Medicine, Literacy, and Manners
So, what has amazon.co.uk got to do with medicine? They sell books, of course, including medical books.
Sitting on the shelf behind me in my office, among many other books, is the venerable Oxford Textbook of Medicine, IVth Edition. I often refer to this authoritative text in the course of my work. It was published in 2003, and a new edition came out in 2010. Well, I do my best to keep up to date, so I thought I would buy the new edition. It is a massive production of over 3000 pages, in three volumes weighing in total about 12Kg, and naturally is quite expensive. So I looked for the cheapest price I could find, which was – you guessed it – from amazon.co.uk, and ordered it from them. Good idea, right? Wrong.
The books were delivered in a cardboard box which I opened in eager anticipation to browse through the new edition. What a disappointment! The books were damaged! How could this be? Surely, the highly esteemed amazon.co.uk has the wit and experience, commonsense and care, to pack them properly. But no! The books were in the original publisher’s cardboard box – fine if you were just carrying them home from the shop – and this had been placed in a slightly larger but rather flimsy outer cardboard box, with some packing material on three sides only of the smaller box. Because of this, unsurprisingly, the books arrived with their corners ‘bumped’ and the spines torn.
Well, amazon.co.uk has a system for dealing with this. They even helpfully provide a printable label and a website page to ease the return of damaged books. I informed them by e-mail that the books were damaged due to inadequate packing. You are asked to return goods by courier, but this would cost almost as much as I paid originally, and I wanted assurance that they would refund this relatively large amount. The trouble is that there is no simple way of communicating with them. An e-mail message produces an anonymous automated response. As a last resort I tried telephoning them – a thankless task. My call was held in a queue for quite a long time, eventually to be answered by a woman who could barely speak English and who identified herself only by her first name. Would she tell me her surname?
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s against company policy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Security reasons.’
Well, fancy that! She has my full name but refuses to tell me hers, for ‘security reasons’. This is not satisfactory. I might need to refer to our telephone conversation in case of difficulty. Does amazon.co.uk imagine enraged customers, if they know the full name of the staff member on the telephone, will be tempted to go round to their offices and heave a brick with his or her full name on it through the window? I asked to speak the supervisor. Same rigmarole again, except that the supervisor’s English was slightly easier to understand. I had to swallow my pride and tell them the reason for my call: please ensure to refund in full my carriage charges and make sure the replacement is properly packed! They agree. So all will be well, right? Wrong.
In due course the replacement arrives. With bated breath I open the parcel. You can guess. Same thing, except the damage was slightly less than the first time.
I was an expert at the game by then and used their website to request a call from a senior manager at the firm. A call comes:
‘Hello, my name’s Michael, how may I help you?’
‘Will you please tell my your full name?’
‘I’m afraid for security reasons I’m not allowed to.’
The voice had a charming Irish lilt to it and as he was even called Michael, my annoyance didn’t last long. Swallow my pride again and get on with the business. He’s very sorry, they will replace the books a second time. No, thank you, I can’t stand this any more! I’ll accept the damage – not too noticeable – but what about some compensation? Of course – how about 15% of the purchase price? All right. And my return carriage costs will be repaid in full.
All this trouble and waste of time could have been avoided by ordering the Textbook from the publisher’s Japanese subsidiary. True, the cost would have been considerably more, but it almost inconceivable that a book sent by a Japanese supplier would arrive in anything other than perfect condition.
Funny, isn’t it, how one has to learn the same lesson over and over: you get what you pay for!
©Gabriel Symonds, March 2011