I think the reason this happens is that when you start looking for washing machines, you start getting ads for them. Then when you buy nobody tells the ad companies that you just bought a washing machine so they still send you ads because they think you’re still looking. Even if you just went straight to the model site and clicked “buy”.
Amazon can’t suggest a “product you might like” if their life depended on it. They have 19 years of purchase history for me spanning thousands of product categories. Want to know a category I’ve never looked at or bought from Amazon, women's handbags. What’s near the top of the suggestions right now on the homepage for me? You guessed it!
The weirdest thing is that at one point, I think it's now almost 10 years, they had somewhat OK recommendations. It's not like "you bought programming books and Battlestar Galactica DVDs, so you might be interested in Neal Stephenson's novels" is really advanced but it's still miles ahead of the "you just bought a washing machine, so you might be interested in washing machines" level.
I think the issue is that it’s no longer “recommendations”, instead it’s now “here’s the things which we can make the most money off you buying based on your recent spending”.
