Since you can buy just about anything on Amazon, I’ve noticed lately that those little recommendation algorithms are slipping out of tune. Specifically, the “Buy Together With” recommendations that pop up when you’re viewing an item someone else may have recently purchased. Sometimes these recommendations are spot on and I really did want to buy a pack of decaf coffee pods with my regular coffee pods, thank you very much. But sometimes, and perhaps more often than not, I’m staring at the screen saying, “Really, Amazon? Really?!”
Like when I was checking out this cool New York motif mug and Amazon suggested I buy it with a coin bank. Perhaps this makes sense in a robotically comical way. Perhaps Amazon is thinking, “Well, if you’re going to New York, start saving your pennies!” or something equally cheeky and annoying.
Or, when I was looking at these outdoor lanterns and I was told to buy them together with this fancy watch…you know, so I can sit home late at night waiting for my boyfriend to come stumbling back from the bar and greet him at our well-lit doorstep to tell him exactly what time it is. Perfect!
But sometimes, Amazon, I just want to buy my cookware in peace, and not be reminded by your robots that this lasagna pan I’m thinking of buying would go great with a bowflex.
Really?
Don Schenck
on 25 Mar 08I think your lasagna purchase should send Amazon a package of “SHUT THE HELL UP WITH THE BOWFLEX ALREADY!”.
Great post, Sarah!
Thomas
on 25 Mar 08I can sort of guess what’s going on here. Those products you’re looking at like the coffee cup or lasagna pans? Barely anyone is probably buying them, and so there’s almost nothing for the recommendation algorithms to go on.
If only two people bought the lasagna pan, and one of them also bought a bowflex, well, that’s a pretty strong association between pan and bowflex.
Thomas
on 25 Mar 08Also, who’s Sarah?
Dirk
on 25 Mar 08Maybe the bots figure anyone who will drop $80 on a lasagna pan will be just as inclined to drop $2900 on a impulse Bowflex buy.
Akeem
on 25 Mar 08Thats pretty funny, I wonder if this could be spun off to its own website, when suggestive algorithms go wrong.
You forgot to add that Jeff Bezos is an investor in 37signals at the end of this post. :-)
Anonymous Coward
on 25 Mar 08Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is no longer an investor in 37signals.
SH
on 25 Mar 08Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is still an investor in 37signals, and we all think he’ll find this post pretty funny.
David
on 25 Mar 08@Thomas: Clearly, Sarah is the One Who Brings The Funny.
nate
on 25 Mar 08Best. Post. Ever.
whitneymcn
on 25 Mar 08I’m actually wondering if Amazon hasn’t made some changes to their recommendation engine recently.
I’ve blogged a couple of times over the past couple of years about my positive experience with their recommendation emails, and then in the last month or so things seem to have gone all pear-shaped: I’m getting emails that recommend that I buy a product to remain nameless because I’ve “shopped for electronics,” where I used to get recommendations for relatively obscure techno-ambient CDs because I’d already bought a specific relatively obscure techno-ambient CD.
Specifics are on my blog—you can search for “amazon” if you’re really that interested.
Mike
on 25 Mar 08I love this post! I’m just relieved it isn’t yet another DHH post about how much he and his girlfriend love their Mac Airs.
RJ
on 25 Mar 08Especially since the price points are so different…why would you add a $2,500 watch to an $35 light? Forget how different the products are – no one looking to spend $35 is even remotely interested in paying $2,500!
Anonymous Coward
on 25 Mar 08Sarah are you a latest team member @ 37s? What do you do?
carlivar
on 25 Mar 08What I find odd about those “paired deals” is you don’t really save anything. If I could save a couple bucks by buying “Summerteeth” along with “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” I might go for it, but the savings are usually like 8 cents. Yay.
DHH
on 25 Mar 08AC, Sarah does customer support and has been with us for about a year.
wvh
on 25 Mar 08My favorite so far: I was looking at a wine book, and Amazon suggested I also buy “The Only Wine Book You’ll Ever Need”.
http://jetfuel.vox.com/library/post/tee-hee.html
Joe Sak
on 25 Mar 08Uh yea same thing totally has been happening to me. They’re weird.
Will Langford
on 25 Mar 08One of the best posts in a long time! I have about 12 products on Amazon as I manufacture pet treats and supplements, I loved it when they recommended Over the Hedge on DVD with my products!
mkb
on 25 Mar 08Thomas has it. I’ve had to deal with the same problem.
GeeIWonder
on 25 Mar 08Bezos: time to pony up some cash for a Netflix-like challenge. It’ll be fun. It’ll be cool. It’ll be lucrative.
Bish
on 25 Mar 08Not exactly the same, but related: If you look up ‘adult toys’ you’ll find, er, quite an assortment, but what really made me laugh is that Amazon kept their ‘post a video review of this item’ suggestion on each product’s page.
Really, Amazon? Really?
Wolf
on 25 Mar 08The ‘Really, Amazon?’-moment struck me yesterday… either I’m one the few people who shops for single items but I don’t believe the ‘People also bought this’-percentages at all.
(see http://www.wolfslittlestore.be/dump/60percentbuy.png )
martin
on 25 Mar 08good to see some humor on this blog… i hope you’ll post more often, sarah!
Adam
on 25 Mar 08Ha. Thanks for the laugh, Sarah!
Amdy
on 25 Mar 08great post, I was laughing 10 minutes and more … I tried it with the lasagne thingy and amazon now suggested me the clock that you get offered by the lanterns. I mean this makes more sense than the bowflex ;-)
Marc Tiedemann
on 25 Mar 08C’mon you guys. Everybody know’s who Sarah Hatter is. Especially since she’s now officially listed under “who is 37 signals”. Stop being stupid – she wrote that she has a boyfriend and also wrote that she’ll be waiting for him at night when he gets home from the bar – which to me subtracts a lot of attractiveness off of a woman.
Ted
on 25 Mar 08How was it that Sarah was able to get her name listed directly after the founders in the “Who are 37signals?” box?
SH
on 25 Mar 08@Ted: It’s this magical conspiracy called “alphabetical order.” Totally crazy who gets listed after whom when you’re using it.
nate
on 25 Mar 08@SH: Oh… I assumed it was because you’re the one who brings the funny.
Dan
on 25 Mar 08Amazon recently recommended two items for me because I said I owned a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser:
OS X Leopard http://www.sinch.net/images/bioshock-recommendation.png and Bioshock for the XBox 360 http://www.sinch.net/images/osx-recommendation.png
The funny thing is I’ve bought so many other things that are related to those two items but it was the magic eraser (which I didn’t even buy on Amazon… just marked that I owned it in the little rating thing) that somehow set off the official recommendation.
Ted
on 25 Mar 08@SH:
How is that alphabetical ordering? It’s neither by the first name nor last name.
Or at least, I never remember Buck coming after Hatter or Sarah coming before Ryan.
In case I’m confused, the listing is below in order:
- Jason Fried,
- David Heinemeier Hansson,
- Sarah Hatter,
- Ryan Singer
- Sam Stephenson
- Matt Linderman
- Mark Imbriaco
- Jeremy Kemper
- Jeffrey Hardy
- Mr. Jamis Buck
SH
on 25 Mar 08They are listed alphabetically by city grouping, Ted. Regardless, what does it matter? Why is is so important to you how our names are listed on our own website?
dusoft
on 25 Mar 08Ted: stop trolling, please. What does it matter who comes third in the list. Moreover, leave it up to 37 signals to decide.
Don Schenck
on 25 Mar 08It’s Alphabetically by Height.
Sheesh … you’ve obviously never been in the military. PJ’s RULE!
carlivar
on 25 Mar 08Wow, first troll-feeding I’ve seen on this blog I think.
Carl Youngblood
on 25 Mar 08I think I might have figured out the bank and the mug thing. A lot of people store their coins in mugs, so maybe there have been some customers who bought mugs and coin banks at the same time. Just a guess.
Angie McKaig
on 25 Mar 08Sarah, the lasagna pan totally clinched it. Thanks – I needed that laugh!
Ross Patterson
on 25 Mar 08That’s a great coffee cup! My sister gave me one for Christmas, and it burns your fingers just like the real thing!
Manuel, Æstheticrew
on 25 Mar 08Sorry for being off-topic here, but could “Jamis” also be taken as a girls name, or why is he listed as “Mr. Jamis Buck” and not just “Jamis Buck”? Or is this just a personal preference?
I am not trying to be funny, i am just curious.
PS. I think the alphabetcial/city group mashup listing makes perfect sense. Nice touch.
Michael Long
on 25 Mar 08That’s part of Amazon’s Paid Placements program. Basically, anyone can spend money to attach any of their products to the coat-tails of someone else’s product.
So in actuality people are doing that, and it’s not Amazon’s recommendation system.
GeeIWonder
on 25 Mar 08@Michael Wow. So poor suggestions are a design decision? Yeesh.
Kevin
on 26 Mar 08Back to the topic at hand… I think that portion of Amazon.com product pages is actually a sponsored listing, where someone chooses a pairing and gets money if you buy the two things together. Not that that explains what they chose to put together, but I don’t think its algorithmic.
Jeff Atwood
on 26 Mar 08You can officially close the thread now, because I’ve got the best inappropriate Amazon “related item” ever.
My wife does a lot of craft projects in her spare time, so she was searching for “beads”.
In the related items—and I am not making this up, I have the screenshot to prove it—Amazon offered her a delightful set of Anal Beads.
Not new Anal Beads, either. Used Anal Beads.
Again, I swear on the bible and my mother’s maiden name I am not making this up in any way. My wife wasn’t happy about it, either.
Dave Rosen
on 26 Mar 08Sarah – rock on! Great to see your posting on svn now.
Don Schenck
on 26 Mar 08Jeff wins.
CJ Curtis
on 26 Mar 08I think Amazon has become little more than a third-party broker for everybody’s crap…even books.
My last two book orders from Amazon included five titles. All five came from individual vendors…none came from Amazon (ya know, the little smiley face box).
But here’s the best part. One of the titles came with a vendor’s invoice in it. It was a used book that I paid around $12 for…the invoice said $1.56 or something like that. Talk about a seller’s markup.
Patricia Garcia
on 26 Mar 08Okay, Sarah you made me laugh, but than I caught myself saying “Really, Sarah?” and had to see for myself the lasagna pan. It was paired with a pot of the same color. Than I realized this was a satire.
Keep the funny posts coming.
SH
on 26 Mar 08@Patricia, aren’t satires usually, I don’t know, make believe? If that’s the case, then this post hardly qualifies.
Robert
on 26 Mar 08Amazon have gone a little off the rails, to my mind… I used to feed them gluttonously. Purchases, Amazon Prime, spend hours honing my “recommendations”.
Then my wife decided she’d buy me an Epson Stylus Photo R1800 for Christmas (great printer btw). What a travesty.
She signed up for an Amazon card. Approved with an initial limit of $400, or so. Fine. Pay the balance on a second card. Oh no, you can’t do that. You’ll have to buy a gift certificate. If we must, sure. All good, we think.
An hour later – “Your card has been declined”. Uhh? You just issued me a card with a $400 limit, I charged $400 to it and it’s declined?
On the phone to Amazon: sure enough, they put a $1 pre-auth on the card, so $399 is the balance. Are they able to do something about that in the interim, so I can get my Christmas present. “Oh no, you’ll have to speak to the bank.”
Uhh.
More screwing around on Chase’s (Amazon Visa provider) part about doing something about it. End result, no can do. Fine.
Problem. Card charge still not going to be approved. We have to cancel order, on phone with Amazon support.
We then cannot re-order because the system has “forgotten” that we have an Amazon Visa card (you don’t get access to the actual 16 digit number until you receive the physical card), but eventually someone works something out, is able to re-do things. We have to buy a SECOND gift card to cover this discrepancy, and in conjunction with the CSR, we re-order the printer. Yay.
Or not. An hour later, “Your card was declined.” Manage to get through again, of course, another pre-auth. “Available balance: $398”. Ye gods.
Back on the phone with Amazon (this was now the next day). We go to place the order with the CSR working through these issues on the phone. Problem. Item is coming from external merchant (seems like almost everything does these days, as noted by CJ, even books). When we placed the order? Shipping would be fine for Christmas. Now? Big warning: “Your product is unlikely to arrive until Dec 26 or later”.
Gah.
Amazon CSR and CSR manager’s helpful suggestion?
We, as the customer, email the merchant, and ask that they expedite shipping, at their expense, for an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with them, other than their choice of Amazon as an outlet for their products. Not that Amazon ask them, or cover the shipping upgrade themselves (they flat out refused that, though they acknowledged that the system in place a) did not account for the fact that someone might actually use their new account straight away, and b) that imperfections in the system caused us to spend two days trying to get this printer ordered through them).
So here I am, writing a humble email saying etc, etc, that it wasn’t their fault, blah blah blah.
Of course, in the intervening time, the CSR has recreated the order, and I eventually get an email from the confused merchant who asks “I can’t see your order in our system, why are you asking us to pay expedited shipping for a problem that isn’t our fault, when you’re not actually buying a printer from us?”
Amazon CSR had found another merchant who could deliver by Christmas and re-placed the order… but for the fact that that would be $40 more in shipping – not that they were intending to pay.
Long story short? I got the printer – and it is gorgeous – for Christmas, by Christmas…
No thanks to Amazon, though.
Adri
on 27 Mar 08Man, that was a real bummer to the end of the thread. I took the time to read all those only to find that unfunny-ness above. Talk about strange pairings…
nIC
on 27 Mar 08The pairing of the lasagna dish with the bowflex is pretty logical – if you’re gonna eat lasagna reguarly, you’re probably also gonna need to exercise regularly to, eh, keep the weight down, so why not buy some gym equipment at the same time…
Globetro
on 27 Mar 08The NYC coffee cup + coin bank actually makes a lot of sense. I believe it’s part of the “NYC Panhandler Set”, except they forgot to add the Windex and pile of old newspapers.
James Hill
on 27 Mar 08Ha, I wrote about this sometime last year, when I had a similar experience. Amazon suggested I buy a hair dryer with my juicer! very practical.
Petrus Pennanen
on 28 Mar 08These are great examples of where social recommendation algorithms go wrong. Another one was a couple of years ago when Walmart recommended “Planet of the Apes” next to Martin Luther King biography.
This is because standard social recommendation algorithms don’t analyse the content, they just look at correlations in buying patterns which become random for the “long tail” of items.
At Leiki ( www.leiki.com ) we base our recommendations on analysing every content item and user interests with 60k+ category ontology, which works perfectly for just a single user.
This discussion is closed.