My letter to Mturk about international worker's interest - making a big difference?

Discussion in 'General' started by djolerkv, Jul 14, 2012.

  1. djolerkv

    djolerkv Active Member

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    I've been struggling few weeks now emailing and contacting Amazon and Mturk trying to make something worked out for us international workers so we wouldn't have to use our honestly and sweaty earned money to pay ridiculously high shipping rates and taxes while ordering stuff from Amazon (only U.S. and India turkers can withdraw money from Mturk earnings, others are condemned to spend this on Amazon through amazon gift card balance).

    Their response has been about "not able to make exception for you from our policy" after I asked them to pay me through Visa card (LOL) instead of useless gift cards. Ultimately we international workers would be thankful even if we could sell our cards we get. That way we could still cash out Mturk money nicely.

    This is today's sent letter:

    "Thanks for your quick response. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and even work on Mturk and get paid. I have read Amazon's shareholder letter for 2010. You name yourself "Earth's most customer focused company" and I also read about it from other folks around well-known forums. So I expect you to act that way and not just blew off a person asking you to act in the certain way that you are not accustomed to.

    I realize that you have the policy of paying international workers their Mturk earnings through applied gift certificate cards. That way one worker can only use his funds to purchase good from his Amazon account. I guess this is made this way so the money wouldn't go from America to foreign countries but is assured to be spent in Amazon. This way your country doesn't pay to foreign workers but it works for your country's best interest. That's why you don't even allow gift cards to be applied to foreign Amazon sites like U.K.'s or German's.

    What would I (and probably thousands of other international workers) like to see it that you would pay us with money directly on Amazon balance (regular balance, not gift certificate account). It wouldn't meant nothing to you really. All cash from Mturk will still be spent on Amazon.com purchases and in America only. Only difference would be that we (as people from other countries) be able to use that sum to buy other gift cards that we could sell it to people that would, again buy stuff on Amazon.

    That way we could sell (or give as a present) our cards (that we can't use in the first place because of high shipping rates) to Americans through sites like Ebay (I realize you don't like them but you would do this for Mturk workers interest) or other exchange cards for cash sites like plasticjungle.com .

    Thank you for your time."

    I like working on Mturk. It gives me opportunity to earn serious cash that can even stand against regular job's pay. But all this falls to water when you consider the fact that you can't withdraw your cash directly. And that makes me bite my ass off. Then all of this can't be considered seriously since you must play "sell stuff to get paid" game on ebay or whatever option you have working out best for you.
     
  2. RonPaul

    RonPaul User

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    Wish you luck..Like most things in life, it takes asking/demand from a number of people to get things changed.
     
  3. ramako

    ramako Member

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    I honestly think they should let us use that money on the other amazon stores. As far as I know, they are the same company, the earnings is for them, whether is .de , co.uk, .fr .... They are all owned by .com . They should be more permissive if it is about buying on their chain stores.
     
  4. interneteditor

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    I agree ramako, I would happily spend it all at amazon.co.uk.
     
  5. djolerkv

    djolerkv Active Member

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    Yes but if you spend money on amazon.co.uk England gets cash from taxes and not U.S. I think.

    If this whole thing is about U.S. and Amazon getting more money then I hope I will struck their nerve with my letter and make a good point that will, hopefully make them realize that it's their interest to give us more options for withdrawals from Mturk.
     
  6. ramako

    ramako Member

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    I doubt they would care where the taxes money goes, as long as they make profit.
     
  7. chaos

    chaos User

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    The frustration is understandable, but in all honesty I am actually proud of Amazon for paying the way that they do. Our country's economy is in the toilet right now and the last thing we need is for money to be leaving the US and going overseas, we've already got enough of that going on with so many companies outsourcing their work.

    Absolutely nothing against anyone from non-US countries, I understand that you guys want to make money too, but I definitely appreciate a US based company doing what they can to keep money in the US.
     
  8. djolerkv

    djolerkv Active Member

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    America is one big bullshit btw. Feeding the world with iShits, junk food, holywood, pornography and stuff. They put their hands on stuff they don't belong to them. They spend bilions of dollars on wars in third world countries and you are "pridefull" for you country. I would be ashamed of my goverment if i lived in U.S.

    You can thank your third world oil wars and your "American pride" for your septic hole economy. I love America. I am just sad it's fucked up and it's going downfall every day.

    Amazon is just doing their job. These penny jobs doesn't don't make any difference in overall economy count. .It's just their nationalistic attitude is showing off here big time.

    Anyway I hope this would make them change the way they pay, if this is truly reason why they pay international workers in gift cards. I am expecting answer from Mturk today or tomorrow and will post their replay here in this post.

    Happy Mturking.
     
  9. chaos

    chaos User

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    If you don't like it, then don't work for an American company, it's really that simple.

    And yes, I do have pride in my country. Pride for your country doesn't mean you are happy about everything your government does, it means that you love where you live and want the best for it. That's why we have elections every 4 years (2 years for house of representatives), if we don't like the way the government is being run, we have a chance to vote in someone new who we believe can fix the problems.

    As far as these Amazon jobs not making a difference in the economy, that's false. Money that American citizens make on MTurk is used to purchase products in the United States, which helps drive the economy. It's really that simple. Now Turk isn't going to make a big difference by itself, but if more companies operated in this way and kept as much cash flow and jobs in the US as possible, it would be a more noticeable difference.

    I have no problem with those outside the US working on turk, but I do like the fact that they ensure that money goes back into the US economy.
     
  10. SalvadorZombie

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    I can understand that you're frustrated, but this really isn't the place to be starting a rant about politics and interglobal economics, especially with such vitriolic language. I agree that there is a lot that my country is doing wrong, but I am also proud of a lot of the things that we have done for the world, and I want to return my country to a time when it actually innovated and was a leader in the world. We have a right to be proud of our country, as I'm sure that you are proud of yours.
     
  11. ramako

    ramako Member

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    I don't think Amazon cares about the taxes. They rather care about their profit.

    Besides, I don't really know how mturk works for amazon/requesters, but I suppose Amazon will also get payed for offering the service, and Amazon must pay taxes to US, so we are already paying taxes.

    What's more, this way of managing international workers can also be counterproductive.
    They might be losing sales on Europe shops.

    For example, let's say I buy something with the money earned on mturk, and since I already have to pay shipment rates, let's add some (insert random item here) since it seems cheap. And I am also going to add this other item, it looks good.

    Those items sold and not payed with the mturk money that I already spent on the item I wanted are not being sold because of amazon international workers politic.
     
  12. bootybitch

    bootybitch Banned

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    If it wasn't for our big bullshit America, you wouldn't even be getting gift cards. If it's so horrible, why are you still supporting it? Leave the work for those of us that want to FIX America instead of just bitching about it. I understand, you have nothing tying you to the US, you don't live here so it doesn't matter to you. But it matters to me and billions of other Americans who work their asses off to watch our money go overseas.

    Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. Frankly, I hope Amazon keeps things the way they are if the majority of overseas Turkers have your attitude. I don't believe that all overseas workers are assholes - just a hypothetical :)
     
    #12 bootybitch, Jul 21, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 21, 2012
  13. djolerkv

    djolerkv Active Member

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  14. bootybitch

    bootybitch Banned

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    Well, you know you guys don't have to do the HITs that only pay $1.50/hr. You could be making more and you choose not to.

    Just to be clear, I'm talking about Turkers, not everyone overseas, k?
     
  15. Turkalicious

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    What he said.
     
  16. chaos

    chaos User

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    I'm sorry, but I don't feel bad about living somewhere that offers me the opportunity to live comfortably. I do find it humorous though that some talk about how they hate the US getting involved in the business of other nations, then turn right around and act like we should be helping the poor in other countries. Which is it?
     
  17. Danthony

    Danthony User

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    They get the money and some of it flows back here
    Sorry but that is a irrelevant reason why not to pay international workers what they earned
     
  18. shariqueahmer

    shariqueahmer Banned

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    I actually don't undertstand the reason behind the policies for money only for US and India. I'm from india and they send a check but i wish that they could just deposit in a bank account and i'm ready to bear the bank charges if any.
     
  19. 1CrookedVulture

    1CrookedVulture New Member

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    If the idea behind the payment of non-US Turkers in Amazon.com gift certificates only is to prevent money going overseas, why do they allow Indian workers to be paid in cheques?
     

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