By now, everybody has a good story about Amazon, and I just wanted to share a curious incident in my dealings with the mercenary cornucopia. I’m not saying it’s typical, and I’m not saying Amazon doesn’t give a damn–I’m just saying this seemed like the were giving away I
ncompetence free with our order.
Kay & I decided to try a bit of advertising on Amazon but found the returns were meager. We wanted to upgrade and needed a walk-through by someone who knew the techniques and terminology of the process. Fortunately, Amazon offers such a service–or says they do. The representative we contacted made three appointments to assist and advise us, and failed to keep all three.
I shall add here that this failure might well have been due to serious personal emergencies or circumstance
s beyond his control, and no fault of his at all, but I thought I should mention it to a supervisor and see if it might be corrected now and avoided in the future.
In short, I wanted someone in charge to know they were driving a Clown Car.
So you can imagine my surprise when they told me the supervisor was too important to talk to me!
I did a bit of supervising myself back in the day, and when someone dropped the ball, I found it helpful to know about it, but apparently Knowing About It wasn’t in the job description for a supervisor here. Nonplussed, I filed a formal complaint and got an e-mail response that help was on the way, and if they didn’t arrive in 5 days, I should contact the party in the handy link provided.
You guessed it: Help didn’t arrive, and the link put me on a circular route back to square one. So we dropped our account with Amazon and took our business elsewhere. Look for the skywriting to appear after we drop leaflets over the city.
Meanwhile, I’m trying my own method for putting the Word out:
Your story is not surprising. I’ve had a few friends who’ve try to sell stuff–books, toys, CDs/records, etc.–on AMAZON and all have had “issues.” I don’t have a Good Fix for this. Online selling is fraught with problems and hassles.
“Fraught with problems & hassles?” The only issue I ever had with it was the deathly silence waiting for any business. In the word of Leonard Cohen, “Quiet as Heaven on a Saturday night.”
Amazon — too big to fail? Ha! I’ve always been tempted to try selling on their site, as on the surface it looks a little easier than the meat grinder that it is eBay. I’ll be interested to know who you end up with. BTW, as a fellow pipe-smoker, I like your briar. Is that one you made?
That pipe? Sorta; I shortened the stem and put a different mouthpiece on it. Not the same as building an Interocitor, but possibly a bit more useful.
The pipe in the picture is one I assembled from spare parts–I’m getting quite a collection of “possibles.”
Yesterday I tried to post a review of MENTION MY NAME IN HELL, which I recently purchased from them. Amazon sent me an apology, saying that I couldn’t do it because I didn’t meet their qualifications. That is despite spending the requisite amount of money recently and having left reviews in the past. I contacted them and, after several exchanges, found no solution. Now I’m waiting for one of their specialists to contact me within 48 hours.
Rich, maybe I’m on their S**t list