According to a June 4 blog post on Medium, Brandon Jackson found himself locked out of his Amazon Echo Show on May 25. When he contacted customer service, he was given the number of an Amazon executive - which he thought was a scam.
"When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked," he wrote. "When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my ‘Ring doorbell.'"
Jackson, who is black, said that the accusation was improbable, as many of the delivery drivers in his area are the same race - thus, the racial slur was "highly unlikely."
Jackson tracked down the time that the driver would have dropped off his package (May 24 at 6:05 p.m.), and compared it to footage from his home at the time of the incident - revealing that nobody was home at the time of the delivery. Instead, Jackson thinks that his Eufy automated doorbell said to the driver "Excuse me, can I help you?"
"The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message," wrote Jackson, adding that even after he shared the evidence with Amazon, his account remained locked.
"Despite numerous calls and emails, it wasn’t until Friday afternoon [on May 26] that I received confirmation that the investigation had started," he wrote, adding that it wasn't until May 31 that access was finally restored.
In a statement to NTD News, Amazon said: "we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again."
While he was locked out of the Amazon account he typically used for his smart home devices, Jackson said he had already thought ahead about alternate ways to control his devices.
“I already had everything set up so if something did fail I have fallbacks so I wasn’t truly in the dark,” Jackson explained in a subsequent video post about the experience. “But I wrote [my blog post] from the perspective of someone who—what if they didn’t do all that.”
Jackson, who is an engineer at Microsoft and is relatively tech savvy, shared his concerns for owners of smart home devices who don’t have the same knowledge base and find themselves locked out in a similar incident.
He said the incident led him to lose trust in Amazon due to how it kept him locked out through the duration of the ordeal.
“I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation,” he wrote.
Jackson also argued that Amazon or other companies shouldn’t be able to block people from using the products they purchased because they expressed the wrong opinions.
“If you bought a toaster right, it doesn’t matter what you did, how bad of a person you were how good of a person you are, you still own the toaster at the end of the day right?” Jackson said. “And if you really did do something that was so horrible and bad that shouldn’t be Amazon or Google or Apple’s call to do anything about that. You know, we already have a system set up for that and that’s...
Read More HERE
8 comments:
Amazon hires some really good drivers, and then again, some really crappy ones.
They suspended my account about a month ago for about 2 weeks because their non-uniformed driver came to my house at 10:30 pm (well after dark) in an unmarked vehicle to deliver a package, and didn't approach my front porch but wandered around among my vehicles and stuck the package in one of them. He never came to my door. His behavior was that of someone trying to steal catalytic converters.
I live in a very rural, sparsely populated area. I had been asleep for over an hour when my dogs alerted me to a strange vehicle coming up my long driveway.
Because I went out on my porch, armed with a shotgun, when I was trying to learn what was going on, their driver lodged a complaint.
It took a long time to resolve, and they insisted that I put a drop box out by the road so they didn't have to deliver to the house anymore.
I explained what happened to my regular Amazon delivery guy (who wears an Amazon jacket and drives an easily recognizable marked van), and he said he'd have done the same thing as I did. He also said they don't deliver after 8pm normally.
And people want smart homes? I know lets hook up your heating and cooling to this so that it can be remotely turned off in the middle of a Minnesota winter because someone thinks they heard you think something offensive.
Nameless, faceless automatons ruining your life. Violating 6th Amenment right.
Neo-marxist overlord telling us that this can't happen.
Another conspiracy theory comes true
i have a great idea! let's give the millenials who are going to be running everything pretty soon total control of our money!
Dumb people buy "smart" homes.
My Alexa Show has been unplugged for a couple of weeks, because it couldn't shut up about Pride MONTH on Memorial Day.
Considering the government's abuse of surveillance laws to obtain information on regular people, as well as it's abuse of people engaging in valid, legal protesting and participation in government (people protesting school board decisions, etc.), I think it's time to disconnect all of the "Smart" devices, especially those run by (literally) fascist companies like Google, Amazon, etc., that typify the abusive and coercive big-tech that are beholden to the DNC and WEF.
What anon said. Are people that lazy, must be. Why be like that?
Everyone driving electric cars is not about the environmentand using digital currency is not about convenience. They are the means by which the government will control you and punish you for "Wrong think".......
Post a Comment