Amazon blues

[shewhomust]

Does anyone out there have any advice about how to persuade Amazon to remove reviews that are really (no, really) out of order?

Anne Fine wrote a book for children called Bill's New Frock: Bill wakes up one morning to discover that not only is he a girl, he is treated like one, and it is no fun.

Over at Amazon.com, "a reader" has got quite over-excited at this idea, and provided a couple of pieces of creative writing in the guise of reviews. To give you the flavour of the thing, one is entitled Its breast growing time Nicole!. And Amazon are not responding to on-line feedback asking for them to be removed.

In itself this is mildly amusing. But we are, or at least, durham_rambler is, responsible for Anne's web presence, and we know that a large number of children look her up on the net, so if anyone knows how to attract Amazon's attention, we'd be very grateful for advice.

Comments

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

That's a real shame. And I doubt there's any way to get Amazon's attention other than the online form. Maybe they're just slow?

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

No, not slow, stopped. I reported it well over a month ago. It's interesting that the response I got was "your vote has been counted". This is not a democratic exercise, it needs someone from Amazon to act on the complaint. That said, if Amazon are treating it as a vote-counting exercise then the more people that 'report this' the quicker they may sit up and pay attention.

I will write to them again, and I imagine that Anne Fine may herself get her US Publishers to take it up with Amazon. Watch this space.

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest that she get involved.
I reported a major problem with their product description of a recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (they had Spring listed four times. I guess they couldn't find any employee who could handle french, it being such an obscure language). They wouldn't change it, even when I provided them with the correct information.
And I don't think that ol' Antonio will be able to get his publishes to do anything about it. ;)

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Anne is now on the case.

And, er, Vivaldi was Italian. Though you knew that and your recording probably listed Printemps rather than La Primavera?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Someone's showing off here!

Result!

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

After writing direct to Amazon.com (rather than clicking their report this link) they have removed the offending reviews. This is what Amazon said:

Thank you for writing to Amazon.com to bring this review to our attention.

Please rest assured that these comments have been removed from our database and will disappear from the web site within 48 hours.

In the future, please report any review that you find inappropriate by clicking on the "report this" link.

We do exert some editorial control over our customer reviews and strive to block these kinds of reviews. Our intention is to make the customer review forum a place for constructive commentary and feedback, so reviews that fall outside these guidelines are either edited for compliance or are removed from the web site. Amazon.com does not tolerate profane or spurious customer reviews.

Again, I apologize for this situation and I'd like to thank you for taking the time to let us know. Feedback from conscientious individuals such as yourself helps us maintain the quality and integrity of our site.