Apr. 13th, 2009 at 10:30 PM
I consider this a semi-apology
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
There was a fabulous post somewhere about the difference between fake and real apologies. I couldn't find that one (anyone have it?) but Seth Grodin has a pretty reasonable apology ranking, and I think Amazon's was about a 7: "We're sorry that this occurred." Better than "glitch", but not really addressing the issues of how someone somewhere can set a configuration switch to change their entire ranking systems.
And now that we know how much Amazon can manipulate the best-seller lists and search results, and how many books are sold through them, it's time to think more about one company having that much power.
Comments
There's so much more that went on with this issue, that to cover merely the alert and correction phase and call it a day in terms of reporting is laughable at best, muddying at worst.
Half the responses to the article think it was a problem of a few hours and are wondering why everyone got so upset. No mention in the article of the responses from customer service to the authors, no mention of the fact that certain subject matter seems to be targeted to kept out of the public ranking system.
I agree 100% with your final statement. This whole thing shook me out of my comfort zone and made me take a second look at that as well.