Disgruntled Amazon customer gets more than he bargained for

An Amazon customer claims to have had a surprise after submitting a complaint about customer service to Amazon - he found a ten-inch sex toy in his shopping basket the next time he logged on.

Irish IT contractor, Pedro, ordered the latest edition of an art book, but was disappointed when an earlier version arrived. And when Amazon took several days to find out whether it had the right edition or not - it didn't - Pedro complained on a customer satisfaction survey.

However, when he next accessed the site, he was startled to see an item already in his shopping cart - the 'Hulk 10.25-inch Huge Dong Black'.

"If my best friend did it to me while I wasn't watching, of course I would find it funny. I'm not a prude," Pedro told tech site Ars Technica.

"The problem is, I was at the office, in an open space, with people behind me. A guy and two girls were sitting by me when I opened up Amazon and they saw the contents of my shopping basket."

After taking a screenshot, Pedro got back in touch with customer services, suspecting a prank from an employee. A senior staffer apologised profusely, and credited his account with €100.

According to a former Amazon customer service worker, the company does have the capability to add products to shopping baskets, to help out customers who are having difficulty shopping.

And, he says, it's likely that Pedro's poor review was fed back to the relevant employee as part of a weekly report aimed at improving performance.

"Again, it's a tool meant to improve customer service for the sake of the customer," he says.

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But it's by no means unknown for employees to hit out at customers that annoy them. Last September, for example, a call handler working for EE emailed a customer calling him a 'f*****g c**t'.

And research earlier in the year from call answering service alldayPA found that nearly half of people had been blamed for problems themselves when complaining to customer service.

And Pedro has one more complaint.

"The entry for 'The Hulk' is completely misleading. I would expect something called "The Hulk" to be green," he says. "Its picture is pink and the description says it is black. My whole issue with Amazon.de started because of incorrect description of items - and this entry does not help their case."