The unhearing monolith

Monolith-Sun-Moon

Amazon emailed me that they’d cancelled all my Christmas present orders. Something wrong with my credit card. No middle initial? I’ll never know. The monolith is top-down, never bottom-up. Amazon doesn’t give a reason… or a phone number to ask.

Once upon a time, we got to interact with merchants. We would uncover what wasn’t working and fix it. No longer. Now it’s take it or leave it. We’re right and you’re wrong, and we’re not going to tell you why. The email from Amazon said, “We’ve cancelled your order,” not “Please fix your credit card information.” Too bad it’s so close to Christmas.

Don’t you hate it when a company sends you a notification that they’ve decided to change their policy around privacy or to impose new fees, and the return address is DO-NOT-REPLY?

Here’s an opportunity for high-minded merchants: treat your customers like people.

Merry Christmas, Jeff.

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