Fuji Welcome to Amazon Cloud Drive - unless you use Fuji X

[Lightmancer]

Amazon advertises "Unlimited Photo Storage Free with Amazon Prime" - not if you are a Fuji user, it turns out.

It has taken more than a month of deeply unsatisfactory to-ing and fro-ing with Amazon Support to establish that Fuji users are discriminated against by Amazon. They offer "Free" photo storage for their Prime customers - unless you want to store your .RAF files...

The statement from Amazon Support reads as follows:

"The unlimited photo storage benefit includes most major image file types: JPEG, GIF, (both animated and non-animated), and most common TIFFs, RAW, PNG, and BMP.

At this time the RAW files you are working with are not compatible with this service and will therefor (sic) reflect against your 5GB storage."

Now, two things really annoy me about this situation. Firstly, it has taken one month and two days to get to the bottom of this. During that time I have been acting as an unpaid beta tester. Amazon Support had not the slightest idea of which files could actually be stored and which would cause a problem - they had me trying it out for them.

Secondly, the completely breath-taking arrogance of the Amazon Support people. Their "solution" email, which basically consisted of the advice "upload jpgs only" was condescending and trite. It ended with the immortal words:

"Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company."

Well, here is some feedback for you, Amazon. I work in IT, with a specific focus upon customer service. You have had my time for the past month to beta test a product that should not be on GA.

One lesson I have learned over the years is that companies that boast of customer-centricity and customer service are usually the ones that treat their customers worst of all.

This experience has proved that, very clearly.

So, if you are fortunate enough to use Fuji X Series cameras but are unfortunate enough to have an Amazon Prime account, don't expect anything from Amazon by way of storage, service or support...

 

[Luke]

Bill, I feel your pain and frustration.

Would batch converting them to DNG files change them or degrade them in any way? And can one store DNG (the universal standard that is so rarely used) in the Amazon cloud?

I'm not sure what it will take for Amazon to fail, but I hope it does with all my heart.

 

[Lightmancer]

Luke, that is exactly the workaround that they suggest. Thing is, I have over 38,000 image files of which a significant proportion are .RAF I am not going to change them to .DNG - which I do not use for any other purpose - just to fit in with Amazon. equally, I store my .jpgs and .RAFs in the same folders - equally, I am not going to separate them out just to fit in with Amazon...

 

[sabin]

Hehehe.

I had Amazon Prime from amazon.com and I got a mail about free video at amazon.com. I said "Great!", but it was a short joy as it turns out I cannot use this service from my country (IP restricted).
I didn't care as I did not buy Prime for the video anyway. After couple of mounts I got an automated e-mail "You are not watching video! Do you know you can watch free video with Prime?"



That said, I must add that when it comes so lost or wrong shipment, they do provide great customer service!

 

[porchard]

... companies that boast of customer-centricity and customer service are usually the ones that treat their customers worst of all.

How true this statement is, generally..!

In my experience, companies whose telephones are answered with the tedious and long-winded 'customer service' jingle "Good morning..... [company name] & Co..... [person's first name] speaking..... how may I help you?"..... are the companies from whom one is LEAST likely to actually get any help.