Big Tech

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The Unfortunate Tale of Amazfit's Poor Customer Service

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In today's highly competitive market, exceptional customer service can make or break a company's reputation. Unfortunately, not all companies prioritize providing satisfactory support to their customers. One such company that has failed to live up to customer expectations is Amazfit. As a loyal customer who has purchased multiple products from them, I have recently experienced their abysmal customer service firsthand. In this blog post, I will share my disappointing encounter with Amazfit and shed light on the various issues I encountered along the way.

Chronology of Events:

In July 2020, I eagerly purchased two pairs of ZenBuds through the AmazFit USA Indiegogo campaign. One pair was intended for myself, while the other was meant for my son, who was experiencing significant difficulty sleeping. Due to personal reasons, my son ultimately decided not to use the ZenBuds. As a result, one pair remained unopened and stored on a shelf, until March 2023 when I stumbled upon it while tidying my office.

Having been pleased with my own pair of ZenBuds, which I had been using without any issues, I decided to sell the unopened pair on eBay. To my surprise, the item sold quickly, and the buyer, Charlotte, later contacted me requesting a refund due to connectivity issues with the left Bud. Despite my eBay terms stating no refunds, I agreed to help her by contacting Amazfit's customer support on her behalf.

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Social Media Day 2022

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When I saw a tweet about this day on Thursday 30 June, 2022, my reaction initially was, oh no not another social media marketing ploy.

I then reflected a little and I remember how excited I was when Facebook came about and how even more excited I was when Twitter emerged. I hadn't even considered LinkedIn properly and over time I did like LinkedIn the best, because of it B2B flavour. I threw myself into all social media feet first, my head followed later.

I got clued up on all of it, sought out training in the USA, I remember how backward the UK was. At the time I was working freelance for a training company who provided online management best practice training, all text based. I told the MD that social media was important and it was going to get big. He dismissed it and said and I quote, ‘I am not interested in knowing what people have had for their lunch’.

Many years later he hired me to run a LinkedIn training session for him and his staff.

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Big Data Sucks

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In case you didn't already know, I've been on this 12+ month journey to reduce my spam/junk email and believe it or not some days I have ZERO spam/junk emails. Yeah I know, unbelievable right? It's been hard work and I’ve learnt a massive amount. When you focus on something with great attention more and more information gathers from the ether and finds it way to you.

Incredibly this week I received a ‘notice of data processing’ email from a company I had never heard of, but it has given me an insight into the rabbit hole of big data and the companies that are gathering huge amount of company information with the singular goal of selling it on to interested spammers. They all claim that they gather this information on the basis of 'legitimate interest', the biggest loophole that has been invented by countries' information commissioners. There's never any 'legitimate interest' in my view to send unsolicited emails these days.

I predict one day this loophole will be closed off, but it will need a lot of lobbying by citizens towards government institutions to do so.

Let's examine my rabbit hole. I have highlighted the company names that I have investigated and communicated with and what I discovered in the process.

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How Facebook (ab)uses your mobile number!

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I am receiving quite a few notifications on the Facebook mobile app (although I don’t look that often), asking me to do something with my mobile number, well I didn't think I had it on there, in fact I don’t have it on my profile, but in researching further I discovered it’s there in the background, stupid me. More about that in a bit, but first a few things to share for context.

I am not a big fan of Facebook and I am very suspicious of Mark Zuckerberg. He is exactly the same as any dictator who has ever lived and lied his way into becoming a billionaire, just think about it.

Facebook had 2.912 billion monthly active users as of January 2022, placing it 1st in ranking of the world’s most ‘active’ social media platforms. Nearly 3 billion people on the globe have happily shared their email and very likely their mobile number with Facebook. This data that we have so willingly shared is a forever unlimiting goldmine for Facebook, it’s shareholders and it’s advertisers. Facebook’s monthly active users equate to 36.8% of all the people on Earth today. I call that a pretty big dictatorship!

They (Facebook) have been accused of so many data crimes, but have never been prosecuted and nobody has gone to jail, okay they’ve had a few minor fines, which basically was pocket change for them. You can read the whole timeline of their crimes here: A timeline of trouble: Facebook's privacy record and regulatory fines, by Guild ~ 4 August, 2021

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China! Maybe they have sorted Social Media addiction?

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I have no idea where China is with Social Media/Big Tech, but I gained a bit of an insight by listening to an episode titled “A fresh take on Tech in China” on the podcast ‘Your Undivided Attention’, which features Tristan Harris, who Co-founded Humane Tech and starred in The Social Dilemma. Do check out these two websites.

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast
https://www.thesocialdilemma.com

I first came across Tristan via an awesome Ted Talk, “How a handful of Tech companies control billions of minds every day”.

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Spam Report 6: Case Study Profiling Mailrush.io

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I received the following email from Keith Rainville.

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Spam Report 5: Case Study profiling Tongue Tied (Manchester) Ltd

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The incidents of receiving unsolicited emails are increasing exponentially. I don’t know about you, but I definitely didn't have this many spam emails during the Covid-19 Lockdowns and I can confirm that it started to increase ever since we got back to a "new normal". I suspect that my email address has been collected from a business database and boom, many companies who are desperate for work are starting their spamming practice towards me! and some of you too?

In my world it is totally unacceptable that Richard emails me without having had any dealings with me previously, it is a clear example of what I call spray and pray. Spray your begging letter far and wide and Pray that someone will pick up on it. We’ve all been guilty of doing it, I can confirm I am definitely guilty of it, but I stopped it and will never send a marketing email to people I have had no dealings with ever again. The question has to be, why would you?