November 9: Amazon’s Delivery Promise for pink iPods
“I hope you’ll get in touch with Apple and try to get our money back from the bastards,” said Jeff Bezos at the WBR.
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Source: The Amazon Way
Published: June 2021
Amazon’s Delivery Promise for pink iPods
Context
In the early 2000s, Amazon ordered 4,000 pink iPods from Apple for Christmas. Customers had already placed orders for them and had delivery promises.
Problem
In mid-November, Apple contacted Amazon and said, “We can’t get you the pink iPods you ordered in time for Christmas. We’re transitioning iPods from a disk drive to a hard drive memory, and we don’t want to make any more using the old technology.”
Solution
Amazon employees went out and bought 4,000 pink iPods at retail stores and brought them to Amazon’s Seattle HQ. Employees hand-sorted them and repackaged them so they could be received at an Amazon fulfillment center and then sent to customers. It killed the profit margin on the iPods, but it enabled Amazon to keep a promise made to a customer.
Learning
While other retailers may have apologized to their customers and canceled their orders, that didn’t adhere to Amazon’s Leadership Principles of customer obsession and earn trust. It would have been easy to just cancel the orders.
During the following weekly business review (WBR), the team explained to Bezos what they did and why. He nodded approvingly and said, “I hope you’ll get in touch with Apple and try to get our money back from the bastards.”
Bonus: Ultimately, Apple grudgingly split the cost difference with Amazon. Regardless, it was the right decision for customers.
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I really doubt that the same would happen in 2022 (or later), young companies would go above and beyond to keep their business. Amazon is still super good when dealing with their customer, but I don't think they will go to this extent these days