Abominazon strikes!

[herveus]

...specifically, the seem to have deemed a whole mess of books with LGBT content to be "adult" and thus not worthy of bearing an Amazon Ranking...

http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html says it with details and specifics.

Let the torches and pitchforks be gathered. This is one more reason I'm not in any rush to buy from Amazon.

Comments

[helwen.livejournal.com]

I'll be posting to my LJ.

[cryptocosm.livejournal.com]

I have an account with Amazon, having used them on rare occasion for things I couldn't find elsewhere. I just used it to send them a rather strongly-worded message that I regard this as intolerable. I wonder how they'll respond?

[wulfsdottir.livejournal.com]

I did likewise. I have doubts they're going to respond individually - the way the intertoobs are lit up, they're getting many such strongly-worded messages.

[cryptocosm.livejournal.com]

Surprise! I did get an individual response. Apparently the exact same individual response that everyone else got:
"Thanks for contacting us. We recently discovered a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed."

Yeah. Right. Sure.

We'll see.

[wulfsdottir.livejournal.com]

I got one, too! I replied that it had not adequately addressed my concerns.

[sylvene.livejournal.com]

Absolutely fascinating conjecture on what could have happened...

http://sbisson.livejournal.com/927640.html

Titled Why Amazon hasn't fixed things overnight. Linked off Neil Gaiman's journal: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/04/amazonfail-sunday.html

[cryptocosm.livejournal.com]

Latest word from Amazon:

"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."

I've checked, and the "Amazon Sales Ranking" that had been missing from the "Product Details" has reappeared in all the examples I looked at.

One may still have issues with Amazon, but they seem to have responded to the torches and pitchforks with alacrity and a certain degree of grace in this particular case.