
Amazon apologises for 'threats' to customer - DanBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42459594
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marshray
I often see articles about a tech company delivering an egregiously bad
customer experience on HN. I'm sure we all agree that the scenario as
presented was a screwup, but I would like to question its relevance. We seem
to be passing around such stories as a form of folklore. Why? As a warning to
others?

Amazon's a huge company with surely millions of customer interactions a month.
Let's assume by now they have adopted a mature supervision process for their
CSR interactions. Is this mostly just a random event caused by an unexpected
'bad apple' CSR?

If so, it would suggest the 'error rate' in this type of interaction is really
quite low. A customer service cosmic ray, if you will.

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totalZero
It's a hedge against our own mistreatment. If companies see that their
customer interactions are visible to the market as a whole, they have more of
an incentive to make sure those interactions are good ones.

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marshray
Well, A) given that the article was from BBC I doubt the HN upvotes were much
of a signal boost, and B) would this story have made it to the front page if
it were, say, an auto insurance company rather than Amazon?

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Operyl
As bad as this sounds, sometimes I have to wonder what the other guy endured.
Don't get me wrong, this is a huge no no, but I wonder what the customer
said/did to make the employee feel like this was worth the "get back" knowing
full well it could result in termination.

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yeukhon
Exactly my thought. While Amazon will not release the specific mitives if any,
what was going on in this guy’s brain? Was he mentally ill, like depressed?
Although the popular culture took call center into a comedy plot [1], the
psychologies of these workers remain depressing I guess.

[1]:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sfaBf3EYYIw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sfaBf3EYYIw)

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sudhirj
Interesting that they’re calling out the call center operator as Indian. I may
be biased because I’ve got a friends who work at the Amazon call centres, but
this seems very culturally at odds with what an Indian would do. Death
threats, if made, are usually heat of the moment and very passionate - this
kind of subtle passive aggressiveness is something I’ve almost never seen
here.

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volgo
Not in my experience. IMO folks there tend to be more culturally ok with
passive aggressive behaviors

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sridca
What is your actual range of experience with "folks there"?

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nicolashahn
Headline sounds worse than it is(edit: by this I mean that it makes it sound
like something Amazon the corporate entity did, not a random employee). Rogue
Amazon employee used customer data to send him an ominous email advertising
books about death. They've since been fired. Amazon offered the customer a 50
GBP gift card as a goodwill gesture.

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ggg9990
Headline sounds worse than it is?! I would love to have you as a customer! :)

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nicolashahn
I guess what I meant was that the headline makes it sound like this was
something that Amazon the corporate entity did, not a random employee. It
could have happened at any company that stores personal customer data.

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ggg9990
It's not necessary for a company that stores personal data to expose that data
to individual employees. Is there ever a need for a customer service agent to
send a manual book recommendation? Does Amazon Customer Service discuss books
with customers?

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mcintyre1994
FWIW Follow You Home is a really good book!

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rootsudo
So someone sends book recommendations and now it's considered death threats.

That's just sad.

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549362-30499
It's clear from your comment that you read the article, but I'm very confused
about how you ended up with the conclusion that the situation is fine and
people are overreacting. I don't know what else to say to this, I hope you can
elaborate on your thoughts here.

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gt_
I asked Amazon Customer why their “2 day” shipping method is called such when
it uses UPS Ground, a 4-7 day shipping service. The response was that they can
only guarantee delivery times once the package leaves the Amazon warehouse.

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sowbug
What does that have to do with this article?

