Amazon fuckwittery

[spookyevilone]

I've just pulled my Amazon account.

Here's why

For the link phobic, they yanked the ratings systems from all "adult" themed books "to make them not show up on certain searches" - except it was only GLBT themed books.. and then books with GLBT characters. Many of which had no sexual content at all. Meanwhile, books that are nothing more than purple-prosed softcore porn - like Anne Bishop, Laurell Hamilton, and Poppy Z. Brite books - still have ratings.

I cry bullshit. I am angry. I will not do business with a company that pulls such blatant, bigoted bullshit. And I wrote and told them so when I pulled my account.

Comments

[belmikey.livejournal.com]

It's a shame your anger is directed at the wrong target.

Amazon has no reason to enact this as a deliberate policy.

[spookyevilone.livejournal.com]

Either:
1) It was deliberate, and therefore they don't deserve my money, or:
2) The biggest online book retailer was ill-prepared in the extreme to deal with a "glitch" before it became a public relations nightmare - and emails were sent to authors telling them it was deliberate instead of a reassuring "We don't know, we're working on it, please be patient!" and they don't deserve my money.

With the size of their web presence, I absolutely fail to believe that someone at the company wouldn't have hit the red button and mass-blasted emails with canned responses that reassured their users that it was not deliberate. Especially not when the AUTHORS started writing in. Yet, they didn't.

[belmikey.livejournal.com]

That just proves to me you've never worked for a large, publicly traded, company...

[spookyevilone.livejournal.com]

Um, I do. That's why I'm being so harsh on them. I know what MY company would do if a "glitch" like this happened. We have two entire departments set up - one of which monitors internet news - not news service news, word of mouth news - and if anything negative hits the waves, there's an immediate and public response.

When our customers write in, en masse, upset about something, the CEO gets online and answers.

Amazon did not. Their web presence is a billion times what ours is. There's really no excuse for how they handled - and continue to handle - this situation.