I've often joked that if my employers could pay me in Amazon vouchers, it would save me a lot of hassle. I'm one of those insufferable people who prefers a delivery driver dropping off a single light bulb rather than having to pop to the shops like some sort of savage.

But now the dream is over. Amazon have bundled their sub-standard video offering, a moribund music subscription, and an underwhelming photo backup service in with their excellent free delivery service. In doing so, they've jacked the price from fifty to eighty quid.

Last year I was able to convince them to give me Prime delivery at the old price. But this year? No dice.

And so now I get this passive-aggressive message whenever I visit Amazon.

Here's the thing - I don't listen to much music, I don't live in an area with same day delivery, I already have a photo backup service, and I don't use a Kindle for my reading. Even if I wanted to watch more TV (I don't) Amazon refuse to build an app for my fairly recent smart TV. The same TV I bought on Amazon...

This really shouldn't come as a surprise to me. Amazon works on a socialist model - as described by the CEO Jeff Bezos:

Levy: Speaking of pricing, I wanted to ask about your decision to include streaming video as part of Amazon Prime. Why not charge separately for that? It’s a completely different service, isn’t it?

Bezos: There are two ways to build a successful company. One is to work very, very hard to convince customers to pay high margins. The other is to work very, very hard to be able to afford to offer customers low margins. They both work. We’re firmly in the second camp. It’s difficult—you have to eliminate defects and be very efficient. But it’s also a point of view. We’d rather have a very large customer base and low margins than a smaller customer base and higher margins.
Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think - Wired Magazine, 2011

The more people taking part, the cheaper the cost for everyone. As a political philosophy I'm all for it, but I'm not keen on it being foisted on me as part of a capitalist transaction.

I personally benefit from a well educated, healthy public even if I don't use the services myself - I'm not sure I'll see any benefit from people being able to watch re-runs of Downton Abbey!

Eighty quid for "free" delivery is just too much. I dare say I'll still shop there, but not with as much regularity.

Jeff, if you're reading, please just offer your delivery service as a separate subscription.

I know that Amazon won't mourn the loss of one customer. But I mourn the fact that the subscription economy is slowly killing the services I enjoy.

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

The CSR's comments can be safely ignored.

Of course, this raises the question of whether big companies should treat their CSRs like mini-PR agents and give them a commensurate salary boost. I believe that front line staff have more of an impact on "brand perception" and "customer loyalty" than even the glitziest of advertising campaigns.

Secondly, the "online community" seems to have a shoot first, ask questions later philosophy.
I'm pro-open-source and I think that crowd-sourcing research is a highly efficient and effective way to investigate stories. But one needs to substantiate first. Imagine if there really was a completely innocuous explanation (say someone hit the wrong button on the wrong box or Amazon were hit by hackers) all of a sudden the tide is out and we can see exactly who is swimming naked.

Thirdly, the immediacy of cyberspace does not map well to meatspace.
A scant few hours after the storm erupted, a blogger was asking

Is there any reason why The [Liberal Democrat] Party is still supporting and promoting them via the affiliate scheme? All the ethical people are disabling theirs.

Well... Possibly because they are part of the evil conspiracy, possibly because they wanted to see if it was true, and possibly because the person who makes those decisions was enjoying a weekend away from work. Her superiors were also probably eking what pleasure they could from the British springtime.

We don't all spend every waking moment plugged into the hyperzeitgeist that is twitter. Right now, ring your mum or ask your boss's boss what they think of #AmazonFail. I bet it won't even have crossed their radar.

The same is also true of Amazon. They've put out a press release on Tuesday - the first working day after the break.

The lesson here for big companies is that your customers are never on holiday. They expect your stores & call centres to be open at the customers' convenience, not the company's.

When I was Production Manager on Vodafone live! we would always ensure that someone responsible was on call to fix the site or answer questions on why a policy decision had been made. If we didn't know the answers, we were allowed to phone someone who did - even if it meant waking them up in the middle of the night.

Of course, this means paying overtime, TOIL or a decent wage. Something Amazon doesn't see the value in.

Finally
I honestly don't think any side in this mini-culture skirmish emerges with much glory.

Amazon need to keeps their CSRs better informed and need to make sure that someone with authority is allowed to engage with their customer base even during the holidays.

Bloggers, twitterers, facebookers should keep fighting the good fight. They also need to keep in mind Hanlon's Razor and, remember, it's ok to take a deep breath & wait more than 24 hours for an answer before breaking out the placards.

Postscript
Of course, if it turns out that Amazon have as a matter of policy deranking these books, I utterly condemn them. However, I'm sure the lost sales from bestselling authors will do more to change their minds than a boycott.