I wrote earlier this week about boycotts and the pervasive idea that they “don’t work”. I hope I’ve explained why that’s the wrong way to think about your choices; you can’t punish Nestle or Vodafone by withholding your custom, but where you spend your money should still matter to you.
So boycotts are fashionable again. I’ve been boycotting Starbucks since the early Noughties because of their aggressive business tactics; now I’m joined in that boycott by hordes of people who are unhappy because of the company’s attitude to tax. Now I know how Michaela Strachan felt when statement earrings came back into fashion: pleased, slightly righteous, and tempted to shout “I was doing it first!” a lot.
We’ve all been there. You’ve found something you want to buy online and you’re happy with the price, so you pop it in your virtual basket and head for the online checkout. It’s all going swimmingly... but you’re not going to be allowed to just buy the item. Oh, no no no. The site asks you to log in. Or perhaps it asks if you’re a new or returning customer. Or perhaps it asks you to register or create an account. Whatever the wording, it’s basically the same demand: before you can buy this item from us, you have to get into an artificial relationship with us.
The phone rings. You answer, and there’s a tell-tale pause, a pause in which you can often hear the call-centre buzz on the other end. The pause might be because the telemarketing phone system has auto-dialled you before the employee was ready, or it might be because they’re ringing from another continent, or it might be because they’ve got distracted waiting for you to answer. Whatever the reason, it tells you in a second or two, before anybody speaks, that this is probably a telemarketing call.
The #amazonfail furore made me angry, but not for the reasons you might expect. I'm angry at the sheer numbers of people who put their energy into mobilising against Amazon. The whole affair showed us just how easily Twitter and blogs can be used to spread a message about a company's unacceptable actions (in Amazon's case, removing LGBT-themed books from their sales rankings) and to generate massive amounts of negative publicity. Perhaps a month after the problem was first spotted, the complaints reached a tipping point; after that, it took just a few days to give Amazon the PR headache of a lifetime.
And I'm furious that it happened this way. Perhaps I should explain why.