About Online Shopping

When I lived in the US, aside from groceries and clothes or shoes, I bought most things online. The main reason is that online shopping gives you more time to compare options carefully, and you can also go through shopping portals to earn extra rewards. But once you shop enough, all kinds of problems can come up, for example:

  • The item never arrives: this has happened most often with Amazon, though of course that’s partly because I order from them so much
  • The package is damaged, and the item inside is damaged too: especially with USPS packages..
  • Some items are missing and don’t match the packing slip: this happens a lot when buying snacks or several beauty products at once
  • The wrong item was shipped

After dealing with merchants several times over these issues, I’ve developed a pretty good sense of how to handle them, so I wanted to share a quick overview here. Of course, there have also been some extremely frustrating follow-up situations, and I’ll share those too. Based on my experience, if an online order never arrives or arrives with problems, you can usually solve it using the following methods. It’s best to go in order, since that saves the most time and effort. In general, these five steps should resolve about 99% of cases.

  • Contact the merchant
  • Contact the shipping carrier
  • File a credit card dispute
  • Better Business Bureau (BBB)
  • Small claims court

Contact the Merchant

The first step is to start with the merchant, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. First check the order status and tracking to see where the package is. If there’s still no tracking, or if tracking shows delivered but the item never actually arrived, then it’s time to contact customer service.

If the merchant offers online customer service, I recommend using that directly. Calling often means long hold times, and having to read out your order number and confirm your address can be a hassle. I usually handle everything online. For example, with Amazon, you can select your order and start a chat right away, which saves a lot of time.

Of course, calling works too. Usually you can find the merchant’s phone number under contact us. Before reaching out, have your order number, shipping address, and phone number ready so the representative can look up your order and verify your identity.

When contacting the merchant, clearly explain your situation and keep evidence. Take photos, and for especially expensive items, you may even want to record an unboxing video.

  • Order never arrives
  • Package damaged
  • Item missing
  • Wrong item
  • Order delayed

At the same time, it helps to decide in advance what resolution you want, so one conversation can settle everything without having to contact customer service multiple times.

  • Refund: If the item never arrives, you can ask for a direct refund. In general, it’s best to have it refunded to your original payment method.
  • Resend: If you still need the item, or if you got a great discount at the time of purchase, ask customer service to send a replacement.
  • Return: If the item was damaged during shipping, you can request a return. Usually the merchant will give you a return label, and you can print it out and drop the package off at a shipping store or have the carrier pick it up.

Contact the Shipping Carrier

In theory, contacting the shipping carrier can also solve the problem, but I don’t recommend doing that yourself right away, for the following reasons:

1. Carrier phone lines are hard to get through, and customer service is usually not very helpful

I once had a package where the tracking showed delivered, but I never actually received it. I contacted customer service, and just getting someone on the phone took nearly an hour. After checking, the representative still had no useful information and simply repeated what was already shown in the tracking details. They didn’t even have the contact information for the delivery driver. In short, I wasted a lot of time and got nowhere.

2. The merchant should be responsible for your order, including dealing with the carrier

When we buy something, shipping is just one part of the service. What matters to us is whether the item arrives correctly, not the middle steps in the process. So contacting the merchant directly and letting them deal with the carrier is usually much more efficient than trying to do it yourself. It also saves a lot of time. Sometimes the merchant may try to blame the carrier, but that’s not really your problem. You only need to emphasize that the item you received was wrong, or that you never received it at all.

3. The merchant, not the carrier, is the one responsible for compensating you

No matter how much you go back and forth with the carrier, the delivery driver or shipping company is not going to refund you directly. The merchant still has to issue the refund. So spending too much effort on the carrier usually doesn’t mean much.

Credit Card Dispute

In general, large merchants are very likely to give you a satisfactory response, such as a refund or a replacement shipment. But in a small number of cases, the merchant may stall or refuse to resolve the issue, insisting that you already received the package. I personally ran into this when I bought discounted gas gift cards on Groupon. The order never arrived, but Groupon kept insisting it had already been sent.

When things get stuck, I suggest not wasting too much more time. Go straight to the stronger option and dispute the charge. Once you file a dispute, the merchant’s funds from that transaction are temporarily frozen. The credit card issuer will step in to review the situation. In most cases, if the merchant can’t provide meaningful proof that you actually received the item, the card issuer will side with its customer and remove the charge. For more details, see:

Based on your specific situation, you can choose categories such as not received or not as described. That said, the dispute process can take a while, so it’s best for situations where you truly no longer want the item and also don’t want to keep wasting time arguing with the merchant.

File a Complaint with the Better Business Bureau (BBB)

If a refund alone isn’t enough and you want additional compensation, or you simply want to teach the merchant a lesson, you can also turn to the BBB. Although the BBB is not a government agency, its business ratings have built up a lot of credibility over the years, and many companies do care about them. So when the BBB gets involved in your case, it does have some influence and credibility. As with the previous steps, going through the BBB takes time, so it’s generally more suitable as a later-stage option.

In addition to emphasizing that the item never arrived, I’d also suggest mentioning things like customer service refusing to resolve the issue, delaying the process, or having a poor attitude. If there was any personal attack or discrimination, you can include that as well.

File in Small Claims Court

If none of the steps above gets you the result you want, and you still have the energy to keep pushing, then I’d recommend one final option: small claims court. It’s called “court,” but in practice, once the merchant’s legal department receives your filing, they usually won’t actually want to appear in court. For them, the cost of hiring a lawyer is simply too high. No matter how much they stalled or passed the blame earlier, by this stage they will often want to settle with you.

My Personal Experiences

Amazon: Package Never Arrived

I’ve had several occasions, both for my own orders and orders I placed for others, where packages never arrived. Amazon has probably had the most customer-friendly service I’ve dealt with. As long as the tracking shows lost, customer service will usually refund you right away or suggest sending a replacement. At that point, you can decide based on how good the original deal was. If the discount was especially strong, ask for a replacement; if not, just take the refund. Refunds also tend to post quickly.

I’ve also had cases where the tracking showed lost, but the package eventually arrived after a long delay. This happens especially often during major shopping seasons, particularly Black Friday. So during those times, don’t panic too quickly. Wait a few extra days, because sometimes it’s just a tracking issue.

Another nice thing about Amazon is that its website sometimes shows who signed for the package. If the name of the person who signed doesn’t match who you expected, there’s a good chance the package was delivered to the wrong place or stolen. In that case, customer service will usually just issue a refund, though for a large amount they may ask for a police report.

Best Buy Kindle Lost in Transit

In my experience, Best Buy had always been pretty customer-friendly, similar to Amazon. But one experience buying a Kindle really disgusted me. I ordered a Kindle, but it never arrived. When I checked the tracking, it showed the package stuck in one place with no movement. The carrier said it might be lost. But when I called Best Buy customer service, they flat-out insisted it was not their responsibility and that the item had already been shipped. I repeatedly explained that I had not received it, but they just kept stalling. In the end, I had to threaten a credit card dispute if they didn’t refund me. Only then did the representative escalate the case to a supervisor and issue the refund.

And then guess what happened? My Best Buy account, which had almost never had an order canceled before, suddenly started getting every order canceled. I couldn’t even place normal orders successfully anymore. It really felt like I had been blacklisted. As a result, some of my Best Buy rewards could only be printed and used in-store, because my online orders kept getting canceled.

Groupon Gas Gift Card

At one point, Groupon was selling Shell gas gift cards at 50% off. I placed several orders using a Discover card and a newly opened account, but one of the orders was never shipped while all the others arrived. I contacted customer service, and they insisted it had already been sent and told me to keep waiting. I waited another half month and still got no response. At that point I stopped bothering with customer service and just filed a dispute on my Discover card. In the end, the merchant couldn’t provide any proof that they had actually mailed it out—in earlier orders they had simply sent the cards by regular USPS mail—so Discover refunded me. This was the only time I ever filed a dispute because customer service refused to refund me.

Has this ever happened to you? How did you handle an online order that never arrived? Feel free to share your experience in the comments.