Amazon's Non-existent Phone Support

Back in April, I posted about Amazon's non-existent customer contact form, designed to keep KDP customers from ever making contact with their customer care team.

This month, things get even more ridiculous.

There's a massive issue with their pre-order system - or lack of - which I'll go into in a separate post. Suffice to say, I needed to talk to someone who could fix that problem.

They seem to have sorted the e-mail system, so I was able to send them a message outlining the issue.

I received the following response:

Thank you for contacting Amazon KDP. I understand that you wanted information on coordinating your books release dates. I would be glad to assist you.

Due to the unique nature of your inquiry, I've temporarily enabled your account for phone support. Our phone support is available every day from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Pacific time...

1. Sign in to your KDP account [...]
4. Follow Steps 1 through 7 above to request a phone call.

First off, this really wasn't a 'unique issue,' many other authors are hacked off by the same thing and have been vocal about it in writing groups - seems Amazon just isn't listening. 

Secondly, there were no steps 1-7. Not above, not below, not anywhere in the e-mail, not on the website.

I replied to point this out and received:

First of all, our apologies for the inconvenience caused.

The steps for the phone support were sent incorrectly previously, now you will be able to see steps 1 to 7 correctly...

The steps included:

1. Go to the Contact Us form: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/contact-us
2. Select your issue under "How can we help?"
3. Choose the subcategory that best describes the reason for your contact.
4. You'll see a "Phone" option under the section "How would you like to contact us?"
5. Under "Phone," click "Call us."
6. Under "Talk with KDP Customer Service," enter your contact number and country or region.
7. Choose "Call Me" or "Call Me in 5 Minutes," and be ready to provide your account information when we call. 

Yeah, I got as far as three. None of the topics under How can we help were remotely linked to my issue, so I selected book details and How do I change my book details? Nowhere under that subcategory was there an option saying phone or How would you like to contact us? 

So, I sent a miffy reply telling them to call me and including my number.

You could watch your entire life go by trying to get customer service from KDP. Amazon is worth almost $135 billion, yet they can't build a website. Rather backs up the theory that this is deliberate and that they're trying their very best to become a company that filters customer service requests out the back door. They can't genuinely be this bad, can they?

Anyway, I'll post an update if I ever get to talk to someone. 

Meanwhile, if anyone knows how to get around this and request a call back, I'd be grateful. 

UPDATE: So, a very nice man from Amazon did call me after I sent the e-mail. Worked out that there is a call back button on the website, but it's well hidden.

If I had chosen Moving from CreateSpace to KDP, I would have seen it immediately:

But because I chose Book details, I should then have guessed that I needed to click one of the additional links below, rather than looking to the right, where you'd logically expect it to appear.

Really unhelpful web design.

Anyway, the guy went off to talk through my problem with colleagues. He admitted the problem was a definite issue, but there was nothing KDP could do about it at the moment. Hopefully in the future.

Well, that was worth it.

Two days to get to talk to somebody, to get nothing done.

What's that IngramSpark - pick me, pick me?