Amazon Reportedly Hawks "The Sopranos" DVDs After James Gandolfini’s Death - East Idaho News
News

Amazon Reportedly Hawks “The Sopranos” DVDs After James Gandolfini’s Death

  Published at  | Updated at

062013 TheSopranos?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1371769921313Craig Blankenhorn/HBO(NEW YORK) — After hearing news of the death of actor James Gandolfini, Amazon was quick to express it was “saddened” by the actor’s passing, but irked some customers by linking to DVDs for The Sopranos.

While Amazon’s text expressed sadness and appreciation for Gandolfini’s body of work, some Facebook users were not so pleased with the subtle endorsement of the DVDs after the 51-year-old died of an apparent heart attack in Italy.

The post was pulled, but not before a reader of The Consumerist blog captured a screenshot and Amazon’s more than 19 million Facebook fans had the ability to see it.

According to a screenshot of the reported Facebook post, preceding the link to the first season of The Sopranos was the text, “Saddened to hear about the passing of James Gandolfini today. We’ll miss you, James, and the memorable characters you brought to life.”

Some Amazon customers expressed their displeasure with the post.

“I’m ashamed to be an Amazon shopper & Kindle user right now,” said one Facebook user. “It was in poor taste that you guys put up a link ‘remembering’ James Gandolfini along with a link to purchase Season 1 of The Sopranos. This is a real person, not a promotional opportunity.”

Amazon did not immediately return a request for comment.

Despite the “bad timing” of the Facebook post, according to The Consumerist, an increase in sales of Gandolfini’s work is inevitable, especially for the most popular series of his career, The Sopranos.

The work of other artists have surged in sales after their deaths.

In the 24 hours after Whitney Houston died on Feb. 11, 2012, 64,000 copies of  the album Whitney: The Greatest Hits were sold. Within about one week after her death, 101,000 Houston albums were purchased, surpassing the combined album sales of 97,000 for 2011 and 2012, from Jan. 1 to Feb. 10 of those years, according to Billboard.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION