HACKER Q&A
📣 MollyRealized

How do you report Bugzilla-type things to Big Tech like Amazon?


I don't think sitting down with some customer service rep gets it anywhere.

In my particular instance, when Amazon redesigned the Author Pages, they made the 'Sort by' not affect the URL anymore -- which means every single author page is now forever sorted by popularity, which means you can't bookmark a sort-by-newest.

So ... I can't get that message to anyone. Much like I couldn't get something to Google, or to Apple, or to Facebook, or so on.

And what I'm wondering is ... is there any sort of very well-hidden place for these Big Tech supergiants where you can actually file an issue or e-mail an address, but somehow legitimately pass along that someone in their org accidentally wiped out features?

Or is that stupid to even ask nowadays?

(I must admit, I am kind of hoping someone from Amazon will see this, make a little tweak, and that feature will come back. But ... that also shouldn't be the way it is.)

  👤 db48x Accepted Answer ✓
Basically you cannot. Big tech companies do not offer support or even a meaningful way to supply feedback. Bug reports are right out. Engineers don't get promoted for taking feedback or fixing bugs.
👤 rzzzwilson
Reporting actual technical problems is impossible, in my opinion. The only way to get through to an Amazon representative is via chat, and the frontline people there are tasked with solving customer problems with orders and the like. They are working off a script and it's very likely they don't have a mechanism to forward any problem report. Over the last ten years, at least, I've had a problem in the reader app with downloaded samples of e-books not able to be removed from the downloaded section or deleted overall. The chat people, following the script, tell me I have to select the item and got to the menu and select the menuitem for remove or delete. When I say that those menuitens aren't displayed I'm not believed, possibly. I've asked them to foward my report to someone technical, but nothing has ever changed. This state of affairs has existed in the app on both iPad and Android devices. To resolve the problem I just delete and reinstall the app, but I wish I didn't have to.