Having been through several Jeff escalations on the seller side of things, the reality is very different from the romanticized version in the public mind.
Maybe it worked that way a decade ago when the volume was lower. Now sending a Jeff message just goes to a specialized team that's only slightly more competent than whoever would otherwise handle the issue. Have had several times where no resolution was given at all.
I emailed Jeff about two years ago about a repeated and annoying Kindle App (on Android) bug. Included the details I'd given to support a few attempts before this final straw. He didn't reply (of course) but a few days later a Kindle engineer helped me debug the issue (part Android setting, part Kindle app bug) via phone.
Amazon generally has always treated sellers/vendors like shit, but has always been good with consumers once you escalate it appropriately. I’ve had a lot of weird cross border Amazon problems and mail to Jeff resolved.
Look at their budget. Most of their revenue comes from AWS. So their large AWS clients are their customers. The margins on the retailing e-commerce customers is slim and wasn't profitable on a cashflow basis until recent years. From a financial perspective, they're the people who are going to stock the items and take the risk for products where demand is uncertain. Once more data is collected about their sales, Amazon will use their scale to undercut their e-commerce selling partners. So they are important to their company logistics, just not to the bottom line.
I just want to point out how ridiculous it is to think that AWS > Selling stuff out of a warehouse in terms of revenue.
Amazon does about $30B a year in selling goods, and about $7B a year in AWS.
AWS does deliver higher profit margins and more operating income than the tiny margins on selling and shipping goods, so perhaps that's what you meant to say.
Because I was using quarterly for both numbers, and their net sales of merchandise was over $200B (global) in 2018, meaning their net sales were almost 10X higher on products than AWS. Since it's a 10:1 margin, I continue to claim that it's ridiculous to think that AWS > selling physical products in terms of revenue.
In terms of income, however, it's not, they make a lot more on services than physical goods (as everyone not named Apple does)
that 30B in sales is revenue and not a profit. You combine all stuff sales they do together in all their warehouses and logistics and they don't combine together enough to beat the money that their AWS brings in. That 30B revenue costs almost 30B in expenses as well. You take out revenue in the form of advertising and it's almost nothing or negative depending on the quarter. As impressive as the revenue is, it's nothing if you can't turn a profit as a business. Anybody can buy something at wholesale, ship it to your door , not make any money on it and then take it back if it the company is unsatisfied.
Maybe it worked that way a decade ago when the volume was lower. Now sending a Jeff message just goes to a specialized team that's only slightly more competent than whoever would otherwise handle the issue. Have had several times where no resolution was given at all.