Jeff Bezos of Amazon is running around to Web 2.0 conferences, hyping the companies new Web 2.0 offerings, such as S3. In the meantime, the company's order system is failing. This is the Web 1.0 portion of the company–the one that puts bread and butter on the company's table.
I ordered a PC audio switch so that I could plug in both headphones and speakers, and I get a notice that this is going to be delayed until January. However, when I go to cancel it, I'm told the item is in process of being shipped, and can't be canceled. When I send an email, I'm told by customer service to disregard the shipping date listed with the item, because it's shipping this week–November 14th. I'm also told:
However, if you do not recieve(sic) your package on November 17, 2006, or
do not want this package anymore, you may of course return this to
us for a full refund.
When I don't receive my package on Friday, I'll be sure to send it back.
What is the problem on this shipment? It was an order with more than one item, and the rest was able to ship. This isn't unusual, and in the past, the company's systems could manage this. Now, though–it's completely haywire.
When I look in order history, past orders show up duplicated or even triplicated. When I access the site with Firefox on my older TiBook, the Flash 'snow on penguin' causes my system to race so badly I have to shut the computer down. I just noticed the penguin is gone, so I have a feeling I wasn't the only one who suffered from this 'effect'.
I put in to be listed as author on several books, so that I can write up a note on each, but I've not had a response back. I like the concept of being able to personalize my book pages, as well providing useful information (such as where to find the book examples), but I can't seem to get Amazon to respond to my request.
I like the company. I signed up for the Amazon Prime service, and have been very happy with the service up until a few months ago. Now it seems like the company just doesn't care about it's old "Web 1.0" customers.
