I love Amazon – I think they have the best customer experience on the web. But this blurb on my empty shopping cart page sort of disturbed me:
Your Shopping Cart lives to serve. Give it purpose–fill it with books, CDs, videos, DVDs, toys, electronics, and more.
That sounds sort of sexual.
Actually there are a lot of things about Amazon I dislike. I don’t like the way it makes assumptions about what books I’d like crammed down my throat based on my purchase history, even when I tell it to forget the books it has listed as being the basis for my recommendations. Unless you order a gift using them to ship it to someone else, you are constantly pushed items that appeal to people you’ve bought books for, and not to you.
I agree that Amazon needs, if it’s going to use previous purchases to track things, an easy and effective way to disregard particular purchases. Indeed, what it needs to do is create wish lists for other people, so that you can do purchases through there.
As to the shopping cart … “Don’t mind me. I’ll be fine, here in the dark on this hard drive, empty and alone. You go ahead and just browse. I’ll (sniff) imagine what it would be like to have a purpose in life …”
When technology starts trying to guilt us, it’s time to see a counsellor.
I kinda like the idea that I’m passively tormenting some database server somewhere. Ha!
….until reading your post, I had no idea how much I have in common with AMAZON’s shopping cart..