Oh boy, I love radio button choose your adventure games.
They have taken a page from Walmart on this one, theirs looks very similar.
ok, good design.
- Does it work?
- Does it actually get you help, or do what most get help pages do, and respond as a chatbot with irrelevant information? Or does it actually return proper information that no one will read?
I donât see a case log âopenâ count anymore
Get Help
You may be asked follow-up questions about your issue before connecting to an associate.
**> [Go to Case Log]/[Get help with a new issue]
Iâm ok with follow up questions with a few conditions:
- The associate actually reads/sees the answers to my questions
- The follow up questions arenât the SAME EXACT ONES the associate is going to ask me once we are connected.
Hear me out. Happens all the time.
Not arguing with you there.
So I made a quick case (since there is always something wrong with something on Amazon)
I do get the options of
- Phone
- Chat
Chat you say. I know there were rumors of it coming back. That was always the most effective because it was all written
What, no
- Fax
- Carrier Pigeon
- Pony Express
- Signal Fires
- Semaphore
- Morse Code
- Didgeridoo
Pretty new beginning that gets you to the same old ending.
(Change the skin and promote the new improved Help but with the same old cut and paste answers).
And the multiple ways to get there âŚ
You can select âŚ
Or you can select âŚ
But hey ⌠we got two different easily findable links to the same Q&A input.
Maybe Iâm more cynical than the rest of you, but I always skip over the option buttons, knowing they wonât do anything for me, and go right to âMy issue is not listedâ, which takes you to the point where you can ask for a phone call.
Surprisingly, I reached out to âsupportâ the other day, and they actually fixed my issue. 
Right there while I was with them on the phone, no less. Of course, I first had to go through a support agent who couldnât do anything, but he then transferred me to a catalog guy who fixed the problem. Which was, btw -
A search suppressed listing because the system demanded some footwear-specific fields be filled in, despite the product not being a shoe, nor anything remotely footwear related. An added bonus was that I was not authorized to fix the issue (which I would have done by providing bogus values just to make the bot happy 
) because I was not the brand owner, and the brand owner couldnât be bothered with Amazonâs bot stupidity because theyâre busy running their business.
Anyway⌠both the initial support rep and the catalog guy looked at the listing and went, hmm, thatâs not a shoe. I was shocked. And the catalog guy even had the power to fix it. It was un-shoeâd in about 15 minutes (still too long, but you take what you can get) and the search suppression went away.
Victory! 
The catalog team has always rocked, but keep it quiet. Once Amazon hears that they will be eliminated.
I know in the past they have tried restricting access to the catalog team, looks like maybe they backed off.
The catalog team has always rocked, but keep it quiet.
I wouldnât go so far as to say ârockedâ, but I agree that they suck a lot less than normal support. Nearly every support issue I have is âcatalogâ related, so Iâve spent my fair share of time on the phone with the catalog team over the years. Sometimes they can help, sometimes they donât have the power to fix things they should be able to. The bots are enabled to break stuff, but the people arenât empowered to fix it. Stupid Amazon. 
I think the catalog team used to have more power (many years ago), then Amazon took almost all of it away, and maybe now they are giving some of it back. The guy I spoke with said they were âtrainedâ to handle the issue I had (widget being mis-categorized as something it was obviously not) and could fix it. No âproofâ required from me, no photo of the product showing it was not a shoe, or authoritative link to the manufacturerâs website proving it was not a shoe, or any other nonsense. Just an employee using their own eyeballs and common sense to see that the item was not a shoe.
You forgot Ouija Board!
As I said at the first staff meeting in a division of a large multinational that I had just taken over, âLet us all join hands in a circle, and attempt to contact the living, because this meeting is so DEADLY BORING!â
