Reader Ray R. writes:

The company’s infamous “customer relations” policy must be among the worst going. My christmas orders for nephew and niece went completely astray and I wasn’t informed at all. When I phone head office in Seattle on Jan. 3 I get put through to Kham in India. She was polite enough, but the best she was going to offer was a $15 voucher, even though the $24 recharchable battery, the only part of the order being filled, was going to be delivered anyway, even though it was useless without the toy boat it was supposed to run, which was not being delivered. So, they’re refunding me about $100 for two presents not delivered and giving me a $15 voucher, but not refunding the useless battery — not to mention the cost of the phone call, the hassle of tracking them down, the fact that I look like a deadbeat uncle for not delivering presents thanks to Amazon.

Jeff Wilke is the low-profile Amazon svp whose policy it is to screw customers in this way. Presumably — and you can imagine the meeting — the calculation is that it would cost the company more to address these problems than to ignore them. Can’t you get something going to make life hard for Jeffy, who surely is more interested in checking his stock options than worrying about customer satisfaction.

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