18 January 2007

E-mail to Amazon

I have been growing increasingly irritated by Amazon and the changes they have made to their interface, in particular the use of information about Marketplace items. So I wrote an e-mail to them:

Comments:Dear madam/sir,

Whilst I have been very impressed with the redesigned search and item list interface, there is one issue that makes it at times almost unusable. A large number of categories are filled with Amazon Marketplace items. These items make it very hard to find genuine Amazon stock, often requiring that I look through several pages of items to find one that is relevant.

On a related note, the Wishlist shows prices not of Amazon stock, but of Marketplace items. Thus to discover how much an item will cost, I need to view the individual item page for each item rather than having the information displayed in a simple list as the Wishlist concept would seem to imply.

I have searched high and low through my account preferences, through the relevant screens, and through the on-line help but can find no suggestion of how to exclude Marketplace items from searches or the Wishlist.

I have no interest in buying second-hand items from sources who will never be able to match the reliability or trustworthiness of Amazon. I wish to buy first-hand stock from Amazon, yet the recent interface changes seem to make this strangely difficult.

Yours sincerely,

******

Their response was as follows:

Dear Customer

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk.

We appreciate that you've taken the time to send us your suggestion. I have passed along your comments to our developers; customer feedback like yours is essential in helping them determine what additional features our visitors and customers want most.

Thank you for shopping at Amazon.co.uk.