An Overdue Apology and Explanation

My friends, your beloved Peasant wants to discuss something
which I should have shared with you some time ago, but I got
caught up in a bunch of topics which seemed to me to require
swift, if not immediate attention. But at last I am making the
time to address this matter: Why is the Amazon.com click-on
ad no longer up on my blog page?

Toward the end of the old year Amazon sent to all of its
associates, that is, we who have their click-on ad enabling our
visitors to our websites and blogs to shop on Amazon's website
(as they are a strictly online retail enterprise) a notice in which
they require us to sign an agreement to have content on our sites
which excludes material that is, shall we say, not suitable for the
whole family. Amazon wants to avoid being associated with
anything crude or lewd, as they are a wholesome organization.
That is most commendable. However, when I went to the page
on their web site to sign the agreement, I encountered a security
feature, a pretty common one on many sites, called "CAPTCHA".
Its name is an acronym, and although I don't know what it spells
out its function is to make sure that it is people, rather than other
computers, which are trying to access the page and leave infor-
mation on it. I typed in the characters that it required me to
interpret and copy o the accompanying box, and clicked to send.
It just gave me another set of characters to copy into the box.
So I copied those characters and clicked to send. Same result.
I did this four more times before giving up. I tried to inform
Amazon of my difficulty, and could not find a page on their site
to so inform them of and describe my problem. I also searched for
a page in which a list of technical difficulties were posted with
brief possible solutions to them. Again, nonesuch.

Finally the deadline given by Amazon to sign and send back the
agreement came and went, after which the Amazon click-on ad
was pulled by the company. They wanted me to take a certain action
in order to continue to carry their click-on ad on my blog site,
and would not make it possible for me to do so, nor to even complain
to them of the technical hiccup (which was on THEIR end!) that
prevented me with complying with their requirement. How's that
for arrogance?

The upshot of it all is this: you, my grand readers, will no longer be
able to shop on Amazon's site when visiting your favorite Peasant.
And I will not be able to receive commissions on any resultant sales
anymore. I was telling a friend the other day when he was telling me
of some other online trouble he'd been having with an onilne organi-
zation that there is a lot of arrogance in cyberspace, and here is but
one example. It's really bad form when an online business plays
such games with the public, many of whom are not as well-schooled
in the ways of computer programming as those in the employ of said
business. And even if no such shenanigans have been perpetrated,
it is then the most incompetent oversight of a company to ask a visitor
to their website to take a certain action, then not ensure that the visitor
will be able to comply without technical glitches interfering and to
not ensure that the thwarted visitor be able to log a complaint and
be provided with a solution to the glitch. Therefore I have discontinued
my business relationship with Amazon.com.

Sometime down the line The Peasant shall have a new click-on ad or
two from some other organizations with whom I shall have an associ-
ation arrangement. Your apologetic Peasant feels badly about not in-
forming you, my beloved readers, about this development and what-
ever inconvenience any of you may have experienced as a result of
this episode.

Thank you all for your forgiveness and understanding!


MEM