A Reply From Amazon, Sort Of

You gotta love those canned replies. Today, I received this e-mail from Codi F. at Amazon (scroll down for my translation):

"Greetings from Amazon.com Associates.

"I am sorry to hear you are experiencing difficulty with your Omakase
Link. I have viewed your link on your web site, however it does not
appear you entered any specific categories when you created your
link.

"Please note, when building an Omakase Link you have the option to
narrow down the products displayed by clicking Advanced Settings
above the HTML coding. This feature allows you to select categories,
keywords and also eliminate certain keywords from your link.

"I would recommend rebuilding your link using the Advanced Settings
features and see if the items displayed are closer to what you would
like to see on your web site.

"As always, please feel free to contact us should you have future
questions or comments, and thanks for your continued interest in the
Associates Program.

"Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

"If yes, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-y?c=wwbhdeay3431665616
"If not, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-n?c=wwbhdeay3431665616&q=has0&nc2c=1

"Best regards,

"Codi F"

I will be clicking on one of the links above to tell Codi that he/she did not answer my question, which was, Why is Amazon only supplying ads for movies to my blog?

Here's my translation of Codi's reply: "I don't know why this is happening. But maybe you would like to try setting specific categories for your ads, and maybe that will satisfy you."

This is, sadly, about par with the answers I get from almost every Web company that I deal with. And I know why--they are trying to handle customer service problems with as few real bodies as possible.

How do I know this? I once worked, briefly, for a company that provided so-called "customer service" via the Web for companies like Amazon, and it was all about the bottom line: How to offer customer service without using real people, or by using as few real people as possible.

And if you do have to use real people, don't use Americans. Use people who will work for cheap in countries like India.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.