Skip to main content

Amazon dilemma

If there was ever a company it is possible to have a love/hate relationship with, it's Amazon.

The hate side is pretty straightforward, and the one that probably many of my readers could put forward. In fact the very mention of them will have some of you frothing at the mouth. They are a behemoth, flattening all opposition in their path. They fiddle their taxes. They drive bookshops out of business. They don't pay publishers (and hence authors) as much as they should because of their virtual monopoly. They set the rules and everyone else has to follow or get out. And they treat their low level employees like automata.

I really did write the book
But actually, they are also pretty damned good at what they do. As someone who wrote the book on customer service, I have to grudgingly admit that most of the time they get it right in a big way.

Like the way that I can buy music from them and in many cases I can not only get the CD, but instantly download the tracks at the same time at no extra charge. Now you may say, 'Grandad! Why do you need the CD if you've got the download?' And I have to reply, 'Experience, young Jedi, experience.' When I first worked on PCs I twice lost a hard drive before I realised backing up was a good thing (I mean the drive failed, as early ones tended to - I wasn't careless enough to actually lose them). If you can get a backup for free, then it's well worth having.

Another example. On Saturday morning I ordered a household product from them. Because I'm one of their 'Prime' customers I get free next day delivery - which itself is a brilliant thing, because it puts online shopping more on a par with the old bricks and mortar version. But of course, we all know that on Saturday, 'next day' means Monday. Nope. It was here, at my house, before 11am next day - Sunday.

And then there's returns. A couple of times I've had to send something back and they make it very easy. They even send out the replacement before you put the original in the post.

So, yes, they may be evil. Yes, they plan to take over the world.. But they are so seductive, like all the best baddies. I don't think I can give them up.

If you want to read more about Amazon (and the secrets of what they get up to), with useful timing, part way through writing this, I got a link to this interesting, if immensely long, article Is Amazon Bad for Books in the New Yorker magazine, from the lovely Lynn Price at Behler Publications.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope