Amazon – Ryan and Debi & Toren

I don’t always review products on Amazon. I don’t have the time. But there have been two instances over the past year when I have been contacted by someone because of a review I wrote on Amazon. Both times, these individuals have tried to bribe me to remove my negative review of the product. Here’s the latest email exchange over a backup cellphone charger that was a piece of garbage:

First Email:

taylor jack taylor.jack0528@outlook.com Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 10:30 PM
To: “ryantcragun@gmail.com” ryantcragun@gmail.com

Hello,rcragun.
I’m Anna.I am a real person.Since everybody’s time is very precious,I just go directly to the topic.
Here is your review.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1T2C38HIJ7JJQ/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07SWTGDVW
I am very sorry to hear about the issues you’ve had with your item.Are you willing to help me to delete your review? If you have deleted your review, please tell me,We will give you an Amazon gift card.
Looking forward to your good news and reply !

My response:

From: Ryan Cragun ryantcragun@gmail.com
To: taylor jack taylor.jack0528@outlook.com
Subject: Re: Amazon compensation

I consider your proposal completely unethical.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Best,
Ryan T. Cragun

I stopped responding after this, but have since received three more emails:

Email Two:

From: “taylor.jack0528” taylor.jack0528@outlook.com Using MailMasterPC/4.13.2.1001 (Windows 7)
To: “ryantcragun@gmail.com” ryantcragun@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Amazon compensation

From my perspective, we are very eager to compensate those customers who trust us but are hurt by us.
So please give us a chance. We will offer a $ 30 Amazon Gift Card.
Hope you understand us, our life and work are not easy.

Email Three:

From: “taylor.jack0528” taylor.jack0528@outlook.com Using MailMasterPC/4.13.2.1001 (Windows 7)
To: “ryantcragun@gmail.com” ryantcragun@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Amazon compensation

Time is limited and tight!!
How is thing going?
If you have deleted your review ,please tell me, I will give you $30 right away.
This is your review.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1T2C38HIJ7JJQ/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07SWTGDVW
Thank you.

Email Four:

From: Bessierh5 Nielsenqvl99 trisnatudd3cx@gmail.com
To: ryantcragun@gmail.com
Subject: $30 Amazon gift card

Hello rcragun.This is the final mail to you.
This is your review.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1T2C38HIJ7JJQ/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07SWTGDVW
If you are willing to delete your review ,I will offer an Amazon gift card worth $30.
If you have deleted it ，please tell me, I will give you $30 right away.
We will thank you profusely and even find a homeless kitten to hug on your behalf. We will waiting for you.
Again, this is the last email you will receive from us so we really do hope you are enjoying your purchase.My most sincere regards, I hope that you can reply to me as soon as possible.
Thank you and please have a fantastically glorious day.
Sincerely
Anna

With the previous company, I told them I wouldn’t delete my review. They were okay with that. They said that they would send me a new pair of headphones (the other ones died within a year) to make things right and hoped I would update my review to reflect that. That seemed fair to me and that’s what I did. They were okay with me leaving my review but wanted me to note that they tried to make things right.

That’s very different from what this person is doing. They are basically trying to bribe me to remove negative information from Amazon’s website so people will be misled about the quality of their product.

The product is NEXGADGET’s Solar Charger Power Bank. As I noted in my review, it was basically a useless brick during a 5-day hike in Wyoming. It didn’t keep its charge for a single day and wouldn’t charge in sunlight. Maybe I got a bad item. But that still speaks to the production quality and my review should stay on the website. NEXGADGET shouldn’t be trying to hide negative reviews but rather trying to make a better quality product.

Update 1/8/20:

I sent a response to their last email hoping to get more information.

My 2nd Response:

Created at: Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 9:02 AM (Delivered after 0 seconds)
From: Ryan Cragun ryantcragun@gmail.com
To: Bessierh5 Nielsenqvl99 trisnatudd3cx@gmail.com
Subject: Re: $30 Amazon gift card

Hi Anna,
I’d like to know your real name and who you work for. Please provide that information and maybe I’ll consider your request.
Best,
Ryan

Here’s their response:

Email Five:

Created at: Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 3:32 AM (Delivered after -325 seconds)
From: Bessierh5 Nielsenqvl99 trisnatudd3cx@gmail.com
To: Ryan Cragun ryantcragun@gmail.com
Subject: Re: $30 Amazon gift card

I understand your mood,but
On the one hand , this is not a bribe,this is just a compensation，we just hope that you are satisfied with this transaction.
On the other hand ， this is not a violation ，because this shopping platform has this option after all，and the choices are in your hand.I just need you to delete it ，not a good review.
So what do you think of it ?
please give me a chance.
If you have deleted it ,please let me know, thank you!

And my final response:

3rd Response

Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 6:41 AM (Delivered after 0 seconds)
From: Ryan Cragun ryantcragun@gmail.com
To: Bessierh5 Nielsenqvl99 trisnatudd3cx@gmail.com

Definition of BRIBE: “persuade (someone) to act in one’s favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement.” You are trying to persuade me to act dishonestly with a gift of money. It is literally the definition of a bribe. Please stop emailing me or I will report you to Amazon.com directly.

To be fair, this is probably some underpaid individual in China who sees this as an opportunity to make enough money to survive. It’s just a job to someone. And my ethical pleadings will never persuade them to stop doing what they are doing because they need to eat. I get that. But it’s still a bribe.

592 total views

I’ve had a Ring doorbell (and security system) for quite a while. I never bought the chime that goes with the doorbell because it has always worked through my Amazon Echo devices. However, I only recently learned that you can change the notification sounds you get when someone rings your doorbell. However, how you do this requires clicking through almost a dozen screens in the Ring app and I can never remember it. So, here’s how to do it.

Change Doorbell Sound on Ring App

I’ll start with the notification sound you get on your phone through the Ring app when someone pushes the doorbell. First, open the Ring app and you’ll be on the Dashboard or Home screen:

Click the three lines in the upper left corner to open that menu:

Select “Devices”:

Now select your Video Doorbell (mine is called “Front Door”):

You’ll have to scroll down (at least, I did), to see the settings icon (the gear). Click on that:

These are the settings for your video doorbell.

The settings you want are the Alert Settings. So, click on that:

The alert settings for your video doorbell.

The second option down in the screenshot above is for the chimes that you can use if you have a separate chime for your device. I don’t. So, what I want to change are the “App Alert Tones.” Click on that option and you’ll get this screen:

We’re almost there (I know, right!?!). Now click on “Ring Alerts” and you’ll get this screen:

Here’s where you can adjust all of the alerts for your phone (through the Ring app) when someone pushes your doorbell. You can silence it. You can turn on or off the notifications. You can set it to Pop on screen. What we want is at the very bottom in the “Advanced” section. Click on that and you’ll get more options:

Now, finally, we can change the sound. Click on “Sound” (it will indicate which sound you are currently using below “Sound”) and you’ll get this screen:

These are your options for doorbell notifications on your phone through the Ring App.

You can pick any of the sounds or music available there. If you want to set it to a song or something like that, you can put that into a folder on your phone called “Ringtones” and they will show up there.

Change Doorbell Sound on Amazone Echo Devices for Ring

In addition to changing the sound on your phone, you can also change the sound on your Amazon Echo if you have it connected to the Ring app. I’m not going to go through how to connect it to the Ring app as that is pretty straightforward (download the Ring skill for your Echo), but here is how to change your doorbell sound on your Amazon Echo.

First, open the Amazon Echo app:

In the bottom right, click on “Devices”:

I have a lot of devices set up with my Amazon Echo, so I actually have to scroll over to see all the devices (just swipe the list at the top to the left – Tinder style!) to see the option for All Devices:

Click on “All Devices” and you’ll get a list of all the devices you have set up on Amazon’s Echo/Alexa app. You need to find the app that has a camera icon and is whatever you named your Ring video doorbell. Mine is called “Front Door”:

You’re looking for your Ring video doorbell in the list of devices.

Click on that and you’ll see the settings screen for your video doorbell:

The selected sound is under “Doorbell Sound.”

As you can see in the screenshot above, I had set up a “Howl” for Halloween. I want to switch it to something different. Click on the Doorbell Sound option and you’ll see a list of additional sounds:

The list includes seasonal options. I went with Xmas Elves. Select it and click back and that will be the new sound that is played through your Amazon Echo devices when the Ring video doorbell is pressed:

Now, the next time I want to change this option, I won’t have to click on 50 different options in the various apps. Hooray for me (and you)!

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Tag: Amazon

Unethical Amazon Review Modifications