Media in the New Millennium

posted by Doyle

When I was in high school, my father was a claims adjuster for State Farm Insurance. He always told me that if ever I was in accident, don’t apologize, no matter what. Just a simple “I’m sorry” at the scene of an accident can be used in court as an admission of guilt.

Good legal advice, I suppose, but that mindset has been taken way too far by way too many companies. Instead of heartfelt, too many corporate apologies are, at best, lousy.

We’ve all seen them: “we sincerely regret any inconvenience this situation may have caused… blah, blah, blah.” That’s right, it was the “situation” that caused the “inconvenience.”

Contrast the milquetoast language we usually see with the statement recently issued — and placed on their home page — from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

Nice, Jeff. Very nice.

I’m willing to bet, unless Amazon has a set of corporate attorneys like I’ve never seen, Jeff had to battle to issue that statement. My hat is off to him for doing so. And if he didn’t have to battle, my hat is off to him for creating a corporate culture that puts customers first and butt-covering second.

For those who don’t know the story, some copies of 1984 by George Orwell were sold in Amazon’s Kindle Store, but for some reason, Amazon didn’t have the rights it needed for the sales. Amazon subsequently deleted the books from Kindles of users who purchased them and issued a refund. As you might imagine, that move was about as popular as an obnoxious drunk at a Ladies Temperance Society meeting, and it created an online stir while generating lots of headlines.

But instead of some mealy-mouthed, overly lawyered piece of crap statement, Jeff came right out and said it: we screwed up, and we’re sorry, and we’ll do our very best not to do it again.

Bravo.

Going back to my father’s advice, did Amazon perhaps admit liability? I’m not an attorney, but it would seem so. But damn, it was pretty obvious. If they had said “we regret the unfortunate removal of your purchased e-book” would they have put themselves in any better position should someone want to sue? I doubt it. In fact, by coming out and saying simply “our bad,” maybe they even avoided problems down the road.

Bottom line, I can sue Amazon for anything I want to sue them for as long as I can find a barrister to take my case (and that’s so hard). I hope Bezos started a trend of talking to your customers like you really care when you mess up. Hopefully, we can start to make the litigious among us look like the jerks for going after the companies who admit a mistake, apologize openly and sincerely, and move on.

I’m going to buy something from Amazon today just to support a company that says they’re sorry and seems to really mean it.

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