I'm not going to say we were all guilty, but....

[nancylebov]

It looks like Amazon skimps on programming, management, and customer support. One of the reasons I shopped there is the good prices, and I bet I'm not the only one.

Comments

[kugelblitz.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw this way down in the comments area on one blog-

"Has anyone read this? http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/04/amazon-rank-kerfuffle-policy-change-glit....ars It was a glitch/prank. Quote: A couple of eagle-eyed observers have noted, however, that this "problem" was the result of an organized Internet prank. One LiveJournaler wrote about the incredible ease of gaming the customer feedback mechanism for reporting inappropriate books simply by sending around the URL to a successful complaint. "I know some people who run some extremely high traffic (Alexa top 1000) websites. I show them my idea, and we all agree that it is pretty funny. They put an invisible iframe in their websites to refer people to the complaint URLs which caused huge numbers of visitors to report gay and lesbian items as inappropriate without their knowledge," he wrote. Dely from SixApart further elaborated on this by reminiscing upon a similar incident that happened to Six Apart back in 2007 over "pedophile" content on LiveJournal (that mostly ended up affecting anyone who had sensitive keywords in their profiles). He theorizes that an organization or two may have decided to declare war on un-palateable topics on Amazon, and that the Internet outrage and boycott are the results of a massive troll. As for Amazon, the company isn't admitting whether it was punked. It is, however, taking measures to ensure it can't happen again. "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," Amazon told us."

[madfilkentist]

That URL is broken.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

The fellow who claimed to be the prankster has been debunked.

Missive from Amazon. FWIW

[kugelblitz.livejournal.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:

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot
make a little worse, and sell a little cheaper, and those who buy on price alone is this man's legitimate prey - attr. (apparently wrongly (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/quotation.html)) to John Ruskin.