This is an absolute pleasure for our USB oscilloscope business - intelligent, reasonable customers ask for help with a problem they have, we help them solve it and both parties move on with our lives.
Our other business - dealing in retro video games, is an absolute nightmare. Almost all support questions we field come from people who have no intention of solving a problem. Most are just anxious people who need a little bit of reassurance, but plenty expect us to do pointless busywork, want to vent emotionally at someone who can't fight back, or just generally want to smear shit all over the walls because they can. Either way, because they don't want to solve a problem, they just keep up eating up your support time and emotional energy in an extended loop for no gain - we're talking upwards of 80% of your support resources if you let these people have their way.
Having to deal regularly with the type of person that the average HN reader would never come across in their lifetime, I can understand why organisations like Amazon would set up these bureaucratic support "walls" and/or outsource all support to a Filipino call centre staffed by people that don't even know what Amazon is. The systems are designed to make getting support hard, because most people contacting consumer support literally don't even have a problem that good support staff could solve.
In this instance, they've clearly made an error in requiring the user to navigate an automated system when the dollar value is in the _millions_, and I understand why the average HN user would be pissed off by a system like this, but I don't think the solution to the problem is as simple as "provide good, human support to everyone" - it creates as many problems as it solves.
A bit of friction, if applied correctly, is not a terrible thing if an interaction's cost outweighs it's value. Getting the balance right is tricky but worth considering some alternatives to just "putting up with it".
After all, "sure, I'm selling at a loss but I'll make it up on volume!" is not sustainable for too long (unless you are a tech company... just kidding).
I observed the same thing in a different context in my previous gig doing Linux training. We strived to make our books as clear and simple as possible. When we discovered streps in our labs that confused students, we would rewrite them to avoid repeating the problem in future classes. Eventually I started noticing a tipping point where if the lab did too much hand holding students would disengage mentally and start having more problems instead of fewer.
I’ve tried sharing this insight with the UX designers at my current gig, but for some reason they’re skeptical when I suggest making our UI harder for customers to use. ;-)
By fixing that bug, conversions went down. We literally did an A/B test to prove that giving the user a stupid error increased revenue. We even played with the text of the error to maximize revenue.
We never figured out why, but my hypothesis is the user has to feel like that are making progress through the task they are trying to achieve. Getting a pointless error, and then getting past it, gives them a sense of achievement. They're then happier and more invested in your product when it comes to plugging in a credit card number...
Experimenters recruited 40 Princeton students to take the
CRT [Shane Frederick's Cognitive Reflection Test]. Half
of them saw the puzzles in a small font in washed-out
gray print. The puzzles were legible, but the font
induced cognitive strain. The results tell a clear story:
90% of the students who saw the CRT in normal font made
at least one mistake in the test, but the proportion
dropped to 35% when the font was barely legible. You read
this correctly: performance was better with the bad font.
Cognitive strain, whatever its source, mobilizes System 2
[slow, conscious, laborious thinking], which is more
likely to reject the intuitive answer suggested by System
1 [the immediate, unreflective thinking by which we make
most of our minute-to-minute judgments].[1]
It's absolutely awful from a customer experience standpoint. But, I believe I end up buying more from them because when it does work I feel like I need to buy everything I've been thinking about because I don't want to deal with that hassle again anytime soon.
If this is the same sort of thing that was happening on your site, this would only work if your product is not available elsewhere for a similar or better price. In the case of under armour, their products are available elsewhere, but not in the same variety and not with the same discounts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
Though I'd also be wary of the impact these bugs are having on your brand name, and reputation. You might have stumbled into a local maxima.
To ensure it wasn't some other wierd effect, we also fixed the bug and then deliberately re-added the same error message.
This bug was worth 15% of our revenue, so we did a lot of tests and trials...
Was this typo intentional so readers don't just disengage and skim through your comment? ;)
That's interesting, though. I wonder why more accurate instructions resulted in more problems. I know you mentioned 'disengagement,' but wouldn't more detail and accuracy make it easier to do the exercise(s)? Or does it make the students just zone out and type the lines out without thinking?
(I know I certainly was guilty of that the first time I went through the Linux From Scratch book.)
That doesn't make sense. You are in favour of systemic obfuscation and low quality support to discourage people who don't have problems from taking up the time of support staff? Even though the barriers make life hell for people with legitimate problems like the guy whose $1.5m inventory was destroyed?
Wouldn't it be better to handle both types of cases properly?
Instead of spending "hours with mentally ill people" (your terminology), why not perfect the art of triage and funnel people without problems appropriately?
If that's an unrealistic expectation, could you provide more detail about how it is unavoidable to spend "hours with mentally ill people"? You already provided details, but I can't see how you end up losing so many hours! There are techniques for handling these cases, my friend.
Your oscilloscope product looks fantastic, and the price and terms you sell it for tells me you are an interesting and valuable human being. I'm just pressing you about the other side of your story because I feel there might be a better way to handle the difficult cases that you somehow aren't aware of because you are too fundamentally helpful and an undiscriminatingly good guy. Or something.
I'm never said I'm personally in favour of that approach, I just saw a lot of comments talking about how terrible it is without any consideration of why certain companies might not want to make support accessible. As you said, an ideal solution would redirect people who don't need customer support elsewhere, but I couldn't imagine this is easy for an organisation the size of Amazon. I hope they can work out a better balance in future.
>If that's an unrealistic expectation, could you provide more detail about how it is unavoidable to spend "hours with mentally ill people"?
Just to clarify, I'm not talking about garden-variety depression/anxiety but people with serious issues that lead to them being completely isolated from regular society.
Honestly, we try to avoid dealing with them altogether. If someone sends us 12 messages in a row at 4am asking for information about a product, we don't respond in the morning. I have done in the past and learned the hard way that it is a bad idea. Of course, this is not possible for a business like Amazon with tickets and phone support.
Eventually they become known and are handled separately because they would fake problems and drive people insane.
Some people should be banned from support.
The joys of having a quasi-monopoly. Amazon does't need be be any better - they have all the customers, so merchants have to put up with that if they want access.
Because some problems are NP complete.
Could you share more about the sort of issues you face?
Sometimes we'll get people just asking for more information on an item we sell. Usually you can tell whether or not these people are actually interested in the product or not by how they ask the question. If they're asking about a specific detail (for example, if they're looking for a particular serial number range on a console), they'll usually follow up if you give them a positive response. People asking less specific questions (such as asking for "more photos") are often just bored and have nothing better to do and will either disappear or ask more questions. You can waste literal hours serving these customers and in the process lose thousands of dollars worth of actual sales.
The worst group are just really badly socialised people - often people with serious mental health or drug-related issues. If you engage with them, they will demand massive amounts of your time and have absolutely zero concern for your feelings (let alone your business goals). If they feel you have slighted they, they will respond in the most foul and violent way possible. Just today, my wife was publicly berated by an incel-type guy because she didn't respond to a message he had sent over a week ago. There are at least 2 other occasions I can think of in the last year where this happened.
I think the thing to remember is that the average HN reader (and, by extension, most people that the average HN reader knows) is educated, values their time, and is socialised well enough to the point that they can hold down a job and maintain basic interpersonal relationships. The type of person who contacts customer support for products that shouldn't really require support are absolutely not like this. Mostly it's just people that don't value their own time (or the time of others), but multiple times every week we'll come across people with _serious_ social issues (I don't mean socially awkward, I mean "unable to regulate emotion like a healthy adult") and no-one to talk to about it.
I used to work at a call center job many years ago, and the amount of people who just seem unable to act like a decent person is astounding. I had to leave the job after a few months for my own sanity.
I know its somewhat biased since obviously a call center position will deal with many unpleasant people, but it worries me how it seems like there is an overall decline in mental health of the general population
I think we're now just uncovering the amount of people suffering from these issues. Before they would just be disregarded entirely and wouldn't even have access to various things, so they'd terrorize only people around them.
As someone who is mostly emotionally and cognitively balanced and who has been trained to communicate in order to reach mutually satisfactory outcomes, I don't even think to consider that some people are too maladjusted to use support resources (i.e. communication) in productive ways.
Note for the concerned: I am receiving treatment and a number of people in my circle are aware of the struggle, so this isn’t a cry for help. I just thought this might enrich the discussion for anyone not familiar with these things who would like to understand them better.
Or maybe the photo is the easiest way to confirm if you have the version that the customer is looking for. I know because I have done that. And yes, if you don't have the right version it might look like I never intended to buy.
Really though, if you don't already have detailed pictures posted that show the state of the product from all sides then that's something I'd consider a problem with your used games business.
Because buyers are often collectors as well, they sometimes have unrealistic expectations for the condition of 25-30 year old hardware. A seller once had a concern with a power supply that was genuine, but worn in a way he was unhappy about. Once returns and replacement were completed (thankfully I had another), I now risk a loss, or worse, a dispute where I end up with neither money or the item.
Another time I sold a month of Xbox Game Pass I had received as a promotion. It was well under retail, but when the customer received it, it wouldn’t activate. I spent at least a week on chat with Miscrosoft support trying to resolve the issue. When it was finally resolved and the account credited, the buyer informed me they were a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber and the pass was prorated to 20 days, but they were expecting a month. No amount of explanation of what they purchased being different from what they expected would satisfy them. What I thought would be a simple $5 transaction turned into a significant stressor, and even offering a refund didn’t stop the persistent badgering. When platform reputation is on the line it’s no longer about the dollar amount of the transaction, but how it might impact future transactions.
Most of the time things are very transactional and I try to undersell and over deliver. One time in 20 or so
So many times people came in with a “20,000” collection they assembled. Basically client spent years of buying 3x over actual value as an “investment”
They were always disappointed with the actual value.
At some point I calculated his hourly earnings at around a dollar an hour.
But kept him happy.
All acquired when I was a nintendo power obsessed kid :)
Hope to sell it some day to a SV tech bro for 5 figures
The podcaster emails the company talking about his dissatisfaction. The response was something like, "We understand your frustrations. Even if there's no issue, you can send it back for a refund." The podcaster realized that nothing was actually wrong. The product worked as advertised. It didn't break. It didn't arrive damaged. There were just unfulfilled expectations. I want to say that he responded by thanking them for their time but a refund wouldn't be necessary.
This guy inadvertently took up support time for an issue that wasn't really an issue. If you mix this scenario with entitled people or hobbyists who are very particular about minor details, sellers may spend lot of time on supporting very few customers.
Typically you'd just raise your prices to factor in support costs. You'd have different margins for each industry.
Realistically, the reason you're unable to raise your prices is because you're stuck competing with companies that simply don't offer customer service themselves, and hence would undercut you.
If there was an appropriate amount of public outrage (and ideally legal repercussions) toward businesses not offering sufficient customer support, then your competitors would also have to increase their prices. You'd be no worse off, and general customer satisfaction would improve across the board.
Instead, it's more about taking time away from your business to deal with people who have no intention of buying from you but are just bored, lonely or mentally ill.
While the latter group might only represent 25% of the people who contact you, attempting to fulfill their needs is literally impossible and will eat up as much of your productive time as you allow it. Online reviews (which basically represent the "appropriate amount of public outrage") have only made this worse. If one of your non-customers feel slighted, they will drag your name through the mud in the foulest way possible. The whole "Karen" meme didn't come from nowhere (although in our case, it's usually 30-something single men).
Are not going to be business better equipped to deal with unruly customers than mothers/grandfathers/teenagers having to spend time of their private lives navigating hostile interfaces designed to make them give up? Does not this incentivize bad businesses selling counterfeits/damaged goods with the hope that will not be returned?
I buy a fair number of items on AliExpress and banggood. I don’t want “good customer service” bloating the costs. (Ironically, I still get good service on the 1% of transactions that go wrong, even when I can’t really prove anything. I bought two nice lipo chargers and got sent one. One email and remedied in a couple of weeks.)
In those cases, AliExpress will seemingly randomly decide for or against you randomly, even when you file a dispute with clear photographic and video evidence. I've had it go both ways.
90% of the time it's fine, though, and the cost savings outweigh the loss from fake goods. But I'd certainly not call the AliExpress CS experience "good".
With someone who will keep everyone busy with meaningless work at all times. Took years of painful effort for her to accept “no” without a complete meltdown.
On the flip side she will let her bosses do the same. 20 hour days, 7 days a week. She kept at it until she ended up in the hospital. I had to threaten to destroy her work computer for her to finally back it down to 18 hours a day six days a week.
Some personality types are just strange.
20 years ago at Radioshack, I had a customer try and return a nice stereo. About 300 dollars or so. No receipt. So only store credit for last sell price.
Was in system but last sell price was $1.97 (we no longer sold it)
So “hours” of digging and endless questions on “you sure you got it here?”
Well she had gotten RadioShack and Frys Electronics mixed up. Apparently same store in her mind.
Agreed with all your points except they really should have some `if (claim > minForHumanAgent){ bypassAutomatedHandling(); }` logic for millions of dollars.
Actuaries have been a thing for quite a while.
It’s a shame but humans can be ruthless.
At enterprise size you automate your support to save money. Even outsourced a call Center is expensive, and Amazon’s shitty algorithmic support isn’t.
I know, because we do this in every enterprise sector, including the public sector. The “advantage” amazon have is that it doesn’t really cost them anything because they have a monopoly. In areas where they see actual competition, like in selling cloud to enterprise customers, they have excellent support. They didn’t always have this mind you, they used the same automated systems for years, until they realised just how many billions they were losing to Microsoft because Microsoft sells enterprise customers of a certain size a direct 24/7 phone line to Seattle if an issue is of high enough priority. Now, Amazon offers something similar.
I'm less inclined to believe that is because of competition and not because of the fact enterprise SaaS always has great support. If you are spending thousands, you will almost always have someone dedicated to your account. Likewise there are very few companies with razer thin margins that have excellent support.
I recently had an issue with my Smart Thermostat - where there is plenty of competition (Nest, Honeywell, Ecobee) - I called support and only got someone after 90 minutes of waiting, who was ultimately unhelpful. I spoke to my building who contacted their support line (the building installed the same, non-smart, thermostats as well), and the issue was solved in the same day by a trained technician in a little over an hour.
Edit: it certainly doesn't need to be battery powered either, conveniently cars have 12v battery power avaliable (although it is quite dirty, so input protection is required). I'm on my phone RN, otherwise I'd pull up the schematics, it might already have adequate input protection.
While I could possibly charge a little bit more for it, I don't think the specs justify a $50+ price point (as-is), and for a lot of people that extra $20 makes a big difference.
There were some thoughts a while back of making a higher-end product to fill the $50-$80 gap, and possibly even a stripped down Labrador to sell around the $20 mark. Looking at the Amazon charts, a lot of people are buying knockoff DSO138s to save literally $5-$10 and are left with a really poor quality product.
Edit: I still bought one as is, lol.
Is this useful for a hobbyist? Everyone I've talked to said "get a proper oscilloscope, anything less is a toy" but I have neither the space nor the need for an oscilloscope. I have a Saleae Logic analyzer, but yours looks more featureful.
Sorry to hear that. I hope the rest of your week, and the week to come, are absolutely awesome to make up for it!
(If ground was decoupled, that would be simply a matter of attaching probe and scope ground at both terminals of the resistor.)
Let's screw people with real concerns and real business so Amazon can save money on customer support seems a horrific justification. That is basically making all small businesses guilty of wasting Amazon time and burden the small businesses with the burden of proving that they are not.
How do you know so well the internal statistics for Amazon if you are just a seller? Cannot your kind interpretation also be based in wrong assumptions?
Who has more resources to deal with this situation Amazon or the little business? Amazon does this bullshit because it has power to abuse, not because it is a reasonable relationship with its providers.
Given that, it's quite easy to see why it's hard to find a customer service phone number or any other option except the one they want you to find.
Personally the one that annoyed me was amazon customer service to find "Package says delivered but not received". Searching for this finds lots of variants in the quick-search bar, and a "helpful" faq that says something like "ask a neighbor" or "look under the porch", but no way to contact customer service about it despite forms for hundreds of other meaningless interactions.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/02/world/the-tyrant-mao-as-t...
But looking a little closer, it was really just the land within about 100' of the road, and only the road between the airport and the town.
"With a person as divisive as Mao, both because of his complex history and because of what he represents to different groups, if becomes an almost impossible task to sift through the contradictions of supposed first hand accounts."
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d3s00b/did_m...
"[Googler], can you suggest a strategy for dealing with Google support issues that doesn't involve "get Matt Cutt's attention on Hacker News"? - 9 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2797972
"Guess we won't be able to get Google support from Matt on HN this month. :)" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3709520
"You'll notice over time that Hacker News is the only way to contact google support without spending thousands of dollars on adwords." - 7 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6932516
"That happened a few weeks ago, and thanks to some inside people at Google, the mailing-list reappeared" - 7 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5523992
"From my friend at Google: "It looks like he used the wrong account to update his credit card..." - 7 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6837411
"I have seen people have to post on HN to get things resolved by google employees reading HN threads! While it seems like a personal touch, people are resorting to it (and I assume googlers are helping) because there is not another avenue that works for MOST products that google has." - 7 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716357
"You can post a problem on google support forums, and pray and hope for an answer from their developers." - 9 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2922073
"Google also has a history of disabling accounts and providing no communication, support or other mechanisms to get it restored. Usually kicking up an almighty fuss in public if you have a prominent twitter/blog works" - 9 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3885588
"Google itself is well known for being impossible to deal with unless you know someone on the inside." - 7 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7018354
"Disclaimer: I work for Google Google's support is a complete joke. The only way to get things fixed in a timely manner (if at all) is to ask someone who works for Google to escalate internally. Then you stand a chance. Otherwise you're SOL. [...] I would recommend the OP to contact a Googler friend if they have one." - 7 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6006534
"Google support is abysmal, [but] they respond if you know the appropriate channels" - 6 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8098842
"and there's just no way to contact Google's support unless you know someone at Google" - 4 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442802
"Particularly if you don't have a friend inside google or the ability to hit the front page of HN to get customer service." - 4 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12975195
"She only managed to get this cleared up via a tech support friend who has contacts at Google." - 3 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15992090
"far far too often do I see folks who have to reach out to a dev on Twitter or their friend at Google to get a simple billing error resolved correctly. Its a problem with most cloud providers, but Google seems to be notorious for it." - 2 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17669161
"this contradicts basically every other google support story I've ever read on HN. Similar to what the few other comments are saying at the time of me writing this, it seems like this guy made a fuss somewhere that caught the attention of someone who didn't want the bad PR." - 2 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17707473
"I ended up getting help by going into the google slack and kicking up a fuss. Never heard back from the "official" support channels." - 2 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564220
"Two effective strategies I have seen are: (1) Contact a friend who works at Google[...]" - 2 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17106803
"even though a friend at Google submitted an internal request to get me the account back" - 2 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367972
"monetize on their content for a while (or a long time if they don't have a friend at Google who can escalate the issue)." - 1 year ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19953722
"Gotta post on Hacker News if you want some Google support!" - 1 year ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711833
"It seems like the most reliable support system with Google is to have a SWE friend who works there who will document and enter tickets for you" - 1 year ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21334183
"if you're lucky and you have a friend that knows someone who works there he can expedite your ticket." - 10 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971932
"large tech companies like google and amazon for this, where kicking up a fuss on social media is literally the only way you can hope to have a human at the company look into it." - 2 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24168390
"Google support .... That’s the joke." - 1 month ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24572759
We have a judicial system to deal with issues like this which generally handles things fairly regardless of the size of each party.
However, in the day and age of modern logistics I'd argue that their suppliers could have sold to other customers in other states.
Ultimately I suppose it depends on how we define a market (ultra regional or wider) and how high the transaction costs (+other extra costs) of the suppliers would be to move to another customer. The classical example in "The Economics of Imperfect Competition" was the labor force in a small town (mining iirc., once again not at my bookshelf). I suppose that would give precedent to the fact that small markets "count". However most studies on the topic I am aware of are about labor not supply/demand structures. And I'd argue it is "easier" for a supplier to move their wares to another customer than for a (specialized) worker to move to another company (uproot family etc.).
Additionally some of the suppliers of Walmart are in pretty strong negotiating positions themselves (Unilever etc.).
At least there's enough doubt in my mind to say Walmart's supplier relations are "a textbook example of a monopsonist".
You've never sold to walmart, I have. If they put your physical product on the shelf you'll sell a lot of units. No one else has the shelves walmart does. If you are not on the walmart shelf there is NO way to get the same number of units sold.
If amazon is just insisting on "their guy" then I would think that should be pointed out in much bigger letters. From Amazon's perspective I can see lots of incentives: faster, cheaper, no appeals, no class-actions, probably no giant punitive judgements. But they may not have any better chance of actually winning them.
Discovery is more limited with arbitration, third party discovery is very limited, usually use witness statements instead of depositions. Arbitration almost never forms precedent, and arbitrators are not bound by case law/precedent. Decisions made by an arbitrator can only be appealed under more limited circumstances than if made by a judge. This means it is less likely a decision will be made based on the existing law. A court can grant interim relief, generally an arbitrator can not. A court will sanction parties that act in bad faith, in practice an arbitrator will not. A court judgement/sanction/relief can be enforceable in a way that an arbitrators finding would not be. This adds up to in practice making a successful claim more difficult for a wronged consumer
Arbitration is generally cheaper, limited discovery is cheaper. Not being limited to the same evidentiary rules and to respecting precedent allows the arbitrator to make more equitable decisions, that conflict with the law. Arbitration is faster.
No they are not. It’s only considered a failure when the position is abused to prevent competition.
You can have a monopoly situation where competition just doesn’t bother to enter because the monopoly holder hasn’t abused the situation to make entering the market attractive.
Additionally, the government frequently grants monopolies because they don’t really want to see market competition due to the disruptive nature of the industry (e.g. utilities).
Monopolies are just a specific market condition that implies certain pricing dynamics and potential competitor strategies. They are not a failure in themselves and can frequently be a huge driver of competition. Nothing attracts a competitor like a stodgy monopoly with a thick margin and no penchant for innovation.
Do you have any real world examples of this actually happening?
> the government frequently grants monopolies because they don’t really want to see market competition due to the disruptive nature of the industry (e.g. utilities).
The government does this with the addition of heavy regulation specifically to prevent abuse that comes from having monopolistic control of a market.
Drive into any small town. There is frequently only 1 gas station, 1 grocery store, etc that all sell things for reasonable prices.
For a completely different style, the major airport in Rome (da Vinci) is owned by a private company yet they don’t do any goofy shit to jack up landing fees.
There are many rural places in the US where there is only coverage from one cell phone provider and the rates remain the same.
> The government does this with the addition of heavy regulation specifically to prevent abuse that comes from having monopolistic control of a market.
No, they have to add the regulation because of the abuse that comes from a government granted monopoly. Monopolies emerge all of the time in all kinds of markets and they are not indications of failures. They can indicate that consumers are happy enough or that the margin is thin enough that competitors aren’t needed.
A government guaranteeing that a competitor can’t exist is when monopolies become ripe for abuse. That’s why government granted monopolies need regulation.
No they aren't. Markets tend towards monopoly, or at least an oligopoly. Market 'equilibrium' where prices are 'right' is an ideological fantasy.
That said - this is an example of how the legitimacy for private commercial corporations being run dictatorially based on formal property ownership kind of blows up in people's faces when such corporations grow to the level of encompassing a significant part of some sector of the economy, or a significant part of social interaction altogether.
As for government intervention - the government is involved: Its basic role is to set this up and support it. Government checks corporate/capitalist power mostly in the face of very strong public pressure and the threat of uprisings / mass strikes / violent redistribution etc.
Amazon is often the most expensive option for me.
When Office Depot was considering a Staples merger a while back, the Feds looked at the price of corporate office supply services in markets where there was only one of each firm, and found them higher than in markets where both competed. This despite the fact they didn’t have a monopoly on, say, copy paper.
It may mean Amazon understands their shoppers' price sensitivity, to be sure, but I can find almost anything on there elsewhere for less, or also for more.
So here we have Amazon destroying the inventory in question. No way to have even a partial sample of that inventory still available for checking? No laws that regulate how and when Amazon can destroy inventory, particularly in the presence of mandatory arbitration? No checks and balances on that process at all?
According to the seller that was Amazon's issue with the receipts. According to Amazon the issue was the receipts provided were either illegible or didn't match records from the manufacturers. In other words they appeared to be faked receipts.
It's just good sense to have all of these images available at all time, regardless of selling platform.
1. Amazon knows the fakes, if they exist, came specifically from this seller. I doubt this because of their comingling problems.
2. That the threshold of complaints required to initiate this type of action is a reasonable one. And furthermore that the complaints are valid. It could be a matter of a few 3rd party competitors, it could be the original wholesaler trying to throw a wrench into Amazon's systems, it could be customers who are angling for credits, free products etc. As well all of this plays with assumption #1 and comingling.
brands thus moved to control counterfeit pursuing anything that isn't coming off their sales chain end to end, even if the fake is virtually identical to the legit product.
> Mediante alcune aziende dell’hinterland fiorentino, pratese e dell’empolese - le stesse che producono quelle che poi diventano le vere borse firmate - il gruppo provvedeva a tutte le fasi produttive e commerciali
your turn.
The people that link you to those help articles are doing so because they simply can't do anything else but to escalate - they simply don't know about the inner workings of the system and don't have the permissions to change the data in it.
Whereas the developers/maintainers who could do it would be overcome with thousands of such mundane requests to fix the data in some geospatial database, that they can't be bothered to do. Perhaps Uber doesn't even maintain the dataset for addresses themselves either, and is using a service from someone else, like Google.
This kind of makes you think that in this complexity of distributed, scalable systems with microservices, message queues and other systems, eventually the complexity will be too much to actually understand and maintain - be it because of a low bus factor and people leaving due to churn rate, or extremely high effort needed for maintenance.
At this point, I don't give a shit about the $16 of paint, I'm not spending two hours of my day to return this can of paint at the lowes store on the other side of town. It's about the principle. A sane company would have replied with the first (and only) customer support team with something like "I'm so sorry! We are shipping you the correct color right now." That sane response used to be the norm 10 years ago, because a $16 loss on one can of paint is far less than losing a customer for life who will now make it their life's mission to deter friends and family from patronizing your business.
The only thing worse than the arbitrary thing is the double rating. I’m forced to give 5* to shit service.
It’s annoying
Now I send a text to each driver, watch the map like a hawk and call them if it looks like they're going the wrong way. Works most of the time.
When it doesn't, I get refunds, Uber can keep eating those costs until they fix their routing.
I've also started using their competitors more often, and bypassing these apps entirely and ordering directly from restaurants that employ their own drivers.
Amazon just doesn't care.
The PROBLEM is when you marry these things together without proper controls in place by society. We haven't completely thought through the ramifications.
Reminds me of a novel that was written over 100 years ago:
> The Trial (German: Der Process,[1] later Der Proceß, Der Prozeß and Der Prozess) is a novel written by Franz Kafka between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously in 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.
This will continue until these companies start losing large monetary value cases in court.
These abuses will continue unless there is enough of a sea change in Washington that protecting free markets becomes more of a priority than protecting the freedom of large businesses to exploit people.
That will happen no sooner than the day Amazon receives an order for ice skates from the hotter half of the Christian afterlife.
Only if you are the "little guy". You can be sure that amazon responds to big companies. If someone from Apple, Samsung, etc contacted amazon about something, do you really think they'll be tossed into the trashbin of the algorithm?