I understand that anonymity can be important or at least more comfortable when buying things that are out of the mainstream, but I sure hope this demonstrates the importance of keeping your local retailers around. Buy from them whenever you can. Don’t just point and click online. You don’t know what you’ve lost til it’s gone.

Let’s hope Amazon’s retardathonic hambrain action is just a glitch (or at least that that’s their little euphemism for “Oh shit. ANGRY CONSUMERS. ABORT. REWIND.”) It’s beyond outrageous otherwise.

http://io9.com/5209403/amazoncom-banishes-queer-sf-writers-to-a-null-dimension

In which case – appropo Applebee’s comment – a little employee abuse would be amply called for…..

The Amazon user community deserves and should demand full disclosure of how this “glitch” came about and who was at the root of the problem.

The ideological commitments and consequent distortions of judgements of senior Amazon executives and managers should be researched by the community and disclosed an published as widely as the internet can accomplish.

This removal of sales rankings sounds a bit too Orwellian for my liking. People have tried to make those they think of as ‘undesirable’ disappear before…

In this ropey economic climate, you’d think they would want MORE customers, not piss off the ones they have.

http://tinyurl.com/dewrjs

You can also email them at ecr@amazon.com.

You can sign a petition against the new policy here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

You can follow the debacle on Twitter here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Amazon

And here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Amazonfail

and removing books like “American Psycho” from the lists

Nope – American Psycho is still ranked. The piece you quote was using that as an illustration of how arbitrary Amazon’s definition of “adult” seems (graphically violent serial killer novel = kid friendly; study of homophobia in the military = behind-the-counter material).

Anyway, Amazon is now telling journalists it’s just a “glitch” in their ranking system, not a new policy (despite what their representatives apparently told Probst), and promising to fix it asap. Twitter is not satisfiedwith that explanation, but regardless of why it happened, we do at least have a promise it won’t last.

Thanks for contacting us. We recently discovered a glitch in our systems and it’s being fixed.

The employees here at Amazon.com truly care about your experience with us and take great pride in the level of service we provide. Your loyalty to our company for the past 6 months is greatly appreciated, and this loyalty is one of the reasons I am attempting to correct an honest misunderstanding.

Although I understand that you requested your account be closed, I sincerely hope that my efforts to correct this misunderstanding have been satisfactory. However, if you still wish to close your account, please visit the following link to submit your request:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/rsvp/rsvp-mi.html

I hope that you will give us another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

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Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Sreedharan P.
Amazon.com
We’re Building Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company
http://www.amazon.com/your-account”

Hmm, what about that policy statement you put out when you made the changes, Amazon? “”In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.” Glitch, my lovely ass.
(Long comment is long, but I thought it was important.)

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23amazonfail