It’s not all that often that Amazon gets it wrong, especially when you consider that, by some estimates, Amazon ships more than 3million packages a day. Still, sometimes an Amazon order arrives with a damaged box, or damaged items, or just plain bad packaging. Amazon has actually made it easy to provide them with feedback and to report poor packing or damaged packaging, if you know how. Here’s how to report damaged packaging or bad packing, or leave other packing or packaging feedback, at Amazon.
How to Report Damaged or Bad Packaging or Packing to Amazon
2021 UPDATE: Amazon has revised how you can report damaged, ineffective, or bad packaging in 2021. Now you can either 1. click the ‘View your item” button within the completed order listing in the ‘Orders’ section of your Amazon account, and then under “How was your delivery” click the thumbs-down button), or 2. Contact Amazon directly through their chatbot, which you will find here. Amazon encourages this method saying “Concerned about a Damaged Delivery or other issues with packaging? While our mission is to reduce the amount of packaging required while ensuring products arrive to our customers undamaged, we recognize we don’t always get it right. If you have experienced a damaged delivery, please contact us and tell us about your experience. We’ll use information collected from your order to help assess both the quality of the item’s packaging from the manufacturer, and the choices we made in terms of packaging solutions available at our fulfillment centers. If needed, we’ll work to improve the packaging and may even restrict the item from sale until a packaging change is made to ensure that we are delivering a great customer experience.
Original method discussed in this post (these no longer work in 2021, use the above methods instead):
There are two different ways to get to the feedback and packaging reporting area of Amazon:
1. Log into Amazon and click on Your Account in the upper right-hand corner
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2. From the dropdown menu, click on Your Orders
3. Find the item with the offending packaging or packing in your orders
In this example, we are complaining about how a bag of bird seed was packaged, because the bag of bird seed itself was slashed open, inside the box.
4. Click the ‘Leave package feedback’ button
This will take you to the Amazon “Rate Our Packaging” page.
OR
Click on this link:
This link will take you directly to the Rate Our Packaging page at Amazon.
Either way, you are going to end up here:
Now, fill in your answers to the questions on the form, such as:
Please rate the packaging protection on your shipment.
-
Excellent Protection
Good Protection
Fair Protection
Poor Protection
Awful Protection
Was the box size and packaging appropriate for the items?
-
Too Small
About Right
Too Big
Way Too Big
and
Was the item difficult to open?
Difficult to open packaging may include clamshells, wire ties, etc.
-
Yes
No
Of course, none of these options are applicable to our problem, that the product inside the box was damaged, owing to a packing issue.
Fortunately, below those questions, is a text box where you can explain what the problem is. You can also submit pictures along with your explanation.
In our case we wrote “This bag of bird seed was slashed – the shipping box itself was undamaged, but within the shipping box, the bird seed has spilled all over, including all over the other item in the box (dirtying its package), and that item was supposed to be a gift! Clearly this bag was nicked by a box cutter or something else, in the warehouse, and still put in the box and shipped. Very sloppy, Amazon!”
Then we attached the above picture, along with a second picture.
Once you are done filling out the form, click on Submit
The system will confirm your submission, saying that Amazon will use your input to improve products and Amazon packaging.
Note that it does not say that you will hear back from them; you might, but it’s much more likely that you won’t.
If the issue is bad enough that what you received was damaged or somehow else rendered unusable, you will need to return the item instead.
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As of February 2023, there is no way to rate shipping and no easily located customer service chat (still haven’t found it after about an hour of being directed in a series of circular loops by the customer service FAQ).
Thanks for the great customer service and for trying hard to get better at safely shipping my purchases Amazon! [hard sarcasm]
I posted this comment in reference to a 27″ computer monitor that arrived in a box that was more than double the volume of the monitor box, with NO additional packing material, not even the usual one or two symbolic air bladders …by some miracle the item survived, so I guess that’s the best way to pack, right? [more sarcasm]
David, to contact Amazon by chat, go to this link, click on the “Something else” box, and then on the resulting page click on “I need more help”; that will invoke the chat. Here’s the link (and we’ll be writing this up shortly): https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us/foresight/hubgateway
This function is no longer available at Amazon. Cannot comment on packaging.
Robert, thank you for letting us know. We have just researched and updated the post to include the new method (thanks, Amazon..grrrr). The new method is to either 1. click the ‘View your item” button within the completed order listing in the ‘Orders’ section of your Amazon account, and then under “How was your delivery” click the thumbs-down button), or 2. Contact Amazon directly through their chatbot; the link to that method is towards the top of this article now (we can’t put the link in this comment because we don’t allow links in comments and they are automatically scrubbed). TIP
I deliver amazon for the post office and I would like to make a suggestion about how the dog food is packaged, it is being put in boxes that are double the size of the dog food and the boxes are getting smashes and broken it would be so much easier to carry if you just put your labels on the bag the dog food comes in, or find a bag to put it in or smaller box, I’m a smaller lady and it would be easier to carry the bag than it is to carry those boxes that are double the size of the bag of dog food. less injuries on the delievers of your product
Delivered Sunday
Package was left inside the residence’s mailbox
Track package
CHITUMA (New Fashion) Women’s Luxury Genuine Leather Classical Evening Party Clutch Bag Shoulder Bag Simple Bag Wallet Handbag (Large, Red)
Sold by: Lucky Dog
Return eligible through Feb 18, 2020
Shipped with USPS
Amazon has conveniently removed the button to rate the shipping.
Reporting bad packaging is one thing. Getting Amazon to actually do something about it is quite another.