Manufacturer: Listing Big Mistake

ATLANTA — It’s called a laparoscopic gastric bypass kit, manufactured by Medline. Somehow, it made it to the pages of Amazon.

The mix-up had comments on Amazon going wild. People were rating the product, describing how it works and talking about how to do the surgery yourself.

A spokesperson for Med-Plus, the distributor that accidentally posted the ad, told CBS Atlanta News over the phone one of their Web designers made the error. The representative with the company refused to give us his name but did say the problem had been resolved.

CBS Atlanta News wanted to know how a medical product, not meant for the public, could end up on Amazon.

We took that question to NeboWeb, an Internet marketing company based in Atlanta.

“What probably happened is this was set to the wrong permission or the wrong level or something and it went to the wrong audience,” said Adam Harrell, the company President. “If this went to a medical whole seller, no one would have any issues. But, it showed up on Amazon. You could have a product intended for adults get pushed to a site where a kid can access it. That’s the nature of the beast. Anytime you automate a process like that with little review, you can have this happen,” he said.

A spokesperson for Medline told CBS Atlanta News they only manufacture the product and don’t sell it.

“This was a mistake on one of our distributor’s parts,” said John Marks. “This isn’t something you sell to regular people. The main concern is there is no confusion with the general public that this is something they can use.”

According to Medline and Med-Plus, no one actually purchased the kits. A distributor listed on Amazon’s website as the seller of the gastric bypass kit told CBS Atlanta News they have more than 200,000 products and have no idea where the items are being sold or what they are selling. A representative with Berktree

Health confirmed to CBS Atlanta that Amazon did send them an e-mail verifying the item had been pulled from the site.

Most of the comments on Amazon appear to be fake.

One comment makes fun of the listing:

“I waited all of 2010 for this item to finally go on sale! Excellent product, however, the instructions included were from an Ikea chest of drawers. No matter! This kit was easy to figure out, I mean, how hard is it to put a rubber band around a stomach? With only three leftover pieces, and a lost pint of blood- I am ready to hit the buffet!”