Avoid AI #Recruiters - @wadeandwendy from @randstad is no Alexa

Randstad is a third-party recruiting firm companies use when they can't or aren't interested in directly recruiting.  Their Twitter header boldly proclaims "human forward." though I'm not sure what that means.

click on any image in this article to enlarge

Randstad themselves have outsourced (fourth-party?) the communications of recruiting to Wade and Wendy, which bills itself as the first AI Recruiter.  In reality, it's not.

First, their emails have MailChimp code showing.  I've tweeted this to them but they continue to send me emails with it, so maybe there's no I, A or otherwise, there.

Second, the emails only have the option for "Yes" - there are FAQs and even an email address, but it doesn't appear that the email box is monitored.  You'd think an Artificial Intelligence company would have something in place to handle incoming messages.  I wrote to them to say that the role wasn't a fit for me, the location was all wrong and even more importantly, the company they were recruiting for wasn't a company I'd ever consider working for.

I never heard back.

Until I got a reminder from Wendy.

So, I looked more closely at the email.  (This is the second company they emailed me about - I would work for Philips - I've stared at their monitors in hospitals on so many occasions that I have a strong appreciation for them.  My first portable CD player back in 1990 - took 10 AA batteries - was also a Philips.)

No real way to select "No" in the email so I clicked yes.  I was prompted to register with my LinkedIn, Google or Microsoft accounts or to create a Username and Password.  So, signed in/registered, and then I met Wendy.

Wendy is a glorified chatbot. Maybe not even glorified.  Maybe not even a chatbot.  More of a progressive form.  Here's my chat:

Red Circle = this was my only choice.

Blue Circle = I had yes/no options.

Green Circle = I had multiple choices, perhaps as many as 9, but it captured the first one and then moved on.  You'd think an AI would want to collect as much data as it could, allowing me to select multiple options, such as Company, Role, Location, I'm Happy Where I Am, and so on.  If I could only pick one, I would have picked Company.

However, I clicked on Role first, so that's what it selected.

Never once did it prompt me for any free-entry typing.

The survey link at the bottom isn't linked - probably to reduce the number of submissions telling them their product is a steaming pile of dog droppings.

Which makes it all the more interesting that Wendy is again writing to me today about the same role at another company.  The Artificial Intelligence Recruiter wasn't paying attention when I told it that it was the wrong kind of role.  

So, with no "No" option in the email, I've clicked Yes.  I'm now asked to sign-in again.  The Artificial Intelligent Recruiter has forgotten who I am.

So, went through the "chat" - the first thing I notice is that the content and prompts are 100% the same. The Artificial Intelligent Recruiter has forgotten it's already had this conversation with me and so it re-introduces itself and tells me the exact same thing it told me last time.  (Which wasn't interesting the first time and wasn't new this time.)

While I wanted to click "Location" or "Other," for the sake of this experiment, I went with "Role" - we'll see if Wendy is capable of learning of it will keep sending me Project Manager roles.  (Unless this post gets me suppressed from their mailing list... yes, please.)

From now on, if I get any more of these, I'm going to click "No" with the reason "Other" - and if it lets me type, I'm going to tell them I'm not interested because of Wendy.

ar·ti·fi·cial
adjective

1. made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural, not existing naturally; contrived or false.
synonyms: synthetic, fake, false, imitation, mock, simulated, faux, ersatz, substitute
2. insincere or affected.
synonyms: feigned, insincere, false, affected, mannered, unnatural, stilted, contrived, pretended, put-on, exaggerated, actorly, overdone, overripe, forced, labored, strained, hollow, spurious
3.conventional as opposed to natural.
(from Google)

Wendy leaves a bad impression and suggests if recruiting is boiled down to a crappy form-based interface, it's only going to recruit people willing to suffer the crappy form-based interface.  (CyberCoder's field-merge approach or LinkedIn's InMail are much better because if you reply, you're immediately talking to a person.)

Penalize the Purchaser @1800flowers

Recently, I bought a gift online.  I knew there'd be a delivery/service charge and they were wise to hide it until the very end because it was a bit outrageous.

To add insult to injury, the more you spent, the bigger the service charge was.

To add insult to injury, the more you spent, the bigger the service charge was.  It wasn't based on weight or items, but on the price you paid.  Spend more, pay more.

This is a penalty when it should have been a reward.  The service charge should have stayed the same, or gone down as I spent more.  Considering the price of the items/upgrades, they could easily absorb a few dollars into the cost to offset the declining service charge.  You can make the same money while simultaneously making the customer feel like they scored.  

Perhaps it's a moot point... they knew I was already invested and didn't want to appear cheap and didn't want to give up the time I'd already put into choosing my gift and building my order, so why should they bother? They got the sale.

But... they lost the next sale.  No matter how much the recipient loves the gift, I'm going to feel like I got a raw deal.

Memo to self: Use Amazon next time. I can't control the delivery as precisely but I can avoid the service charge altogether and it looks like I can get quite a bit more for my money.

@Avis, @Budget and the Viking Billing Service Fraud Scam

So we got a letter the day before yesterday from Viking Billing Service alleging damage to a car we rented from Avis.  The paper had the logos for Viking Billing Service and for Budget (who owns Avis or something).  It did not provide too many details but we had rented a car from Avis earlier this year and it did have a large scratch on it when we picked it up, a detail noted by the agent who checked the car out to us.  This was 6 months and 2 days ago.

We contacted Avis by email and the next day, were contacted by Viking Billing Service.  Apparently Avis had just passed it off to them without even looking into it.

Viking cannot provide us with any details about the rental or the actual damage and asked us to call the Avis branch where we got the car.  My wife called and someone promised to get back to her. When they didn't, she called again today. She was told that records are only kept for six months so no records were available, there was nothing that could be provided.   (Again - the rental was 6 months and 2 days ago.)

So my wife called the place where the car was dropped off.  They offered to email her a confirmation, but it was simply the return receipt. Not a checkoff, not an inspection, just that little slip they give you when the car is turned in.  You know how it is these days - they don't look at the cars while you're there, they just have you park in a a row, give you a little slip and send you on your merry way.

So we were later able to determine that the damage report was filed one day after we returned the car, but we weren't able to determine where the report was filed from but my wife thinks it was filed by the place where we picked it up.  The damage report wasn't entered into the Avis system until November.  So far, no one has been willing to provide us with any documentation.

We talked to a lawyer who says that the rental car companies bundle up these claims and sell them to Viking Billing Service.

So Viking Billing Service has already paid Avis for the right to harass you for money (whether or not it's even true) so they're not going to be willing to help you if there's been an error.  And the person assigned gets paid on commission so their only goal is to get you to pay up.  And it's gotta suck to work there.... a 2.4 on Glassdoor? You gotta try really hard to be that bad.  That's worse than Zulily.

And Avis has already washed their hands of it, getting some money. So why should they care if they're sticking the wrong person with the bill?  (Or maybe they stick multiple people with the bill. Would not surprise me.)

We're fighting it.  We're not paying it.  The car was damaged when we got it and we did not damage it further.  And Avis refuses to provide any documentation relating to either our pick-up of the car or our return or the damage report itself.  (We're still hoping that we've still got the paperwork around here somewhere, but we haven't come up with it yet.)

This is fraud. Plain and simple.  Probably someone at Avis gets a kick-back from Viking.  This is Wells Fargo-style "screw the customer" fraud.

Worst case scenario, we'll call the credit card company we used to rent the car and send it to them, but we'll strongly encourage them not to pay it. The problem is, for the credit card company, it's such a small amount they'd probably just pay it because that's the cheapest solution.

We will also be contacting the Better Business Bureau, our state's insurance commissioner and the Attorney General in our state and the Minnesota Department of Commerce (who has fined them in the past for violations).  It would also be nice to find a lawyer who wants to take it on as a class-action lawsuit.

So I don't know if this is an Avis scam, a Budget scam or a Viking Billing Service scam, but it's a scam.  They intentionally wait hoping you'll have discarded paperwork or lost photos (if you took any yourself) and I wouldn't be surprised if they bill multiple people for the same damage. (Searching on Google, apparently this is a Hertz scam and a National Car Rental scam as well. Must be good business ripping people off.)

All I know is that Avis, Budget and Viking Billing Services are either rotten thieves or just incredibly careless, inept and callous -- and danged if they're going to get our money for damage committed by some other renter.  (Danged if they're ever going to get any of our money ever again - when I have a choice in who I rent with, it will never be them.)

Apparently this has been going on for years, must be profitable for Hertz, Avis, Budget, National Car Rental and Viking Billing Services.  Just check out Google.  Seriously, I think it's time for a class action lawsuit.

How Not to Cold Call

Got this gem this morning...

"I'm trying to reach the person who manages [your company]'s SEM / Paid Search. I have several contacts on file but was hoping you could point me in the right direction so I can spare your colleagues' inboxes from similar emails in the future."

So... if I tell you who to specifically pester, you promise not to pester all my co-workers the way you're currently pestering me? What made me the lucky winner, or do you tell everyone they're getting your special attention?

Privacy Alert: Avoid @Kmart and @Sears online

I am so frustrated right now. There's two people who think my email is their email address. One guy in L.A. has one that's mine + one extra character. I don't know if people type it wrong or if he's sloppy, but I get emails intended for him often, including employment contracts from TV studios and people who want to be on one of the reality shows he produces. Most recently I've been getting emails from Hilton confirming trips he's taking. Hilton was quick to get my email address removed, thankfully.

Now there's another guy(?) in New York who keeps using my email address when he buys stuff. He did it at Nordstroms - it took a quick online chat to get my email address removed from the account. He did it at Wal*Mart - again a quick online chat got my email address removed, unfortunately, canceling his order in the process. He did it at KMart and here's where our story is today. He's not making fraudulent purchases, he's just apparently unaware of what his own email address and not at all puzzled about why he's not receiving confirmations when he places online orders.

First, that got me on the mailing lists for Kmart and Sears and unsubscribing did not work. I finally had to tweet to them and their ESP (Epsilon) before I was able to convince Sears to work directly with me to stop the marketing emails (that's the promise - they say it'll take 7-10 business days before we'll know for sure).

Second, I keep getting confirmations for orders this person is placing. I've tried to remove my email address online, but to no avail. I've tried to delete the account, but to no avail. I even changed the name on the account in the hopes that it would get someone's attention, but that hasn't helped.

So today I tried again to remove my email address from Kmart's system. There's no online chat and you have to call a 1-800 number. There's no option to talk to customer service. I pressed zero a bunch but it just kept repeating the same options. I eventually went with "cancel my order" for a lack of anything better.

So I got this person with a heavy accent who had trouble understanding what I was trying to do. Trying to be helpful, she shared details about the order and the last four digits of the credit card that was used. This was before I had even given her the order number. All I had provided was an email address.

Eventually I had to ask to be transferred to a supervisor. Again, the supervisor wanted to talk about the order and address me as the person in New York and give me additional details about the person in New York - I think she was closing to giving me their address, even though I'd explained that I was not the person in New York, I've never met the person in New York and this email address is mine, not theirs.

She reiterated that an email address cannot be removed from an order. Best she could do was submit a request to IT to do... (something)?

Apparently, the bottom line is that if KMart gets your email address, they own it, not you. You can't get out of their system without extraordinary measures (if at all - we'll seE) and they're not going to make it easy for you.

But, they will give out all kinds of personal details if you call 800-735-6292 and provide an email address.

So, I would recommend avoiding shopping at KMart and Sears - at least online - because I don't have a high confidence in their ability to keep my (or your) data safe. (and if you shop in a store, for goodness sakes, don't give them your email address.)

I don't know what's next... Better Business Bureau? Federal Trade Commission? I hope it doesn't come to that but I will go there if I need to because this has to stop. I can't go around signing up at every retailer in the world in the hopes of preemptively keeping this guy from New York from signing up.

Update 1: My wife's Google skills outshine mine today. She found the person's Facebook page (all I could find was their property tax payments). So I've emailed them and asked them to stop using my email address. Sears sent me an email that links to the dev instance of an internal tracking dashboard. I don't think that was supposed to come to me. At the very bottom it humorously says "This message, including any attachments, is the property of Sears Holdings Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries. It is confidential and may contain proprietary or legally privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it without reading the contents. Thank you." (How are you supposed to know not to read it if you don't read the disclaimer?)

Feed Sift: Skynet Edition (06/05/2015)

I've always said if we're not careful the Terminator stories will have to be considered documentaries and not fiction. Here's some ways we're moving down that path.

-1-

ENGADGET.COM -- Europe's combat UAV takes to the skies over Italy

-2-

ENGADGET.COM -- The Navy sees its future in unmanned fighters

-3-

ENGADGET.COM -- Department of Defense creates new cyberunit in Silicon Valley

-4-

ENGADGET.COM -- AZ town hides license plate readers in dozens of fake cacti

-5-

ENGADGET.COM -- US SKYNET program marks Al Jazeera journalist as Al Qaeda - really? Bad enough there's a company in Japan called Cyberdyne making products called "HAL" but we're going to use the term SKYNET in this kind of way???

Twitch

You know when you encounter something (taste, smell, thought) so unpleasant that you scrunch up your face and bleat out "erk"? You know the face... the kind your mom warns you will stick.  I had that today. And then when I told someone else what had caused my face, they involuntarily did it, too.

I was reading an article from the other Robert X. Cringely today and he mentioned two companies that shouldn't exist:

Yo - an iPhone app that lets you send "Yo" to others who have the app installed. One million dollars in venture capital was thrown at it after it reached 50,000 users who'd sent a combined four million Yos. That's a quarter a Yo. And we thought cell phone companies were overcharging for text messaging. And that's before it was discovered the app was so poorly built that you could find the phone number of any user and sent them unsolicited Yos or other words or even music that apparently would play on their own.

Speaking of quarters, here's a subscribe-and-lose offering for you... Washboard will let you subscribe to a service that will mail you quarters on a monthly basis. Let me repeat that. You can subscribe to have someone mail you a roll of quarters.  $10 worth of quarters for $15 or $20 for $27. Nice looking website. I used to get quarters from the grocery store or any bank or change machines or the manager's office at our apartment complex. Before they switched over to the reloadable keycard. Quarters? Really?

It finally dawned on me. It's not that I can't come up with any good ideas, it's that I don't have the nerve to foist absolutely horrid ideas into the marketplace where supremely ill-advised people will undoubtedly fall for them.

I guess I just have too much respect for my fellow humans.

Nintendont (A Work-Related Post)

The Nintendo Wii was a groundbreaking device when it was released. In some ways, it probably still is. For years, we used it every day for Wii Fii. Now, we mostly use it for Netflix and occasionally YouTube. I use the balance board downstairs for freestep 60-90 minutes a day and if life ever gets less crazy I'll get back to doing some yoga regularly.

While it's commonplace on systems today, it was an early pioneer in online connectivity - you could email between Wiis, it could get system updates online, you could even download games and apps. And when it needed to tell you something, this really cool blue flashy thing would happen with the case around where the optical disc went.

But then the iPhone came out. And Nintendo seemed to completely ignore it. The game had changed. The iPhone (probably unfairly getting more credit here than it deserves) showed mainstream users some pretty cool new tricks:

• Regularly delivered updates
• Lots of apps due to making it easy to create apps and giving them a marketplace to sell them inexpensively (or give them away)
• Quick, casual games
• Limited multitasking
• Better and better graphics
• Eventually an ecosystem of related devices (iPod, iPad, etc.)

But the Wii sat there firmly resistant to the change happening around it. Sony and Microsoft continued to innovate and Nintendo said "Nope, we're not playing that game." and the Wii sat there, looking less and less innovative.

Fine, we thought, maybe the Wii's replacement would address all of those concerns. Maybe there was just enough drawbacks to the Wii (like limited graphics processing) to make continuing to enhance the platform difficult, unpleasant, unenjoyable, whatever. Eventually the blue flashy coolness came to mean bad news or annoyance, used to try to promote new products or tell us about features they were cutting:

Eventually it's reasonable to stop supporting old platforms, whether that's Minitel in France (1978-2012 - still had 10 million customers in 2009) or Windows XP from Microsoft (2001-2013, still the 2nd. most used Windows operating system).

And frankly, I'm not sure there's anything I'll miss.

But it's a reminder:

Plan your support and maintenance. You're not just having a child, you're raising that child - there are ongoing costs.

Plan your exit strategy. My Ford Sync tells me I get three years of free service, then they might charge me. I'm hoping they won't, but they could. And if I'm paying for it, there's probably a better chance it will be around longer. (Minitel would have been gone a lot sooner if it were free. Granted, also something better - the web - came along.)

Learn from the ever-changing world. The Wii U could have been a backwards-compatible upgrade (Wii 2 or Wii 2013) with better graphics and sound that still played all the existing games. But more importantly, the Wii ecosystem could have been opened up to the marketplace allowing for the easy creation of games and apps with Nintendo taking a cut of every sale.

Don't be stubborn (or appear stubborn). The Wii had a proprietary optical disc drive, sort of. I think some hackers proved years ago that you could get a Wii to play CDs, but Nintendo wasn't having any of that, in part because they didn't want all the extra wear and tear on the drives of people using it to play movies. Microsoft's original XBox used a competitor to Blu-ray that turned out to be unpopular in the marketplace, future XBoxes switched the the more popular standard. Apple created stores to help it address customer problems with broken devices.

I have fond memories of my NES and N64 and of the early days of my Wii. I want to cheer Nintendo on. But I can't. Sometimes an underdog proves it doesn't belong in the race because it is so clearly in the wrong weight class.

And I don't think it had to be that way.

See also:
How App Stores Changed How We Buy Software for Better or For Worse (Lifehacker)

Feed Sift (02/28)

Five things I saw recently and wanted to share.

-1-

Dilbert - he needs to be careful, he's starting to sound Like A Boss.

-2-

Nix Tape: 10 Closed & Abandoned Blockbuster Stores - a beautiful article with glorious photos. (No love lost for my former employer and this outdated technology.)

-3-

Say it loud and say it first - Southwest, Delta and United Airlines in for a win. (Yes, I did say United.) Remember, first-mover advantage still works when it comes to marketing and PR.

-4-

T-Mobile's 'Mobile Money' blends prepaid Visa cards and no-fee checking features - fascinating... a bank for the bank-less.

-5-

Including Teens with Special Needs – The Challenge - I like the thought behind this.

F minus minus

Seriously, how racist is this company?

"Kreative Kookies for Kids - Ready to Kut - Kreate & Bake - Kreative Kookie Cookie Dough" - thirteen words and six are spelled incorrectly. 

Trader Joe's Hates Canada

There are no Trader Joe's in Canada.

But there is definitely plenty of demand. The store closest to the border regularly sees 40% of its receipts from foriegn (mostly Canadian) credit cards.  And it suffers from long lines.   So much so that there's a guy who regularly travels from Canada to the U.S., visits a Trader Joe's, buys about $25,000 worth of stuff and then drives back.

He adds a small mark-up and sells it all rather quickly. Why? He's a fan. He used to live in Emeryville, Calif.

Trader Joe's got mad. They posted photos of him in the stores and tried to keep him from buying from them. He had to resort to hiring people after his other idea (of cross-dressing in a mumu) almost got him arrested.  Someone even (hmm... I wonder who?) once put in an anonymous tip that he was smuggling wine - that got him held up at Customs for a long time.

And eventually they sued.  And they lost.

This bothers me. On one hand, ignoring a customer base... that seems un-American.  On the other hand, using lawyers, alienating your fans and acting like a big bully... that seems very American. Like THE MAN.

But is Trader Joe's now THE MAN?  Here's what SHOULD have happened.

Googlefail (@gmail)

Now when I press "C" to compose a new message in Gmail, I see this. The first I saw it I was like "Uh - what? Wait! Nononono." And then I recognized "hikingfan@gmail.com" because Google uses it all the time in its promotions.

This should be labeled as an advertisement and the arrow to the $ should be bigger and the background of the entire popup should be a different color to stand-out more.  And there should be a checkbox for "Never show this again."

Otherwise, perhaps this is the newest way for Google to make money.

Probably not. This may not be evil, but it's pretty lame.

The Horror

Really, Washington Department of Licensing? This is just like begging to get hacked.

Email is not a secure channel. It is not an appropriate means of handling customer service involving personally identifiable information.

*sigh*

This is the autoresponse you get back when you email them. (I wrote to tell them their new system is great. I'm less convinced now.)

Does this actually work?!?!?!?

Seriously? Who clicks on emails like this? They aren't even trying!

I'm So Blue I Don't Know What To Do

This is just disappointing. The is the blue tape that Rachel and I put on Ben's wall. Rachel noticed it was starting to sag an hour or two after we'd hung it so she carefully worked to set it again. And then a few hours later, I saw that it was loose again and so I went back over all of it with a second strip, offset, to hopefully adhere it better to the wall.

And yet the next morning it was all on the floor. It's going to be difficult for me to get in and get the strip on Ben's wall painted (with multiple coatS) with my schedule so I need something that will stay for days or a week or more. Scotch Brand Blue Painters tape by 3M used to do that. This stuff which is even printed with "3M" every few inches on the front of the tape (Rachel: "Why are they advertising on their tape?") is garbage. So disappointed.

@CBS: We're not going to take this anymore!

If you don't recognize the title of this post, shame on you. Go here (Wikipedia) and here (YouTube). [Language warnings on both.]

I love this interaction (image below) on Facebook. Zoom in to read it. Time Warner Cable has dropped CBS and they're trying to get people to call Time Warner and complain. Or switch to a competitor like DirecTV or DISH.  Oops... guess they're fighting with DISH right now, too.

But people are starting to wise up. We are no longer sheep without a voice, at the whim of an elite few who will tell us what to watch and when to watch it. Change or die, right?

Time to tell CBS and Time Warner that we're not their pawns. (Sorry, I realize that's ironic.)

This is not news, @nbcnews

I feel bad for the injured people and the families of those killed and I'm embarrassed for NBC News. (I was also not on this flight.)

Also sad - search for it on YouTube and you'll see video people shot as well as ads above and below it for Disney/Pixar's Planes. Might want to adjust your ads, Disney.

I'm leaving you, @DirecTV

Dear DirecTV,

I was really excited to return to you after a long, long gap. Finally I once again lived in a place with the appropriate southern access and a cable system I'd had enough of.  A lot had changed since the last time. I still remember the boxes being delivered to my office and me running home on my lunch break to mount the dish on our apartment balcony and make the adjustments necessary to get a signal. Good times. The software was cludgy and slow and the DVR regularly ate The Amazing Race.

And then we moved to a house that couldn't see you and we went with Dish.  And then a new house and we didn't think any sort of southern access was possible and we went with Comcast.  But that got old and someone swore we really could get a southern view and that weather wasn't really the deterrent that it used to be.

And for awhile, things were good. But then, the emails. More and more emails, more and more irrelevant. (Oh, and for a time, impossible to read on an iPad or iPhone. Thanks for making me only complain three times over six months before you fixed it. You're welcome, by the way.)

But the more the email market matured, the more we looked at what's possible with data, the farther and farther away you seemed to get.  Take this email, for instance:

Manipulation, Much? @GerberLife

Gotta love this mailing from Gerber Life Insurance Company.

Photo of a baby with a thought cloud that wonders "You love me, right?" The cute little guy has been forced into child labor to guilt grandparents* who don't remember what their grandchildren look like to "Do something today to show your love now... and for years to come."

*This was addressed to my dad but delivered to my post office box.  They must have the same low-rent data source that General Motors uses.

Ok, @Amazon, I give up

So a few weeks ago I needed a special part for my faucet.  These parts are guaranteed for life as long as you are the original owner and they came with the house, so I wasn't.  They're also rather inexpensive.  As such, they're hard to come by.  Home Depot and Lowes don't carry in the local stores and there's very few places online that sell them.  We're also Amazon Prime subscribers, so I'm not in the habit of paying shipping and handling.

I finally caved and bought the part from a third-party through Amazon for $5.95 and accepted the shipping ($5.25) because I needed the part.  The faucet was dripping hot water and would continue to do so until I got the new part. Not only was there an expensive shipping charge, but it was going to take a week or more to get here from California.

I kept watching the order and finally the day before Amazon said it would arrive, it had a tracking number, but no additional information.  I waited until Amazon said I absolutely should have the package in hand and contacted the seller.  They took about a day to respond and said that it must have been lost in shipping and that they'd reship it.  So I confirmed - "had they actually shipped it?" and they were evasive.  It took another day or two but finally the tracking number lit up with actual movement and then the product arrived rather quickly.

I reviewed the order and gave them 2 out of 5 stars because I did not believe they were honest with me and that they blamed the post office when it was their own issue.  Things happen, I get that.  But be honest with me.  Better yet, be proactive.  It's not difficult and I will understand if you're forthcoming.  They weren't.

Worse yet, after my 2-star review, they contacted me directly outside of the Amazon system to offer to refund my shipping in exchange for a 5-star review.

I found that to be pretty offensive.  Not only now were they blaming someone else for their error, they were trying to buy me off.

I went back on to Amazon and tried to update my review and instead deleted it.   I tried to fix that and instead ended up asking for a refund, which was immediately granted.   I tried several ways over the next few days to reverse that.  But the automated emails from Amazon that provided the instructions didn't work -- they said to reply, put an X between the braces [  ] and then add any notes.  Every time I tried, Amazon's servers refused to accept my email or said the email address I was replying to didn't exist.   Finally, I did an online chat with someone and explained the whole situation and they assured me they'd look into it and that I might not hear a resolution.

So now I have a credit on my credit card with Amazon and no clue whether they're going to reverse the reverse and change me for the product (I did receive it and the post office did receive their fee for shipping it) or if this company is just going to get stiffed.  

That was never my intent.  I wanted them to get better at selling online, not give me free stuff.

I had toyed with the idea of mailing them a check directly but that just seems too weird.  I guess I'll wait awhile and if Amazon doesn't charge me, I'll donate $15 for charity and not claim it on my taxes or something.

I'm not mentioning that company's name because they've gotten enough grief from me.  I never intended to rip them off, I just wanted a real picture of events to be shown to future potential customers.