So yes, I'm sure that Amazon did this or rather, outsourcing, practiced by
every huge corporation does the same thing. I had a similar experience about
two years ago when I tried to call United Health Care. But I have my own story
about Big Tech and telephones and it is a never ending nuisance. Please be
patient.
When I moved, I had the option of keeping my phone number. But if I had, I
would have had to get my phone service through Cable Vision. I didn't want to
do that because when the cable goes out, due to a storm, the fix to prevent one
from losing phone service, lasts for only six hours. I wanted to continue to
get my phone service through Verizon so I could use the copper wiring that
existed in the house I was moving to. At that time, I had cordless phones, but
also one traditional phone so that even if the electricity went out, I could
continue to get phone service. After I moved here and had my new phone number,
I discovered that it used to belong to a business called Power Design. Not only
was I receiving numerous calls meant for Power Design, I was also receiving
automated calls from Google, wanting Powerdesign to, press 1 if you want to
continue to have your business listed. One day I called a friend and instead of
my name coming up on her caller id, the name, power design, appeared. First I
called Verizon to be sure that the phone was listed in my name. I had been
hanging up on the Google calls, but instead, I listened to each call and
pressed the proper number in order to be dropped from their list. And I had
Yaneek look on her I phone to find all the places where my number was listed
for power design. There were all sorts of listingsanf from , some of which one
could remove one's listing, so she did that. There was an address in a building
in a nearby shopping area. My daughter went to the building, but there was no
office for power design there. Yaneek found a power design listed in Florida,
and I sent an email about the phone number, but that was a dead end. It was
probably a different company with the same name. By the end of the first year
that I'd been here, January 2019, the calls had diminished. Then they started
again. Yaneek found one more listing from which to delete the phone number. I
was getting more Google calls and asking to be removed from the list. I was
stilltelling potential customers who called that this is a private number, not
a business. It had begun to die down when I heard or read that Amazon has moved
Alexa to a new level. She is no longer just a personal assistant for people who
own the Echo, but the service is now moving into the business world. Just after
I read that, I received, or rather power design received, a call from Alexa,
saying that it was listed with Amazon and asking me to press 1 to verify the
listing and 5, to delete it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2019 10:13 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Did Amazon do this?
I'm in a complaining mood, so I hope you guys will indulge me. Remember that
recently we were talking about how Amazon seems to be taking over everything?
Well, I happened to mention that one thing they took over was my pharmacy. I
use Pillpack in Manchester, New Hampshire because they ship my drugs directly
to my door and some time back Amazon bought them out. I said that I had not
noticed any changes that Amazon had made. Well, I think I have now noticed some
changes just this morning. I just called them with a question about the
expiration dates on one of my medications. When I have called them before I was
connected directly to a pharmacist. In fact, they even advertised that when you
had a question you would be talking to a pharmacist. This time I was on hold
for a long time and when my call was finally answered I found myself talking to
a woman with an accent heavy enough that I had to concentrate to understand
her. I couldn't tell what kind of accent it was, so she could have been almost
anywhere in the world. I think she had a difficult time understanding me too
because she had to ask me to repeat myself several times. But I was able to ask
her my question and then she had to put me on hold while she spoke to a
pharmacist. After another long wait she got back to me and told me what the
pharmacist said. She offered to connect me to a pharmacist, but I declined
because the important part of my question was answered, but, in retrospect, I
think I should have asked to be connected to that pharmacist because I am still
wondering why there are two expiration dates on my medication. In fact, I just
might call back tomorrow and ask immediately to talk to someone who knows what
they are talking about. Now, if I called the pharmacy before and actually got
the pharmacy and now I call the pharmacy and get someone in who knows what
country who doesn't have a clue about drugs then I can only guess that this
must be something that Amazon came up with. What was the point of this relay
calling? If she didn't know the answer to my question she should have connected
me with someone who did on the spot instead of relaying my question and then
relaying the answer back to me because there was definitely something lost in
the relay.
--
---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
??? Carl Sagan
