Praise for Amazon

Too busy this morning to put up much--perhaps I will have time later. But I did want to just slightly depart from this blog's usual focus to give praise where it is due. Living in Mexico, I depend on Amazon for a lot of things like books, CDs and most recently, eBooks for my newly-purchased Kindle Paperwhite.

By the way, I am a big fan of the Kindle. When you are running around during the day and sometimes have to wait twenty or thirty minutes for someone, having your Kindle along means that you can do something useful while you wait. Right now I am reading a recent collection of essays by Richard Taruskin called The Danger of Music.

But the main thing I want to say is how impressed I am with Amazon's customer service. When I ordered my Kindle I was amazed that it arrived in only two days! Obviously they have a warehouse full of Kindles here in Mexico. But what really impressed me was how they solved a problem the other day. Because of a bit of a confusion with my credit card company, they suddenly froze my account. I was easily able to resolve the issue the next day, but in the meantime, Amazon was in the middle of downloading an eBook when it happened. So I owed them nine dollars that they couldn't collect! As soon as I got the issue cleared up with the credit card company, I sent Amazon an apologetic email and asked them to resubmit the charge. Within ten minutes I got an email back that was a model of courtesy and efficiency!

Now when was the last time you could say that a large company you deal with handled customer service with excellent courtesy and efficiency?

Right!

Now, how about some music? Here is something suitable: Heitor Villa-Lobos 1917 ballet Amazonas: