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AmazonFail Part 2
Jul. 23rd, 2009 03:07 pmFor those unfamiliar with the lates example of AmazonFail, it seems that last week Kindle users started reporting that some titles they had purchased were disappearing from their units.
Seems that Amazon learned that the firm they bought the rights to some titles including Orwell's 'Animal Farm' and '1984' did not actually have the right to sell them in the frist place. Faced with the knowledge that they had inadvertently sold stolen property, their solution was to go in via the Kindle's much-hyped Whispernet system and delete all copies of the works in question, and issue credit vouchers to all purchasers. However, no explanation or press release was made, leaving Kindle owners confused and angry. In fact it took several days and a fair amount of waffling on the part of Amazon's people before the actual story came out.
Gee - does any of this sound at all familiar?
(And of course, the fact that one of the titles involved was George Orwell's '1984' will never stop being funny...)
More takes on the story, or you can just Google "Amazon Kindle 1984" to find more than you ever wanted to know
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/20/deleting-books-a-new-kindle-dilemma/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32014285/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
Now, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. On the one hand, it's kind of like Amazon sneaking into your howse, taking back a book and leaving a voucher in it's place. On the other hand, if you buy stolen property and the police come to take it back, they don't reimburse you.
I think the real issue in this case is another case of AmazonFail - If when they had made the decision to "delete" the books and issue refunds they had also sent a simple message/e-mail/press release explaining WHY there would have been a hell of a lot less fuss. Instead they did it without explaining and were slow to communicate exactly what happened to their users.
This is very similar to the issue from a few months ago when books with GLBT content or characters suddenly disappeared from all Amason searches. First they claimed it was based on what is considered "adult content" and later info revealed that it was primarily due to a right-hand-left-hand situation combining an ill-thought-out corporate policy, some lazy implementation, and a non-native speaker of English who used a keyword in an imprecise manner. In general, if they had been a bit more transparent in what they were doing, there would not have been NEARLY as much hullabaloo.
For a company whose very existence depends on the computer-using customer, you'd think they'd have figured out by now that those same customers expect a certain level of communication from the companies they shop with. Also that a significant percentage of those users are not only telling the entire World Wide Web about what their cat had for breakfast but also are not only swift to complain and even swifter to fly off the handle and start screaming about conspiracies.
The "ownership" of digital media is a still evolving field and I suspect there will be more cases like this as we work to define things. But however things go, I suspect that Amazon ougt to look into hiring a bunch of 20-something media-saavy twitterverse facebook freaks to shake up their customer/media relations groups, cuz this is only going to get uglier.
Seems that Amazon learned that the firm they bought the rights to some titles including Orwell's 'Animal Farm' and '1984' did not actually have the right to sell them in the frist place. Faced with the knowledge that they had inadvertently sold stolen property, their solution was to go in via the Kindle's much-hyped Whispernet system and delete all copies of the works in question, and issue credit vouchers to all purchasers. However, no explanation or press release was made, leaving Kindle owners confused and angry. In fact it took several days and a fair amount of waffling on the part of Amazon's people before the actual story came out.
Gee - does any of this sound at all familiar?
(And of course, the fact that one of the titles involved was George Orwell's '1984' will never stop being funny...)
More takes on the story, or you can just Google "Amazon Kindle 1984" to find more than you ever wanted to know
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/20/deleting-books-a-new-kindle-dilemma/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32014285/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
Now, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. On the one hand, it's kind of like Amazon sneaking into your howse, taking back a book and leaving a voucher in it's place. On the other hand, if you buy stolen property and the police come to take it back, they don't reimburse you.
I think the real issue in this case is another case of AmazonFail - If when they had made the decision to "delete" the books and issue refunds they had also sent a simple message/e-mail/press release explaining WHY there would have been a hell of a lot less fuss. Instead they did it without explaining and were slow to communicate exactly what happened to their users.
This is very similar to the issue from a few months ago when books with GLBT content or characters suddenly disappeared from all Amason searches. First they claimed it was based on what is considered "adult content" and later info revealed that it was primarily due to a right-hand-left-hand situation combining an ill-thought-out corporate policy, some lazy implementation, and a non-native speaker of English who used a keyword in an imprecise manner. In general, if they had been a bit more transparent in what they were doing, there would not have been NEARLY as much hullabaloo.
For a company whose very existence depends on the computer-using customer, you'd think they'd have figured out by now that those same customers expect a certain level of communication from the companies they shop with. Also that a significant percentage of those users are not only telling the entire World Wide Web about what their cat had for breakfast but also are not only swift to complain and even swifter to fly off the handle and start screaming about conspiracies.
The "ownership" of digital media is a still evolving field and I suspect there will be more cases like this as we work to define things. But however things go, I suspect that Amazon ougt to look into hiring a bunch of 20-something media-saavy twitterverse facebook freaks to shake up their customer/media relations groups, cuz this is only going to get uglier.
