Amazon’s latest request borders on the absurd. After weeks of back-and-forth, after hours of lost time and royalties trapped in limbo, I have now been asked to provide yet another video documenting the very glitch I’ve already explained multiple times.
Let’s pause for a moment. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, valued higher than many countries, is asking me—an unpaid customer—to act as their intern and diagnose their own self-induced system failure.
To be clear: I am a professional. My rate is $1,000 per hour when I’m hired to consult or analyse systems. If Amazon wishes me to continue providing unpaid system analysis, perhaps it should formalise that arrangement. By my rough calculation, they have already consumed more of my time and goodwill than an abacus could tally.
This is not a complicated problem. A phone number verification glitch should not require weeks of escalations through layers of “Executive Customer Relations.” Adobe solved a near-identical issue in hours. Amazon has resources larger than most governments, yet here we are.
I restated three basic requests:
- A concrete timeline for restoring my account access.
- The immediate release of my trapped royalties.
- An assurance that Amazon, not its customers, will take responsibility for diagnosing its own technical failures.
What I look forward to is resolution, not further tasks. And for the record, I’ve asked that this all remain in writing.
A paper trail is transparency. Pushing me into voice calls without record-keeping is not. Should Amazon insist, I’ll insist the call be recorded for training, coaching, and verification purposes.
Because if this continues much longer, it won’t just be me asking questions. The Attorney General of Washington state may well want to get involved.
Lesson for Amazon
When a company outsources its own failures to its customers, it signals not empowerment but abdication. Amazon talks about being the “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company,” yet it pushes diagnostic tasks back onto the very people it has already wronged.
The lesson is simple: Don’t make customers do your work for you. Leadership means owning problems, not delegating them to the people paying you. Accountability isn’t a slogan. It’s an action.
The post Amazon’s customer relations failure, Part… oh, I’ve lost count appeared first on vietnam leadership coach.
