I Guess Amazon Sent The Same Response To Everybody Who Complained About Their Sales Ranking Shenanigans…
Tuesday, April 14, 2009Posted in: Amazon behaving badly?, Amazon's God Complex, AmazonFail
Read thusly:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.
Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.
Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.
Sincerely,
Customer Service Department
Amazon.com
Hmmm, maybe it was an error, maybe not. Who knows?
Are all the sales rankings restored now?
Cindy
April 14
7:49 pm
I guess it depends on their definition of error. Was that an oops, we tried to force people to read what we say and they didn’t like it? Or oops! The computer threw a fit.
Teddypig
April 14
7:59 pm
Yeah sure!
Can I point out that database glitches generally do not come with response letters from the actual company reps stating something to the tone of “this was a policy change so you are shit out of luck you pornographic gay memoir author”.
Database glitches also generally tend to break most everything else not be a gradual escalation over time with indications of a weeding process while other parts of the web site on the same database OMG surprisingly continue to function exactly the same as usual.
sallah
April 15
1:01 pm
I think it was someones bright idea, “hey, lets make a filter system that will make sure that the far right conservatives who want a Bill OReilly book won’t be offended by the sight of the gay books”, that snowballed with unintended consequences.
This crap happens at my husbands work all the time, where one simple line of code has unintended consequences.. My guess is that it was an intended change, it just wasn’t meant to be the clusterf@#k it turned into…
I do a lot of shopping with Amazon, and I am not sure what I am going to do now… I buy more than just books from them
Lolita Lopez
April 15
7:25 pm
This response totally irked me. I hate receiving canned responses, especially when they don’t even address my complaint or question. As to the glitch, oh yeah, Amazon, I really believe that since it’s been happening since, oh, February. Also if it was a glitch, why were authors receiving emails informing them of a new “adult content” policy? Whatever. I’m a strictly Powells or B&N girl now.