Talk:Amazon.com

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[edit] Hack sentence

"Amazon was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos refers to as his "regret minimization framework," i.e." would someone like to try to fix this?--LAgurl (talk) 09:52, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Original Research"

White 720 flagged a recent edit from me as needing a citation/original research. How do I provide a citation when *I* am the source of the information. I was the 2nd employee at Amazon.com, and my information does not come from "sources" but from actually being there. What to do?

151.199.255.38 16:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The thing to do most probably is to remove it from the article. As an encyclopedia we don't publish facts that people know or have experienced, only ones that have already been published in a reliable source. If you've provided the information to an author or a newspaper reporter and they've included it it in something they've published then you can probably use what they've published as the citation. But the simple, unsupported, personal experience of authors isn't suitable material for Wikipedia. This is often a bit shock to new editors - wikis seem like a great way to be able to add to the record and let people know what you know - and some wikis are designed to let you do just that. But Wikipedia isn't one of them. As one of our core policies states The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- SiobhanHansa 17:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
I didn't mean any disrespect by flagging your edit as original research. As a current Amazonian I certainly like knowing more about the company's history. There have been a few books published about Amazon's history. Or, you could publish a site about the company in a credible, verifiable way, and cite that. White 720 17:58, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
I thoroughly understand the point. The problem here is that verifiability is moot if I am the source of the claim in the cited work (e.g Get Big Fast, Spector, 2002). We can add that citation, but its no more verifiable by doing that, because I am the only source Spector cites in the book. The problem is that if you don't want to include the comment I added, you should probably remove the entire claim about the business plan, because it too is unverifiable. If you dig into its history, it emerged in a hack journalist story on Amazon.com early on in the company's life, and ended up becoming part of the company legend. There is no actual evidence anywhere (and probably there could not be until Bezos' death, if then) for the claim that the plan was written on the road. Even the original (print) article in which this claim first surfaced publically did not attribute the claim to Bezos or his wife. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.199.255.38 (talk) 22:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


I think the Spector book is a better source to cite. If you can remove information of dubious origin that would greatly improve the article. Several editors have recently trimmed some of the fat from this admittedly long article, and some expert opinion would be greatly appreciated on this anti-elitist site of ours. White 720 06:37, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please clarify

The article lead paragraph says

but it made its first annual profit in 2003

Did it never make a profit before that? Or is it the first profit after the bubble burst. --Kushalt 22:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

2003 was the first annual profit for Amazon. It had previously made a quarterly profit in 2002 2001, but 2003 was the first full year in which Amazon was profitable overall. Before the bubble burst Amazon had never been profitable. White 720 01:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split off products and services?

I think we need to split the list of products and services into another article at this point. The main article is 42 KB and a large amount of space (at least vertical space) is in the products and services section of this article.

Alternatively, since so many products and services are already covered by their own articles, would it hurt to collapse them from subsections down to a bulleted list or something else smaller? White 720 (talk) 01:16, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

As you noted, the main problem is vertical space, not actual bits. A possible solution to this issue is to make the timeline into prose. Superm401 - Talk 08:13, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gift cards for downloads

Re: "As of December 28, 2007 it is not possible to use gift cards to purchase MP3s even though the gift card FAQ claims "Yes, Amazon.com gift cards can be used to buy Amazon MP3 and Unbox downloads" " - strictly speaking, this is a false statement as it was possible to pay for orders with a gift card at that time (and now). One person already removed that line but it was reverted. Is there a good way to go about providing verification? LwoodY2K (talk) 01:42, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I bought an mp3 with a giftcard on December 24th. I had some remaining giftcard value in my account from a previous purchase and the cost was subtracted directly from that balance. 168.7.228.22 (talk) 10:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Amazon MP3

Does anyone else think there should be a separate article for Amazon MP3? I think it is sufficiently verifiable and notable. Superm401 - Talk 08:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Just started one; help out if you can. Amazon MP3 White 720 (talk) 19:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Controversies section

The Controversies section has a number of problems, including several items which pose verifiability and reliable sourcing issues, and several which do not really constitute a notable controversy, or are given undue weight. This includes:

  • Patent infringement: completely unsourced.
  • Shipping destinations: not a controversy, just an unremarkable local compliance issue.
  • Labor relations: UFCW and CWA organizing attempts and results unsourced, and not particularly controversial.
  • Treatment of third-party sellers: completely unsourced and unverifiable; only reference is made to an unidentified source on a sellers' forum site.
  • Chris Benoit DVD: minor incident sourced to an opinion article on a wrestling web site.

Wikipedia is not a soapbox for airing grievances against companies and organizations. Unless these can be edited to satisfy Wikipedia's verifiability and sourcing policies, they will need to be removed from the article. --MCB (talk) 21:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The changes have been made. --MCB (talk) 06:03, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, it needed change.—DMCer™ 18:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BookSurge

I've added a brief mention of the current BookSurge controversy. The supplied reference ("Writer's Weekly") also lists 76 further articles on the net on this subject, and 11 ongoing discussions on the subject - so far. I trust that this counts as sufficiently controversial! :) If this story continues to develop, it might accumulate enough information for it to be worthwhile giving BookSurge its own separate page once again. ErkDemon (talk) 10:38, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Amazon.at

I just noticed the removal and re-instatement of information stating that Amazon has an Austrian website. This appears to be true, but it does redirect to the German (that is, .de) website. I thought this was worth pointing out. The Baroness of Morden (talk) 19:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, amazon.ch also exists and redirects to .de. The difference is that amazon.at actually has a different logo. It's pretty much a cosmetic change, though; Austria doesn't even appear on the "list of international sites" in the footers of most pages. White 720 (talk) 22:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Search Inside feature - disabled?

It seems, as of March 2008, that the Search Inside feature of Amazon.com has been disabled. Previous titles open to the Search Inside feature have been replaced with the Look Inside one. This doesn't seem to have happened, for example, in the British site for Amazon (Amazon.co.uk), but only at the American one (Amazon.com). Bkkm (talk) 01:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

It was probably a temporary change. Things seem to be back to normal now. Bkkm (talk) 23:26, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Amazon vs Walmart

Amazon has a unique problem. Their web site attracts a whopping 615m visitors annually (200 per cent of Walmart). It means their technology bills are gigantic. But the company's total revenues are just over $14 billion (4 per cent of Walmart). It means their invoices are miniscule.Anwar (talk) 18:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Could someone please help me?

  • Amazon.co. and .co.uk no longer load for me. And 'm sure it's not just at high traffic times, it just no longer loads at all. Any ideas? Thank You. --Cokeandpoprocks (talk) 20:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Alas, that's not a question for a Wikipedia talk page. Try contacting your Internet service provider or local network administrator. --MCB (talk) 20:39, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Alas, Cheer the fuck up! I asked you nerds in good faith

--Cokeandpoprocks (talk) 16:05, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Try https://www.amazon.com - the secure site is still up as of this post. I'm sure the normal one will be back soon. -75.148.93.109 (talk) 19:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)