PC World – Spam Law Test (circa 2004)

Amazon.com, which continued to send e-mail after our opt-out request, acknowledged the error. A spokesperson blamed a technical aberration, which the company tells us has since been corrected.

I suspect the spokesperson for Amazon was spouting a bunch of b.s. They still ignore opt-out requests. I hate to be so brutal as to flag Amazon.com email as spam, and, in truth, I really can’t as long as there’s the remote chance that I might one day have affiliate earnings. I’ll just have to create a special filter.

I don’t buy anything from Amazon. The expulsion of gas in your face when you try to stop their marketing emails is one reason. The second is that they rely too much on a hyper form of business intelligence that is constantly in your face when you visit their site. “We noticed you bought this book back in 2003, three people on your street bought this CD, and eight people who went to your school just bought these. Therefore, we think you might be interested in X, Y, and Z. We hope you find our attempts to live inside your brain useful!” Actually, no, I find it all wholly obnoxious. I actually expressed a similar opinion with much rosier words back in June 2005 when I interviews with Amazon in Seattle. Some exec asked me for my honest opinion on something I wish Amazon did better. I told her I thought their site was way too cluttered. I don’t know if I didn’t get the job because of that answer or because I did a poor job of explaining when I would use an array and when I would use a hash. Being proficient at Perl really wasn’t a significant job requirement, but I was interviewed by a Perl geek who seemed appalled by my ignorance. (Not getting the job is not a reason why I don’t shop at Amazon. I’m pretty comfortable with the first two reasons).