Blathr Wayne Lorentz

In spite of what Amazon.com suggests, Iʼm not sure that these optical disc sleeves are compatible with my iPhone.

Hereʼs something you donʼt see every day. Among the big technology overlords, Amazon isnʼt perfect, but EC2 outages aside, its flaws are rarely technical. This is one of those blue moon cases of a styling error on amazon.com.

This must be my lucky day. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket, or something.

Another day, another technology that fails to live up to its billing. This is a familiar one: Amazon.com, and its Amazon Music service.

Today I tried to play the album Koop Islands by the band Koop. Except that I canʼt.

Whenever I press the play button on one of the album's songs, Amazon Music plays something other than the song I requested.

I clicked on Koopʼs song Come to Me and it played the song In the Morning by Natural Self.

I clicked on Koopʼs song Koop Island Blues and Amazon Music played the song Ode to Billie Joe by Nicola Conte.

If Amazon canʼt handle something as simple as playing music, maybe I shouldnʼt let it store my credit card information.

Streaming media is one of the many areas of technology that has failed to live up to its hype.

Streaming services use vague marketing words promising “unlimited” this and “endless” that. But the seldom-acknowledged fact is that if you rely on streaming music services, the music you love could just disappear tomorrow with no notice, or recourse. Thanks for the money, donʼt let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Just like how newspapers publish lists of whatʼs going to disappear from Netflix at the end of the month, streaming music also gains and loses music and artists regularly.

The screenshot above is Amazon Music telling me that it no longer has any songs by Comsat Angels. It knows Comsat Angels. It used to have Comsat Angels music. But not today. If you love Comsat Angels and give money to Amazon Music, youʼre out of luck.

Streaming music is the same thing as renting music. You donʼt own it. It can be taken away from you at any time.

Itʼs similar to when Microsoft abandoned its e-book store and millions of people lost the millions of books they thought they owned. A digital librarian sneaked into their homes in the middle of the night, emptied their shelves, and left behind a note reading, “Didnʼt you read page 640 of the EULA? You only rented these books. Sucker.”

This is all fine if all you care about is whatever is trendy over the last 48 hours. But people connect to books, movies, and especially music emotionally. Thatʼs why people create music. And to have those emotions yanked away from you is going to be hard on people once they realize that the things they once loved have disappeared and they didnʼt know it was going to happen.

As for the Comsat Angels, Iʼll hit the local record stores to find what Iʼm looking for. Then Iʼll own it. For real and forever.

I spend too much time pointing out the shortcomings of modern technology. Thereʼs a reason that Tech and Fail are among my most populated blathr tags.

Today, however, Iʼd like to point out what, on the surface, looks like a tech success story. But at a deeper level is the success of a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer to adapt to changes in society in order to — literally — deliver better than a tech company did.

It started a couple of days ago, when I ordered something medical from Amazon.com. In general, I donʼt buy anything that goes on or in a living being from Amazon. Between counterfeits, people selling used items as new, and a constantly-growing list of other reasons, relying on Amazon just isnʼt safe anymore. When your company canʼt even prevent selling bogus copies of books, you have a problem.

In this case, however, I ordered from Amazon because the medical thing I needed was not available from any of the CVS or Walgreens stores that I can reach, and purchasing from Walmart meant waiting two to three weeks for delivery. Walmart used to be safer than Amazon, but has recently decided to trod the same road to unreliability by embracing unknown, unverified, and dubious independent sellers.

What Amazon delivered was clearly not suitable. Instead of being in branded packaging, the item was in a Zip-Loc bag. Legitimate medical items arenʼt packaged in consumer baggies. Legitimate medical items are also not labeled by hand in ball-point pen. And they also donʼt spill their contents during shipping, unless they are seriously mishandled. The box that the item arrived in was in fine shape, and the medical item sufficiently padded.

Exasperated, I went to the CVS web site to see if perhaps the item was back in stock my local store. The CVS web site would not function. So I tried Walgreens. Except, this time instead of specifying a store that I can get to easily by train, I let the Walgreens web site pick one. And it did a splendid job.

The item I needed was in stock at a Walgreens in an area I would never think to travel to. So I put two in my cart, selected “Same day delivery” and went back to reading my New York Times.

Before I could finish the International section, there was a guy dropping a paper bag on my doorstep.

I checked my e-mail and found that the time from when I placed my order online until Walgreens notified me that my order was ready to be delivered was four minutes. Four minutes. It was picked up minutes after that, and delivered to me straight away.

The total time from when I placed the order to when I received my Walgreens order was 22 minutes. For an item that I couldn't get at a drug store near me, and that Amazon sent a counterfeit of.

Yes, I had to pay $3.99 for the delivery. But the item was a dollar cheaper at Walgreens than at Amazon, and I ordered two of them. So the cost difference was $1.99. More importantly — I got what I paid for.

Walgreens is better than Amazon. Man bites dog. The sky is green. Everything the tech bubble has been preaching about the death of brick-and-mortar is wrong.

I guess this is what happens when I rely on the same company that sells me plastic adhesive googlie eyes 👀 👀 👀 to deliver my prescriptions.

I'm not sure where the Amazon.com chatbot picked up the phrase “Thank you for understanding here.” But, inspired by its gratefulness, I think Iʼll understand “over there” next.

With half a trillion dollars to work with, this still happens to Amazon.com. So, what chance do I have?

Vagueness is not a virtue. I can only imaging that the git commit history for Amazonʼs eero team looks like “Update,” “Update,” “Update,” “Update,” “Update.”

Thanks, Amazon. Ooh! Paper towels!

It seems that my choices are to:

• Add a credit or debit card
• Add a credit or debit card
• Add a personal checking account
• or add a personal checking account

Maybe Iʼll enter my personal financial information later, when Amazon.comʼs system is a little more stable.

Part of the Amazon Music screen says “purchased.” Another part says I canʼt download the music I paid for.

Trying again in 15 minutes didnʼt change anything. Nor did trying again in 30 minutes, or 45. An hour after my purchase I got on the blower with Amazon customer service, and was told to wait 24 hours to download the music I paid for.

Thatʼs OK for me, because I'm patient. I was able to download the music when I tried a couple of days later. But isnʼt the whole point of Amazon Music that people are supposed to have immediate, unlimited access to their music?

Three packages for three different people dumped in a corner is actually not the worst Amazon.com delivery experience Iʼve seen lately.

At least these were inside a building, and not just dumped on a sidewalk outside a skyscraper in the middle of Americaʼs fourth-largest city.

Thereʼs a big backup at the floating bridge toll booth, so there are no Amazon.com employees available to take my order right now.

If Amazon.com canʼt keep its web site running, what chance do I have?

The tech world in 2021:

• Meta wants to be the new Google
• Google wants to be the new Microsoft
• Microsoft wants to be the new Oracle
• Oracle wants to be the new IBM

Meanwhile,

• Apple wants to be the new Sony
• Amazon.com wants to be the new Sears

Nothing is new.

I bought a new pair of sewing scissors from Amazon. It came in a package that required scissors to open.

Dear Amazon Fresh,

Why do you always show me what you donʼt have, rather than what you do have?

Iʼm not impressed by your selection if I canʼt buy anything. Youʼre just demonstrating the weakness of your supply chain.

I just saw an ad on TV for working at Amazon.com.

A woman said something like, “I joined Amazon to improve kids education.” What thought process was that?

“I want to help children… I know, Iʼll work at a company that sells fake Chinese diapers!”

“Search is hard,” the tech bubble constantly says.

Itʼs not this hard.

If Amazon.com canʼt keep Whole Foods running, what chance do I have?

Amazon lost another one of my packages. Really lost it. Itʼs so lost that Amazon doesnʼt even know which warehouse was supposed to send it to me.

If Amazon was a person, it would apparently be very embarrassed because it proactively refunded my $16, plus ten bucks for being stupid.

Fortunately, it wasnʼt anything important; just some electronic circuits so I could occupy my brain. Iʼll watch Antiques Road Trip on TV until I can order more.

I searched Amazon.com for “easel.”

One of these things is not like the others.

In April of 1982, I waited an agonizing three weeks for the UPS guy to deliver a 1541 drive that could hold 170K of data.

Tonight, Amazon brought me a drive that holds 25,000 times more data… in 90 minutes… at midnight.

So maybe not everything is more terrible today than it used to be.