Wow, that's a really crappy experience. Personally, I had a pretty good experience with their customer service. My stylus broke after a few weeks (just stopped working for writing entirely). They sent me a new one right away and didn't require me to mail mine back.
I think the way they do returns is pretty unfriendly compared to other electronic companies I've gone through this with. I was going to exchange my tablet after I bricked it, and they wouldn't send a replacement until they received and processed the return. Based on the label, the return center is in Hong Kong (IIRC), so it probably takes a while to get the replacement even if everything goes according to plan. I ended up recovering the device myself (that ordeal's another story, but that's entirely my fault) so fortunately I just had a week without use of it, not a month+.
I would expect it to be beneficial to them to send the replacement first along with a return box, then charge for a whole new device if the return isn't received on time. Maybe that only works if you have the scale and resources to build such a system that companies like Amazon have.
That reminded me, they had two different return sites. First one they sent me to didn't even recognize my order, and because it takes them at least 24 hours to respond to an email (sometimes 2+ days) that was 24 hours of me continuing to twiddle my thumbs while they sent the second return site to me, both of which they included incorrect instructions for.
But yes, part of the hassle was the return to Hong Kong I suspect. That said though, it shouldn't be on me to foot the bill for a product until their shipping company can deliver it to them. If I chose the shipping company, then sure, I guess I can see that. But it was their label, their return site, their rules, and I'm just stuck footing the bill until the product gets returned. What would they have done if it never actually arrived? Would I still be footing the bill? I had to file the dispute because the time period was running out on being able to do so AND I was then outside their 30 day return period because of the lengthy delay in their shipping provider moving the product. I sent it back less than a week after I got it, but it took another month for the stupid thing to end up in their hands.
Anyway, yea. It was entirely self inflicted by Remarkable. My assumption is they've been burned by people returning incorrect products or something, but if they handle it this way they're just upsetting legitimate returns.
I wasn't entirely dissatisfied with the product, it just wasn't in a state I could use it right now. Had the return gone better I may have purchased a newer version down the road. Now however, I will avoid them at all costs, and I am being vocal about it ... all they had to do was treat the customer appropriately and this all could've been very different for them. It just goes to show how important good customer support is.
I wonder how much this has to do with their being a Norwegian company. I have no idea what the expectations of customer service are over there. I'm just going on my experience working at a Scandinavian company and the incredulity I've heard Europeans express about the US's "the customer is always right" attitude, so I apologize if this is extremely ignorant. Regardless, they have a lot of room for improvement.
Have you tried giving feedback directly to the company? They feel like a small enough operation that they may actually listen.
I did offer feedback whenever it came up, but it was just to whomever I was talking to via support. They acknowledged the feedback but they kept repeating the same problems over and over so it was clear it wasn't going to improve in the immediate term. Some of it was simple, like, "please just use the right snippet, or if you need separate snippets for this, make separate snippets" and some was obviously more complex, like "if you are going to say something, like that you'll refund me, you should stick to what you said, rather than back out of it and not stick to your word."
To clarify for anyone in the US, this applies to everyone _outside_ the US. Previously, Paramount released Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount+ in the US and Netflix everywhere else. Now it's Paramount+ everywhere, only that doesn't exist everywhere yet.
It's amazing to me that the company feels that the benefits of this outweigh the goodwill it costs them among the fanbase. Trekkies are going apeshit over this. It makes me more hesitant to buy Star Trek media in the future, and I'll admit I'm not one to change my buying patterns based on companies' behavior ordinarily.
Not just that, they're not releasing them yet outside the USA and Canada even in places that do have Paramount+, such as the Nordics. So outside the USA and Canada, Prodigy and Discovery are pirate-exclusives even if you are subscribed to Paramount+.
Why would they pull it before having a replacement ready? Is this just classic US-first thinking where the rest of the world kinda fell through the cracks?
Seems like it. I imagine there were a lot of people at Paramount who were unhappy with this, but who weren't empowered to stop it from happening. I want to believe that Paramount is a good steward of the franchise, so I'm hoping we'll eventually get an explanation of how this was somehow unavoidable because of how Netflix does business or some weird contractual stuff.
The timing was so abrupt that I really doubt this was just a horrible rash decision. That's totally still possible though.
Someone in that toddler's family did provide the value, the money didn't appear from nowhere.
And the public school teacher is not paid a market value by definition.
Also, you don't personally get to decide what has more value than something else, the market does (which is what you are doing with the implied statement that the public school teacher provides more value than the toddler's family)
Ok fine, let me choose a different example. Has someone who became a millionaire daytrading crypto contributed more to society than almost* every nurse?
* there are probably a handful of millionaire nurses out there
Edit: to be clear, I'm not arguing that the market doesn't reward people for providing economic value to the world. I just disagree that that's the type of value that's relevant when discussing whether someone is virtuous. If two people make the same amount of money selling vacuum cleaners, but one kicks an orphan every time they make a sale, I don't think many would say they're equally virtuous.
>If two people make the same amount of money selling vacuum cleaners, but one kicks an orphan every time they make a sale, I don't think many would say they're equally virtuous.
You can judge each action a person takes, and the intent behind it (I do think intent matters) and and apply the virtuous label to those on a case by case basis. If you do that, it may well be that in aggregate one person could be more virtuous than the other - but in either case there could be some mistakes that a person makes. I think black-and-whiting the issue makes it needlessly polarized.
So that being said, 'contributing to society' is a very complicated topic. Everything is so inter-linked that you can make anything look good/bad depending on the framing.
I don't necessarily agree that by simply accepting a job as a nurse you are contributing more than a millionaire trading crypto. After all most people have their 401k invested in stocks and such. So it may very well be that someone who is day-trading may be growing the nurses 401k - (for example). Again, its just a thought - and like I said the framing can make anyone look good/bad. Wouldn't you agree?
I believe this kind of thing is a big contributor to Amazon's hegemony in online shopping. I'm reluctant to order from other sites because there's a whole new set of dark patterns I may fall victim to. At least I'm familiar enough with Amazon to know I'm not getting charged for things I didn't intend to order, the low stock warnings are somewhat legitimate, etc. I'm not saying Amazon doesn't have its own issues, but at least it's a known quantity.
If it weren't for Amazon's dominance, other sites would be able to compete without resorting to these dark patterns, so this is a self-perpetuating cycle: people only shop on Amazon -> the only other sites that can survive are the ones that engage in deception -> trust in non-Amazon shopping sites decreases -> people only shop on Amazon -> ...
I don't mean to cast these scammy shopping websites as victims. My concern is more about how the legitimate sites that could exist don't because they're crowded out by Amazon (and other big players like Walmart) and the scammy shopping sites this article discusses.
Amazon earned a lot of loyalty from me with a light pattern. An Xbox they shipped me was stolen off of my porch and they replaced it with no questions. I've purchased other things from random outfits, had them charge the card and then just ghost me. If I could buy anywhere with the same confidence I have in Amazon then Amazon's hold on me would be a lot weaker.
Another leg up with Amazon is their free returns. I purchased over $200 worth of product from corsair.com with free shipping, but one item was defective (RGB mousepad regularly kills my entire USB stack every few hours - it's either defective or incompatible with my motherboard) and the cost to return it from Georgia -> California via USPS for RMA/refund is nearly a third of the item's price since Corsair doesn't pay for return shipping.
Another thing I like with Amazon is that you can easily know the exact date you have to return something. With Best Buy for example, they have a FAQ page by category, but I couldn't find nothing regarding turntables, for example. Way easier on Amazon - at least after you order - just going to your order page and seeing the return deadline there.
(My experience is with amazon.ca) Amazon is filled with the kinds of deception that the article discusses.
I dont have prime and the whole UI is set up to trick me into getting prime.
I always buy enough to get free shipping (which they show with a big banner), but it always defaults to paid shipping, that often needs to be removed item by item.
More often than not, books I search for default to kindle, and I have actually been tricked into buying a kindle version before.
They hide the fact that you are buying from a reseller as much as they can.
I could go on, but the point is I agree with you entirely.
As of 2012 Amazon sells more Kindle books than physical books in the UK. I suspect that hasn't changed since then. So I'd argue defaulting to kindle is the right product decision as it's the option the majority of users want.
Amazon Prime on the other hand is definitely a dark pattern.
Amazon has 15 years of shopping history from me that includes multiple physical books each month and 0 kindle purchases. Its possible they don't consider that and default to kindle for everyone, but they at least have the info to know that kindle versions are not what I'm after.
Amazon is incredibly good at converting consumer surveillance data in to money. They could easily default this (and many other things) to sensible per-user values. Given their competence and attention to detail, the reasonable guess here is that playing dumb on this default pays better than doing right by the user.
Maybe what's happening is: if you have a Kindle (you bough it form Amazon - or you bought kindle books on your account), they assume is likely you want a kindle version. If you don't have a Kindle, they want to show you how cheaper the Kindle version is, and maybe you will end up buying a Kindle.
They sell more e-books because the publishing industry colluded to jack up the price of paperbacks so that $10 e-books look like a bargain. I'm not paying $15 for a physical book that would have been $5 15 years ago. Their production overhead has been dramatically lowered by digital distribution and I'm expected to pay more?
I think it's the convenience for both buyers and sellers. If readers want the book "now" they get the kindle version; if they want it later they get the physical copy. However, Kindle in general is a dark pattern: it forces users to be locked into their product ecosystem.
> I don't have prime and the whole UI is set up to trick me into getting prime.
Back when I was still in college they offered a "6 month trial" of Prime Student. I agreed, made a mental note to cancel it in 5 months, and was shocked to find the next day that my card had been charged. There weren't any purchase screens, any terms to agree to, or anything to indicate that the trial they were peddling was in fact just an ordinary Prime Student subscription which would then renew in 6 months.
They hide the fact that you are buying from a reseller as much as they can.
I mean, it says Sold by X and Fulfilled by Amazon right under the add to basket/buy buttons. It's repeated on the order summary. I'm aware people keep missing this, but I don't really get it.
If you are not buying from Amazon, then nothing on the entire page should imply that you are.
Why is this not obvious to us? It wasn't to me either. There has got to be some cognitive bias at play here to lead to our acceptance of inverted principles like this. The framing of the problem is completely inverted, yet we're pretty much okay with that.
If it's not clear what I'm talking about here's another example:
"Why do you need privacy if you have nothing to hide?"
This is also a reframing that presumes I do not have privacy and therefore bare the burden to prove I need it. People accept this frame and attempt to argue it directly all the time, when they should really just say "Why do you need to take it?" The burden of proof is on the taker.
Neither the buyer nor the seller should be so accepting of Amazon's attempt to obfuscate the actual parties involved in the sale. Amazon is just the payment processor and possibly providing storage and shipping services.
A real world analogy would be if every store that accepts VISA looked like a VISA store.
> More often than not, books I search for default to kindle, and I have actually been tricked into buying a kindle version before.
This can't really be something Amazon is intentionally trying to trick you into doing. There's no way for you not to notice that it happened, and you can just return the kindle book.
In general you just need to change it for each shipment - if multiple items are grouped together [because they're all at the same warehouse) then changing one shipment will change the shipping speed of all items within it. They probably should be defaulting to free shipping when it's available, though.
I'm not saying they aren't. What I'm trying to get across is that people are more used to and, therefore, inured to their dark patterns. There's a learning curve for navigating any website's dark patterns, so I'm more comfortable using a site whose dark patterns I believe I can recognize and avoid than one I haven't used before and am consequently more likely to be victimized by.
I'm definitely overestimating my own ability to avoid Amazon's scammy tactics. I, like most people, am reluctant to admit that I'm vulnerable to manipulation by things like these dark patterns (and ads, PR, etc.). But since I'm talking about my subjective feelings towards the websites, I think how good I _feel_ I am is relevant.
I totally agree with everything you've said, but just want to clarify my initial comment. I'm not trying to let Amazon off the hook, though they are less problematic than almost all of the other examples in the article.
One example is their "subscriptions" to products. It's very easy to accidentally order a recurring subscription to a shipped physical product, rather than just a one-time purchase.
that is not accurate. Amazon is brimming with dark patterns.
They walk the line between selling to customers and selling customers.
Over time, there are more and more "sponsored" results occluding and confusing my search results.
There are now warranty upsell screens on just about every purchase ("would you like coverage on your $5 part?")
They don't offer you the lowest cost on an item, you really have to drill down into all the offers to check.
If you block part of their site, things don't work - but if you sign in, all is well.
Can you delete your browsing history? Well, no. You can "hide" your browsing history but "removing items from view".
Search results are peppered with nonsensical results - that you searched for/bought before. I'm pretty sure this is timed with memory decay.
for example if 3 months ago you searched for dishes. Today when you search for computer parts, there might be a dish thrown into the results.
They talk about "free shipping" everywhere, but even if your cart is $500, you are opted-into non-free shipping and must manually select free shipping.
They don't tell you what is being sent in their shipping emails. But you can install their browser plugin and get all the info conveniently.
I have audible subscription and can say it is the definition of dark pattern if you have unused credits. either keep buying credits with the hope of someday using them or cancel and lose them all.
Here in Austria/Germany I see these dark patterns only from Amazon. They always try to get you to subscribe to prime, they mislead you with delivery times (my girlfriend has Prime and the website shows LONGER delivery times for her. Same item, browser signed into my account without Prime: shorter delivery time)
I want to support the local economy, so unless an item is only available on Amazon, I try to avoid buying from them. I've ordered from lots of different online stores in the past few years, and in my experience these dark patters are pretty rare.
Exactly. For all of that bullshit, plus Bezos' absolutely despicable conduct during Covid, I deleted my Amazon account and haven't looked back. Music gear? Thomann. Electronics? Digitec or Rakuten. And..., er, I'm struggling to think what Amazon was good for anyway. But regardless, unknown stuff? shopping.google.com
Honestly, of the top-x tech companies, Amazon is probably one of the easiest to quit, perhaps after Netflix.
ETA: And oh yeah. Books? Once again, search on shopping.google.com and buy from some small vendor.
I don't have any evidence to back this up, but in my recollection, that is the case. But it's hard to even compare e-commerce now to back before Amazon, when the web was much more niche and a lot of dark patterns weren't even technically possible yet.
It would be interesting to see where e-commerce would be today if a company as dominant as Amazon never came about. My hypothesis is that people would have more trust in a random shopping site they click on when Googling a product they want to buy, but it's impossible to test that.
Similar for platforms that let you build ecommerce sites, like Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, etc. They might be cookie cutter and usually over-priced for the level of hosting you get and the poorness of the wysiwyg site editing experience, but they solve a big problem of letting you get up and running with a trustworthy site fast.
It’s interesting though because there still are plenty of scam sites hosted by those platforms, plenty of dark patterns on Amazon too.
> At least I'm familiar enough with Amazon to know I'm not getting charged for things I didn't intend to order
You are better at online shopping than I am.
Amazon has tricked me into signing up for Prime twice. First time it was disguised as a shipping option. The second time I'm not sure exactly how they did it.
I don't think the author really understands the characterization of Michael Scott. I can't imagine the hypothetical scene of Michael Scott taking pride in knowing how to use chopsticks. That sounds way more out of character to me than having him not know how to use them. Hard for me to take the article seriously when it has to make up character traits for Michael Scott to make its point.
I believe that the type of person the author thinks Michael Scott is exists and sucks (and I'm probably one of them), but I don't think Michael Scott is one of them.
I agree, this bit in particular seems wrong to me:
> Posturetalk is everything said by Michael, Dwight and Andy, to anyone: the staff, the execs, or each other. Everything they say is some form or another of meaningless, performative babbling.
I only really remember the first four seasons of The Office, but I remember Michael as being a very skilled salesman and a very unskilled manager. But Michael's skill as a salesman comes from a genuine desire to connect with people and form relationships --- recall the episode where he takes a second job as a telemarketer and keeps deviating from the call scripts to ask people about their lives. In that sense, a big chunk of what Michael says is pretty close to the opposite of performative?
You just wrote it yourself - he has an enormous desire to be praised, so much so that he completely fails to notice just how much he lacks a connection with literally anyone or anything (Michael is of course a comically over-emphasized example). This is the key to understanding the "clueless" or the "educated gentry" ladder, they are unhappy with being in "labor" but lack the balls/intelligence/true desire/luck/whatever else to be the "elite", so they come up with alternative scoring rules. Why do you think writing an op-ed in the NYT is so highly desired in that ladder? The other ladders don't dabble in praise, they either want their jobs to satisfy basic life needs (labour) or want ever-growing power with minimal regard to others opinion (elite), more specifically others opinion is only relevant insofar as it is a stepping stone on the path to more power.
Maybe your (and sibling's) comment along with mine illustrate two sides of the same coin. I think Michael is interested in status mostly as a path to connection. The dreams he talks about, if I remember correctly, center around having a family and a nice life, not prestige or power or winning. That's part of why I think the "Michael Scott" analogy is such an awkward fit for the middle ladder proposed in the article. My recollection of the series is that Michael is actually pretty satisfied with his status in society, but not his status relative to the people around him. If Michael dreams of writing an op-ed in the New York Times, it's because he hopes it will make Oscar like him or something.
I agree that his desire to connect on a personal level isn't posturing and is very much a huge piece of who he is- as such, it's wrong of the author to say that everything he says to everyone is posturetalk. At the same time, I'm not sure it's fair to dismiss the author's point entirely. One of Michael's other defining features (which goes hand in hand with his desire to connect personally) is his absolute need to be liked. His desire to connect on a personal level often feeds into this need to be liked, and attempting to satisfy this need is where a lot of his posturetalk comes from. He sees traits in others that he admires and he will do whatever he can to convince other people he has those same traits. Example: during performance review time, Pam mentions that she doesn't know what to expect from hers because her previous review began with Michael asking her where she sees herself in five years and ended with him telling her how much he can bench press. Heck, there was a whole episode about him trying to prove to the office that he was the toughest fighter around. Not to mention the paper conference where he pretended his $100 per diem was just what he would tip normally; or the time he said that anyone who could do more push ups than him could go home early; or like when he takes Jim to Hooters and says to the waitress that he's doing it because he's the boss and he can afford it but then we see when he gets back to the office that he's trying to get it expensed as a business cost because he can't pay for it; or when he tells Oscar to tell Jan that he's a financial guru who cut their debt in half; or when he buys his condo and brags about having two microwaves; or any interaction he has with a woman he finds attractive. These are just a couple easy ones off the top of my head.
My point is that it's not one or the other- Michael is a great salesman because he wants to connect on a personal level, but man alive he sure spouts off a whole lot of posturetalk.
michael's desire for connection does make him a lot more genuine than most of the other characters on the show, although this might be because he just isn't capable of the subterfuge and even the casual sarcasm employed by the others.
a lot of michael's behaviors are pretty naked attempts at gaining status. the irony is that he latches onto things that no one else actually respects. a good example is when he bought the sebring. michael did not buy that car because he liked it; he bought it because he wanted other people to see him in it, purely a flex. as is often the case, the joke was on him. no one thought the sebring was a cool car. just continuing on the car theme, look at what pre-breakdown jan was driving: a volvo, a nice vehicle befitting someone of her stature but not flashy.
Right, Michael Scott would tell someone he of course knows how to use them and then end up in a Japanese restaurant with that person and be found out to be the fool once again.
That I can see. Or he would fixate on the fact that someone else does know how to use them and get competitive about it, trying and failing hard to show that he's also worldly.
The other part is that Micheal doesn't posturetalk to his employees. He desperately wants them to be his friends, because he has none. It's one of his defining characteristics.
I started using DuckDuckGo, and one day I woke up and all of my email was on Fastmail instead of Gmail. No memory of switching, but all of my contacts were moved over. My accounts were using Fastmail aliases.
I called up my siblings and asked, "where did you get this email address, why are you emailing me here?" And they just said, "what are you talking about, you've always been on Fastmail." I have no idea what's going on. Sometimes I'll go to update my system, and I'll be using Pacman instead of the normal Debian package manager. Then the next day it will switch back. Sometimes I'll search for things online, and I won't find the result I'm looking for, but then a day later I'll get a physical letter in my mailbox with the answer to my question written on it.
So anyway, long story short, I decided to switch Bing instead and so far that's had only minor side effects.
It would have been a courtesy to Teams users too, not just MS. I don't see the downside of going through the proper channels before disclosing this publicly unless the goal is some kind of "revenge" for the bug.
There is a difference between unintended yet inevitable bugs and negligence.
Deliberately cheapening out on security because security researchers generally hold to a responsible disclosure procedure is not in the users interest.
This is not one of those inevitable bugs. This is an indicator that there maybe security issues littered throughout the system because no one cares.
I've lived by this rule too ever since I got a bottle of "One A Day" multivitamins that invariably made me vomit 10 minutes after taking one. (Embarrassingly, I didn't give up on them until maybe the fifth time it happened.)
I think the way they do returns is pretty unfriendly compared to other electronic companies I've gone through this with. I was going to exchange my tablet after I bricked it, and they wouldn't send a replacement until they received and processed the return. Based on the label, the return center is in Hong Kong (IIRC), so it probably takes a while to get the replacement even if everything goes according to plan. I ended up recovering the device myself (that ordeal's another story, but that's entirely my fault) so fortunately I just had a week without use of it, not a month+.
I would expect it to be beneficial to them to send the replacement first along with a return box, then charge for a whole new device if the return isn't received on time. Maybe that only works if you have the scale and resources to build such a system that companies like Amazon have.