Tag: Jeff Bezos

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So I wanted to buy a book.

I avoid Amazon because I find Jeff Bezos business practices suspect, to say the least, but I needed to buy the book quickly and didn’t have it in me to try something new and Amazon is easy which is long way to go to say I had to buy a book from the horrible Jeff Bezos.

Somehow in the process of buying the Kindle book, I also bought the audio book. I didn’t want the audio book. I tried to return it. After about 15 minutes of fruitless reads of the “Help” pages. I surrendered. I would to talk to Customer Service. It took me a good few minutes to find the Customer Service phone number but I finally found the hidden icon. I was immediately informed that it would when be a half hour wait to actually talk to someone and they kindly informed that there were other avenues to get help for my problem. Do you really want to wait a half hour on hold when Chat can help you right now.

I tried Chat. I told Chat I wanted to return an audio book. Amazon had a drop down box for accidental purchase which means accidental purchases of audio books is a frequent problem. Now, I want to pause my rant to point out something this should be a red flag to whoever is in charge of their system that there is a problem with people accidentally purchasing audio books. If it happens so often that they have an actual drop down box for it means it happens a lot. But I am pretty sure that the accidental purchase of unwanted products is a benefit not a feature of their system. How much money does Amazon earn from accidental purchases from people who don’t realize they have accidentally purchases something. What a wonderful source of passive income for the company.

Anyway, I was cracking away with the Chat function when Chat told me I could only return an audio book if I paid with a credit card which was mystifying because I had paid with a credit card. Since Chat was convinced that Chat had resolved the problem Chat wouldn’t let me talk any longer about my problem. Whenever I tried to return to the subject of my accidental purchase, Chat reminded me that Chat couldn’t help because I needed to have purchased with a credit card. The matter was resolved as far as Chat was concerned. I am assuming Chat’s reluctance to discuss the matter any further was because Chat was an AI robot and not an actual person. I couldn’t change Chat’s mind because Chat didn’t have a mind to change.

I decided to wait for phone operator. It took about 20 minutes, so less than the half hour mentioned at the beginning of the call. I spoke to Mohamed who took all of one minute to resolve my problem. ONE MINUTE, I tell you. He also let me in on why I couldn’t get a refund from Chat because I needed to belong to some Audio Club to get the refund. This might explain why the system wouldn’t let me use the normal refund process. I wasn’t supposed to get one because I didn’t belong to the Audio Club. The system just lumped my accidental purchase under a general category of not buying with a credit card because that happened a lot more.

I was bothered that I shouldn’t get a refund for my accidental purchase. It was an accident after all. In a conversation that resembled a comedy show routine, Mohamed said that only club members could return audio materials but I reminded him that I accidentally purchased the audio item. Mohamed then said and that was why he was refunding my money. He just wanted me to know that, in the future, I couldn’t return audio materials. But what if I accidentally purchase it, well then Mohamed said he would refund. Which begs the question why not just use the regular Amazon return system instead of forcing me to call them and explain that I accidentally purchased an audio book.

Never mind, I am pretty sure that Mohamed didn’t understand the policy either. He was doing his job, and quite well I might add. Someone up the food chain wants customers to know that if they accidentally purchase an Audio book they aren’t supposed to get a refund unless they belong to the Audio Club. Mohamed ticked that box. He didn’t understand the policy any better than I did so he couldn’t explain the policy to me. He followed his company script and that was all that mattered.

There are several reasons for me to be irritated with this customer service encounter:

  1. A human being resolved my problem quickly and efficiently. The Chat robot and help pages were time consuming and utterly useless.
  2. Making it difficult to talk to an actual human being is unhelpful. The company is actively thwarting good customer service by giving a show of alternates that aren’t as good. I tried for a good 15 minutes to use the help pages and then tried for another 10 minutes with Chat. Neither could help me, a person could.
  3. I spent a good 45 minutes to get $5.44 back when a human being could have help me almost instantaneously. How is routing customers to ineffective tools and wasting your customer’s time helpful.
  4. I am starting to believe that this is all an intentional way for Amazon to get passive income. How many people give up trying to get a refund? Indeed I thought several times is this worth my time to get back a paltry $5.44. There were so many impediments in my way. First, I didn’t realize I had bought the audio book, then I couldn’t return it through normal return process, the “Help” pages were no help at all, Chat couldn’t help me and I had to wait 20 minutes to get a customer service agent. I am certain that there are people who would have given up and ka-ching and extra $5.44 in Jeff Bezos pockets.
  5. Why aren’t more human beings hired for customer service? Jeff Bezos is a billionaire numerous times over. Real live human beings are better customer service than all the self-help bull shit put in our way. They just are. So why not have the customer service phone prominently displayed on every page and properly staffed so a customer doesn’t have to wait long to get help.
  6. Also, and this over everything else think might matter to someone like Bezos, the whole process made me hate Amazon all the more. Yes, I will use Amazon under duress but I am willing to pay more to stop him from getting any more of money that is absolutely necessary.

Rant complete.

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I remember, in the good old days, when second weddings were a sedate affair. This was particularly true if the people getting married were having an affair which prompted the dissolution of their first marriages. The idea was that the marriage was necessary for respectability but let’s not shine a spotlight on the adultery of the bride and groom. It would be a small gathering probably at the city hall or a private home with a small reception afterwards.

But far be it for Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez to quietly celebrate their nuptials. They are spending millions. You heard that right. Millions for a wedding. There is even concern that the city of Venice would be unable to cope with the number of guests their wedding will bring into the city.

Their guest list is a who’s who of the rich and famous. Here are just some of the names being bandied around: Leonardo DiCaprio, Eva Longoria, Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry, Brian Glazer, Barbra Streisand, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner,  and Jewel. I would be surprised if the happy couple actually knows all of these people on a personal level that would warrant a normal person to invite someone to their wedding. It’s just a collection of rich and famous people who will add to the fabulousness of the day.

There are times when VIPs should read the room and behave accordingly. The USA is entering a time of great economic tumult. There are real fears about jobs, 401Ks and Social Security. Maybe a little less ostentatious display of conspicuous consumption is in order here.

But far be it for a billionaire to take advice from me. I wish them all the luck in the world.

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Something goes on in people’s minds when they start talking about poor people that doesn’t happen with your average middle class person and certainly not rich person. People assume they know the general outline of the poor person’s story which can be whittled down to the person fucked up and somehow deserved the consequences of their mistakes. Poverty and the attendant despair teach a great lesson. How else will they learn? Right. This kind of help has proven itself enormously successful with this nations homeless problem. If anything, the present spirit is that all this mollycoddling we shower on the homeless is part of the problem. There are some people who think we should do even less than the very little we are doing now.

Any way I digress. I was talking to friends about a person who is having financial problems. She lives month to month and needs every penny she can get. More than once in the discussion, people said that her situation was shocking because she was a good person and undeserving of such problems because she worked hard all of her life. Of course, I nodded my head in agreement. Poverty shouldn’t happen to good people.

There is the rub however. If good people shouldn’t be poor, then the unspoken part is poor people are somehow bad. They deserve their fate. They either behaved badly or made bad decisions in order to find themselves in such a state. And because of that, they must pay. Indeed, the most important thing, more important than helping them, is that the poor must realize that they made a mistake and their poor judgement is the reason they are poor and suffering now. If we don’t make them pay, they will just continue making more bad decisions.

If I needed any more evidence of how bad poor people are, earlier in the week I saw the following in Facebook:

God forbid that the poor experience anything other than looking for a job and suffering. You simply aren’t suffering enough if you have a beer and a cigarette. You are a bad poor person and are certainly undeserving of any help if you would spend your money on such luxuries. Give me a break.

Try this on for size. Jeff Bezos receives government tax breaks. This means, he doesn’t have to pay all of his taxes because the Government wants him to invest in his business. But because we give him a tax break, he has more money to spend on drinks, first class hotels and his own god damn airplane. Does he really need those things? Of course not. Yet, he is getting a government handout and he dares to have a good time while getting them. If he needs these tax breaks so badly, he should be only spending his money on his business and nothing else, and certainly nothing that might be considered fun. Both the poor and the rich receive government money but we only police the poor on how they spend this money.

This is because we give the rich the benefit of the doubt. We assume that they are good people unlike those horrible poor people who are bad. They are drug addicts, they sleep on our streets, they beg for money, and, horrors of horrors, they are doing it in front of me. It taints everything we do as country for poor people but we sincerely believe that unless help comes with a healthy dose of disapproval, the poor will never change.

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Apparently Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars to burn through and is looking for people to help him. He just donated a $100 million to Dolly Parton. It is presumed that Parton will help Bezos distribute his extra money to worthy charities. Given her history, I believe that she will. Parton has proven herself a generous woman as she is credited with giving Vanderbilt Medical Center money in order to help find the COVID vaccine.

But, with absolutely no animus towards Parton, why give her even more money to give away. She has so much of her own money that she is already giving it away. So Bezos gives her even more to give away? Whenever I hear about money transfers like this I have to ask, why not take this money out in taxes and let our legislatures determine where it goes. The money is there. The rich are giving it away. They clearly don’t need it for their business. Why let billionaires decide where the money goes?

I can hear people say the Government will only waste it. Perhaps. But there is a fundamental difference here. A Republican led government could put the money to tax breaks, bringing down the national debt, or helping energy companies find oil. Democrats can use it on providing better social services. The key here is that in both cases a number of people are looking at the public good and making a decision that they think is best for the country. I might disagree with the decision but I feel better about a legislative body looking into it than having a single billionaire deciding on a whim.

I mean what if Dolly wants to talk to the animals? Based on her desire, she drops the $100 million into charities that work with humans trying to talk to animals. A noble enterprise I am sure, but is it really the best use of money when we have so many other pressing needs? And, more importantly, why leave this decision to one citizen. And really why does any citizen have so much money that they are giving away $100 million to another wealthy person.

Since Bezos has $100 million to give to Dolly Parton, it mean he can pay more in taxes without a detrimental effect on his life or his business. He is giving it away already. I say if you are giving away $100 million you are begging to be taxed more. Let’s do it.