Continuing with the E-Commerce Times article. It states that some of the most dominant E-Commerce companies like Amazon.com and many others have adopted this technology, have opened stores at @mart, and that all this bodes well for activeworlds.com. It seems that it might, if the companies had actually done what the article says.
After the rude treatment I received at @mart, I decided to call Amazon.com to complain. After explaining the situation to the customer service department, I was transferred to the associates line. I again explained my situation and asked the person I spoke with what their policies were regarding this particular online store. The gentleman reported that they had nothing to do with the store. He added that they had received several complaints already regarding this particular associate, and that they had already contacted activeworlds.com and asked that they change the sign at the front of the "store" to indicate that it was not an Amazon.com store but that activeworlds.com was merely an affiliate of Amazon.com, no different from their 200,000 other affiliates.
This person apologized profusely and stressed that this was not the way they liked to see customers treated and urged me to visit the
Amazon.com web site directly. I have not contacted any of the other companies mentioned in the E-Commerce Times article, but it would not surprise me if an associate relationship is all they have with activeworlds.com, just like Amazon.com.
This is a far cry from and "adoption of the technology" as presented in the E-Commerce article, at least in the case of Amazon.com. In fact, any of us who want to hawk a couple books or sell some CD's through our personal web-site can become an associate of Amazon.com just like activeworlds.com.
Which leads me back to my starting point. I had originally entered the activeworlds.com site to see if I could track an order I had placed with Amazon.com. When I went into the store all I saw were 3 books featured (below a Oprah Book Club sign) and 3 CD's. To order any of these books you would click on the one you wanted and be taken to the amazon.com web site to place the order. I realize it is a technology in its infancy, and it certainly seemed clever enough, but it was hardly the mall experience I was expecting. I also did not notice any of the other people there at the same time (I believe there were about 25) doing any shopping, most were chatting or confused with the operation of the software.
While at the store I saw no way of browsing or searching through the 100s of thousands of titles at Amazon.com, there was no way to check on my order, there was no way to offer feedback to Amazon.com. In short, to get anything done I had to go the Amazon.com site.
In my last message I will give a summary of what information I have gleaned so far. |
