A couple of years ago, my wife, who is relatively computer savvy (not compared to HN users, just to the general public) tried to buy a Miley Cyrus album for a young acquaintance. Instead she got a Miles Cyrus album, which was a guy singing bad covers (though they could be a lot worse) of Miley Cyrus songs.
I still find that highly amusing, but it's also a huge failure on Amazon's part. There's no way that was the album anyone was looking for.
I was going to write about this very thing a couple of hours ago although itunes not amazon, but I think the principle is the same.
If you go to itunes and search for any popular song (pre-released songs are the best for it) there are always a lot of shadily labelled covers that are there to trick buyers into purchasing them. I've been caught out by it once before (not paying much attention, see the title matches and hit "buy").
It's not like these songs aren't making sales, quite a few have a large number of reviews (some asking wtf?) and because the character limits in itunes allow for you to cleverly disguise the songs they are a great way to make quick money. For example for the new Justin Bieber single "Boyfriend" there is a group called "Justin Bieber Tribute Team", their name shows as "Justin Bieber..." because of the cut off and they have a song out called "Boyfriend", which is just an instrumental version of the real song, it has ~40 reviews of people saying they love Justin and this is an amazing new song, or saying "wtf is this".
This is a really interesting phenomenon but arguably happening before Amazon markets became a thing. For example, in the mid-90s, knock-off band Los del Mar got on the charts with a largely indistinguishable cover of "Macarena" by Los del Rio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macarena_(song)#Los_Del_Mar_ver...
A few months ago I was about to buy a 80s compilation album in MP3 format from Amazon based on nothing more than the names of the songs, when I noticed one of the reviews (not even the top one) was complaining about how these were not the original artists. Sure enough I played a few of the samples and I realized that while the songs (and lyrics) were generally the same, not only the pitch was all wrong on some of them, but the voices and instruments were all kind of "off". Needless to say I ended up not buying the album.
I think Amazon needs to allow these things on their catalog but at the same time they need to be more clear about the fact that these are either not originals or (in the case of the books) that they're really rip-offs of popular media. It's fairly obvious that these are little more than scams, but the no-returns-allowed electronic format itself and the fact that the amounts involved are small probably plays a part in preventing people from complaining too much once they realize that they've fallen for it.
Even if you get the spelling right, the "Tribute to _" albums from "Cover Nation" or whoever are pretty clearly designed to trick people. I've noticed the scammers tend to cover artists whose music is not available for download, so they don't even have to compete against the original artist.
Same problem happens on iTunes, to be honest. There are a lot of karaoke albums out there, and if a song is out of print, or not buyable by the song, they might be the top hit on a search.
IMO, customer service starts well before the product has been purchased.
Amazon might make some double sales (the fake, then the original once a mistake has been realised), but in the long run I think this damages their reputation somewhat.
I still find that highly amusing, but it's also a huge failure on Amazon's part. There's no way that was the album anyone was looking for.