Got an email from Amazon the other day asking me if I could answer a question from a prospective customer about a watch I had purchased.
I went to my order page, clicked on to the home page of Flying Fashion, the watch’s merchant, and posted the following direct from the page:
Please note, that Flying Fashion provides its own warranty for the products by us; the manufacturer’s warranty may not apply to products purchased from Flying Fashion.
Flying Fashion two-year limited warranty covers manufacturing defects. Flying Fashion Brands will, at its option, repair or replace the product, or provide a full refund in the event a manufacturing defect is discovered within the two year time period.
This limited warranty does not cover any improper use of a product.
I then went to the product page to see my posted reply and found that mine was the second response. Here’s the first:
Three year international.
https://www.wenger.ch/global/en/Products/Watches/Classic-Metropolitan/Urban-Metropolitan/p/01.1741.133
Note. It took me less than three minutes to read this question, research the answer via Google, and reply.
We will overlook for the moment the self-congratulatory air of the response and focus on the substance of the posting. The response is perfectly factual. Except as I pointed out in a comment on that response:
I believe that answer would be true for a watch purchased from an authorized dealer. Manufacturers generally do not cover watches brought on the gray market. The merchant would need to provide its own warranty.
So, a perfectly factual (if fatuous) response—but totally useless in the context.
The watch for sale on Amazon is not offered by an authorized dealer (who could provide the manufacturer’s warranty), but by a so-called gray market* merchant, who provides its own warranty.
Facts alone do not make an answer; relevance to the context does.
*
The dramatis personae:
Lisa MacLeod, Tourism, Culture and Sport Minister of the province of Ontario.
Eugene Melnyk, owner of the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey League.
Here is an expurgated account of an encounter between the minister and the owner:
The Ottawa Citizen reported that MacLeod saw Melnyk at Saturday’s concert near Barrie, Ont., yelled at him that she is his minister and swore at him.
"I am your minister and you’re a f—ing piece of s–t and you’re a f—ing loser," MacLeod said, as recounted by Melnyk to the newspaper.**
What I am interested in here is not the original expletive-laden encounter, but Ms. MacLeod’s follow-up response—her apology (of sorts):
she apologized to the owner of the Ottawa Senators for being "blunt" — which came after she reportedly hurled a profane tirade at Eugene Melnyk at a Rolling Stones concert.
Tourism, Culture and Sport Minister Lisa MacLeod described the encounter as her giving Melnyk "feedback" on the management of the hockey team.
Now we’re only halfway through the year, but I think that Ms. MacLeod’s description of her obscenity-ridden rant as “feedback” is the frontrunner for the Euphemism-of the-Year award.
*
For the last of our responses-of-the-day we travel from the Canadian capital to the metropolis of Carbon Hill, Alabama (with a population of 1,928, according to a 2017 nose count). Two members of the city council resigned because of remarks by the mayor, Mark Chambers. According to newspaper accounts, Chambers
posted a comment on Facebook about "killing out" socialists, "baby killers" and gay and transgender people.***
Despite protests from city residents Crawford has refused to resign, and even said he plans to run for re-election.
One resident, Rawsy McCollum, said, "If you can impeach the president of the United States, you should be able to move the mayor in this little 1-red-light town.”
Ms. McCollum said the mayor responded with an apology—and with the complaint that his comments “shouldn't have been public.”
The moral of the day: If you keep your murderous homophobic comments behind closed doors, you don’t have to apologize for giving “feedback.”
***
* The so-called “gray market,” unlike the black market, is perfectly legal and legitimate. The goods are real—not counterfeit—being sold by merchants who have obtained the goods from distributors or the manufacturers themselves outside the normal channels of distribution.
** https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/ontario-minister-says-apologized-giving-feedback-senators-owner/
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