More #amazonfail -> #sorryamazon

[ravan]

AmazonFail: An inside look at what happened. I believe this - it checks with what can and has happened, including the stuff about programs being global, plus the trouble ticket type. The catalog stacks for the stores are separately indexed, but books are books the world over.

Just the search part has workers in 5 countries that develop and monitor it. That is smaller than the catalog part.

Not malice, or anti- anything. Just a regular guy, probably working late before a holiday weekend, who fat fingered a checkbox and didn't proofread his submission before he committed it.

So please, go back to buying from Amazon - I still own stock!

Comments

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Have they made a full apology yet?

I know they've admitted that they screwed up, but have they said they're *sorry* for the screwup - not just acknowledged that a fuckup happened?

[mdlbear]

I still don't believe it. It's been happening since February, apparently, and the de-ranked books make up a pretty well-targeted list.

Yeah, said employee might have been sent a list of books that had been complained about, and checked them off without bothering to notice that all the titles were in a language he couldn't read, but I'm not buying the "just a glitch" excuse.

[ravan.livejournal.com]

Not a glitch - a ham fisted error. Plus, I think that hack-trolls have been trying to game the system with the user reporting system. I also figure they're still figuring what all went on.

The cause for the large numbers of books I believe - the person would not lie, and he'd know. They are still looking into the rest. The fact that search system naively accepts the "adult" flag will probably be quietly fixed, too.

It's human error, compounded by programming assumptions.