As long as they refund people it's all good.
Would of been nice for them to open source the SDK too.
Would of been nice for them to open source the SDK too.
As the person proposing such purchases you want to be able to show successes. Amazon just bricking it means you don't have much to show for, probably burnt political capital for nothing to get these, and if anyone was opposed to getting these they are now proven right.
Both on the organizational and individual level these kinds of things are far more impactful in business products than in a hobbyist product
Have fun doing accounting for those credits.
Very bad look.
Is it? Let’s say I buy a Foo rather than a Bar because it brings better value for money. A few months later, the device is bricked, and I get my money back, but Bar doesn’t sell my 2nd choice anymore or it got more expensive.
Even if it isn’t, I may have made additional investments in time (e.g. learning how to operate it) or money (e.g. buying an longer charging cable) that I won’t get back.
It's basically in the range of an expensive laptop, fancy fridge + dishwasher, big couch, etc... Something that might have taken multiple weekends to shop for and maybe even a day off work to get delivered, possibly followed by months of personalization for an electronics product like a laptop.
If you are a business owner who bought one of these and happy with the device would you be “all good” with a refund?
There are costs associated with fielding new tech. At the minimum now people have to evaluate and install some new tech/service. Possibly you are now scrambling around to get a new guard service which can keep your property secure, perhaps at an elevated rate. At the worst your property is going to be burglarised because of the lack of security coverage.
This sucks. It damages Amazon’s reputation a tiny little bit. Every time anyone evaluates some tech or service they think about “will this thing go away one day and leave me in the lurch”? Doing this just increased the estimated probability of Amazon flaking out on you just a tiny bit. That means the next time they are selling something their own brand they will have just a tiny bit harder time to convince companies to be the early adopters. This kind of damage is cumulative in a non-linear way. And reputation is one of those things which are very hard to restore once you have ruined it.
There is nothing “all good” about it. At best this is an “on balance of costs and benefits this course of action was less damaging for Amazon than the alternatives”.
Without a doubt.
> After all, they know only 30 people in the entire US bought the thing
Do you have a source for that?
> number for illustration
What do you mean by that? What is it illustrating?
Is this some post-truth thing where you make up something and then provide a weird disclaimer to let people know that you just made up a thing out of thin air? If so, it ain’t cool.
Instead, they went with an abitrary low number and declared it to be arbitrary.
const ILLUSTRATIVE_LOW_SALES = 30
Seems fine to me.
They could have said "I don't think they sold too many." It would have clearly indicated that they are speculating and expressed the same information.
The problem with the sentence "they know only 30 people in the entire US bought the thing" is that it indicates precise knowledge where there is none. Is it 30, 32, 300 or 3000? who knows? We don't even know that the 30 is the right order of magnitude. We just speculate that it must not have been too many units. How much is "not too many" for Amazon? How colossal a flop this was?
> Seems fine to me.
I'm afraid you are too used to the blurry edges of the "truth". We can push back against that. If someone is speculating they should say that.
I agree. This was not speculation though. It was a hypothetical, signaled by the use of "illustrative".
The OP was making a point, not about that order of magnitude, they were saying that whatever the number is, Amazon knows it. Even if the OP, myself and yourself don't. It is possible they deliberately selected an implausibly low number, in order to further signal this as a hypothetical.
>> I'm afraid you are too used to the blurry edges of the "truth".
Please, less of the personally directed comments like this. I am trying to explain how you have misconstrued the OP's comments. It would be great if you could take us as arguing in good faith.
I did not misconstrued the OP's comment. I understood them completely, and exactly as you explain them. I even understand the meta level. Saying " After all, they know only 30 people in the entire US bought the thing" sounds strong, and authoritative. Even with the disclaimer it sounds stronger than saying "I think not too many people bought the robot."
> they were saying that whatever the number is, Amazon knows it.
It will be very hard to convince me that the original phrasing is fine by rephrasing it. It just further proves it that you can say the same thing without having to make up a number.
> It would be great if you could take us as arguing in good faith.
But that is the core of my argument. What I'm saying is that the form of the argument "strong and concrete statement (followed by sideway, weak disclaimer)" is manipulative. It is not a good faith form of argument. There are other ways to say the same thing and I recommend using those forms.
I also accept that you are saying in good faith that you think this is fine. I truly believe that that is your opinion, and you are communicating it in good faith. There is no problem there.
What I further believe is that you hold that opinion because you have encountered many cases of statements subtly manipulating, or subtly bending the truth and you have become desensitised to them. That is what I believe makes you think it is fine.
Things like "asterisk illustrative image" on food packaging where in truth you will never make those ingredients look like the illustration. Or "asterisk your experience my vary" on a battery life or gas mileage claim where in real life you will never get those numbers. Or a breakfast cereal claiming it improves concentration, but when you read their studies you realise what they tested is that it improves concentration over not eating anything for breakfast at all. None of these are actual lies, but they are all meant to manipulate you into thinking something other than the truth.
Our memetic landscape is saturated with these "half-truths" because they work. I don't like it. I think we would be better of if we would not let these slide. I'm seeing the same pattern in the comment we started talking about, and I called it out for that. I believe I said that in as civilised way as I can.
The root comment was not about money but reputation. How confidently can someone buy something from Amazon to use if a 'sorry, I changed my mind, give it back and solve your task some other way, I am out of here!' is hanging over the head.
It's the risk of buying experimental tech. If you don't want this to happen you can wait until it's an established product.
It was clearly sold as a trial run and refunded but I haven't found a replacement that works as seamlessly.