Amazon and Labor Laws

Amazon and Labor Laws (satire)

Labor laws? We don’t need no stinkin’ labor laws (Soper, 2011; Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015)!

Jeff Bezos, CEO
Amazon.com, Inc.

Satire. Not a quote of Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos probably keeps these thoughts to himself and his Senior Vice Presidents.

References

Soper, S. (2011, September 18). Inside Amazon’s warehouse. The Morning Call. Retrieved February 8, 2016, from http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html

Kantor, J., & Streitfeld, D. (2015, August 15). Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising workplace. The New York Times. Retrieved February 8, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

Photo by Asa Mathat.

Amazon Case Update and Elliott.org Story

My contact with consumer advocate, Christopher Elliott, was successful. Jessica, a volunteer advocate from Elliott.org, contacted various Amazon employees on LinkedIn, and Gabriele Masili, the Global Director of Digital & Device Customer Service at Amazon.com, Inc., thought my issue was important enough to refer it to the Amazon Executive Customers Relations team. On Tuesday, 2/02/2016, Amazon offered to refund my $451.20 balance or issue a check. My $38.02 Amazon Local Register balance has already been refunded.

I requested that Amazon pay my legal fees as well, for a grand total of about $610, which I was told they will consider and get back to me on. We will see if they actually reply, since it has already been 5 calendar days.

Please see the story here: Amazon gives customer silent treatment after closing his account – and us, too

Note that the Elliott.org story is actually quite abbreviated and leaves out many details, including my pending litigation. I appeared for the pre-trial conference on 2/02/2016 in Daytona Beach, FL, and the judge was sympathetic and agreed to allow me to amend the case style, since I could not serve the summons against the CEO as it was refused by Amazon’s Legal Department. I am holding off on refiling the case and paying for a new summons, since I will not have to if Amazon voluntarily offers the refund.

I have responded to a great number of comments on the blog post on Elliott.org. Surprisingly, the comments were quite uninformed and vitriolic toward me; one commentator even called for my arrest, saying that Amazon, Discover Bank, and other organizations and agencies should prefer federal charges against me for wire fraud and racketeering (said commentator’s comments were deleted by Elliott.org moderators).

The most vocal commentators have been very sympathetic toward Amazon.com, Inc. Many of them have fundamental misunderstandings of the issues, partly due to their lack of expertise, and partly due to their failure to actually read. For example, there was a particular commentator who said that buying gift cards with credit cards constitutes evasion of “cash advance fees” and should that I should be prosecuted by Discover Card. This commentator’s understanding of the law is ludicrous, and he or she could not even bother to read that I was purchasing gift cards with a Discover Cashback Checking debit card, not a Discover credit card. Another commentator believed I was buying Amazon gift cards for slightly below $10.00 each to redeem for cash, which is allowed by state law in California (though not for Amazon gift cards), thereby earning 5% cashback with my Discover credit card. Of course, this commentator ignored the fact that I explained many times in the comments section that I was buying sub-$1.00 gift cards to receive 20¢ rewards from my debit card issuer on each transaction, that I was applying them to my account directly rather than trying to cash them out, and that the gift card purchases were made in a quarter when Discover Card was not even offering 5% back on Amazon purchases! So much for doing your homework.

These victim-blaming comments are quite surprising on a consumer advocacy site. How much worse would the comments be if this was published on an actual news site?

However, these comments don’t actually represent public opinion accurately. They reflect a subset of vocal commentators who enjoy public, anonymous, online ridicule, and none of them present a cogent argument nor even accurately understand the situation. While such commentators are a staple on Slashdot, 4chan, and Reddit, it is disappointing to see them on Elliott.org.

While many people believe this case is closed, it will not actually be closed until Amazon actually provides the refund as indicated. I have told them about the small claims suit and asked for legal fees of $160.00. Now that the know about the suit, it’s possible they will decide to no longer communicate (again), in which case I will proceed with legal action. This has been a very educational experience for me. Obviously, it has cost me far more than $500 in time, but I have learned more about the law and awful customer service than I ever cared to before.