16 February 2018 – the Amazon nightmare continues

The nightmare continues.

Makes me wonder if it is just abysmal incompetence from Amazon staff, or if they make bets among themselves, pick a customer at random who sent any kind of request and test how much they’ll be able to piss him off.

So, early afternoon, I get a response from Amazon communities:

Sent: Friday, February 16, 2018 12:40 PM
Subject: A message from Communities

Hello,

This is Mervin from the Communities Team. I hope this e-mail finds you well.

We can no longer accept Amazon non-verified purchase reviews for these ASIN’s, because we detected unusual review behavior on these producst and therefore are allowing only Verified Purchase reviews of these products at this time. An Amazon Verified Purchase means that the person writing the review purchased the product at Amazon and did not receive the product at a deep discount. There is no limit on Amazon Verified Purchase reviews.

You may try to submit your review again when we have removed restrictions on submitting unverified reviews.

I hope this helps.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.
Best regards,
Mervin V.

 

WTF?????…. Now, how is that response related in any way to the problem I submitted to them? My problem is NOT that this or that review didn’t get posted, or was deleted, because I didn’t buy the CD from Amazon… Anyway, the classical music CDs that I review are conspicuously NOT products on which “unusual review behavior” would be detected – unless, of course, you consider that ALL my reviews are “unusual” by Amazon standards, which certainly would be true! But unusual review behavior refers to, say, political books that attract lots of reviews, both positive AND negative, because they are being campaigned around… or commercial products that a manufacturer is trying to promote underhand, or a competitor is trying to denigrate. I WISH that CDs of Honegger had sufficient following to attract that kind of attention!

Anyway, my reviews that are not appearing on My Profile are STILL posted under their respective product page, and they have been there for 3 to 9 years! My problem is not that they were deleted or not posted, it’s that all those between May 2009 and 15 August 2016 do not show up any more on My Profile, dammit! And I was very clear in my explanations, do you not even read the requests that are sent to you and serve any generic response that you have in your bag, just to be able to brush the request under the carpet ? (answer is probably “yes” – Earth’s most customer-centric company my ass!)

I mean, this response is so egregious that I really, seriously, don’t rule out that this response was sent to me in error.

Or, they just try to exhaust and discourage you, hoping that the flies will finally go away.

Well: persist, against all odds, and move the boulder, again and again, up that hill.

So I wrote back (what does that make it? Fourth time? Plus the chat…?).

And, surprise surprise, got a very quick response:

Hello,

This is Liam from the Communities Team; I trust this finds you well.

I’ve contacted our technical support team and they are currently working on the issue with your reviews not displaying on your profile page.

They were not able to provide an exact date or time when they expect this issue to be resolved, but I’ll continue to monitor the situation with the technical support team until the problem is fixed. We appreciate your patience in this matter.

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.

Best regards,
Liam A.

Well, Liam, best regards to you to. It seems so simple when you have someone who appears to actually read your request… Forgive me however if I abstain for the time being from giving a positive response to your inquiry about service quality. I’ll wait and see how my problem is solved. Oh I can wait: you may indeed “appreciate my patience”, because Amazon is taxing it real hard, and I don’t have so much of it in fact, but I substitute dogged determination, and persistence.
This is the kind of thing that has me running away now from Amazon.
*****************************
And with all that, I resposted my review of Honegger’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 1 by Dennis Russell Davies and the Basel Symphony Orchestra (2012) – very mediocre versions, I’m afraid, for reasons developed in the review.

Comments are welcome