Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Amazon Love/Hate

I was so proud of my review that I decided I might as well post it to Amazon--why not?

The page that allows one to preview the review correctly displays text markup stuff like italics. So thinking it was just as I wanted it, I published it. However, when the review showed up on the site, all the markups were annoyingly displayed throughout the text naked--wads of various characters and punctuation marks.

Once I tried to edit a review and the edits never showed up, so I thought instead of editing this one I'd just delete it and rewrite it with no text fanciness. However, when I tried to save that one, OOPS! I'm not allowed to write more than one review for a product.

And while it's easy to look up any product, it's hard as heck to navigate and find information on Amazon's own processes. I often just go to Google and look up whatever Amazon operation I want and get in from there, because Amazon sure as heck isn't going to help me navigate itself.

Stoopid Amazon.

3 comments:

Tim said...

Oh, I hear you sister. Since it's one of the book companies we use for buying items for the collection, I have to deal with their insanely undocumented Corporate Accounts section. It's amazing how successful a site can be even if it has such a poor Help structure.

argotnaut said...

A couple of things they need, off the top of my head:

Obvious SIGN IN/SIGN OUT near account tabs, instead of a little link with "Sign in to get _personalized recommendations_." At least link the "Sign in" part instead of "personalized recommendations," since it seems to be the only route to log in.

An easy way to get to friends' wishlists. How about, for instance, having them in the Wishlist tab? I mean, duh! I always have to poke around for ten minutes before I remember how to find them. And furthermore, they're inconsistent with use of "wish list" vs. "wishlist." Pick one!

It really is a godawful mess.

liz said...

Yeah, I want an obvious [abovious] link to that "home" thing, where it lists my reviews, friends, and so forth. I always have to poke around to find it, too.

My current method is to go to my wishlist, then follow the breadcrumbs to my "home".

(But there shouldn't have to be a hack to get to that, for cripes sake.)