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Is Jeff Bezos breeding a generation of bots for Amazon?
Bezos’s bots are on the march! I’m convinced of it. Let me explain.
I have had a lot of unpleasantness with Amazon lately, and I want to talk about it. I am a novelist and have had an Amazon Author Account since I started ten years ago. The account lists publications and methods of contact et cetera. It’s a sort of showcase.
Anyway, I have been changing some of my book covers over the last few months, until I received a rather surprising email from Amazon’s dual content brigade. It accused me of not having the right to change my covers or, in fact, edit my books (they call it content) in any way. This could happen if you have sold the rights to a publisher, for example. However, I have been self-publishing for a decade and don’t have a traditional publisher.
Stupid Responses.
They, the dual content mob, took a while to reply, and my books were locked during this period. Then I received an email from them that was completely off-topic. Neither did it address any of my questions. I replied again…, and again, and again. A couple of weeks went past, and I became very angry. How do you prove that you own the rights to your content, if the other side isn’t listening or answering your questions?
Bezos’s Bots.
Then it dawned upon e. Only immature bots could make such stupid mistakes! Jeff Bezos had to be developing bots to sell commercially and was using his customers and colleagues at Amazon, ACX and Audible as guinea pigs! I was talking to experimental robots, not to humans at all! It was the only logical explanation. I could imagine technicians reading my replies and sniggering that I hadn’t worked out that I was talking to Bezos’s Bots.
That made even ore angry, I can tell you 🙂
Bezos’ army of bots…
Anyway, I came up with two ideas. I asked what they had found in my Amazon Author Account to suggest that I had relinquished control over my books, and threatened to write a real letter to head office explaining my frustration. I received an email the next day thanking me for the suggestion to check my Author Account.
Now, tell me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that be the first place that a logical, intelligent human should look? I mean, these accounts were Amazon’s idea, and they are hosted on their websites. Surely, only a Bezos Robot could not have thought of that in three weeks?
Bezos’s Robot Technology.
If you have cause to deal with the internal ‘machinery’ of Amazon and its subsidiaries, you will soon realise that there’s something a bit crook with it, in the Aussie sense. It just is not right… You know that you are not talking to humans, or if you are then they are just choosing replies from a list. My money is on that they are not human at all though! One could be forgiven for predicting that millions of help-desk/support workers might lose their jobs when the technology has been perfected… in what, two… or five year’s time?
And if Bezos’s bots take over the call centres then millions of workers in developing countries will lose their jobs, and what will be the consequence of that? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
PS: I received another dose of idiocy from Amazon’s bots in March 2023. They accused me of publishing books I hadn’t written. However, after a week of mud-slinging, they backed down again. No apology though, just a threat of dire consequences should I ‘do it again’.
The ‘woman’ that keeps jumping on my case is Sofia – i hope you never meet ‘her’.
These high and mighty ‘people’ make you sick, don’t they?