This story appeared on The Register website last week. Our eagle eyed Information Quality Crash Investigators only spotted it today. To read the original story please follow this link .

This is not the first time that Amazon has appeared in an Information Quality trainwreck – pricing issues on their sites a few years ago resulted in TVs and IPaqs being listed for substantially below their market price (link and citation for this to follow).

##########Amazon pushes sex toys to random punters########

As we all know Amazon push ‘recommendations’ to customers via their website and via email based on past purchases and browsing. It would seem that a ‘technical error’ resulted in an email being sent out just before Easter that very definitely failed to “meet or exceed end customer expectations”.

Customers received an email advertising (ahem) sex toys which featured images and text that some recipients found offensive. In particular recipients found the email offensive as at least one of them (and probably a lot more) had never actually shopped for items like that on Amazon. Amazon.co.uk’s apology makes interesting reading:

Amazon.co.uk promotional mailings are based on previous purchases and should only go to customers who have previously purchased items from a particular store. We are aware, however, that a ‘Sex & Sensuality’ promotional mail was erroneously sent to a small number of customers who have never purchased anything from our ‘Sex and Sensuality’ store.
We sincerely apologise to any customer who has received this promotional mail in error and for any offence it may have caused. We trust that the customers in question will continue to use Amazon.co.uk for their online shopping needs.

Amazon’s recommendations are, it seems, based on data they hold about your browsing and buying patterns on their site. While it is an irritation when they recommend a book you only bought a few months ago it can be highly offensive and embarassing when they quite simply get it wrong with their information.

Have any readers had experience with Amazon either recommending things they have already bought from Amazon… or even worse things they would never in a month of Sundays buy?