Amazon UK are weird

[captcalhoun]

so, i was checking my wishlist just now, and they're saying Fearful Symmetry is 'currently unavaliable, we don't know when we'll have it in stock' - yet quote a Aug 4 release date, meanwhile Shards and Shadows is quoted as available to buy, shipping in 6-11 weeks, yet the release date is given as Feb 2009!!!

W...T...F..?

 

[Omega Particle]

They are a strange organisation.

I've had 'Greater than the Sum' on my wishlist for ages, and have been growing more and more frustrated with how it's still not available, even though the Marketplace sellers normally make it available at the same time as it's released in the US.

And today I find out it's because there are *two* complete entries for 'Greater than the Sum', with it having been avaiable in the other entry for a while now. Needless to say, I put in my order straight away.

Insanely frustrating.

 

[captcalhoun]

yeah, i just checked that out and they've also got 2 pages for Fearful Symmetry, one of which is showing it as available...

biz-arre...

 

[Idoliside]

Oddly enough i have Myriad Universe and Fearfull Symettry on the same order, due out 2nd of August, and they were apparently shipped last thursday...

 

[jgdst]

It was ENT: Kobayashi Maru that kept confusing me. It makes out it's already out and quite popular, but then you find out it hasn't even been released yet.

Someone's even gone to the trouble of rating it

 

[Deano2099]

When Amazon have two listings for a Trek book, one is generally the US import bought over themselves (but still slower than getting it from the US direct via Marketplace) and one is the UK domestic release.

 

[John Clark]

so, i was checking my wishlist just now, and they're saying Fearful Symmetry is 'currently unavaliable, we don't know when we'll have it in stock' - yet quote a Aug 4 release date, meanwhile Shards and Shadows is quoted as available to buy, shipping in 6-11 weeks, yet the release date is given as Feb 2009!!!

W...T...F..?

Just to add to the wierdness (though not literature) Amazon UK were recommending a dvd to me last week which was (according to them) due out this week. It seems to have totally disappeared from their system now as though it never existed

 

[Trent Roman]

I have to ask because this is bothering me: isn't Amazon UK, as a corporate entity, considered singular? Most of the people in this thread are treating it as a plural word, and it just seems odds. "Amazon UK is weird" vs. "Amazon UK are weird", etc. Grammar-nazis, what say you?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Omega Particle]

When Amazon have two listings for a Trek book, one is generally the US import bought over themselves (but still slower than getting it from the US direct via Marketplace) and one is the UK domestic release.

Except for the fact that I'm pretty sure there's no UK domestic releases for Star Trek books in the same way as there is for Star Wars books, at least as far as I can tell. I know Titan printed the books here for a while back in the early 1990s, but these days I thought all 'British' Trek books were just brought over on crates from the US.

 

[JD]

Huh, you'd think there would be someone (or people) who would keep an eye on all of the pages to make sure this kind of stuff doesn't happen.

 

[Morwen]

I have to ask because this is bothering me: isn't Amazon UK, as a corporate entity, considered singular? Most of the people in this thread are treating it as a plural word, and it just seems odds. "Amazon UK is weird" vs. "Amazon UK are weird", etc. Grammar-nazis, what say you?

It is a perfectly customary usage in British English (which would be reasonable to expect in a thread with this title) to treat collective entities such as companies, governments, bands, and sporting teams, as plural.

As an example of this usage being widespread, if you search news.bbc.co.uk for "The government are", you get about 30,000 hits compared to 40,000 for "The government is."

 

[Amy Sisson]

I have to ask because this is bothering me: isn't Amazon UK, as a corporate entity, considered singular? Most of the people in this thread are treating it as a plural word, and it just seems odds. "Amazon UK is weird" vs. "Amazon UK are weird", etc. Grammar-nazis, what say you?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

I was wondering about that too. I think of a company as an entity, therefore singular, therefore I would say "Amazon UK is...."

 

[Omega Particle]

I have to ask because this is bothering me: isn't Amazon UK, as a corporate entity, considered singular? Most of the people in this thread are treating it as a plural word, and it just seems odds. "Amazon UK is weird" vs. "Amazon UK are weird", etc. Grammar-nazis, what say you?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

I was wondering about that too. I think of a company as an entity, therefore singular, therefore I would say "Amazon UK is...."

It's interesting the differences in how we perceive it.

I don't think of it as a single entity, but rather more as a collection of employees, offices and distribution centers etc. etc. Amazon UK is a brand which represents an organisation of multiple people.

The webpages are created by one individual, whereas another will take my order, a third will package it, a fourth will put it in the post and a fifth will deal with my customer service enquiries. So I think of Amazon as a label representing a group of employees and managers, hence references to them in the plural.

'They are weird' as a group of individuals working for a company, rather than 'It is weird' referring merely to the brand.

 

[Deano2099]

When Amazon have two listings for a Trek book, one is generally the US import bought over themselves (but still slower than getting it from the US direct via Marketplace) and one is the UK domestic release.

Except for the fact that I'm pretty sure there's no UK domestic releases for Star Trek books in the same way as there is for Star Wars books, at least as far as I can tell. I know Titan printed the books here for a while back in the early 1990s, but these days I thought all 'British' Trek books were just brought over on crates from the US.

They probably are, but it's the difference between Amazon shipping their own crates over from the copies they bought in the US, and Pocket shipping the crates over to their UK distributor, who then sends them on to Waterstones, Borders, Forbidden Planet, Amazon, etc.

 

[Ethros]

Replace "weird" with "totally unreliable" and I'd agree

 

[Therin of Andor]

I have to ask because this is bothering me: isn't Amazon UK, as a corporate entity, considered singular? Most of the people in this thread are treating it as a plural word, and it just seems odds. "Amazon UK is weird" vs. "Amazon UK are weird", etc. Grammar-nazis, what say you?

I often find myself saying "Pocket Books are...", "Paramount are..." and "CBS are..."

I guess it's like we're saying "Paramount [executives] are...", with the "executives" being understood. (If anyone understands company executives.)

This topic came up about a year ago, and I find myself second guessing and attempting to self-correct all the time. Us older Australians have the delightful heritage of UK grammar rules, imposed on our posts for Internet bulletin boards which seem to have a majority of young US readers. What fun.

 

[JD]

It always amazes me how different American English, and British English are.

 

[Trilliam]

Us older Australians have the delightful heritage of UK grammar rules, imposed on our posts for Internet bulletin boards which seem to have a majority of young US readers. What fun. [/quote]

Wouldn't that "read better" as:
"We older Australians..." -

Sorry mate - I couldn't resist!

 

[JoeZhang]

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on"

 

[Therin of Andor]

Wouldn't that "read better" as:
"We older Australians..." -

Actually, I originally had that, and then I toyed with a wordplay on us/US, then thought better of it. At one point, it looked like I was going to run into the same we/it problem.