"a glitch in our systems"

Update: Powell's Books

Update: Describe the Ruckus

Update: #Amazonfail and the politics of anti-corporate cyberactivism 

Update: Very interesting post here. Seems it's all about the MetaData.

Well, I kind of expected to get up this morning (late - yay! cause my son has spring vacation this week) to find the blog world abuzz with Amazon's screw-up of amazonian proportions. Ranks, lists, I never paid them much attention before. But even so, they've had an effect. Yup. I'd sent them an email yesterday - from the point of view of someone who had searched for a book and had a hell of a time finding it. This actually happened to me several times. And not just in the last day. And not just once.

Back in March I was searching for Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories (links to Powell's Books) in order to write a review of it. Even typing in the full name with author of the book didn't get me to it. The first time it happened I had this brief flash of "what if they've removed it from 'their shelves' so-to-speak?" Naaaa. Then I thought I was just being stupid, obviously doing something wrong. 

Finally I went over to Rachel Kramer Bussel's site and clicked on her book link and that took me to the page. I typed in my review and after posting it, felt good. It wasn't my first review and I knew that sometimes it took time to get up. But then more than 48 hours later it still hadn't shown up. I sent them an email and suddenly my review showed up along with a response to my email.

Like I said, this happened several times. And was frustrating. So that's how I framed my email to Amazon - from the point of view of a "customer." Which I have been and won't be unless this is resolved to everyone's satisfaction. This was the response I got:

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us. We recently discovered a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed.

Thanks again for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

then all their click if helpful links and wait, wait, this is the best -

their sign-off - 

"We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company"
um, yeah, right. And if you believe that...

It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out. What's funny is that on Saturday I posted two reviews and they both showed up almost instantaneously. It's interesting, they rank reviewers too.