Well I never ... 2 mins on twitter, 5 mins in chat, refund issued 5 mins later (email received, account credited).

They wanted me to send the item back, but as I'm overseas they waived that! 🎉 

So the least I could do was accept an account credit (but they did offer me a refund to card).

I was so impressed, I wrote a new post >

✅ [SOLVED] HOW TO CONTACT AMAZON UK AND GET THROUGH TO A PERSON? WORKS IN 2023 !

They've just mailed me, inviting me to sign up for an extra monthly fee to view Prime Video content without ads. It isn't much - £2.99 - but I haven't watched any content with commercial breaks for over 20 years, and I'm not going to restart now. I've already made the decision to close my Prime account before next renewal, and this has just convinced me it's the right decision. If there's any Prime content I want to watch now - and it doesn't happen often - I'll get it another way.

I just got that email myself today, and it was quite a sad list of programs they listed out as reasons to keep subscribing; some have already finished and they're not making any more, some were crap. Reacher is all that interests me and I was planning on waiting until they're all available and then binging it.

I've just set up a Raspberry Pi with Adguard Home on it and am using that as a DNS server for my nVidia Shield. It's blocking ads successfully when streaming Channel 5 (not watched anything in anger on All4 or ITVX yet so can't say if it works for them). I'll find out in a month whether it works on Prime.

Companies only hear complaints that impact their bottom line… they took a calculated risk that people would gripe for a few days about it and either pay the extra or not, but in the end keep their membership. The only way they would go back on this is if enough people end their memberships.

I only renewed my annual subscription in November, at which time I had no idea this was happening. I was fuming when I found out. What I did today is probably futile, but just the same...

1. I cancelled my subscription. Of course, because I am paid up, this will not take effect until November 2024. But it is on record as being cancelled, and if enough people do it *now*, they might get a clue that it relates to their announcement.

2. I contacted Amazon support, politely explained the situation, told him I was cancelling, and asked him to record it as an official complaint; which he agreed to do.

3. He also suggested I write a formal *letter* of complaint, and attach it to an email sent to "customer-attachment-requests @ amazon dot co dot UK". Which I will be doing.

I did look at the cancellation option - I'm due for renewal in July - and was presented with the option of seeing out my paid year, or cancelling there and then and getting half a year's refund. I'd have done that if it wasn't for the fact some family members use my account.

I've just picked up an Echo Dot for the bargain price of £13 or so. They're half price at the mo, and if you trade in an older Amazon device you get a £5 voucher and another 25% off a new Amazon device. Our 1st gen Alexa (pringle can version) had been knocked over a few times by the grandkids and the top had come off and it had become a tad flaky.

The sound on the new dot is easily as good as the pringle can which I was pleasantly surprised with. It also has the ability to sense people in the room. I've used that to create a handy routine that sets the light on to 12% in the lounge when it senses movement between midnight and 6.30am, waits 5 minutes and then turns the light off again. Dogface has taken to getting up in the early hours and crapping at the end of the lounge if we don't let him out in time and I don't want to have to ask big A to do anything or she'll respond back and wake up the mrs. I had been using the presence not detected feature to turn off the light, but that doesn't work. This morning I found the wait for x step in the routines and that works a treat.

Had an unexpected message from Amazon yesterday. A refund of £6 or so from an item I bought in the Black Friday sales. Apparently it went lower in price during the sale so they've automatically refunded the difference.

The continuing spread of enshittification [*], as these 'too big to care' tech companies keep shareholders happy, disregarding customer privacy ...

[*] the degradation of once-useful platforms through profit-driven surveillance and control - by normalising and commodifying access to our personal data, devices become tools for corporate (and governmental) over-reach.