Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Why Amazon Sucks

So I won something the other day. Yep, me! I won a $10 gift certificate at Amazon. You can see the announcement here. I was very excited because I usually don't win zip!

I am now going to routinely buy my hazelnut coffee syrup from Amazon, provided I can find some that is decent. While I'm on that subject the Torani syrup sucks. It tastes like pancake syrup. If I wanted pancake syrup I'd buy pancake syrup. Pancake syrup is NOT hazelnut.

I'm going to try Oscar's and we'll see if it's any good. It's too bad because I really loved the DaVinci brand but it doesn't come in a discounted, economy sized, price nor do I get free shipping. Between DaVinci and Oscar's, it looks like Oscar's is much cheaper. Torani has dropped in price but it's probably because no one wants it!

The point of this is, that I am getting ready to make an order. Since I'm getting free shipping, I can use my $10 GC and as long as there is super saver shipping and it doesn't cost me a thing. Essentially I'm getting more for less.

Now I go to Amazon's Gold site where they have their specials. The picture below highlights what I found interesting on the page. If you click on the picture, it'll take you to a larger version.



Oh boy! DVDs are always fun.

I then click on the banner and it takes me to the page below. Now I know it's big, but that's important. When you look at it, see if you can see anything annoying about it. If you click on the picture, it'll take you to a larger version.


Well do you? To begin with, there is absolutely NO sort feature. I cannot sort them from lowest to highest. Get a load of how many freaking pages that is? See, I was under the understanding that Amazon WANTED customers, but evidently they could care less. They also obviously aren't interested in making a sale, because they're not making it easy to find what you're looking for.

Now let's look more closely at this page. As you'll note above, along the top are links which say,"All Titles, Under $10, $10-$20..." and so forth. Note which one is selected.

Then can ANYONE please explain to me why Amazon REFUSES to display ONLY Titles under $10? Take a look at the picture again below. What I'm speaking of is highlighted. If you click on the picture, it'll take you to a larger version.

See what I mean? Either the Amazon developers are really, REALLY, bad at math, or they just don't care. I'm betting on the latter rather than the former.

Here's a lesson in business practice for Amazon's developers: If you want to make money, make it so that users can find what they're looking for quickly. There are always other sites that sell what you sell. Once I use my GC, I likely will dump Amazon until they improve.

After all, Walmart now offers free site to store shipping, so.... well, you get the idea.

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