Amazon Limits Customers Talking With Each Other
Written by Evan SchumanMarch 10th, 2010
With Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn leading the way, many retailers are experimenting with a wide range of approaches for creating common-interest communities for their customers, especially online. Of course, such actions start to shift some of the power away from the chains and to the consumer. Amazon last month made its first defensive move in trying to control that type of community. What Amazon did was change how it handles E-mail. Before, comments to a discussion forum would include a customer's real E-mail address. No more.
"Real buyer and seller E-mail addresses will be hidden by our systems. All sellers and buyers will be assigned an Amazon E-mail alias," said an Amazon statement. "This will enable both parties to continue communicating as they do today with standard E-mail providers (such as Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.). However, that communication will happen via their new E-mail aliases instead of their real E-mail addresses. All communication will be stored and available for review in case of disputes." This move is very interesting. From a brand-building perspective, there are few things better than sitting back and creating a huge room for tons of your customers to gather and talk about you.
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Christine
March 11th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
I actually like this idea, especially when I am buying my x rated videos … no need for the seller to know my real e-mail (just kidding).
My only comment is that I believe the discussion of “unnecessary contacts during claims investigations.” misses the point. I think Amazon is saying that if they are confident they have all the exchanges that occured between a buyer and seller there is no need to go back to either to gather additional information. Amazon already has everything that should be needed to resolve the issue.