I greatly admire Amazon.com for its commitment to getting merchandise to customers at the time guaranteed. I live on an island for much of the year, and even here, books arrive at the appointed time. If not, then Amazon makes it up to customers.
My Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a prime example. The three copies I ordered did not arrive by July 21st, as promised. They did arrive on July 23d. So I get the books for no charge except the $5.97 shipping fee. That means three copies of Harry Potter for just under $2 (yes, two dollars!) per book. Not the $35 list price or the $18-$19 pre-release price of some of the big retailers.
But in dealing with customer service to straighten out a glitch in the initial order, I found myself talking to a customer service person in INDIA. Then when dealing with customer service to report that I had not received my books on the 21st, I found myself talking to a customer service person in THE PHILLIPINES.
On a personal side, I suppose I am benefitting from this outsourcing of jobs from the U.S. to countries with cheaper labor costs. But as an American I am angry that Amazon is paying foreigners to do jobs that Americans would be perfectly willing to do even for minimum wage, which just today went up to $5.85.
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1 comment:
Congrats! That's an amazing deal, depending on how much timeliness is worth to one, of course.
The outsourcing is absolutely a pain in my own rear-end. The communication barrier is the main reason I find it so problematic. Too often, the job's just not getting done.
Of course, that's often true when I'm dealing with customer service in America, but the communication issue is an additional, completely unnecessary and incredibly avoidable obstacle between the customer and satisfaction.
*counts to ten*
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