By now I’m sure you have heard about Amazon services, in fact, I wrote a blog post about it when it was first introduced to it. At that time from a contractor's perspective, I thought it was a great thing. Giving you the ability to acquire new customers from Amazons vast database.
I recently had the chance to try it out as a customer. I was looking to hire an electrician to install recessed lighting in my kitchen, so I searched for electricians in my area. I had to describe the project I wanted to do and submit the job. It took a day to get a reply in the form of a question. I then answered the question through their site and had to make more selections on Amazons site. Another day went by, and I received a reply with pricing. The problem was that I was never given the chance to tell them how many recessed lights I needed. So at that point I asked another question and a day later I received the reply of this pricing is for just one. One?!? Who installs just one recessed light in a kitchen? Why didn’t they ask me how many I wanted.
At this point, I was very frustrated and several days had gone by. I then replied, can you just come out and measure everything and suggest how many lights you thing would be best in my kitchen. A day later I received a reply that I had to go back on to the site and request a home consultation and pay the $16.00 fee. I then went in and set up the appointment and was asked to give them three different time options that worked for me. The options were 8 am-2 pm, 2 pm – 6 pm and 6 pm-8 pm. 6 pm to 8 pm did not work for me so I attempted to select just two time zones and it would not process because you had to choose three. I could have chosen the final option for the next day, but that didn’t work for me. So I thought to myself, ok no big deal I’ll select all three time zones there is no way they will want to come from 6pm-8pm.
The next day I received my confirmation via email that they would be at my house between 6 pm and 8 pm. I sent yet another email explaining that I could bot be there at that time and the only reason I chose it was because the system would not process unless I selected all their time slots. They replied saying they would come between 2 pm and 6pm.
I waited all day for the contractor to arrive and can you guess what happened next? They never showed up at that time. They showed up between 6pm and 8pm when I was not home. I send an email asking what happened explaining that we discussed the changing of the appointment. Apparently they forget and just followed what the system told them to do.
The next day I searched Google for an electrician and called on the telephone. I was able to do what took a week on Amazon in 10 minutes over the phone. From a customer's perspective, Amazon Home Services is a challenge. You just can’t buy home services as you can buy an iPad. There are too many different factors involved.
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