Amazon’s Short-Sighted Move: Killing Order Archiving Is as Ridiculous as Removing Review Comments

Once again, Amazon has made a user-hostile decision that leaves many longtime customers scratching their heads. Recently, they quietly removed the ability to archive orders—a feature that, while simple, offered users a degree of privacy and organization over their purchase history. This move is not just inconvenient—it’s shortsighted, tone-deaf, and strangely reminiscent of another baffling decision Amazon made years ago: eliminating the ability to comment on product reviews.

Let’s be clear: archiving orders wasn't just a "nice-to-have." It served real, practical purposes. Want to keep a surprise gift hidden from prying eyes who share your account? Archive it. Want to prevent a past purchase from cluttering your order history? Archive it. Want a little more control over your digital footprint? Archive it.

Now, all of that is gone. Why?

No real reason has been offered. No fanfare. No announcement. Just another example of a tech giant silently removing a feature many quietly relied on. It feels disturbingly similar to when Amazon removed the ability to comment on product reviews—a feature that added much-needed context, clarification, and community-driven insight to the often chaotic world of online reviews.

Killing off review comments neutered meaningful dialogue between buyers. Sometimes the comments were more helpful than the reviews themselves. “Did this work with X device?” “Why did you rate it 1 star if the product wasn’t the problem?”—those types of interactions helped the community separate signal from noise. Removing that didn’t stop spam or improve quality—it just silenced a layer of valuable user feedback.

Now, with the removal of archived orders, Amazon seems to be doubling down on eroding user agency in favor of... what, exactly? Pushing more purchases? Simplifying backend systems? We can only speculate. But whatever the reason, it’s a loss for customers who value privacy, control, and the ability to manage their account on their terms.

The bigger problem here is the pattern. Amazon, once the ultimate “customer-centric” company, seems increasingly disinterested in how its actual users interact with the platform. It’s trading away usability for simplification—or perhaps worse, surveillance and data mining. Removing a non-invasive feature like order archiving is not only unnecessary; it signals that Amazon no longer trusts users to manage their own experience.

In a time when trust in big tech is already fraying, these little betrayals add up.

So, yes—it is ridiculous to eliminate the option to archive orders. It’s ridiculous in the same way that neutering community feedback was. And unless Amazon starts listening to the people who made it the retail giant it is today, it’s not hard to imagine more features disappearing under the guise of progress.

Just don’t be surprised when customers start disappearing, too.