Amazon's Ant Problem - Company Business and Marketing

To celebrate its five-year anniversary, I Amazon.com recently posted its "5 Years of Favorites" list. But it also included a "Hate It, Hate It, Hate It" list ("From terrible toys to disappointing software, products that drew your ire and fire"), where we weren't surprised to see the video Showgirls and the book Monica's Story. But Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm?

At Uncle Milton, which has been selling ant farms since 1956, people were shocked to find they had made the dishonor roll. "Two days ago, Amazon ordered a bunch of ant farms from us," says Scott Ruben-stein, national sales manager. "You'd think that if people were furious, they'd pull the product. It looks Like they based the list on one or two bad reviews."

Many customers said nice things about this perennial kids' favorite, but others complained of long waits: "My 6-year-old daughter cries every day when we check the mail and it's still only junk mail and no ants. PLEASE SEND OUR ANTS!"

Amazon says it's all a joke. "We're definitely not saying it's a bad product," says spokeswoman Kristin Schaefer. "It's just a way to highlight funny feedback from customers over the years."

Online sales of the Giant Ant Farm have been doing well on Amazon and other toy sites, according to Rubenstein: "We only have a 2 percent DOA rate [for our ants], and when you're dealing with livestock and hundreds of thousands of customers, you're going to have the occasional problem." In the future, Uncle Milton will try to mention in its online sales pitch the lag time to receive ants (two to four weeks).

But Uncle Milton's Rubenstein still takes issue with Amazon: "They should have gotten back to us before putting us on the 'nasty list."'

Amazon's Least Wanted

Up on the Roof, (CD, by Neil Diamond)

Dutch (biography of Ronald Reagan, by Edmund Morris)

Irritating Stick (toy, by Jaleco)

Monica's Story (biography, by Andrew Morton)

Showgirls (video, directed by Paul Verhoeven)

Big Mouth Billy Bass (singing plastic fish on a wall plaque, by Gemmy Industries)

Daikatano (computer game, by Eidos Interactive)

Bubble Fairy Barbie (by Mattel)

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