New Adventures in Corporate Fascism

 For whatever reason, someone (or ones) at Amazon really don't like me.  Again and again I'm harassed, having things blocked or accounts closed for little reason.  With no real due process ever, just vague boilerplate emails that say nothing.  And emailing them only gets more boilerplate emails because no one seems to know what the hell is going on.

The first thing was while I was changing covers and categories for Eric Filler books, I figured I might as well do the PT Dilloway ones too.  Among those was the Tales of the Scarlet Knight comic book.  I didn't change anything except the categories.  Annnnd...Blocked.

This happened once or twice before where they took it off sale because some doofus in India thought I was plagiarizing my own book or something and I had to waste time then getting some other doofus in India to understand that the comic book is a comic book promoting the other book.  Also they're both written by me and released through my account, so what the fuck is the problem anyway?

I decided to just redo the comic in KDP Create so I could upgrade it to zoom into panels and whatever.  Which I had to look that up in their help section because it was in no way intuitive to do that.  (It's something like hold the D key as you select stuff.  Makes sense, right?  Not at all.)

It took a few hours to find all the old pages for the comic (with the words) and make a new cover and fix the last page with the old link to my blog.  I finally load it annnnd...Blocked.  What?  Why?

I finally got them to unlock the new version and it was OK for a few days...until they start harassing me with "quality issues."  The "issue" was I chose white for the panel edges instead of the default, which is blue or something.  Well someone demanded I use the default for...reasons.  I just clicked the button to say it's not an error.  And a few days later they do the same thing.  So I do the same thing annnnd...Blocked.

OK, really, if you're going to demand I use the default, then why even make it an option to use another color?  Why give me a choice and then say I can't make a choice?  It's another of those annoying Catch-22 things with them.

Finally I had enough and sent them an email demanding they stop harassing me about this because it's just a 9-page promo comic that has none of the graphic violence, sex, or language of the superhero shows their Prime Video division puts on TV like The Boys, Gen V, and Invincible.  I guess someone understood I was pretty irritated because they unblocked the thing and stopped bugging me about "quality issues"...for now.

Then a few days before Christmas I got an email from Amazon saying I had violated "community guidelines" and my community account was being blocked.  Which meant what?  I realized later it meant they'd closed my Vine account.  Why?

I thought it was because I wrote a review (that was never posted) about a stupid counterfeit "Snoop on the Stoop" toy.  I called it counterfeit and maybe pondered whether these had "fallen off a truck" or were just defective units they were trying to get rid of or something.  I don't remember what all I said but nothing with graphic language or sexual innuendo. 

I also mentioned that some knockoff Transformers were knockoff Transformers.  I mean, they are.  Those reviews got blocked even before they blocked my account.  They also blocked a review saying a knockoff Wednesday Addams doll was a knockoff Wednesday Addams doll.

But after Christmas I got a fairly rude response from someone called "Tristen."

Hello,

I'm sorry we haven't been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. However, I won't be able to offer any additional insight or action on this matter.

We removed your posting privileges because your most recent post violated our guidelines and Conditions of Use. You previously violated our guidelines and then again.

[Version 5 - Mediocre Product, Company Harassment

What annoys me is you have to read some of that mind-numbing auto-translated or AI-written product description to realize the "48 GB" space is 16GB internal and an included 32GB card. My whole collection is less than 48 GB but it's more than 32GB so I have to break it up and put some internally and some on the card and it makes it kind of annoying to separate like that. Just say 16GB and expandable up to whatever. Otherwise it's OK. A little bulky and micro-USB charging is pretty retro these days. The Bluetooth works and the rest works as well as other cheap Chinese brands I've tried. UPDATE: Since a "Cynthia Nelson" supposedly from the company has been harassing me all week about taking down a review (even offering a $30 bribe) I have lowered my rating. There are...<truncated for this email>]

We won't reinstate your posting permissions for this account.

This was actually a lot dumber reason to ban me than I thought.  I mean back in April(!!!) this stupid person going by "Cynthia Nelson" (ha ha, yeah right) kept bugging me about taking down a 3-star review for a pretty mediocre MP3 player.  My main issue was they claim in the title of the product page that it has 48GB space, which would hold my music collection.  Buuuut down in the description it mentions that only 16GB of that is internal and the rest is a "TF Card" they include, which makes putting all of my music on there more difficult because I have to split it up.  Otherwise it was pretty basic and I don't know why "Cynthia Nelson" got a bug up her ass about it and kept emailing me and offering me a "refund" of up to $30 if I took down a review that wasn't very harsh.

I obviously should have just ignored her.  But when I had enough I changed my review to 1 star and wrote that someone from the company had been harassing me for a week about changing my review or removing it.  Because, really, you shouldn't buy products from companies that do stuff like this.

In a bitter cosmic irony, I wouldn't change or take down the review because I didn't want to lose my Amazon account.  Instead by reporting on the attempt to bribe me...I lose my Amazon account.  And meanwhile this asshole company keeps selling their mediocre product.  Only now they make even more confusing claims, saying in the title that it has 64GB and then in the description that it's 48 and up to 128 and I don't know what else.  It's ridiculous.

This one sentence from "Tristen" though doesn't make a lot of sense:

We removed your posting privileges because your most recent post violated our guidelines and Conditions of Use. You previously violated our guidelines and then again.

Most recent post...and then you quote something from April!?!  I previously violated our guidelines...when?  When did I previously violate the guidelines?  Did anyone even bother to tell me?

The plot thickens though!  January 2 I received this email after sending them another email or two:

We appreciate that you took the time to contact us about the review.

We read the review and did not find that it qualifies for removal for violating our Community Guidelines (available here: http://www.amazon.in/review-guidelines). We encourage our customers to give their honest feedback, whether positive or negative, about

the products sold on our site. Our Community Guidelines exist to cultivate a space where customers can share their opinions about the products they receive in a way that is relevant and helpful to other customers.

If you want to report violations of customer reviews in future, please click on the "Report abuse" link near the content. If no "Report abuse" link is available, please contact us via E-Mail.

We appreciate your understanding.

We'd appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.

Best regards,

Noorjahan

Wait, so now you're saying that review shouldn't have been removed?  But Noorjahan didn't restore my access to anything, so then I have to send another email to ask them to unblock me.  WTF?!

The way it reads is like Noorjahan there thought I was reporting my own review and so sent the boilerplate to say that it wouldn't be taken down.  This demonstrates the problem of outsourcing your customer service for English speakers to people who probably don't speak English as a first language.  It seems pretty clear that Noorjahan there didn't actually read or understand the email and just sent whatever form letter he/she thought covered it.  Instead of solving the problem it just made things even less understandable.

***

In the late 2010s Amazon Vine was pretty great to get things like real Barbie dolls, Monster High toys, and occasionally Transformers or stuff like that.  Also things I could use like detergent pods, coffee, furniture, clothes, and even small appliances like microwaves and air conditioners.  But then with the pandemic everything went downhill.  The name brand stuff all but dried up.  The useful everyday stuff like detergent pods, coffee, band-aids, and so on also dried up.

By 2023 Amazon Vine was basically just a dumping ground for Temu/Wish-type bullshit like that MP3 player.  In 2022 I got an awesome Samsung smart TV and Dell computer but there was none of that in 2023.  I actually went through all the stuff I ordered that year and there were maybe a dozen things that could be considered a real brand and it was all just small stuff like a Funko Pop and Biggby Coffee mug.  No real Barbie dolls or Monster High toys for my nieces.  I mentioned once before they had Marvel and Power Rangers toys that were basically just slightly repackaged Five Below toys.

The electronics they had were all these no-name brands like "Sorny" or "Magnetbox" only probably even lamer than that.  Most of them you're lucky if they work for a few weeks or a month before they break down.  The "smart" phone I got runs worse than the first LG phone I got back in 2014.  I got two different digital cameras, one claiming to be "48MP" and another "52MP" and yet both were worse than my 5MP Kodak from 20 years ago.  I gave them to my nieces for Christmas because they were basically only good as toys.  One neat MP3 player looked like an old iPod, but after a week or so it wouldn't play about 2/3 of the files, saying they were "broken" or "corrupt."  I wiped it and reinstalled everything and still got the same problem, despite those files work on other MP3 players.  So maybe the files aren't broken, maybe you're broken, fake iPod.

So maybe I got a little frustrated with some idiot pestering me by email.  But closing MY account for telling the truth about THEIR harassment?  Seems like overkill.  You could, I don't know, just remove that review.  But since they admitted they shouldn't have even done that, the whole thing is pretty fucking stupid.

Like I said at the beginning, there is no due process to this stuff.  There's no real explanation.  As far as I can tell, someone, somewhere (probably India) just pushes a button and POOF! your account is gone.  Or your book is gone.  Good luck trying to get anyone then to explain what happened or why.  Because probably no one knows.  So they just hide behind the boilerplate emails and these nebulous terms like "content guidelines" and "terms of service."  And, hey, it's their site so they can do whatever they want, right?  If you don't like it, go somewhere else, right?  Like, um, Walmart?  That's so much better, right?  Ugh.

In this case if they had simply asked me for an explanation instead of instantly pressing the annihilation button, all of the problems could have been avoided.

There really needs to be some kind of transparent process in place with oversight, preferably with someone who speaks the native language of the user as a first language to avoid misunderstandings.  Instead they'll probably just farm it out to "AI" because that's even cheaper than Tristen or Noorjahan.

What was worse was to realize that not only did they close my Vine account, they completely wiped out ALL of my reviews.  I had book reviews from as far back as February 2001!  And they were gone, just like that!  23 years of stuff that in no way violated any "guidelines" and had nothing to do with Vine and they vaporized it just cuz.  And then after the fact (and only after I email them about six times) they say that review shouldn't have even been removed--let alone the thousands of other ones?!

I can't write any product reviews or anything right now, but I can still buy stuff.  I mean they can silence me and basically exile me from their "community" but they wouldn't want to stop me from being able to give them money.

In this year where fascists are on the ballot, it's a good illustration of why fascism is bad.  You might think they won't come for you, but if you give them the power then they can.  We've seen it before and we'll unfortunately probably see it again.  When you give people absolute power with almost no oversight, they will inevitably misuse that power and there's little to nothing you can probably do about it, not alone.  Like someone on Bluesky mentioned, Hitler didn't just seize power; he was elected Chancellor.  Vlad Putin was elected.  Palpatine was elected in Star Wars.  What happened then?  None of them would give up the power.  The best way to stop people (and companies) like that is to never give them the power in the first place.