Friday, November 2, 2018
Breakfast at home: leftovers. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. No standup. Siteimprove Users Helping Users meeting via Zoom. CPF followup. Styling work: microsites identity retheme. Lunch at desk: leftovers. Chatted with Levi, Grant, Eric, and James about renting and landlords. Walked and rode Muni home. Today I contacted Amazon about a partial refund of my Amazon Prime membership because one of my recent deliveries of an Amazon Prime item was 10 days late. In the past Amazon has given me one month of Amazon Prime for free, and I have received this discount many times because Amazon isn't perfect about delivering items on time. This time instead of giving me one month of Amazon Prime for free, they offered me a $5 gift card. I told them that this was not very nice since in the past one month of Amazon Prime was worth $8.25 (when Amazon Prime was $99) and will be worth $9.92 (when Amazon Prime will soon cost $119 due to their recent announcement of a rate change). And remember my delivery was 10 days late? Some apology! After some time spent checking with a supervisor, the representative agreed to give me a $10 gift card. They said the gift card will appear in my account after one or two days, which means that I can't confirm the adjustment immediately like I could with a one-month extension of Amazon Prime. Then, after the chat ended, I noticed via an email receipt that the $10 gift card was provided by making an "account adjustment" for a "goodwill refund" which to me means that Amazon is tightening this partial refund process to their advantage and potentially making it harder to track how often this occurs. This new way means that they will still charge your Amazon Prime membership fee on schedule, and it's up to you to use your gift card. The more customers that delay using the gift card, the more money Amazon saves.