It’s been a month-and-a-half since the ‘1984′ brouhaha when electronic copies of Orwell’s tome were removed from Amazon’s Kindle readers without their owner’s permission. Now, it looks like Amazon is ready to properly apologize for their transgression with the following e-mail:
Hello,
On July 23, 2009, Jeff Bezos, our Founder and CEO, made the following apology to our customers:
“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com”
As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made. You will not be charged for the book. If you do not wish to have us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $30.
Please email Kindle customer support at kindle-response@amazon.com to indicate your preference. If you prefer to receive a check, please also provide your mailing address.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The Kindle Team
Time will only tell if the apology (and the 30 bucks) will placate the enraged Kindle users.
Pat Hill, a 72-year-old real estate agent and grandmother from Alexandria, Virginia, has held season tickets to the Washington Redskins’ games since the 1960s. With the recent downturn in the real estate market she was forced to cancel her $5,300-a-year contract for two end zone seats.
Although she tried negotiating with the ticket office to waive the contract for a year or two, they were not willing to budge, and sued Hill for $66,364, the amount of the tickets each year until 2017, plus legal fees and court costs. Hill did not contest the suit, and a judgment was filed against her.
More information, including a list of NFL teams that make a practice NOT to sue their fans, is available in this Washington Post article.
What do you think - should the team have cut Hill a little slack? Let them know:
Last week a programmer discovered a major flaw in Sears’ gift card processing Web site that allowed anyone to verify an unlimited number of gift card account numbers by writing a workaround to Sears.com’s gift card balance checker.
It only took the programmer, Alex Firmani, a few hours to write a script that could extract all valid Sears and K-Mart gift cards account numbers from their database - the same database that stores Visa, MasterCard and other credit card information for purchases made on the site. It is important to note that while Firmani wrote the script to perform this task, he did not actually run it long enough to obtain a substantial amount of valid numbers - only enough to prove that a security risk existed on Sears’ site.
When Firmani alerted Sears to the security issues, the customer service representative brushed him off, and did not see the urgency in the situation. It took several e-mails to Sears management at the VP level before Sears fixed the security hole.
All of the documentation for the security flaw was made available as a PDF, and documented on Firmani’s blog.
Sears does not have the best history when it comes to online privacy and security practices. In 2008, a flaw in their “Manage My Home” Web site allowed access to any customer’s purchase history, both on-line and off-line. And, just a few weeks ago, an exploit on Sears’ Web site allowed users to change the content on the site, to sell - among other things - a baby roaster.
Purchasing anything from Sears.com? Tread carefully, and doublecheck your credit card statements!
When Steve Valdez walked into the Bank of America branch in Tampa Florida to cash a check from his wife this week, he was astounded when bank staffers refused to let him cash the check without a thumbprint. Valdez, you see, was born without arms, and relies on prosthetic limbs - he has no way to provide a thumbprint.
When the teller realized his situation, she talked with her manager, but the manager refused to make an exception for Valdez’s disability, even though the check was written from his wife’s account at that very Bank of America branch.
The bank offered Valdez two choices - either bring in his wife or open an account at the bank. Valdez told the bank manager that those choices were not in keeping with the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) because the ADA states that businesses must comply with nondiscrimination requirements that prohibit exclusion, segregation, and unequal treatment.
What do you think, should Bank of America found a way to let Valdez cash his check? Let them know:
Call Bank of America at 800-432-1000, and say “Talk to an associate” when prompted.
When Jennifer Frederich took her 6-month-old daughter, Kaylin, with her to Burger King earlier this week, she never imagined that the tot’s bare feet would have her kicked out of the restaurant.
Frederich was visiting the Burger King in Sunset Hills, MO, outside of St. Louis. She was standing in line to order her food with her baby, her mother, and her grandmother when the restaurant’s manager looked over and told the group that they would have to take their order “to go”, because the baby’s shoeless feet violated the restaurant’s policy.
Trying to explain to the manager that the baby didn’t even have a pair of shoes yet because she didn’t walk did no good, the manager insisted that shoes needed to be worn, and threatened to call the police. Frederich and her companions quickly finished their meal and left the restaurant. [See video below]
In a comment to the St. Louis FOX TV affiliate, Frederich said, “People have to know about this… if you’re going to go to Burger King get some shoes on your baby or go somewhere else. I think they just need to understand, it’s a baby. They’re not going to be walking around in their dirty, nasty, feet. I feel like the policy was probably for grown adults who might walk in without shoes on. That’s understandable. But, babies don’t wear shoes.”
Think Burger King was off the mark on this? Let them know:
Sunset Hills Burger King phone: (314) 965-2902 Burger King Corporate Customer Service phone: (305) 378-3535 or (305) 378-7200
