0xDECAFBAD

It's all spinning wheels and self-doubt until the first pot of coffee.

Surprising "feature" at Amazon.com

Here's a mini rant about Amazon.com: Apparently, user accounts there are identified by some combination of email address and password. That is, you can login with the same email address, give three different passwords, and get three different sets of user data. Different wishlists, different shopping carts, the works.

Enter me: I've changed my password so many times at so many places that I've now got a dozen or so possibilities to try if I happen to forget what I'm using at a particular place.

I do this at Amazon with an ancient password and rediscover an even more ancient wishlist I'd started from back before they bought out CDNow. Kudos to them for migrating my list, which provided some nostalgia, but now I have to try to figure out which password takes me to more current stuff. I try another one, and I get a slightly newer abandoned wishlist of mine. Wow. Did I actually want some of that crap? Anyway, try again with a different password or two and I finally get to what I want.

Talk about surprising the user...

Archived Comments

  • Mad William Flint
    That would actually be pretty cool if it didn't sound like such a pain in the ass.
  • Greg Linden
    If you're curious, the reason that feature exists is because some people share e-mail addresses. It used to be very common back in the mid- to late-1990's, less common now. This feature allows you to have multiple different accounts for people sharing the same e-mail address. I can see how it could be annoying if you created multiple accounts accidently.
  • Stormy girl
    Oooh what was on the list?