Even if you look at your purchase history now they have intentionally destroyed that too. What size shoe did you buy 3 years ago? Too bad we are not telling you!
The purchase/shipped/etc email was the lifeline to tracking your Amazon spending and exactly what you bought. Now that is impossible. It's similar to a business refusing to give you a proper receipt and should be likely illegal.
What 3rd party companies I let hoover up my Amazon purchase emails is none of their business.
I’m not sure if it’s been redacted from there, but try to do a request for a full data export, it might have the detailed data.
I overall try to do that for all online services I use around once every six months or so, lots of interesting data in them.
Literally just discovered this was broken today. I was looking for the length of the bike valve stem I bought 2 years ago and was incredibly disappointed that they don’t tell me, even on the invoice.
What’s the why behind this? Is this to give them license to say “No, you ordered X, even though you think you ordered Y. So, we sent you X.”
Not really having this issue looking through the last 10 years on my account? 1-2 dozen pairs, all have the size info available. Invoice histories seems proper enough - they have the product titles, costs, and seller info but not the entire descriptions.
I went and looked at order confirmation emails from 2019 and confirmed my memory that back then they didn’t list what items I ordered (but did a few years before). At the time I figured this change was intended to fight against Paribus, a startup that would scan your email and automatically request compensation for late Amazon deliveries.
But then I looked at emails last year and Amazon was sending item names after order again. So it seems like this practice has changed multiple times.
I ascribed it to the likes of Google vacuuming all this data at scale from gmail service -- which Amazon actively wanted to avoid (gifting free data to Google to train on and potentially advertize Amazon-alternatives to via personalized/targetted ads based on purchase patterns and preferences)
I worked at Shopify during this period and their Shop app (the one that helpfully tracks your packages arriving) was a victim of these emails becoming vague.
At the time it felt like a specific reaction to Shopify mining this information to compete. (I have no insider knowledge if they were or were not).
Of course, the answer can be many things -- now it's AI, back then it was 17track, Google, Shopify, etc.
For the sakes of individual humans, who unfortunately don't know everything, I wish some of these things would be gamed out beforehand and mooted without dragging us pawns through the accelerating conflicts of giants. I'm not asking for central planning, just recognition for distributed impacts without waiting three election cycles and forgetting everything again.
There is a secondary, more nefarious purpose, near as I can tell. I constantly order items from Amazon that say "arriving tomorrow/Tuesday/etc." then the item invariably doesn't actually arrive when it was supposed to, often outside of Prime 2 day shipping even if a Prime item. But when you go to view the order online it has helpfully updated the arrival date to the new day. They push it as many times as they want to, then act dumb if you call them on it.
I've taken to screenshotting the initial shipping date, but it doesn't make much difference. I don't know what "Prime" even means anymore.
And I live in SF so it's not like there is some logistics problem with my location, either.
They’ve been doing this for a while now and it’s one of the main reasons I have believed that Amazon Prime is a money grab if you live in a moderately populated metro area.
Looks like you haven't seen what they've done with Order Search. Being a customer since 1994 (yes, when they just came out as a neat way to buy books online), my order history has been an invaluable reference allowing me to find that thing I bought 5 years ago, its specific and the price I paid. Now, instead of a good old substring search, they do some kind of insane fuzzy search which comes up with hundreds of absolutely irrelevant results. They've made it completely unusable.
But I'm sure a good bunch of people got promoted for "enhancing" the search with AI...
Good example of where user agents will need to be more proactive in areas like this to collect and store information useful to the user. In the accelerating "optimization" of online commerce (and discourse) more relations will become aggressively adversarial.
Whenever I order anything from Amazon (or anywhere else online), I Print-to-PDF a copy of the order receipt and keep it on my own computer; I've been doing this since 2010.
It's especially useful for recovering info about items that are no longer carried (or from places that have gone out of business) and thus have no webpage any more.
I've been unsubscribing from a lot of mailing lists the past week because my email was getting cluttered.
I noticed many Amazon emails, not just the 'ads' but also the order confirmation, order shipped, rate your order, etc emails related to a purchase. Honestly, never look at any of them because I know most will arrive either same day or within the next 1-2 days and I don't care for rating my orders.
It's only when something hasn't arrived within that timeframe that I check the app/website, both of which are much more useful.
If your delivery is fulfilled by amazon, they'll ask if you want to send a "thanks" to your driver. My understanding is there are bonuses for good levels of "thanks" and so it's worth clicking though and giving them as much thanks as you can to help them out.
I wish there was a way to put another phone number under Account / Notifications / Shipping and delivery. Without adding somebody to a "household" or installing apps, I just want someone else to know a package was delivered, and it should be brought inside.
A better method that limits exposing information to Amazon is to set up forwarding rules with your email provider or client.
I recommend stop feeding the beast. Have not used Amazon in 10 years and never will. They are so big that they harm the buying power of the consumer and selling power of the producer. Personal knowledge gained while working with them.
The website needs an actual orders/cancellations page too as well as a page that clearly shows which items were shipped together in the same box (rather than arriving on the same day). The "Your Orders" page is a stream of items, and that can make it difficult to figure out which items came from where, in case of an issue.
Yeah, seriously. We keep being promised by these very empathetic and so honest tech CEOs (messages probably broadcasted from their bunkers) that all these AI tools will make life so much better for us, but so far for most things I use things have gotten worse - and I'm still trying to find affordable computer parts, which has been a total joke in the last year. Thankfully I bought my PS5 and Switch 2 before all the price creeping really started
After checking every box to never get any email from Amazon.com, I followed-up with a catch-all auto-delete rule for the domain. That was 10 years ago. I have experienced zero issues with their services. As a nice bonus, I'm immediately aware of anyone trying to phish me via Amazon orders.
Even if you look at your purchase history now they have intentionally destroyed that too. What size shoe did you buy 3 years ago? Too bad we are not telling you!
The purchase/shipped/etc email was the lifeline to tracking your Amazon spending and exactly what you bought. Now that is impossible. It's similar to a business refusing to give you a proper receipt and should be likely illegal.
What 3rd party companies I let hoover up my Amazon purchase emails is none of their business.
I’m not sure if it’s been redacted from there, but try to do a request for a full data export, it might have the detailed data. I overall try to do that for all online services I use around once every six months or so, lots of interesting data in them.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/privacycentral/dsar/preview.html
Scroll down on that page to “request all data”
Literally just discovered this was broken today. I was looking for the length of the bike valve stem I bought 2 years ago and was incredibly disappointed that they don’t tell me, even on the invoice.
What’s the why behind this? Is this to give them license to say “No, you ordered X, even though you think you ordered Y. So, we sent you X.”
Not really having this issue looking through the last 10 years on my account? 1-2 dozen pairs, all have the size info available. Invoice histories seems proper enough - they have the product titles, costs, and seller info but not the entire descriptions.
Maybe you’re not being A/B tested.
Very possible. To compare the potential new A/B, can you share what the header of the first result of https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/order-history looks like for you now? For me it's still https://i.imgur.com/sI1Ysdu.png
I went and looked at order confirmation emails from 2019 and confirmed my memory that back then they didn’t list what items I ordered (but did a few years before). At the time I figured this change was intended to fight against Paribus, a startup that would scan your email and automatically request compensation for late Amazon deliveries.
But then I looked at emails last year and Amazon was sending item names after order again. So it seems like this practice has changed multiple times.
I ascribed it to the likes of Google vacuuming all this data at scale from gmail service -- which Amazon actively wanted to avoid (gifting free data to Google to train on and potentially advertize Amazon-alternatives to via personalized/targetted ads based on purchase patterns and preferences)
I worked at Shopify during this period and their Shop app (the one that helpfully tracks your packages arriving) was a victim of these emails becoming vague.
At the time it felt like a specific reaction to Shopify mining this information to compete. (I have no insider knowledge if they were or were not).
Of course, the answer can be many things -- now it's AI, back then it was 17track, Google, Shopify, etc.
For the sakes of individual humans, who unfortunately don't know everything, I wish some of these things would be gamed out beforehand and mooted without dragging us pawns through the accelerating conflicts of giants. I'm not asking for central planning, just recognition for distributed impacts without waiting three election cycles and forgetting everything again.
There is a secondary, more nefarious purpose, near as I can tell. I constantly order items from Amazon that say "arriving tomorrow/Tuesday/etc." then the item invariably doesn't actually arrive when it was supposed to, often outside of Prime 2 day shipping even if a Prime item. But when you go to view the order online it has helpfully updated the arrival date to the new day. They push it as many times as they want to, then act dumb if you call them on it.
I've taken to screenshotting the initial shipping date, but it doesn't make much difference. I don't know what "Prime" even means anymore.
And I live in SF so it's not like there is some logistics problem with my location, either.
They’ve been doing this for a while now and it’s one of the main reasons I have believed that Amazon Prime is a money grab if you live in a moderately populated metro area.
I ordered something yesterday, expecting it today, and the confirmation email contains the actual product images and title (albeit trimmed).
Looks like you haven't seen what they've done with Order Search. Being a customer since 1994 (yes, when they just came out as a neat way to buy books online), my order history has been an invaluable reference allowing me to find that thing I bought 5 years ago, its specific and the price I paid. Now, instead of a good old substring search, they do some kind of insane fuzzy search which comes up with hundreds of absolutely irrelevant results. They've made it completely unusable.
But I'm sure a good bunch of people got promoted for "enhancing" the search with AI...
I used to use my emails to find where I bought something and got bitten by this as well.
When searching a particular term or a brand name, let’s say an electronic equipment, it’s showing me everything with electronic in it.
Surely they will start hiding stuff from our purchase history or start adding ads there as well.
Good example of where user agents will need to be more proactive in areas like this to collect and store information useful to the user. In the accelerating "optimization" of online commerce (and discourse) more relations will become aggressively adversarial.
Every relation will probably go down that path. Building trust will be interesting.
Whenever I order anything from Amazon (or anywhere else online), I Print-to-PDF a copy of the order receipt and keep it on my own computer; I've been doing this since 2010.
It's especially useful for recovering info about items that are no longer carried (or from places that have gone out of business) and thus have no webpage any more.
I have seen the same with bank emails for example not listing a bill balance or deposit amount.
Kudos to those companies that are implementing this.
I've been unsubscribing from a lot of mailing lists the past week because my email was getting cluttered.
I noticed many Amazon emails, not just the 'ads' but also the order confirmation, order shipped, rate your order, etc emails related to a purchase. Honestly, never look at any of them because I know most will arrive either same day or within the next 1-2 days and I don't care for rating my orders.
It's only when something hasn't arrived within that timeframe that I check the app/website, both of which are much more useful.
If your delivery is fulfilled by amazon, they'll ask if you want to send a "thanks" to your driver. My understanding is there are bonuses for good levels of "thanks" and so it's worth clicking though and giving them as much thanks as you can to help them out.
I rather those drives have Health Care than having to suck up for bonuses.
I agree with you, but it's one of those things that exist today that can help them out.
I wish there was a way to put another phone number under Account / Notifications / Shipping and delivery. Without adding somebody to a "household" or installing apps, I just want someone else to know a package was delivered, and it should be brought inside.
A better method that limits exposing information to Amazon is to set up forwarding rules with your email provider or client.
I recommend stop feeding the beast. Have not used Amazon in 10 years and never will. They are so big that they harm the buying power of the consumer and selling power of the producer. Personal knowledge gained while working with them.
The website needs an actual orders/cancellations page too as well as a page that clearly shows which items were shipped together in the same box (rather than arriving on the same day). The "Your Orders" page is a stream of items, and that can make it difficult to figure out which items came from where, in case of an issue.
Enshittification.
Yeah, seriously. We keep being promised by these very empathetic and so honest tech CEOs (messages probably broadcasted from their bunkers) that all these AI tools will make life so much better for us, but so far for most things I use things have gotten worse - and I'm still trying to find affordable computer parts, which has been a total joke in the last year. Thankfully I bought my PS5 and Switch 2 before all the price creeping really started
[dead]
You know folks, it is perfectly doable to live you life without buying on amazon.
After checking every box to never get any email from Amazon.com, I followed-up with a catch-all auto-delete rule for the domain. That was 10 years ago. I have experienced zero issues with their services. As a nice bonus, I'm immediately aware of anyone trying to phish me via Amazon orders.