I emailed Amazon and told them to delete my account. I was very pissed at reading that and even more pissed off when I heard they were trying to pass it off as a glitch.
I'll be ok with them if they knock it off and issue a formal apology. Every internet business goes through this at some point. They think they can impose some kind of assbackwards set of so-called "values" on their customers, so they try it. And then their customers fuck them in the ass, toss them out the window, and take their business elswhere. Then the business freaks out, takes it back, and everything goes back to normal.
I was very annoyed that they tried to lie to cover their asses. I mean, they had sent out emails explaining their new "policy" to authors whose works were affected, and those authors kept screencaps. Clearly, no one was going to believe the lie.
If/when they issue a proper apology for their asshattery, I will consider shopping there once more. And even though it's the same company, I'll feel better spending my money at amazon.ca because when the shit went down at .com and the "homosexual" search was turning up "How to Prevent Homosexuality in your Child" and crap like that... .ca's top result was "The Gay Man's Kama Sutra". *snorts*
This (http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html) is the possible explanation that I like best. I can forgive them if this is it. What concerns me most is that Amazon hasn't really made any statement yet, beyond calling it a glitch. They need to communicate about this if they want to save their asses.
One of the amazon!fail links that went up on Sunday had the executive customer service email addy for Amazon, so I wrote to them there. I got this reply back yesterday, for what it's worth:
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
Of course, while this apology mollified me somewhat, it goes against the hacker claim to suggest it was a cataloging error. But this kind of apology is what they need to make public. We're sorry, we realize that there was a significant GBLT portion affected, but it wasn't excluded to that, we're sorry, we're fixing it.
THEN I'll be happy and willing to shop there again.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 05:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 05:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 05:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 02:14 pm (UTC)If/when they issue a proper apology for their asshattery, I will consider shopping there once more. And even though it's the same company, I'll feel better spending my money at amazon.ca because when the shit went down at .com and the "homosexual" search was turning up "How to Prevent Homosexuality in your Child" and crap like that... .ca's top result was "The Gay Man's Kama Sutra". *snorts*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-14 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-14 08:39 pm (UTC)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
Of course, while this apology mollified me somewhat, it goes against the hacker claim to suggest it was a cataloging error. But this kind of apology is what they need to make public. We're sorry, we realize that there was a significant GBLT portion affected, but it wasn't excluded to that, we're sorry, we're fixing it.
THEN I'll be happy and willing to shop there again.