Vendor-Tech is a chimera.

Its head is an information resource, focused on improving your operations and technology.

Its body, and perhaps its soul, is a peer networking group focused on operations.

We’ll work out the tail later…

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gregg's blog

Amazon to Customer: "Bugger Off"

So it started when Amazon blocked my Seller Account. They have restored it, but I won’t be a satisfied customer until someone from Amazon corporate responds to the letter I sent to Jeff Bezos.

Then Amazon blocked my daughter’s Seller Account. We think its because she is on my Amazon Prime membership as my daughter, but they haven’t really told her the reason.

So she wrote back to Amazon customer service to ask exactly why her account was blocked:

I don't understand why you won't reactivate my account. The other account that was closed belongs to my father, Gregg Marshall. I am a different person, Amanda Marshall, and therefore have my own account. Is there some policy that doesn't allow for more then one member of a household to have a seller's account? I am getting very frustrated that is matter is so difficult to resolve. I would think that the different names on the credit cards and bank accounts linked to my Amazon account would be enough to verify the fact that this is not a duplicate account but the account of a separate person. Thank You.

So how does Amazon respond? They tell her to stop asking because they aren’t going to tell her why:

Hello from Amazon.com.

Thank you for writing. After a review of your account by an account specialist, we have decided your account will remain blocked.

Read more »

Can Amazon Make it Any Worse?

First, I have yet to receive any response to my letter to Jeff Bezos, either from him or any other Amazon representative.

Terrible customer service.

In the mean time the drones at Amazon have finally reviewed my first email and re-instated my account. Of course, as I mentioned in my last post, I was coming to the conclusion that after deducting the Amazon fees, shipping costs and the costs of the packaging I was using, my net proceeds were effectively zero. And that does not include anything for all the time spent listing, packing, printing shipping labels, and confirming the shipments.

Guilty by Association?

About a week ago my daughter, who has also been a big Amazon customer, got a suspended notice on her sellers account when she tried to log in.

No notice, either by email or on her Amazon account notices page.

So she sends an email to ask what’s going on:

There was no email sent to me by Amazon.com to inform me of why my account was suspended. Yet when I login in to my account it alerts me "Amazon.com has suspended your account" and directs me to the notice page. The only notice that is in my seller account is from 2 years ago about entering credit card information. Why has my account been suspended and why was I not notified?

Amazon’s drones (I call them drones since the emails I have gotten, and my daughter has gotten, indicate they are not being composed by someone who is paying attention to the message using pre-scripted email text, if they are generated by a human at all) replied: Read more »

Farewell Amazon?

I have to admit I have a reading problem. If there were a 12 step program for book buyers, I’d have to join. The problem with all those books is they take space. At some point you can build any more bookshelves. Older books are moved to storage, but eventually the collection gets out of hand.

My wife dropped some “subtle” hints the book collection was getting out of hand. The last time that happened I ended up recycling 800 pounds of my college notes.

My solution? Sell the books, and some CD’s I haven’t listened to in several years on Amazon Marketplace. After listing a few books, I decided I needed a faster way, so tech support pointed me to the paid version that let me use my trusty bar code scanner to scan the book’s bar codes to list the books or CD’s. It also let me download shipping information to feed to PayPal’s shipping system.

Things were going along smoothly, eliminating a half dozen books/CD’s every few days, until one Friday afternoon I get the following email:

From:    Amazon.com Seller Performance Team [seller-performance@amazon.com]
Sent:    Friday, May 21, 2010 2:06 PM
To:    me
Subject:    Notice: Your Amazon.com Account

Hello from Amazon.com.

This message is to inform you that we have blocked your selling
account. You may no longer sell on our site.

Read more »

Have You Backed Up Your On-line Life?

I am a huge proponent of backing up. I know from personal experience that hardware fails, usually at the worst possible time and as far away from your last back up as possible.

I use local drives for daily back ups. I use network drives for weekly backup. I have important data burned on DVD’s and “stored in the cloud.”

A recent item in my RSS feed got me thinking (and acting)—What about my on-line life? I’m on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (not supported yet), Plaxo (not supported yet), Delicious, Flickr, Picaso (not supported yet?), Google Docs, who knows how many places I have parts of my life scattered.

So I was intrigued to read that Lifestream Backup had re-branded as Backify, not for the rebranding, but for the reminder I don’t have a back up of my on-line data.

I’m now a trial user of Backify (with the disclosure I hope to talk them into providing a premium subscription “upgrade” to this blogger for blogging about them).

Signing up was quick, although I wonder what the mailing address might be used for.

Connecting Backify to my various on-line accounts was simple and fast, the hardest part being remembering passwords I’ve had stored in my password manager for a long time.

In the next few hours I expect Backify to back up all my on-line data to Amazon’s S3 service.

I wish they supported LinkedIn, Plaxo, Picaso, Twine, etc. which I assume they will add as time goes on. Read more »

Desktop 4 Reincarnated

It’s hard to believe it was only last June (2008) when I had multiple systems failures, two desktops and two notebooks. One notebook never recovered (it was dropped and the extended warranty just refunded the purchase price so I didn’t replace it). I’m typing this on the other notebook, repaired by HP under warranty. The desktops, Desktop 3 and Desktop 4, were part of a 4 computer cluster I have in my office connected via the network and sharing a monitor et al via a KVM switch. I ended up replacing both with a single new HP desktop, which has been Desktop 3 ever since. It is a dual core processor with 3 GB RAM, dual 500 GB hard drives (one operational and the other as a backup using Bounce Back Professional) and Windows XP 32 bit.

A friend wanted to upgrade his system so I’ve been watching for a suitable computer. Over Labor Day, Micro Center had a sale on a Dell 435MT that was 80% of his ultimate computer configuration at 20% of the cost. He deferred, then agreed this week we should go ahead and get it. Fortunately it was still on sale. The old system had a Passmark system score of 356. The base 435MT we got for him had a Passmark score of 1680. I replaced the installed hard drive with a Western Digital VelociRaptor, using the "old" 640 GB drive as a back up drive. The Passmark score is now 1970. We’ll upgrade RAM later. Read more »