I used to find good Blu-ray bargains by sorting searches from low to high...but the past few weeks the sorting engine on Amazon seems completely screwed up. Anyone else experience this? Is it a browser problem (I'm internet explorer)? --Peter


P.S. If it helps, this is the link I've used in the past for Criterion:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?bb...011&sort=price

Wrong forum. This should be in the stores forum.

Amazon has never liked customers having powerful search and sorting capabilities. This goes back for years, power users had to resort to outside hacks that crawled Amazon's site with bots. I believe it's tied to preventing competitors from easily tracking Amazon's own prices. Most web retailers these days use sophisticated pricing bots getting prices from a number of places.

I'd agree that their search engine is poorly programmed.

It's not just poor, it's too controlling. Trying to find a listing for an OOP listing of a DVD is almost impossible. It pulls up the current digital content, current releases, and then tries to list similar titles. You have to search by UPC to even get close. It's another reason I am starting to hate Amazon. They have too much power in the online retail world.

Part of why you are correct is that most of these music & movie forums get paid a commission whenever someone clicks on a link to Amazon & makes a purchase. I know of one forum in particular that's basically turned into an Amazon fan club.

I generally don't have problems finding what I need, I just filter until I find it, ie choose the Category then the format.
Sorting, on the other hand, never worked well.

They've done that for all their media, it's almost impossible to directly return an older item through their search.

I was recently checking prices for the DVD "The Spiral Staircase" (1945). Searching by title didn't list Anchor Bay's version at all, and searching for "The Sprial Staircase Anchor Bay" listed only the VHS. (The "DVD" link brought me back to....tada...the MGM DVD.) In the end, the only search that worked was by bar code. Problems like this have been the norm for many months, and repeated complaints to Amazon apparently didn't mean a thing. I'm wondering if a class action suit by major Marketplace sellers unable to move goods is eventually in the cards? Telling unhappy sellers they can just go elsewhere is still true, but less so than it was in the past.

Add to that, searching on my phone and wading through pages of search results tagged "This item is not available for purchase from your device" (then why bother listing them??) and Marketplace items that don't list the condition, and I'm not the happiest camper either.

Amazon is taking their lead from Google, which abandoned objective searching long ago. I barely use Google anymore and had to resort to Bing for more specific searches. Amazon is funneling customers toward products they carry themselves over out-of-print products sold by third-party sellers.

I agree, Google has become all but worthless. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

My frustration is the compromised browsing/filtering.

Let's say I'm searching for a birthday gift. I have a general theme in mind but am looking for more specific ideas. I can specify in the filters that I want something new and shipped by Amazon Prime. I can't really sort by price, though. If I do, it'll sort by whatever the lowest price is for that item, with shipment method and condition not factoring in at all.