Let me explain.

I bought a set of Klipsch computer speakers. They were the best computer speakers I have ever bought. I have heard music like I never have on my computer.

I suffer from a large amount of high-end hearing loss due to the chemotherapy and radiation I received to my head and neck during my cancer treatments nearly 20 years ago. And as I age it gets progressively worse. The difficulty this poses is that I totally love music. I have an extensive collection of all types of music on all types of media. Vinyl, CD’s, Cassettes, Digital and even reel to reel tapes. It’s great. But I need really great speakers to get anything worthwhile out of it due to my hearing loss.

I saw some Klipsch floor standing speakers that seemed like they would be even better than the Bose 901’s I currently own and love. It took me over 40 years to find the 901’s and they are great speakers. But I thought, based on the Klipsch computer speakers, that the larger ones should be amazing and really help me to compensate for my hearing loss.

I have been saving up amazon gift cards for about two years. This Christmas season put them in my pocket and I was ready to order.

I had a few questions first.

First, they have what are called Atmos speakers on the top of the cabinets. These are designed for home theater applications with the new Dolby Atmos system. I was not going to use them in a home theater system so I wanted to know if they were available without this feature ( I am running an old amplifier that doesn’t have the Atmos option ). Second, I also had a wiring question because I was not familiar with all the extra speaker wire terminals they had.

Amazon has a feature where you can send a message to a seller. Amazon takes your written message and sends it to the seller and then sends you the reply. I assume this is so that buyers and sellers can’t make deals outside of Amazon, thereby cutting Amazon out of its percentage. This is all fine and good if it works, which it used to.

I attempted to use the message system. I clicked on the seller link (Adorama) and typed in my questions. Amazon’s system came back and said it needed the ASIN number of the item in order to route my question. Here is where it got sticky.

The AISN number (Amazon Standard Identification Number) is an alphanumeric identifier that is ten characters long and is used to id every product on Amazon. Each seller’s unique product(s) is/are given a unique AISN number.

The ASIN number is not located on the seller’s item’s page. It is no where to be found. I looked for quite a bit and couldn’t find where it was located. So after several attempts, including pasting the entire URL into the question box, I gave up and did what anyone else would do. I set up a chat with Amazon.

So after logging into a chat window and getting a chat representative I went through this. I had questions (sending the rep the item URL to look up)  about a product and tried to message the seller on Amazon, and it says I need the AISN number to send the message, where do I find this number.

The first response I got was “What is your question about the product?”

What?! Really?! No, that was not my question. I asked how do I get the product’s  AISN number to give it to the Amazon message center to ask the seller a question. This was met with more questions, first was what was the order number. There was no order number as I had questions before I placed the order. Again, first and foremost, were the speakers available in a different configuration?

I asked again, where was the AISN number so I could email the seller, explaining again that their own system was asking for it before it would send my message.

I was given a phone number to contact the seller…

During this process I was already in fact on the phone, on hold at this point for over fifteen minutes, with Adorama. When they answered I was immediately greeted by a representative whom I could tell English was a second language. Remember the hearing loss? Right, I am at a severe disadvantage when it comes to understanding foreign accents over the telephone. Even with my hearing aids in.

I was still trying to get some light bulb to go off with the Amazon rep and hoping they would just supply me with the mysterious and hidden AISN number when the Adorama rep asked to place me on an additional hold, after she asked me what I was calling for and after I explained the reason for my call. I said I am sorry, but no. I was not willing to hold anymore out of sheer frustration over the situation.

Amazon continued to buffalo me on my request. I was sent to a second representative who asked me the same questions wanting to know why I wanted this number. I again explained (I don’t know how many times now this was) that their system would not send a message to Adorama without the AISN number and I wanted to know how to get it.

At this point it was obvious  that I wasn’t going to get the information I needed without a set of thumbscrews and some travel to wherever in the world these Amazon reps worked out of. I gave up, thanked them for their time and disconnected from the chat.

Now when you have a longer chat session with Amazon, they usually will email you the transcript of the chat. I have not received one. Apparently the AISN number is akin to something in national security that I clearly don’t have the clearance for, even though it was their own system asking me for it.

Afterwards I did receive a survey from Amazon about how the service was on this chat. I was, I must say, brutally honest about my frustrations and again described the situation about how my message was blocked by their own system asking for the AISN number before it would send my message and how their reps would not give me the requested info.

Today I received an email from Adorama as I also emailed them. I explained to them what happened and how Amazon blocked me from sending them a message to inquire about one of their products. I also asked the questions I had about the speakers. I figured if I wasn’t able to send Adorama a message, then others were having the same issue and they were missing out on sales and would contact Amazon themselves to fix the issue.

The email was very polite in tone and apologized for the trouble I had with Amazon. You know they never did answer my questions about the speakers?

As I was writing this article, I was online to reference exactly what ASIN meant and I stumbled across and website that had an article about ASIN numbers. It describes three ways to find them. I will ignore all but one as they are for sellers.

It goes on to state that in the URL, the ASIN number is located after the “/dp/”. Wow. WOW!

I don’t know if it’s correct as I haven’t looked yet, but how could that have been so difficult for an Amazon help representative to tell me where it was, or to look herself since I gave her the entire URL in my chat response. Again, wow!

So that is basically how Amazon, and to a lesser extent Adorama, talked me out of spending nearly $700 for a set of speakers I really didn’t need but thought I wanted so that I could hear my music better. I guess I just need to turn my 901’s up to 11.