Despite the amount of money I spend with them on things I don’t really need, I like Amazon.
Whenever I go on there to buy one thing, I end up with a bunch more simply because they have a knack of presenting me with ‘things I might also like to consider’ that I consider and then decide I want to buy.
That said, I don’t know if I would call Amazon a great brand.
They have a great product and offer great service, but my relationship with them is purely transactional.
They certainly don’t inspire any disproportional emotional response to them … and they’re probably perfectly fine with that.
Anyway, that’s by the by.
The reason for this post is that I recently was on their site [buying another daft book best suited to 5 year olds] when I saw this:
… if you can’t see what I’m talking about, how about this:
Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the importance of saving and the benefit of being able to profit from things you are never going to need/use again … but to offer me a gift card worth 34 cents – though they acknowledge this ‘offer’ may end up being lower than that amount – is a bit tragic, especially when it’s for a book I don’t even own.
I’d sort-of understand it if they had used books I had already bought from them.
I’d sort of understand it if their headline was, The book you want to buy could be free if you trade in these 3 books you bought from us 3 years ago.
But to randomly offer me a shit price for a book I don’t own doesn’t make me think Amazon ‘cares about me’, more like Amazon doesn’t understand who I am and just wants to get as much moolah out of me as possible.
Mind you, it it is the latter, they are doing an amazing job of it so far.