Why Is Jeff Bezos Embarrassed?

To: Mr. Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon

Great strategy! You have 200+ cities and regions in a lather, hoping you’ll bless them with your second Amazon headquarters, now nicknamed HQ2:

All the free publicity is generating, well, more publicity, along with fierce competition to have the privilege of offering you “the largest possible package of subsidies and tax breaks,” to quote a recent article in Forbes. The article goes on to say that “some simple math suggests cities should pass on this contest. The winner of HQ2 will almost certainly be a financial loser.”

But no matter!

Because I’m writing for a different reason: To suggest that before you spend all that money on HQ2, and before you spend another $13 billion+ buying another company like Whole Foods…

Could you please spend some money on grammar lessons for your team?

I recently made a purchase on Amazon and it arrived with a small problem. I used your online procedure to send an email to Customer Support, describing the problem in two succinct sentences.

Later that same day…

I received a response that was so generic, it was laughable. And full of grammar errors, which was not. Examples:

First, please accept my sincerely apologize for all the inconvenience that this situation caused to you.

… there are some informations that cannot be discussed via e-mail for your account security.

I realize that at this point of time asking you to contact us again would be disappointing, but in a situation like this, it is very important for us that we provide you with accurate resolution and make sure the security of your account and in my experience, this is the best way to be certain that your issue is address more appropriately.

I know, I know, Mr. Bezos – you’re cringing with embarrassment. To quote another part of the email, you’re trying to “build the Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company,” and here’s your representative using such uncustomer-centric grammar. Truly cringe-worthy!

But don’t panic – on your very own website you have, in stock, the recently published English Grammar for Dummies, list price $19.99, your price $13.85, that’s a 31% savings of $6.14!