I love amazon.com. I likely have a problem. Hi, my name is Surya, and I have a problem. I order too much from Amazon.com. I have books, and other random stuff (now that they sell -everything-) lining the walls of my humble condo.

Yet, Amazon frustrates me to no end. It’s simple really. You order something for a friend or are browsing for a present. Say I’m shopping for a present for my 1 year-old nephew. Why, the next time I want to browse the site, are my precious recommendations littered with the latest Dora the Explorer and Wiggles paraphernalia? Of course if you’re shopping for your spouse, the problem gets even more exacerbated. This isn’t a problem except the recommender is likely one of Amazon’s coolest features and also one of their biggest money-makers. It’s a powerful thing and I’m flabbergasted that they’ve left it broken. I think I can fix it in under 5 minutes.

Tags. Yeah, tags. Why not allow someone the option when checking out, to tag a present with a name of who its for. If the item is for me, I do nothing. If it’s a present for say, my niece, allow me to enter her name, “Sonya”. And so on. This accomplishes a few things:

1) It cleans up my recommendations and only delivers me things relevant for me– making me happy and getting them more sales.
2) It makes shopping for Sonya easier. Next time I need a present, I can choose from my tag, and based on what I bought get recommendations meant for her. Everyone wins, right? Amazon all of sudden has another point of advantage over every other retailer even for gifts now.
3) Everything should come in threes. I’ve already explained my benefits in two points, so this is filler. Pretty.

That’s all. It’s simple, and it makes everyone money. It’s not a complicated thing like search engine click fraud, where fixing that means the company with the responsibility to fix it is guaranteed to lose money (at least in the short term…in the long term you could argue they’ll make more money because they gain trust and have proven results…but I digress…). Amazon makes more money. Surya gets a better experience. Sonya gets a better present. The USPS gets more packages to deliver. Everyone’s happy. Even the tags are happy.

What do you guys think?