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"We would like to clarify our policy on this topic. Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library. If any customer has trouble accessing their content, he or she should contact customer service for help. Thank you for your interest in Kindle."


It's astonishing that they persist with the robotic language in their clarification. Something tantamount to "We fucked up, sorry, dude" would help them so much more.

I guess it just reflects their attitude towards customers.


This is what any company with global brand recognition would say. Anything more would open them up to horrendous lawsuits, and anything less might cause more criticism. It's a well-crafted statement of fact with an invitation to solve issues through their customer service department—basically admitting they were in the wrong (but not too much), and that their policy has been clarified.

The robotic language is a legal necessity for corporations and it does not reflect on their attitude towards customers in the least.


I still think there is plenty of legal wiggle room to sound like a carbon-based lifeform.

I am not really sure what legal case this would open them up to, but we have to assume they've consulted with their attorneys prior to writing the statement.

There is also an opportunity cost to going all legal, which is the attrition of brand perception and customer relations. Apple managed to pull both off during Antennagate.

Maybe Amazon cut the cord to US-East as a diversion and hoped that and the Apple keynote would distract from this screw-up. :P

EDIT: Which is not to even touch on the subject of assuaging the fear that consumers might suddenly lose all access to their entire library in the cloud. There is a lot at stake here, and Amazon have done nothing to dispel this apprehension arisen in light of this event. It's not just a customer catastrophe, it's an e-book/Kindle catastrophe.


Nope. While "content-free" statements may well be encouraged by lawyers attempting to be risk-averse, there's no basis in fact or law for that. Indeed, studies in medical malpractice have shown that doctors and hospitals that promptly admit fault and apologize are less, not more, likely to be sued for malpractice.

The content-free statements are not only infuriating to your customers, they are actually counter-productive in a purely fiscal sense.


>Indeed, studies in medical malpractice have shown that doctors and hospitals that promptly admit fault and apologize are less, not more, likely to be sued for malpractice.

There's a huge context difference here. These studies are dealing with the doctor apologizing to the patient (or their family) and being less likely to be sued by that patient (or their family). This has a lot to do with emotions and how the patient or their family feels about the doctor and the doctor's actions.

In the case of Amazon here, it's essentially making a statement to the world that could be used by anyone as part of a lawsuit. I imagine the class-action lawyers looking at these things aren't going to let their feelings about Amazon change their minds.


The problem there is what if your insurance company requires you (or more likely them) to sue the doctor to get the medical expenses paid?


"Thank you for your interest in Kindle" at the end is absolutely not necessary and comes across as patronizing, clueless, and robotic.


Amazon can handle the possible legal issues of human like messages


Exactly. The bigger you get, the more you need to protect yourself, especially in customer relations communication. You can't keep the casual startup mentality forever (well, in many cases anyway).


The odd thing is that with it's physical world stuff, Amazon has, at least in my experience, always been great when it comes to customer service.

I'm sure with any business that size there will be people who say otherwise but I can't say that I've heard anyone bad mouthing their customer service which given how many people use them and how much is pretty remarkable.

Long way of saying - I don't think Amazon have a culture which discourages good customer service, I think that they have a problem in this specific area.


I got burned several years ago, when a $150 textbook was stolen during delivery. It was sent via FedEx, and someone somewhere along the pipeline had 'signed' for it by writing my name in all upper-case letters.

I went through a lengthy process of submitting paperwork, at the end of which I was told that since the book had been signed for in my name, I must have received it and therefore I would not be compensated (so why did I have to spend time and money jumping through hoops?).

No doubt I should have pursued this further, but at that point I let it go. I just cancelled my account and haven't purchased anything from them since.

I guess its a tough situation when a customer claims they didn't receive an item, but I was a regular customer who spend hundreds of dollars per year with them, so they could've given me the benefit of the doubt at least once.


I agree that with shipping product, and making sure people can return faulty product for replacement, Amazon is fantastic.

And this stuff about auto-detection of supposedly bad accounts, and closing of those accounts with very little detail or ability to appeal is worrying, but not limited to Amazon. (That doesn't make it any more acceptable!)

Where Paypal (or their honest customers) are at risk of losing many thousands of dollars from fraud I can understand that some[1] people are going to be innocent victims of heavy handed policies.

[1] For some values of 'some' including 'too many'.


Amazon have a policy of doing the same to any customer that returns more than a tiny number of physical items, as I recall.


You'll have to define what a "tiny number" means in this context, but I've certainly returned a bunch of stuff to Amazon over the years that I've been a customer, and they haven't cut me -- or anyone I know personally -- off yet.

Their return policy is decent but not particularly generous or anything: if you return something that's not defective, you have to pay the freight back to them, and they have to receive it before they issue you the credit. I suspect their return rate is fairly low compared to retailers with more generous policies (e.g. Zappos, REI, LL Bean, etc.).


Thats different within the EU. If you return it within 14 days and its worth more than 40EUR Amazon has to pay for shipping. Its called "Distance Selling Act" (Fernabsatzgesetz in Germany). It applies to all non digital goods sold online except Software and Music.


Details?


Depends on where you are. It might be pretty good when dealing with Amazon in US, but I have been on the receiving end more than once when I order stuff to India. One of books I ordered, I never received and yet it was marked delivered in their history. I did not know what to do back then and case got closed just like that.


A while back I broke the screen of my kindle while traveling. Not only was I surprised that Amazon covered this under the warranty, but the service I received was really fantastic. The Kindle had originally been shipped to Ireland (where I live), but I was in India when it was broken. I phoned Amazon and they had a replacement shipped to Kathmandu (the next stop on my itinerary with dates certain enough that I was happy to have something shipped there). It was shipped fine and they reimbursed the cost of shipping back the broken unit (I sent a scan of the distinctly dodgy receipt issued by a Kathmandu shipping agent) and they also paid me back the import charge that Nepalese customs levied on the "new" Kindle. All told I was blown away by the quality of the service given the funniness of what I was asking them to do (shipping to random locations etc).


Allow me to counter your anecdote. My 18-month-old Kindle Keyboard screen broke last month, while I was travelling in Russia. It hadn't been impacted or scratched, it just started to become unresponsive on about 40% of the surface and failed. I got offered 10% off a new kindle basic or kindle touch once I got home, despite the customer service rep admitting that a kindle should last longer than only 18 months.

I'm so annoyed about this that I am seriously considering buying a competitor's replacement instead.


Well, it was out of warranty. It's unfortunate that 1-year warranties have become the norm, but that seems to be the key difference between your anecdote and the parent's. They'll do a fair bit to help you while a device is in-warranty, but as soon as it's out, you're basically on your own.

If you use a Kindle heavily, and it's starting to behave at all flakily as you get towards the end of the warranty period, it's worth calling up Customer Service and pushing them hard for a replacement before it runs out.

(I have a friend who writes the warranty-expiration dates in Sharpie on the back of his electronics when he buys them. I thought this was a fairly decent, if dorky, little lifehack. I don't bother but that's just because I buy most of my stuff used.)


In the UK, regardless of manufacturer's warranty, the manufacturer is bound to replace the device if it begins to fail within a reasonable time period due to manufacturing defects. For electronics, this is generally accepted as being 5 years. This clause is one of those cited by electronics firms for the 'treasure island' tax applied to things sold in the UK.

Of course, it requires that you spend a whole bunch of time writing letters and threatening legal action. Frankly, for the sake of £150, I'd rather just stop buying things from Amazon; it'll do me good to explore other ecosystems, I guess.


You hear a lot of stuff like this, though it makes sense - keep the happy user's Kindle working, they keep buying books.


Yes, they have really been responsive and responsible about the occasional lost package and other shipping problems. When I lived in Scandinavia, there was nothing comparable to Amazon Prime at all in terms of convenience and customer service.


Big companies persist in corporate-speak even though everyone hates it. I never have understood why. They must think that it's the best way to go, somehow.


I don't think everyone hates it. On a site like this obviously the cool thing is to claim to prefer startup-style error messages like "oops, everything's fucked, sorry dude". But fashions change fast; a big company writing in that style would (by the time they'd approved the procedures) likely come off like your parents trying to sound cool by using the hip phrases they've read about.

And that's without even getting into how older people (the HN readership is overwhelmingly, unrepresentatively young) tend to care a lot more about politeness.


There are plenty of good alternatives out there besides useless lawyer-speak and profanity-filled startup-speak. It is possible to write a message which is polite, official, and doesn't sound like it came from a robot.


It's the legal department. Each public statement has to be carefully evaluated for its potential to open up lawsuits or bad press. The neutral, robotic tone with ambiguous statements is absolutely required to protect them from the masses.


"Thank you for your interest in Kindle."

This line is not from the legal department.

You see it everywhere:

* "Thank you for not smoking."

* "Thank you for your understanding."

The unintended effect (for me at least) is that sentence stands out and I pay less attention to the poor excuse written directly before it. A bit like the way a politician does not answer a question.


I think this is just how language sounds when crafted by committee.


My sense is that any time a company issues a statement or response about a customer service issue, someone will dislike the tone and comment about it. This gives an inflated appearance of dissatisfaction with statements by large companies and over-perpetuates the corporate PR-speak meme. That's not to say that companies never dodge key issues, refuse to own up, or spin things in their favor.

But in this case, it sounds like someone at Amazon simply fixed the mistake, admitted the mistake, and clarified their position. Just because they didn't use profanity and an informal tone doesn't change the content.


"The problem has been resolved. There was never any problem. Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia."


I much prefer the English explanation than a "sorry dude". First I am not a "dude".... and don't even get me started with the f* word, please.


Because contacting customer service worked so great the first three times...


That is the exact problem, and one they seem to have very much avoided addressing. I have absolutely no doubt that 99% of these sort of problems would be quickly and easily resolved, IF one could adequately contact a responsive customers services department.

Yeah, this is about DRM, but IMHO, the bigger issue is that of getting hold of some one to help and resolve these issues. I don't think any of us mind thongs going wrong, that happens, its what these people do or don't do that counts.

(Yes, I see the typo, it amused me so I left it :) )


This reply contradicts the original story.


Yeah, and we saw how well that worked yesterday...




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