Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfCrash
Amazon is a large company that has policies that it will follow to the letter because to look at any specific case is to open a massive can of worms and could lead to law suits down the line. It sucks donkey balls because there are folks who are in a grey area who get screwed.
I taught for 10 years. I had a strict policy regarding grades and missed exams. I allowed students to drop one exam (out of three). I allowed make ups only in instances where someone had a doctors note due to illness (theirs or someone who they are responsible for), funerals (They had to bring something from the funeral to show that they were there like a program) or other really weird issues. Dropping an exam allowed students who were sick but not worth going to the Doctors for or slept through an exam some latitude. They still had two exams they could take and do well in the class.
The black and white policy worked. It made my life a hell of a lot easier. It was in the syllabus. I reminded them of it before every exam. There was one case, in 10 years, were the Ombuds told me I had to give the student a make up exam. Is it possible that some students with legit reasons for missing two exams were harmed? Yup. Did it mainly effect the kids who never came to class and got the syllabus or heard my mention the policy and basically thought they could BS their way into a D? Yup.
I had one student who made a fuss in class about it, after missing a second exam. His classmates, plural, pulled out the syllabus and pointed to the policy. Several voiced that I had reminded them of the policy several times before the exam. After class, several students came up and said that they now understood why I was so anal about it.
The problem to me seems to be that Amazon, and other companies, are not clear on what the policy is. You could be someone who buys from third parties on Amazon and what is sent is damaged so you send it back. How many times does that have to happen before you are on their radar? Is it a set number of times or is it a percentage of total sales?
We buy a lot from Target and have returned stuff a good amount. We have a toddler and have picked up toys, clothes that we thought he needed and they didn't end up fitting or we decided he had enough gifts or the diapers were delayed from Amazon but then arrived that same day and he was going to be moving into the next size soon so keeping an extra pack of diapers was silly. I have worried that Target was going to tell me that I could not return any more. I don't know what the line is. I am not trying to be abusive, we don't return items we used.
So where is the line? And what type of warning are they giving? Is it clear enough that people know what is happening? The cases I am seeing have involved food items that have exploded due to bad packaging.
So yeah, Amazon is not clean. Some of the cases I have read about strike me as abusive by the customer but many are not. The hard line sucks but I get why it is there.
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Hey Prof,
You made me kind of giggle. I didn't miss any exams but I just took my father's obituary to college with me. I don't remember if we didn't have programs or I just didn't pick on up.
I do agree with your policy.