Amazon, you suck
That’s right, today’s suck of the day is that behemoth of internet sales, Amazon.com. I decided a while ago that I needed to recover some money by selling my textbooks online, so I listed them on Half.com and Amazon.com. One of my textbooks finally sold last week, the day before I was to go out of town. I got the notification of the sale at about 8 p.m. and my flight was at 8 a.m. I don’t have a scale sitting around the house, so I usually take my packages to the Post Office rather than just printing shipping labels online. Obviously, the Post Office is not open at 8 p.m., so my only option seemed to be the automated machine they have. Unfortunately, that machine doesn’t allow you to specify media mail as your shipping method, which is the only method Amazon seems to approve of. That meant that I paid about $8.70 for shipping, despite only receiving a measley $3.99 from Amazon. That means that not only did Amazon take a percentage of my sales, but I actually lost money on the sale. So I e-mailed Amazon, thinking that they have been fairly cooperative in the past and might throw a couple extra bucks my way so that I at least break even. No such luck. They simply told me to review their shipping policy (as if I hadn’t already done so). I e-mailed them back, arguing that $3.99 was clearly not sufficient for any normal means of shipping and that if I was going to continue losing money on every sale as a result of their policies, I would certainly not continue making money for them. The reply they sent included instructions on how to close out my account. Not only are they screwing me over with their shipping policies, they don’t even care a little bit.
Amazon.com, you are the suck of the day.