FAQ for the 'Amazon Retail' Group

[RShankar]

Please post your Q&A here for the 'Amazon Retail' group

[Jnesbeth]

Question from 'GitHub' to 'Amazon Retial': The drones that Amazon are using to deliver packages, other than safety issues which are a given, How are they going about security issues? Such as, if one steals a drone or a third party takes over a drone and started to steal packages?

[intC0der]

Question from 'LinkedIn' to 'Amazon Retail': How secure is to use Amazon Api? For example, to autheticate an user on a website using amazon oauth?

[deniseygrace]

Question from 'Twitter' to 'Amazon Retail': What happens when an item that exists in a user's cart goes out of stock/gets discontinued before the cart expires? Is this a problem, and if so, how do Amazon's APIs deal with it?

[aasthadave]

Question from 'Netflix' to 'Amazon Retail': According to many sources, Amazon Prime Air was a black firday PR stunt to increase traffic on Amazon. What does your research say about that? Do you believe this or not?

[rnadrich]

Question from PayPal to Amazon Retail: In your presentation, you said that Amazon stores your credit card information for purchases. If an account has been compromised, how would Amazon deal with the compromised account, personal information, and any fraudulent purchases that have been made?

[KotowichS]

Question from 'NOAA' to 'Amazon Retail'. In your opinion, what has made Amazon so successful? How have the API's assisted in Amazon's success?

[GiBiT]

Question from 'Facebook' to 'Amazon Retail'. You only breezed through wish lists. Is there an API or a Widget of some sort to share your wish list (Registry, Christmas, etc....) to a relative or friend through email or other services?

[RShankar]

Question from Dr. Shankar to the 'Amazon Retail' Group: As you know,there is a supply chain of small businesses that work with Amazon. List the APIs that they need to use to set up their businesses in terms of listing their products, receiving orders, shipping them, etc. Give also the URL link.

[MistyM26]

Question from 'Amazon Cloud' group to 'Amazon Retail' group:

Currently, Amazon is offering a service called Prime Now in select cities (certain zip codes in Miami are now available for this service) that offers 1 or 2 hour delivery. It requires users to use Amazon's Prime Now app. How are the APIs used with this type of purchase?

[jsimonis]

Answer from 'Amazon Retail' to 'NOAA'

Amazon is so successful because of the company unwavering focus on long term goals rather than short term profit. Though Amazon went public in 1997, it didn't record its first profitable quarter until a year after the dotcom bubble burst back in 2001. From the beginning CEO Jeff Bezos has made it clear that growth and innovation are far more important to the company than profit. This strategy allows the company to reinvest most profits that will in turn make the company better suited to serve its customers and also become more efficient. APIs have assisted in this growth because Amazon has taken its world class technology and logistics network and made it available to the general public(and government) for a fee. Which in turn generates a huge residual income stream from more loyal customers and partners.

[Bainshinds]

Answer from 'Amazon Retail' group to 'LinkedIn' group: The Amazon S3 REST API uses a custom HTTP scheme based on a keyed-HMAC (Hash Message Authentication Code) for authentication. To authenticate a request, you first concatenate selected elements of the request to form a string. You then use your AWS secret access key to calculate the HMAC of that string. Informally, the process is called "signing the request," and is called the signature, because it simulates the security properties of a real signature. Finally, you add this signature as a parameter of the request. When the system receives an authenticated request, it fetches the AWS secret access key that the user claim to have and uses it in the same way to compute a signature for the message it received. It then compares the signature it calculated against the signature presented by the requester. If the two signatures match, the system concludes that the requester must have access to the AWS secret access key and therefore acts with the authority of the principal to whom the key was issued. If the two signatures do not match, the request is dropped and the system responds with an error message. The system is top of the line and has proven it's worth over the years.

[jsimonis]

Answer from 'Amazon Retail' to 'Facebook'

There is an API called Amazon Wish Lister. This is a little API to retrieve Amazon Wish List data. There is no official API, as Amazon shut it down a couple years ago. The only way around that... screen scraping. It works with both old and new (beta) Amazon Wish List design.

Amazon Wish Lister uses phpQuery (server-side CSS3 selector driven DOM API based on jQuery) to scrape Amazon's Wish List page and exports to JSON, XML, or PHP Array Object.

Scrapes the following from your Amazon Wish List: Item name Item link Price of item when added to wish list Current price of item Date added to wish list Priority (set by you) Item rating Total ratings Comments on item (set by you) Picture of item Perfect if you want to host display your wish list on your own website. Best used if cached, or saved in database. Supports multi-page Amazon Wish Lists as well as Amazon Wish List "Ideas" Return list as JSON, XML, or just dump PHP Array Object.

[jsimonis]

Answer from 'Amazon Retail' to 'Twitter'

Product Advertising API operations sometimes return items that cannot be added to the Active cart area. Most items for sale are available immediately. There are times, however, when that is not true. Items can go out of stock or very popular items, such as a new Harry Potter book, are pre-sold, that is, the book is sold before the book is even published. When a customer adds an item to their cart that is not available, it is added to the SavedForLater area. Also, if an item in the cart, for some reason, becomes unavailable, Amazon automatically moves the item in the cart to the SavedForLater items section. It is also possible for a customer to add an item directly to the SavedForLater items area in their cart so that they can easily purchase the item at a later date. When items become available, you can use the CartModify operation with the Action parameter within the API to move items from the SaveForLater section of the cart to the Active section. Or, if Amazon automatically moved an item in the Active area to the SaveForLater area because the item went out of stock, Amazon will move it back into theActive area automatically when it becomes available.

[Bainshinds]

Answer to 'GitHub' group from 'Amazon Retial' group: Amazon has not mentioned too much details about their security procedures and safety issues. I believe it may be because they aren't ready for deploying the drones as yet, however, congress has a issued FAA a deadline of September 30, 2015 to have a guideline for drones and Amazon is saying they will be ready by then.

[Bainshinds]

Answer to 'Netflix' group from 'Amazon Retail' group : I believe it was indeed a PR stunt to increase traffic on Amazon; but with all the evidence that was presented, and having the CEO put his name behind it, I believe Amazon Prime Air is just a matter of when it will happen.

[jsimonis]

Answer From 'Amazon Retail' to 'Paypal'

Question from PayPal to Amazon Retail: In your presentation, you said that Amazon stores your credit card information for purchases. If an account has been compromised, how would Amazon deal with the compromised account, personal information, and any fraudulent purchases that have been made?

For compromised accounts Amazon will suspend your account due to "suspicious activity" and will perform a 48hr investigation. The customer will be notified via email. The account suspension is reversible following Amazon's receipt of a follow-up email from the customer telling them whether or not their detection was in error.

For Fraudulent purchases If you see an Amazon Payments charge on your bank or credit card statement and you are not sure where the charge came from, we suggest you log in to your Amazon Payments Account to search for a transaction that matches the charge. Details about the application, merchant, or the specific good you purchased will appear on the transaction details screen.

If you are not able to locate a transaction that matches the charge on your account, you may want to consider some other scenarios:

Do you have a child away at school who is authorized to use the card or bank account? Have you asked them about this charge? Have you or a family member purchased anything by using your card or bank account on Amazon.com? Certain charges on Amazon.com also will show as Amazon Payments on your bank or credit card statement even though the charge did not originate with your Amazon Payments Account. Do you have a spouse, friend, relative, or co-worker who has access to your card number and may have used Amazon Payments? If you still cannot figure out where the charge originated, you can submit a dispute through your Amazon Payments Account by clicking Details next to the Order or Transaction ID.

On the page that opens, click File/View Claim or Problem with this transaction?, and then follow the instructions on the page. You will be prompted to enter information about the transaction on the pages that open.

Alternatively, you can inquire about the error by mail by sending a message to the following address:

Amazon Payments, Inc. P.O. Box 81226 Seattle, Washington 98108-1226

If unauthorized or erroneous transactions or activities involve your Amazon Payments account and any balances that you hold or bank accounts that are registered with Amazon Payments, please see Unauthorized Transactions Policy for more information. The Policy details additional requirements and certain limits on our liability for unauthorized transactions. As part of the dispute resolution process, we will contact both parties in the transaction. If we determine you are not responsible for the charges, you will be reimbursed. Also, under certain circumstances we may grant you a provisional credit for the disputed amount.

[Bainshinds]

Answer to Dr. Shankar from 'Amazon Retail' Group: Below are a list of the APIs needed for small businesses and their URLs

Product Advertising API https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/main.html#details

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) https://developer.amazonservices.com/gp/mws/api.html?ie=UTF8&section=orders&group=orders&version=latest