Note that his is not: “Anthony vs. the Amazon” since I have nothing against the river. Nor is it “Anthony vs. an Amazon” because I would have gotten my ass kicked. I’m a bad-ass, but even I know better.
So.
Over the weekend, I decided to get some music from amazon. There were a couple of songs and an album that I wanted to get on MP3 and I had been adding a few here and there to the Digital Music Cart.
I had a little trouble finding the DMC again, but got there and went through the checkout to make my purchase. It “scolded” me for not having One-click checkout set up – which I didn’t really want to do but didn’t have a choice. (I like things a little less automated).
With the songs I’d purchased showing on the amazon screen, I selected them and clicked the Download button. I got a window telling me to download and install the Amazon Music app.
Hmmmm…
So, I downloaded and installed the Amazon Music app to my computer – and it promptly scoured my computer for all my music. It’s a player as well as the store – sort of like an iTunes. I clicked on the “cloud” button when it was finally finished so that I could download my newly purchased music. This brought up a window saying I had to accept the terms of service – with a continue button.
I clicked the Continue button which took me back to amazon’s webpage and my list of music – and no terms of service agreement. The download button still sends me over to Amazon Music on my computer and the cloud still gives me the error.
By this point, I’m deeply cranky. I dig through the support docs a bit and then fire up a chat window and explain the problem. We go back and forth a bit until they ask what browser I’m using.
“Chrome”
They tell me to instead use Firefox.
Really.
I ask if they think this is a pop-up blocker issue and they say yes, and that I need to “enable the pop-up blocker”
Wait, what? How would blocking pop-ups help? Answer: It wouldn’t. Also, they don’t know what they are talking about.
I tell them I’ll try firefox and end the chat.
Download and install firefox, navigate to the site, click the download button and this time the window now includes an option to skip Amazon Music and just download the file. But only if I do it one at a time. I don’t know how a pop-up blocker would change the content of a window, but okay…
I carefully and manually download each of the individual files, add them to my own mp3 player, and back them up to my external hard-drive.
Still don’t have a way to download multiple files, or access them with Amazon Music, or accept the user agreement.
I’m tired of everything being interconnected and overlapping. It’s the same problem people have with the scanner/printer/fax/shredder/grater devices – if one part goes bad, you have a giant and expensive pile of crap.
Which was my experience with amazon. Not “the” amazon or “an” amazon – though, frankly, I might have more luck taking on the longest river in the world or fighting a warrior woman.