Last week I dropped my phone in the supermarket and it popped apart and the battery went skittering across the floor. Everything seems to be okay with it, but it scared me. This phone is literally the most valuable thing I own, both in price and general usefulness, and it would have been devastating to lose it because it slipped out of my shirt pocket when I bent over to pick up a bag of dog food.

So tonight I decided I’d spend some of my writer’s block time shopping for a protective cover for it. I went to Amazon to do this because I’m poor and a little cheap, and also an Amazon Prime member, so I wanted to find a cheap one with free two-day shipping.

I told Amazon to show me only Prime eligible items, to NOT show me “add-on” items, and to sort the list from lowest price to highest.

Now take a look at this screen-shot. (I tried to scribble arrows and captions on it, but the GIMP has become so powerful and advanced that I can barely use it to crop out the stuff that’s not relevant.)

I loved that I could get it all on one screen. The prices bear no apparent relationship with the order of items shown, and right next to each other is one that’s an add-on and one that’s not Prime.

So, Amazon, if you’re not going to apply the filters I select, I must ask why they are even there?