{"id":2301,"date":"2010-07-16T12:53:19","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T16:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/?p=2301"},"modified":"2010-07-21T14:20:50","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T18:20:50","slug":"amazons-mind-reading-service-not-ready-for-primetime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/amazons-mind-reading-service-not-ready-for-primetime\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon’s Mind-Reading Service Not Ready For Primetime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Amazon,
\nI have been a loyal customer for 13 years. I’ve had your credit card for as long as I’ve had credit. But today I am very disappointed.<\/p>\n

I was running low on dietary supplements, and decided I should order some more ASAP. I was going to do it when I got home, which is where I prefer to place online orders, so I don’t rush through them. But this seemed like a simple one, so when I had a moment of free time at the theatre before our final dress rehearsal, I selected the one item I wanted, and with a few clicks placed my order.<\/p>\n

Because I’m an Amazon Prime member, I sent it using two-day shipping for free. I received your notice that it had shipped on the day I ordered it (thanks!), but since it’s a pretty boring delivery, I never clicked on it to check the tracking status.<\/p>\n

So today was the day it was supposed to arrive, so this morning I clicked on the tracking status to see if it had been delivered yet. When I get to the basic summary screen I see
\n\"amazon1\"\/
\nI thought it was kind of funny that it was going through the Bronx on the way to Boston. I also was a little disappointed, since obviously that meant it was going to be late.<\/p>\n

Then I clicked on the details.
\n\"Amazon.com<\/p>\n

Oh. OH! Ah. I see where there was some confusion. <\/p>\n

Now Amazon. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what happens when you assume. In this case you seem to have made an ass mostly out of me. But still.<\/p>\n

I’m at that stage where the other day I was talking to my board op about interior decorating or something, and had to take a minute to concentrate very hard on remembering what my apartment looks like before I could comment on whether I would like to decorate that way. That also happened last year, when I saw some towels I liked at Bed Bath & Beyond, and then realized I couldn’t decide if I liked them until I was sure what color my bathroom was. <\/p>\n

So in light of this, the fact that my default shipping address at Amazon is my apartment seems completely nonsensical, and never once crossed my mind while I was placing that order.<\/p>\n

If I’m receiving a package, it’s going to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston<\/li>\n
  2. My parents on Long Island<\/li>\n
  3. The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis<\/li>\n
  4. Some random hotel somewhere in the United States<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The last place on earth I would actually be is at my apartment!<\/p>\n

    I would think with your billions of dollars, you would by now have developed a better system to read your users’ minds, and prevent things like this from happening. At the very least there needs to be an app for that. I have the Amazon app, and I never use it because it doesn’t seem to offer much. Here’s what it needs:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Customer places order with Amazon<\/li>\n
    2. Push notification sent to customer’s iPhone asking them to open the app to load their order status<\/li>\n
    3. When the app opens, access the user’s current location<\/li>\n
    4. If the user is more than 100 miles from the shipping address, and the package is addressed to their name, be like, “Are you sure you know where you live?”<\/li>\n
    5. If the user says no, tell them what an idiot they are and pop up a screen where they can select a different shipping address.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Thankfully it looks like UPS has an option to change the delivery address on an item (for a fee) once a delivery attempt has been made. I’ll have to try that. But for the future, please work on that mind-reading thing.<\/p>\n

      Update:<\/b> I had to have someone get the delivery sticker off the door to get an additional code number off it, but with that number I was able to have the package redirected to me up here. It cost me about $15 for my stupidity (a $4 flat stupidity fee, and the rest was the actual cost of the shipping from NY to Boston), but the shipping was surprisingly fast. It took like two days. I figured they’d send it by mule or something. So there you go. I hope you never do something stupid like that, but there is a solution and it was a lot cheaper than the value of the item.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Dear Amazon, I have been a loyal customer for 13 years. I’ve had your credit card for as long as I’ve had credit. But today I am very disappointed. I was running low on dietary supplements, and decided I should order some more ASAP. I was going to do it when I got home, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[145],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2301"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2358,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions\/2358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}