Yesterday, Amazon remotely erased author George Orwell’s “1984″ and “Animal Farm” from all Kindle devices without prior authorizations from the book owners.
Apparently, the company who sold the digital copies of the books didn’t have the rights to them. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers”. Amazon also effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.”
Now before you start shouting, “Amazon, Why Don’t You Come In Our Houses And Burn Our Books Too?“, let’s take a minute and consider all of their options. Keep in mind that the books only cost 99 cents. I think it’s safe to say that whoever bought the book didn’t really care for the $1 refund.
#1) Take the book off the online store, erase the books remotely, and refund the money.
#2) Take the book off the online store, and do nothing else.
#3) Take the book off the online store, and offer the users the choice of keeping or returning/exchanging their copies.
#4) Take the book off the online store, erase the books remotely, and offer the users $10 store credit.
We have to assume that the smart people at Amazon have considered all of the above and a lot more other options during their meetings. But as you can see, these options, with the exception of #1, put the company at the risk of either getting sued or lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, or maybe both. Imagine yourself as one of the executives having only several hours to come up with a decision, which one would you pick? More importantly, let’s not forget the fact that with one misstep, you might just lose your job.
Sure, option #1 may upset the customers a little, but that’s something can and probably will be fixed later. It was by far the safest and the smartest way to go.
Moral of the story? “Putting the customers first” is (much) easier said than done — especially when money/lawsuit/job security is on the line. Most businesses don’t do it, and they won’t be punished for it. You are both rare and remarkable if you manage to pull it off everyday.
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