We've all seen the lovable Amazon Christmas TV adverts this year, with the cute singing boxes. But Amazon’s
customer service operation (who are incidentally based at a call centre in
India) seem to have a much more sinister side.
Amazon has been forced to apologise to
a customer who was emailed what he believed were "coded death threats"
by one of their call centre workers.
Michael Jacobson, a former Special Constable, first contacted Amazon's
help centre after experiencing delivery issues with a package he had ordered in
October.
But according to him: "Later that
afternoon I checked my emails, and I'd received five emails, all from Amazon. They
were all ostensibly book recommendations but the titles were pretty ominous and
threatening, and I was pretty taken aback.”
The books were called: ‘Death’, ‘Follow
You Home’, ‘The Denial of Death’, ‘Death Made Me’, and ‘Suicide's An Option’.
But this wasn’t just a coincidence. Mr
Jacobson suspected that the recommendations had been sent by a person, not automatically by a computer. This made him feel frightened for his safety. "The more I looked into it, I
realised that they had actually been sent manually by an employee at Amazon
rather than via an algorithm. I was concerned, because as soon as I realised
that this had been sent by an individual rather than by a computer, it meant an
Amazon employee had access to my personal information."
After getting in touch with Amazon to
report the issue, they investigated and found the book recommendations HAD been
sent manually by one of their customer service staff members - not automatically
by computer.
According to Amazon: "We have
zero tolerance for any misuse of customer data and have apologised to the
customer. The individual involved no longer works for Amazon.”
"On this occasion, an isolated
individual was using the 'share page' function on our site to send the emails
in question. We are taking this matter very seriously. Corrective actions have
been taken internally both in relation to the agent who instigated the emails,
and subsequent service failures.”
But according to Mr Jacobson: "At
no point did Amazon say, we're confident you're not in any danger.”
Is Amazon such a nice company as people think?
Despite their customer-friendly
image, Amazon have an appalling record in avoiding paying tax (click here for details) and there has recently been a series of complaints about their 'Prime' service that promises 'next day delivery' but has failed to keep this promise for many customers. This is now being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority. And now we know that if you dare to complain to their customer service department
about a late delivery, you might even get a coded death threat from
their ‘friendly’ customer service staff!!
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