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Having had to work with Amazon support in a variety of capacities for many different businesses this is a common response to Amazon's support. Contrary to what

Having had to work with Amazon support in a variety of capacities for many different businesses this is a common response to Amazon's support. Contrary to what a lot of people think these are generally not robots. They're just people with a very short training period governed by an extremely didactic decision tree. If you do not give the support person what they expect using Amazon's unique definitions for terms which are often orthogonal to the dictionary definitions (e.g. you are supposed to get IP owners to 'retract' complaints even if you are really supposed to 'resolve' those complaints and there is a giant distinction between 'counterfeit' and 'inauthentic' products in Amazon-land) . This often causes a lot of frustration as people shake their fists at the injustice of a highly bureaucratic system. Fist-shaking doesn't really do much and it just sorta amps up the frustration level. Sending lots of messages in also tends to befuddle the support people and/or cause giant problems if the wrong thing is said. In practice what it means is that people who try to sell on the marketplace without knowledge of the opaque rules that govern it will tend to get weeded out. People tend to expect that the systems that they rely on are governed by moral rules about who is right and who is wrong. But it is really more easily navigable by people who are savvy. What's fair doesn't really enter into the picture and the way that Amazon's systems in particular work tend to run against the average American's expectations for justice (expecting to be innocent until proven guilty, that laws and procedures be readily comprehensible, that judgment be even-handed and based on precedent, and so on). However unlike some other big tech cos like Google/FB you at least have avenues of appeal beyond suing them. If you have a business problem with Google you will probably have to do something insane to get their attention.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
> In practice what it means is that people who try to sell on the marketplace without knowledge of the opaque rules that govern it will tend to get weeded out. People tend to expect that the systems that they rely on are governed by moral rules about who is right and who is wrong. But it is really more easily navigable by people who are savvy. How does one avoid getting weeded out and become savvy if the rules are opaque?
- dizzystar 8y ago
  The rules aren't opaque. There just isn't any ambiguity to them, which means that everything is exactly written with no room for Interpretation. I explain Amazon support like this: if you told someone to grab money from the bank, you haven't specified the instructions, so they will claim they have no idea how to do it. If you tell them to drive to the bank, walk in, go to the teller, not the ATM... This very specific instructions will get the response you need. With experience, you start to get a hang of the lingo. It does feel like you are talking to bots, but you are really talking to humans who click the next step in the Q&A. They probably could hold your hand, but they don't appear to be trained to do so. It's highly unlikely that you'll get shut down full stop right off the bat. You have a lot of room for error, but if you get frustrated quickly, you can get blocked at some step, but really that's on you. The situation in the article would have taken me about 1 day to resolve, but the key takeaway is the books were up for sale again because the author did exactly as the instructions said.
  - j-c-hewitt 8y ago
    'Opaque' as in 'generally opaque from the outside.' You learn in the process that you're describing. Hilariously, it's to some extent like playing Zork or a similar text-based adventure game but with real money on the line.
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      The easiest approach is to just ask the rep to install Teamviewer, it will help make the process much less opaque. https://imgur.com/a/yaI4B https://imgur.com/a/yaI4B
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    The books are up for sale again for now, but the seller has no way to know whether this will happen again or what will happen to their account if it does. That's what opaque means. Would you be able to resolve this in such a way that you'd know nothing bad was going to happen to your account as a result of your resolution? Would you be able to do that just with information that Amazon makes publicly available?
dizzystar 8y ago
Oh yes. Knowing how to navigate the maze of Amazon support is extremely valuable to sellers. I sometimes do consulting for them to help with this very issue. Support is exactly what you ask for, nothing more and nothing less. It also helps to know that whatever country they use has bans on things we in the US take for granted.
coldacid 8y ago
>Contrary to what a lot of people think these are generally not robots. They're just people with a very short training period governed by an extremely didactic decision tree. That's essentially a bot made of flesh and bone. If there's no room for critical thought, you are essentially just software that breathes.
- CharlesW 8y ago
  > If there's no room for critical thought, you are essentially just software that breathes. "Today, Amazon is thrilled to announce: Mechanical Turk On-Premises."
ilamont 8y ago
people who try to sell on the marketplace without knowledge of the opaque rules that govern it will tend to get weeded out. This person did understand the rules, and followed them quite carefully. Also, are you sure that automated support isn't being used in some departments? Human reps are a huge cost, and considering Amazon is investing so heavily in AI/ML, it would seem that its own customer communication channels would be a natural place to apply the tech.
- j-c-hewitt 8y ago
  There's some automated stuff for routing but generally speaking you will be answered by a person. They may get blocs of text as prompts to use and the kinds of responses they can give are quite restricted by their policies but they are still real people. Also in this case she thought she was compliant with the rules, but according to Amazon (which is not always reasonable) she was not compliant. Amazon support tends to send out these kinds of robotic emails that require a very specific phrasing in response (again, like I said elsewhere in this thread, similar to playing a 1980s/90s text adventure game). If you don't get the adventure game reference, in those kinds of games you would have to solve bizarre puzzles using a very specific syntax. If you had to open a lock with a key, you might have had to try a bunch of strings like >"use key in lock" > "You cannot do that." >"turn key in lock" >"You cannot do that." >"use lock with key" >"The lock opens. You can examine the drawer." Once she included the magic phrasing that Amazon requested, her account was unfrozen. You may think that this is just because she is some tiny author, but you would be mistaken. Even top ten US/international sellers with tens of millions of dollars of sales per year are held to the same silly standard and hitched up by robotic support people even when they pay over six figures for special reps at Amazon.
ikeboy 8y ago
>But it is really more easily navigable by people who are savvy. Not really. I know plenty of 7-8 figure sellers that have the exact same issues all day long. Hell, pharmapacks, biggest amazon seller by number of feedback, publicly talked about the same issues in their inc profile 2 years ago https://www.inc.com/magazine/201603/burt-helm/pharmapacks-amazon-warehouse.html https://www.inc.com/magazine/201603/burt-helm/pharmapacks-am... >But Vagenas's desk is constantly cluttered with products that have caused problems. Each day, the Seller Support group takes down one or more Pharmapacks listings without warning because of customer complaints. They're savvy, yes, but they have a ton of issues just like every other big seller.

daveFNbuck 8y ago

> In practice what it means is that people who try to sell on the marketplace without knowledge of the opaque rules that govern it will tend to get weeded out. People tend to expect that the systems that they rely on are governed by moral rules about who is right and who is wrong. But it is really more easily navigable by people who are savvy. How does one avoid getting weeded out and become savvy if the rules are opaque?

dizzystar 8y ago
The rules aren't opaque. There just isn't any ambiguity to them, which means that everything is exactly written with no room for Interpretation. I explain Amazon support like this: if you told someone to grab money from the bank, you haven't specified the instructions, so they will claim they have no idea how to do it. If you tell them to drive to the bank, walk in, go to the teller, not the ATM... This very specific instructions will get the response you need. With experience, you start to get a hang of the lingo. It does feel like you are talking to bots, but you are really talking to humans who click the next step in the Q&A. They probably could hold your hand, but they don't appear to be trained to do so. It's highly unlikely that you'll get shut down full stop right off the bat. You have a lot of room for error, but if you get frustrated quickly, you can get blocked at some step, but really that's on you. The situation in the article would have taken me about 1 day to resolve, but the key takeaway is the books were up for sale again because the author did exactly as the instructions said.
- j-c-hewitt 8y ago
  'Opaque' as in 'generally opaque from the outside.' You learn in the process that you're describing. Hilariously, it's to some extent like playing Zork or a similar text-based adventure game but with real money on the line.
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    The easiest approach is to just ask the rep to install Teamviewer, it will help make the process much less opaque. https://imgur.com/a/yaI4B https://imgur.com/a/yaI4B
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  The books are up for sale again for now, but the seller has no way to know whether this will happen again or what will happen to their account if it does. That's what opaque means. Would you be able to resolve this in such a way that you'd know nothing bad was going to happen to your account as a result of your resolution? Would you be able to do that just with information that Amazon makes publicly available?

dizzystar 8y ago

Oh yes. Knowing how to navigate the maze of Amazon support is extremely valuable to sellers. I sometimes do consulting for them to help with this very issue. Support is exactly what you ask for, nothing more and nothing less. It also helps to know that whatever country they use has bans on things we in the US take for granted.

coldacid 8y ago

>Contrary to what a lot of people think these are generally not robots. They're just people with a very short training period governed by an extremely didactic decision tree. That's essentially a bot made of flesh and bone. If there's no room for critical thought, you are essentially just software that breathes.

CharlesW 8y ago
> If there's no room for critical thought, you are essentially just software that breathes. "Today, Amazon is thrilled to announce: Mechanical Turk On-Premises."

ilamont 8y ago

people who try to sell on the marketplace without knowledge of the opaque rules that govern it will tend to get weeded out. This person did understand the rules, and followed them quite carefully. Also, are you sure that automated support isn't being used in some departments? Human reps are a huge cost, and considering Amazon is investing so heavily in AI/ML, it would seem that its own customer communication channels would be a natural place to apply the tech.

j-c-hewitt 8y ago
There's some automated stuff for routing but generally speaking you will be answered by a person. They may get blocs of text as prompts to use and the kinds of responses they can give are quite restricted by their policies but they are still real people. Also in this case she thought she was compliant with the rules, but according to Amazon (which is not always reasonable) she was not compliant. Amazon support tends to send out these kinds of robotic emails that require a very specific phrasing in response (again, like I said elsewhere in this thread, similar to playing a 1980s/90s text adventure game). If you don't get the adventure game reference, in those kinds of games you would have to solve bizarre puzzles using a very specific syntax. If you had to open a lock with a key, you might have had to try a bunch of strings like >"use key in lock" > "You cannot do that." >"turn key in lock" >"You cannot do that." >"use lock with key" >"The lock opens. You can examine the drawer." Once she included the magic phrasing that Amazon requested, her account was unfrozen. You may think that this is just because she is some tiny author, but you would be mistaken. Even top ten US/international sellers with tens of millions of dollars of sales per year are held to the same silly standard and hitched up by robotic support people even when they pay over six figures for special reps at Amazon.

ikeboy 8y ago

>But it is really more easily navigable by people who are savvy. Not really. I know plenty of 7-8 figure sellers that have the exact same issues all day long. Hell, pharmapacks, biggest amazon seller by number of feedback, publicly talked about the same issues in their inc profile 2 years ago https://www.inc.com/magazine/201603/burt-helm/pharmapacks-amazon-warehouse.html https://www.inc.com/magazine/201603/burt-helm/pharmapacks-am... >But Vagenas's desk is constantly cluttered with products that have caused problems. Each day, the Seller Support group takes down one or more Pharmapacks listings without warning because of customer complaints. They're savvy, yes, but they have a ton of issues just like every other big seller.