VOICE

I found Amazon in the late ‘90s, and not because it was trendy. I found you because I had lost my driver’s license after a seizure.

I was going through a brutal divorce, and suddenly, after 20 years, my epilepsy showed up again. I had children who needed things — school supplies, shoes, groceries eventually, the thousand small items that keep a household running — and I could not legally get behind the wheel to go buy them.

Delivery wasn’t a perk for me. It was how I tried to stay independent, a functioning parent, during the most traumatic stretch of my life.

You were there for me. I have been a loyal customer ever since — nearly three decades now.

But I want to be honest about that loyalty: for millions of us, it isn’t really a choice. Especially given your labor practices.

People see an Amazon box on my doorstep and give me a hard time because I’ve been ‘shopping’. Little do they truly understand, most boxes have toothpaste, laundry detergent, and even basic medication I have to wait for because I cannot jump in a car to run an errand.

If you live with epilepsy and you can’t drive, Amazon isn’t convenience. It’s infrastructure. It’s the car we don’t have because we could never legally drive it.

Which is why your returns process has become a real problem. Somewhere along the way, returning an item started to assume a car. Drop it at the UPS Store, bring it to Whole Foods, take it to Kohl’s. Every one of those options requires the very thing that brought many of us to Amazon in the first place: the ability to drive.

For a customer who can’t, a “free and easy return” is neither.

Which raises a question I would genuinely like answered:

When these decisions were made, did anyone in the room ask what they would mean for customers with disabilities?

Did the disability community come up at all?

Did anyone consider what this change would cost us and how you might accommodate us?

From where I sit — a customer you’ve kept for almost thirty years precisely because of my disability — it doesn’t look like we crossed your mind.

So here is what I’m asking for — not for myself, but for the nearly 3.5 million Americans living with epilepsy, and everyone else whose disability means they can’t drive:

Create an accessibility accommodation for customers who can’t drive.

1. At-home pickup returns, at no charge, for customers with a qualifying accessibility need — the same drive who delivers the box takes it back.

2. An accessibility flag on the account, set once, so we don’t have to explain our medical situation to a chatbot every single time.

3. A commitment that “convenience” features get tested against one question: Does this work for a customer who cannot drive?

Amazon has the logistics network to do this tomorrow. Your drivers are already at our doors — pay them well and give them the time to knock, because for customers like me, that person is the whole company.

Your lavish events in historical European countries whose histories are in threat of being not cherished, but commercialized, are well… disgusting. But I’m trying to survive, not thrive.

You were there for me in 1998, when a seizure took my license and life was coming apart. Millions of people with epilepsy and other non-driving disabilities are in the same boat.

FYI - it’s a big fucking boat.

I’d genuinely love to talk about this — on the record, on our show, with someone from your company.

With respect and nearly thirty years of order history,

Kelly

P.S. I have been called ‘relentless’ as a compliment and otherwise. I will continue to follow up.

We believe in keeping things simple, smart, and human. Every project starts with listening and ends with something we're proud to share.