Aral Balkan

So, after the LiquidWeb debacle, I start looking for alternative hosting provider for OSFlash and it dawns on me that this is the perfect chance to start using Amazon's EC2.

So I try to log out of my regular account with Amazon to sign in with my developer account. Umm... well... I can't seem to log out. So I search for "logout". Lo and behold, I see a link in the results: "Need help with logging out?" Apparently, I'm not the only one who has tried to log out of Amazon.com. So I click the link and it brings me to a page titled Signing Out.

So here are the instructions for logging out of Amazon.com:

1. Click the link near the top of the home page that says "If you're not (your name), click here."
2. On the next page, leave the e-mail and password spaces blank and click the Amazon.com tab at the top of the page.
3. Close the browser to prevent your name or 1-Click settings from appearing on the public terminal.

All right, so maybe they want to make it as hard as possible for people to log out (that's really secure for people logging from an Internet cafe, by the way, especially if they have one-click checkout enabled) but what about logging in. Surely, they want that to be as simple as possible, right?

Here are the instructions for logging in to Amazon.com:

To log back in to our web site:

1. Click the "personalized recommendations" link that appears just under the tabs on our home page. If you don't see this link, but are greeted by someone else's name, click the link that says "If you're not (your name), click here."
2. On the next page, sign in with your e-mail address and password.

I'm confused. Whatever happened to using common conventions and keeping things simple? What exactly is so wrong with the convention of having a Login link (or, better, having the login form available throughout) and having that change to a Logout link once the user is logged in that Amazon had to go an invent this convoluted process with its own vocabulary?

Craziness. I hate having to lie to a web application just to log out. It's just so wrong!

Comments

• Right on Aral! Lying is wrong, and lying to web-apps is even worse than lying to women (consequence-wise :p )..

  by Ruben on 2006-09-29 22:01:45

• Hello from an old friend Melike from EMU, International Relations Department. A friend of Rida. Hope you will remember :) You may reach me from my e-mail address Melike

  by Melike Colak on 2006-11-20 15:17:23

• Hey Melike, How nice to hear from you. I don't think you email address made it in the comments (nor should you really post it on the blog). Feel free to email me at my-first-name at this blog's address. Hope you're well looking forward to catching up! :)

  by aral on 2006-11-20 22:57:57

• Hi, I found this explanation about the log out on Amazon, could be useful for you. http://plynt.com/blog/2005/07/how-amazon-lives-without-a-log/ Regards,

  by Marco on 2007-02-25 04:49:29

• Thanks for the info, Marco! :)

  by aral on 2007-02-25 20:45:01

• errhhmm... sometimes its good to browse Amazon without logging in first. I read somewhere (Time, I think), that at one point, Amazon presented higher prices to folks who were logged in and made more purchases. Time then reported that this fave bookstore of mine stopped the practice after a lot of complaints. But I can't help but still feel suspicious

  by Joey Plazo on 2007-07-28 18:27:07

• i tried this a couple of times, and it works...so far... i went the the "your account tab" then to "amazon.com" tab then clicked on the "your amazon.com" and it appears to be logged out. why there's so many steps i don't know but...what ever

  by mel on 2007-09-10 22:54:46