Amazon’s Website Snafu Undercuts Its Image as a Well-Oiled Machine

Who says there are no laughs in tech business news? Our scoop today that Amazon, the premier online retail website, was marking products made by big companies and foreign sellers with a label meant to denote small U.S. businesses has a comedic side (make sure you check out the anecdote about Chomps jerky). But there’s a serious angle here. Over a period of nearly 30 years, Amazon has won over shoppers by making it dead simple to buy things that get delivered within a couple of days. Mislabeling products as stupidly as Amazon has done lately doesn’t fit the company’s image as a smooth, well-oiled machine.

Of course, neither does Amazon’s website generally. Take a look: Visiting the homepage of Amazom.com is so dizzying nowadays that you have to wonder whether more people run for the virtual exits than stick around to browse. Ads for baseball games on Prime Video compete for attention with One Medical sign-up offers, Earth Day promotions, top deals, buy again nudges related to past purchases, and a mishmash of other ads. And that’s just the homepage. As we’ve written previously, searching for items on Amazon now generates lots of ads, making the online shopping experience frustrating.