June 2, 2005

Amazon’s crummy messages

Erica and I were look­ing to switch cell phones and providers, so we decided to go with the Amazon Razr deal I men­tioned.

Thus started a descent into madness.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but given how well Amazon usu­ally designs their sys­tems, the process of order­ing a cell phone with ser­vice can be a bit daunting.

Not long after we placed our order, we got this note from Amazon:

There has been a delay in pro­cess­ing your wire­less order. We apol­o­gize for this incon­ve­nience. We are wait­ing for a final deter­mi­na­tion of ser­vice eli­gi­bil­ity from the car­rier. Unfor­tu­nately, Ama​zon.com is unable to process a wire­less order until we receive approval from the carrier.

At this point, you do not need to take any action. Rou­tine delays of a day or two are not uncom­mon if car­ri­ers are expe­ri­enc­ing high volume or system issues. …

And that’s where I stopped read­ing the note. After all, like most people, I scan my e-mail look­ing for the impor­tant info. I closed the note know­ing this:

  1. My order with Amazon is delayed
  2. Because they’re await­ing final approval from Cingular
  3. Cin­gu­lar has to do a credit check (this is men­tioned promi­nently while doing the order)
  4. I don’t need to do anything

Great, I’m a lazy Amer­i­can — I’m good at not doing anything!

Appar­ently I should have taken that more to heart. A few days later, I checked the status of my order on Amazon’s Web site.

This is what I saw:

Amazon\'s crummy alert text

You can click the link to read the full mes­sage. But what it says is:

  1. I haven’t been approved
  2. I need to cancel my order
  3. “We cannot pro­ceed with­out some action on your part.”
  4. In five days, if I don’t do any­thing, they’ll cancel my order.

That, my friends, is one of the worst error mes­sages I’ve ever seen.

Let me get this straight… I need to cancel my order, Amazon can’t pro­ceed with­out action on my part. But, if I don’t take any action, they’ll cancel my order.

Being a bear of very little brain, I can­celed my order like I thought Amazon wanted me to.

Then, a few days later, fig­ur­ing I’m going to have find another phone/plan/provider I re-​read my e-mail from Amazon a little more closely. And I dis­cover this nugget of wisdom (empha­sis mine):

Until this is resolved, it is pos­si­ble that the infor­ma­tion in the “Your Account” sec­tion of the Amazon site will incor­rectly indi­cate that this order requires your atten­tion and may direct you to cancel – please dis­re­gard this until we get more information.

A jigga-​what?

So I reordered my phone/plan. Got the same note, got the same error mes­sage, did noth­ing. Now my phone is on its way.

Amazon, what the fuss? (iTunes)

In an effort to be con­struc­tive might I sug­gest the fol­low­ing changes?

The first and most defen­sive thing would be to not have a mes­sage saying I need to cancel my order, when I don’t.

Absent that, your ini­tial note should say this:

  1. There has been a delay in pro­cess­ing your wire­less order.
  2. We are wait­ing on your car­rier to com­plete a credit check
  3. Do not take any action
  4. If you check your order status on the site it may prompt you to cancel. Do not cancel your order.
  5. If your credit check is declined we will inform you and cancel your order
  6. If you have any ques­tions you can con­tact our Cell Phones Spe­cial­ists at 1-800-201-7575, Monday through Friday 10am to 7pm EST.

A six-​point e-mail is much easier to skim/read and digest than a six para­graph mes­sage with nearly 300 words.

Finally change your “error message” to accu­rately reflect the status of my order!

Filed under: Business, Web design

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Comments

me – June 8, 2005 #

hi ! ur blog abt amazon was really helpful.I was trying to buy the same fone with cin­gu­lar and got the same email.I wasnt sure what it meant so I searched on google and found your blog .