Amazon customers are taking aim at the e-commerce giant over its email etiquette.
Earlier this summer, some Amazon customers started seeing generic descriptions instead of exact ones in receipts and other order-related emails. An engine air filter for a car, for example, might now appear in the emails as an “automotive item” and require the reader to check Amazon’s website or app for more details about the order.
It’s a change that has drawn ire from some Amazon shoppers. Amazon made a similar change to its emails in 2020, but eventually rolled it back.
One Reddit post, for instance, has attracted 450 comments over the last two months, including many from Amazon users who take issue with the new system.
“I just noticed this today and I HATE IT,” one commenter wrote. “I order things both for work and home, on two different cards. Now I have to click through to see which is which when things ship? Lame.”
Other posters pointed to reasons that the change mattered to them, from managing businesses to budgeting apps that pulled the product information from Amazon’s emails.
Amazon made the change for privacy reasons, the company told Business Insider. It’s also designed to “direct customers to our app and website for the latest information on their orders,” a spokesperson said.
The change “reduces customer information shared outside the Amazon app and website to further improve customer privacy,” the spokesperson said.
Some customers have pointed to other possible reasons for the change.
Information about what customers buy online has long been a treasure trove for advertisers. It’s also become useful for training AI. Last month, for instance, Google agreed to pay $10 million for anonymized employee data, such as work emails and messages, from Spirit Airlines — information that could be valuable to the search giant, experts told Business Insider.
“I’m wondering if this is because they don’t want AI tools to be able to easily scrape sales data?” wrote one Reddit user on a post about Amazon’s change that attracted 162 comments.
The Amazon spokesperson said the change was intended to “help protect customer information” when asked whether the company was trying to limit what third parties could scrape from its emails.
One poster on a Github forum posted a message from an Amazon customer service representative, who said that the change was meant “to minimize the risk of package theft by not disclosing the specific contents of your shipment in publicly visible communications.”
The posted message, which Business Insider verified, also said that the less-informative emails “maintain confidentiality for gifts, surprises, or personal items you may not want others in your household to see.”
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the contents of the message.
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