And this is not
After Sunday’s incredible response from Apple concerning my lost iTunes media, I sent Amazon a message this morning. My purchases from them are much more modest — probably 250 tracks in all and maybe $50-100, tops — but the files were still missing. Worth a shot, I figured.
I was curious to compare how they might handle my request for help, so I sent them a message nearly identical to the one I sent to Apple:
I recently had a catastrophic hard disk failure. I’ve lost about 80% of my iTunes Library. I can re-rip my own CDs, but I have many songs that I have bought off Amazon that I have lost.Yes, I did have a backup through Backblaze.com, but they had an error on their side and I’m only able to get back a small portion of my data (only artists A-C, basically). Can you please help me with the remaining files? Please?Jeff
About 6 hours later, I received their reply:
Basically, it’s their standard “tough nuts” boilerplate. It even includes the phrase, “…we encourage you to make backup copies…,” meaning that the CS rep either didn’t read my original note, has no way to edit their responses or simply ignored it and moved on. The cynic in me tends to believe the latter, but I really had hoped for more from Amazon, especially given the excellent experiences I’d had with them in the past.
In the end, it is not a surprising result. To help me out would have required an exception to their policy, and it’s unrealistic to expect that. But of course, that’s also what made Apple’s handling of the issue so notable.
I still am a fan of Amazon. And I will certainly continue to shop there for many things. But I have to admit, when it comes to media, I will take pause. If anything, this little experience has reminded me yet again that service matters. And unless the content is simply unavailable, iTunes will almost certainly get all of my business from here on out.
