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Apr. 14th, 2009 03:00 pmI move in the company of people far more eloquent and expressive than myself. Quotes and links to the writing of others about #AmazonFail:
Things like Amazon have largely obsoleted stores like Lambda Rising (New York, for example, has lost its gay bookstores) and lives and jobs like the ones Millie and I had back in 1990/1991. Blushing virgins no longer have to make embarrassing phone calls (but oh where shall people confess so to anonymous strangers? the Internet is not the same). Queers in Idaho no longer have to send handwritten notes on lined paper to place their yearly orders. But in the world of Amazon.com's we've lost something, and it's also why #AmazonFail hurts so bad.
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...it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors.
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Again, Amazon is full of very, very bright and very, very techno-savvy people, who would have warned their management what was up. Amazon management knew about the Twitter buzz hours before they responded. PR, waiting for (I'm betting) the right thing to say, and for permission to say it, wound up letting the wrong thing be said for them. And the final official was as "ham-handed" as the glitch. Some grovelling was in order, and "mistakes were made" isn't grovelling. As various people around the Web have been saying, this is going to be a classic case study in PR, and not the way the Tylenol poisonings are.
Regardless of exactly how this happened (tired code monkeys or vainglorious supposed hackers or total lack of oversight) the real problem is that it went on so long and was handled so incompetently. That kind of thing doesn't make me want to do business with a company.
I have worked with a market research company since I was eighteen. On almost every evaluation, there's a set of questions at the end they use to help classify their data. One of the questions asks if you have ever stopped patronizing a company because of their business practices, how long it's been, how many companies, etc. The next time I do one of those evaluations I think the number will go up by one.
Things like Amazon have largely obsoleted stores like Lambda Rising (New York, for example, has lost its gay bookstores) and lives and jobs like the ones Millie and I had back in 1990/1991. Blushing virgins no longer have to make embarrassing phone calls (but oh where shall people confess so to anonymous strangers? the Internet is not the same). Queers in Idaho no longer have to send handwritten notes on lined paper to place their yearly orders. But in the world of Amazon.com's we've lost something, and it's also why #AmazonFail hurts so bad.
&
...it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors.
&
Again, Amazon is full of very, very bright and very, very techno-savvy people, who would have warned their management what was up. Amazon management knew about the Twitter buzz hours before they responded. PR, waiting for (I'm betting) the right thing to say, and for permission to say it, wound up letting the wrong thing be said for them. And the final official was as "ham-handed" as the glitch. Some grovelling was in order, and "mistakes were made" isn't grovelling. As various people around the Web have been saying, this is going to be a classic case study in PR, and not the way the Tylenol poisonings are.
Regardless of exactly how this happened (tired code monkeys or vainglorious supposed hackers or total lack of oversight) the real problem is that it went on so long and was handled so incompetently. That kind of thing doesn't make me want to do business with a company.
I have worked with a market research company since I was eighteen. On almost every evaluation, there's a set of questions at the end they use to help classify their data. One of the questions asks if you have ever stopped patronizing a company because of their business practices, how long it's been, how many companies, etc. The next time I do one of those evaluations I think the number will go up by one.