Last week we reported that Amazon's customer service department deleted a review that told about a seller's attempts at bribery and the damage this action can do to product ratings. Like all of Amazon's blunders, this one appears to have been a misunderstanding. The Consumerist reports that Amazon got a hold of the original customer and let him know that ignoring his report of bribery was a big mistake.

According to Amazon's executive customer relations, the customer service department should have flagged the product for further investigation. For now, Amazon has dropped the Anti Snore mouthguard from the store and won't offer it until the company starts acting ethically. Amazon blamed a "failure in the Customer Relations department." for deleting the review and ignoring the unethical behavior of the manufacturer.

It's good to hear that Amazon doesn't stand for bribery and other attempts at manipulating its product reviews. Right now users can report pay-for-play and bribery attempts by using the "Report a Community Rules Violation" page. Amazon could make the whole process easier if it made the contact form come up in search results for "bribe" or "pay-for-play." As of this writing, it's buried in the description page for "Seller Offenses & Prohibited Content."

This is just the latest incident to come out of a mishandled Amazon customer service response. You have to wonder who exactly is providing customer service for Amazon and how much training they receive. It's time for Amazon to give its reps more training and more responsibility to fix customer problems. There's only so much a customer service representative can do when they are confined by a scripted response.

Thanks to reader Adam for alerting us to this update.