Good apology, wrong mistake

[rabidsamfan]

I just got this from Amazon.com

Hello,

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.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here: (link redacted)
If not, click here: (link redacted)

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Anil k
Amazon.com
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company
http://www.amazon.com/your-account

The "if not" link, which I clicked, got me a page that said it would be best to talk to them (I redacted it because I think it was account specific), and I must say that when I gave them a phone number, I got a call immediately. So I talked to the poor put upon customer service rep (who was amazingly cheerful after what has had to have been a very long day) and explained that it wasn't a cataloging error that caused the problem. It was a policy problem. The moment you start to censor materials by a category as vague as "adult", you've left yourself open to making mistakes.

As long as Amazon has any materials which do not get "ranked", they are susceptible to this kind of error happening again. I put it as simply as I could. If you sell it, you should rank it. Anything less corrupts the viability of the statistic and the usefulness of the database.

Comments

[belleferret.livejournal.com]

Let me see if I understand this: They admit they are deranking some books due to content. The "glitch" resulted in too many books being deranked. They are correcting the "glitch" but not the policy of not ranking some of books they sell.

Is that right?

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

That's what it looks like. Which is why I made a further complaint -- if they were correcting the problem globally (by restoring all rankings) they wouldn't have to go item by item.

[dreamflower]

This link I got from ellen_kushner may explain some of it. I don't really understand the technicalities, but apparently it was the work of a troll:
http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*shakeshead*

A, the troll's method has been shown to not work and
B, if Amazon didn't have a policy that made some books unranked, even if the troll's method did work, it wouldn't have had any effect.

Root problem is still the policy of taking the ranks off of "adult" material.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

what a mess all and all! *shakes head* I hope it gets resolved because...well...I will miss my Amazon if it doesn't!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

My main consolation in this is that they seem to understand that this is being viewed universally as a screwup. My main worry is that they won't understand what it actually will require to keep the problem from reoccuring. (i.e., a spine.)