Month: January 2019

Actually I ended 2018 reading the following short Kindle book by my old Alleyn’s school buddy, David Wellbrook.

I would like to recommend David’s book, My Good Friend, highly to anyone who cares to pay attention to my opinion.

I say, “I would like to”, rather than “I have recommended”, because Amazon, in their (absence of) wisdom, chose to reject the following review, which I submitted this morning:

An Exceptionally Good “Merry Pranks” Chapbook

This is a chapbook in the Renaissance sense of the word – i.e. a short, inexpensive booklet or short book. As it happens, it is also a “chap book” in the more modern sense, as it is a comedic set of anecdotes about the scrapes two young chaps – inseparable friends, who manage to get each other into (and sometimes out of) trouble.

Imagine a version of “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” with two central practical joker characters and you are starting to get the picture.

The adventures of this pair of twenty-somethings, David Wellbrook and his “Good Friend”, in the 1980s, mostly occurred either when they went on holiday together or when they were chasing opportunities to make a quick buck and/or score with young women.

The identity of My Good Friend appears to be a closely guarded secret. Some sources suggest that he is now a knight of the realm. Other sources suggest that he is an ordained minister of the Church. It is also rumoured that he was transported to the antipodes before the end of the 1980s, where he remains at large. On my reading of this laugh-out-loud short book, it is quite possible that “My Good Friend” today is all of those things and more besides.

More than just funny, the book is ultimately warm and charming. Read it and you’ll no doubt wish that you had spent your school days growing up with these clowns. I know I did.

Within about one minute of my submission, I received the following e-mail rejection:

Thank you for submitting a customer review on Amazon. After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. While we appreciate your time and comments, reviews must adhere to the following guidelines:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review-guidelines

I felt quite put out by that rejection, for several reasons:

• It was nigh-on impossible for someone to have really read, by which I mean read, thought about and cognitively digested, the content of my review in the short interval between my posting and the rejection notice;
• I have submitted several Amazon reviews in the past and never been rejected before;
• I carefully read the review guidelines and could not work out which element of the guidelines I was deemed to have breached;
• I did feel that the one review that Amazon has published so far for this book, by Derin, was, in my opinion, while amusing and a nice bit of fun amongst old friends, in breach of several of the guidelines…unlike mine. Here is a scrape of Derin’s review which might well bite the Amazonian dust if by chance Amazon wonks start crawling all over this incident:

So, I decided to appeal to Amazon customer service in order to have the injustice reversed. I wrote as follows:

I am horrified that you have rejected my thoughtful and well-crafted review for this book – see below. The review was rejected within seconds, so I do not believe that someone gave it due consideration at all, whereas, I’m sure you can tell, the review is well-written and honest.

Frankly, if you do not reconsider and choose instead to publish the review I shall never review anything on Amazon again.

Here is the reference number that came with the rude e-mail from you – thereafter the content I sent: Reference A1F83G8C2ARO7P-RKQCVM2C9B62D.

A couple of hours later I received the following Kurt reply:

Hello Mr Ian L Harris,

This is Kurt from Amazon Customer Care.

I apologise if your feel that your review of “My Good Friend” by David Wellbrook has been rejected.

Thank you for taking the time to provide not only a well thought out but also a heartfelt review of one of our Kindle Titles.

We do not wish to make you feel rejected and sincerely how that you continue to provide both Amazon and Amazon Customers with more of your book reviews.

It always helps customers like yourself to find the right title for themselves and helps Amazon find the right title types to provide to loyal customers like you.

We hope you continue your Kindle reading and heartfelt review.

If you require any other assistance, we can be reached 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can contact us by following the link below:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/contact-us

Thank you for taking time to contact Amazon.

Your feedback is helping us build Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.

Warmest regards,
Kurt C
Amazon.co.uk

So that’s it then. My appeal has been denied. The use of English in the denial note is so awful, it cannot even be an entirely algorithmic decision (I figure the original rejection decision might well have been).

So please allow me, in my own space, to unpick that travesty of an e-mail reply from customer services.

…I apologise if your feel that your review of “My Good Friend” by David Wellbrook has been rejected…

I don’t FEEL that it has been rejected; it HAS been rejected.

…We do not wish to make you feel rejected and sincerely how that you continue to provide both Amazon and Amazon Customers with more of your book reviews…

I think you mean “hope” not “how”, but there is no point hoping, Kurt. When I said, “if you do not reconsider and choose instead to publish the review I shall never review anything on Amazon again“, I meant it.

…It always helps customers like yourself to find the right title for themselves and helps Amazon find the right title types to provide to loyal customers like you...

I see. So you want me to write reviews, which you will publish or reject at your algorithmic whim, so that you can sell me and other people more stuff. Well, I think I told you before that you have blown that deal with me and it should come as no surprise that the deal is still blown. Now with brass knobs on

… Your feedback is helping us build Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company…

I am hoping against hope that Amazon’s corporate behaviour today is not the Earth’s most customer centric stuff.

…Warmest regards,
Kurt C …

Well, I guess it was a pun to describe the denial note as Kurt, as I suppose there is an attempt at courtesy, but to milk a similar pun, it is an “empty Kurt C” as far as I am concerned.

So, my dear friends, there it is, my first rejection of 2019 and it wasn’t even past noon on the 1st of January.

I tried to help David Wellbrook in his quest to storm the world of electronic publishing, but I failed to get past the first hurdle.

In similar circumstances, David’s “Good Friend”, The Right Reverend Sir Nigel Godfrey, would, by now, no doubt, not only have had his review published but also been given a year’s free subscription to Amazon Ultra Platinum Prime for his trouble…

…oh darn, I think I’ve just blown the Good Friend’s cover.

Anyway, it is possible that more potential but undecided readers will land here than on that crummy Amazon Review area. So if you are one of those potential readers…

…here’s another link through which you can procure David’s book: