I talked with Amazon Live Support today...

[damnek]

Where are you from in India? I know India very well.

Darjeeling.

I know Bombay. But I have some friends there!

[DoubleIcaras]

You are now connected to Chandra from Amazon.com.
Chandra:Hi, my name is Chandra. I'll be happy to help you.
Me:Hi!
I was wondering if in the near future we will be able to pay with Bitcoins?
Chandra:I'm really sorry you had to take the time to contact us about this today. I'm really not too sure about that
One moment
Me:If you could find out anything that would be amazing.
Chandra:I wish I could. Unfortunately we don't have anything in our system, that shows this as a possibility. I'm sorry I wasn't able to find more information for you
Me:That's fine, thanks for letting me know.
I hope in the future Amazon will accept bitcoins!
Chandra:I will leave some feedback for this as well
Me:tyvm, have a great day!

I feel like I did my part~

[deepceleron]

[Steve]

Like others have pointed out, there's really no urgent need for Amazon to sell BTC that they might earn from their products.  At least not initially.  In fact, it would probably be really dumb for them to do so.

My guess is that if Amazon does in fact start accepting bitcoin, that they'll not only accept it, but also provide an exchange, a wallet, and even merchant services that lets others accept it.

Then, how long will it be before they have most of the 8M BTC currently in existence? Not counting the other entities that'll be jockeying for position to get on the Bitcoin band-wagon at the same time.

Can you imagine a high level boardroom meeting where the execs are trying to get their head wrapped around this Bitcoin acceptance thing?

It would be difficult for them to get anywhere near the 8 million without pushing the price into the stratosphere.  Sales in bitcoin will be very light to begin with and Amazon has enough cash that they can float it without selling for a while.  If they also opened an exchange, they could even begin paying suppliers (or even employees) in bitcoin.  As for the board room, it's hard to imagine that Bezos would have any difficulty at all grasping the concepts of bitcoin and he certainly is the type of personality that would give seemingly crazy ideas a shot (and really, is bitcoin all that crazy?  it just kind of makes perfect sense to me).

[nefanon]

Well, it doesn't look like ThinkGeek is supporting bitcoin anytime soon...

• Kevin D: Hello! How can I help you today?
• Nefanon: Hi Kevin, I was looking at your payment options and I was curious: Does ThinkGeek plan to offer bitcoin payments in the future?
• Kevin D: We have no plans to offer any other forms of payment at this time.
• Nefanon: Aw, that's disappointing, a lot of geeks are getting into bitcoins and I'd love to share ThinkGeek with the bitcoin community as a supported retailer. Has ThinkGeek heard of bitcoins?
• Kevin D: They have been introduced to us before and at this time there are no plans of using them.
• Nefanon: Ok, cool! Well, I just wanted to make a formal request for ThinkGeek to accept them. It's an awesome technology that I think will only grow and become more popular.
• Kevin D: I will forward that feedback for you.

He was very slow to respond though, I wonder if he was busy or asking around.

[bitcoinbetas]

lol awesome!  which leads me to say should we have  " Tuesday Bitcoin Talk w/ Live chat help" days ?  If we all hit up every major internet "live help" with the question this might just work!

[bitcoinbetas]

I like the offer of emailing the people who have Bitcoin interest.  I believe that is something they would take note of, as they will want to have a targeted mass marketing email to promote if it were to happen, and the best audience is of course the people who were requesting it.  If you have an Amazon account, ask that they 'note' on your account or whatever it is payment feature request and you would like to be notified when it happens.

Hi :-)  someone say e-mail ?

[BTCurious]

He was very slow to respond though, I wonder if he was busy or asking around.

Chat support typically handles multiple conversations at the same time. They may have been dealing with a difficult customer.

[DeathAndTaxes]

He was very slow to respond though, I wonder if he was busy or asking around.

Chat support typically handles multiple conversations at the same time. They may have been dealing with a difficult customer.

Yeah I heard they kept asking about this thing called Bitcoin.

[nefanon]

He was very slow to respond though, I wonder if he was busy or asking around.

Chat support typically handles multiple conversations at the same time. They may have been dealing with a difficult customer.

Yeah I heard they kept asking about this thing called Bitcoin.

lolol

[giszmo]

But if all the inquiries being done on amazon are linked to this forum and the amazon person in charge of investigating bitcoins starts at the obvious points, i.e. this forum, how does that look? I seriously hope that many people are doing that as a result of watching the show, but if not...

Good point. Maybe the respective authors could add some no referrer service to their links in case amazon checks the referrer id on their support form.

http://www.no-referer.de/

[bitcool]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html?ie=UTF8&skip=true

inquiry sent.
thanks for the useful link btw, I couldn't find this when I needed it last time. 

[Tuxavant]

ThinkGeek is a good target.  

Just sent this to them... Great idea D&T!

ThinkGeek:

I would like you to consider accepting Bitcoin as payment. There are about 8 million Bitcoins currently in circulation with a total value of about 50 million dollars ($6 USD per Bitcoin).

That is $50 Million dollars, held almost entirely by geeks and nerds that just WAITING to hand over their money for your very targeted products.

The advantage to ThinkGeek is a reduction in fraud/chargebacks, reduced PII requirements, reduced visa transaction fees (more profit for the company), and enormous free advertising and publicity - not just in the tech community, but the world as they watched the legitimacy of this new digital currency solidify under your acceptance.

[istar]

ThinkGeek is a good target.  

Just sent this to them... Great idea D&T!

ThinkGeek:

I would like you to consider accepting Bitcoin as payment. There are about 8 million Bitcoins currently in circulation with a total value of about 50 million dollars ($6 USD per Bitcoin).

That is $50 Million dollars, held almost entirely by geeks and nerds that just WAITING to hand over their money for your very targeted products.

The advantage to ThinkGeek is a reduction in fraud/chargebacks, reduced PII requirements, reduced visa transaction fees (more profit for the company), and enormous free advertising and publicity - not just in the tech community, but the world as they watched the legitimacy of this new digital currency solidify under your acceptance.

Great letter!

[BitcoinPorn]

I like that letter.   I think ThinkGeek is a decent enough target, though I don't like helping Memory Dealers competition , I definitely would try and swing for the fences making sure the message is understood that though Bitcoin has a market that fluctuates, as long as they use an instant service of some kind to exchange Bitcoin for cash on their end immediately, they will never have to care about the Bitcoin market at all, and get all the other benefits.

[SgtSpike]

Regarding Think Geek - what if we did a massive email campaign?  Each of us emails them our own written email (not a canned email like some petitions go), requesting that they accept Bitcoin, and also making a promise to spend at least $X equivalent of Bitcoins on their products if they do start accepting it?

[notme]

ThinkGeek is a good target.  

Just sent this to them... Great idea D&T!

ThinkGeek:

I would like you to consider accepting Bitcoin as payment. There are about 8 million Bitcoins currently in circulation with a total value of about 50 million dollars ($6 USD per Bitcoin).

That is $50 Million dollars, held almost entirely by geeks and nerds that just WAITING to hand over their money for your very targeted products.

The advantage to ThinkGeek is a reduction in fraud/chargebacks, reduced PII requirements, reduced visa transaction fees (more profit for the company), and enormous free advertising and publicity - not just in the tech community, but the world as they watched the legitimacy of this new digital currency solidify under your acceptance.

+ 100

I like that letter.   I think ThinkGeek is a decent enough target, though I don't like helping Memory Dealers competition , I definitely would try and swing for the fences making sure the message is understood that though Bitcoin has a market that fluctuates, as long as they use an instant service of some kind to exchange Bitcoin for cash on their end immediately, they will never have to care about the Bitcoin market at all, and get all the other benefits.

Memory Dealers is great, but we don't need monopoly protection.  There is plenty of difference in their product lines anyway.  Cash-out immediately really is they best way to sell bitcoin to medium and large sized businesses, at least in the short term.

[notme]

Regarding Think Geek - what if we did a massive email campaign?  Each of us emails them our own written email (not a canned email like some petitions go), requesting that they accept Bitcoin, and also making a promise to spend at least $X equivalent of Bitcoins on their products if they do start accepting it?

Good idea... perhaps start a bounty thread?

[Steve]

Regarding Think Geek - what if we did a massive email campaign?  Each of us emails them our own written email (not a canned email like some petitions go), requesting that they accept Bitcoin, and also making a promise to spend at least $X equivalent of Bitcoins on their products if they do start accepting it?

Good idea... perhaps start a bounty thread?

Multi-sig transactions will be great for bounties…imagine getting 5 people to participate in organizing a bounty for ThinkGeek to accept bitcoins for purchases.  After 6 months of accepting bitcoin for purchases, the bounty is awarded to ThinkGeek.  The 5 people would each hold a private key and funds would be sent to an address that requires 3 of the 5 signatures to spend (in case one person dies or loses a key…or if there is some debate about whether the bounty was satisfied).

[notme]

Regarding Think Geek - what if we did a massive email campaign?  Each of us emails them our own written email (not a canned email like some petitions go), requesting that they accept Bitcoin, and also making a promise to spend at least $X equivalent of Bitcoins on their products if they do start accepting it?

Good idea... perhaps start a bounty thread?

Multi-sig transactions will be great for bounties…imagine getting 5 people to participate in organizing a bounty for ThinkGeek to accept bitcoins for purchases.  After 6 months of accepting bitcoin for purchases, the bounty is awarded to ThinkGeek.  The 5 people would each hold a private key and funds would be sent to an address that requires 3 of the 5 signatures to spend (in case one person dies or loses a key…or if there is some debate about whether the bounty was satisfied).

+100

Will Bit-Pay be leveraging multi-sig in any interesting ways, or are you just focusing on getting merchants signed up for now?