The Invisible FunnelHow AI agents evaluate real brands · by Accord
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Amazon

In six shopping journeys, the agent never opened Amazon.

Five journeys ended with no retailer recommended and one ran out of page reads; not one Amazon page was read.

Open-market search Cordless vacuum under $450, returns and delivery required · tested 2026-09-20

6 customer-agent journeys

Decision trace (one journey)

no memoryno readable brand-owned pageobserved2026-09-20
  1. 1Customer missionAmazon decision — customer with no relevant memory
    • delivered total ≤ $450 including tax and shipping, without joining a paid membership
    • return window ≥ 30 days from delivery with no stated restocking fee
    • delivery within 3 days of ordering
    • human phone/chat support available for order problems (preference)
  2. 2Evidence10 searches, 12 pages: target.com, bestbuy.com, walmart.com
  3. 3BeliefNothing established about the brand
  4. 4DecisionNever entered the comparisonNONENo candidate could be confirmed, from a readable source, to meet all three required facts (delivered total ≤$450, ≥30-day no-restocking-fee return, delivery ≤3 days) with…

Why Amazon was not selected

  • Never entered the comparison4/6
  • Action budget ran out before the brand1/6
  • Named, not researched1/6

One label per journey, from the record. By recorded outcome: never entered the comparison 4 · named, not researched before the budget ran out 1 · ran out of page reads before deciding 1.

Same task, different memory

0/3selected, no memory
0/3selected, with memory
0 ppdifference

Memory did not change the outcome in these journeys; see what it changed on the Memory page.

Journeys without a readable brand-owned page

6 of 6

All journeys ran on 2026-09-20; a time series needs more than one day of testing.
Selection by day

0 of 6

All journeys ran on 2026-09-20; a time series needs more than one day of testing.

Where its facts came from

0

decisive beliefs about Amazon taken from a page that is not the brand’s own, or from a brand page that refused the agent; 0 journeys met a bot wall on the brand site.

What this does not establish: that Amazon generally wins or loses customers this way, or that changing one page would change these decisions. It establishes what happened in these 6 journeys.

The numbers

6journeys
1considered
0selected
1not selected
0/6reached a readable Amazon page
Never entered the comparisonmost common reason not selected · 4/6

6 customer-agent journeys. Amazon entered consideration in 1. It was selected in 0 and not selected in 1. In 6, no readable Amazon-owned page was reached.

View strongest trace → Open story and traces →

What remains unresolved

  • Never entered the comparison: 4 of 6 journeys
  • Action budget ran out before the brand: 1 of 6 journeys
  • Named, not researched: 1 of 6 journeys
  • total price usd left unresolved in 1 of 6 journeys
  • return window days left unresolved in 1 of 6 journeys
  • delivery days left unresolved in 1 of 6 journeys

What could be tested

The same customer missions, run again with the open condition readable on Amazon’s own pages, against these 6 journeys as the baseline. That is a comparison, not a guess: same customer, same requirements, one change.

Investigated with Accord

Accord holds the customer requirements, Amazon’s published conditions and this journey evidence in one Decision Case, runs the comparison, and records what changed. For brands and CX teams →

Work at Amazon?

Send us the source the agent couldn’t find. We’ll rerun the same customer and publish the before/after. Send the source How the rerun works

Decisions

All journeys

with memoryno readable brand-owned pagerefused by dyson.comobserved2026-09-20
  1. 1Customer missionAmazon decision — same customer with relevant memory
    • delivered total (item + tax + shipping) at most $450 without joining a paid membership
    • return window of at least 30 days from delivery with no stated restocking fee
    • delivery within 3 days of ordering
    • availability of human phone or chat support for order problems (preference)
    Remembers: “In March 2026 a marketplace order arrived damaged and the third-party seller refused the return; the platform took three”
  2. 2Evidence10 searches, 13 pages: dyson.com, target.com, walmart.com, bestbuy.com
  3. 3BeliefNothing established about the brand
  4. 4DecisionNever entered the comparisonNONENone of the four investigated offers could be confirmed, from sources I could actually read this session, to satisfy all three required facts (delivered total ≤$450 with …
no memoryno readable brand-owned pagerefused by walmart.com, dyson.comobserved2026-09-20
  1. 1Customer missionAmazon decision — customer with no relevant memory
    • delivered total (item + tax + shipping) at most 450 USD without joining a paid membership
    • returnable for at least 30 days from delivery with no stated restocking fee
    • delivered within 3 days of ordering
    • human phone or chat support available for order problems (preference)
  2. 2Evidence10 searches, 13 pages: target.com, bestbuy.com, help.target.com, walmart.com +1
  3. 3BeliefNothing established about the brand
  4. 4DecisionNever entered the comparisonNONEThe strongest candidate found on the retailers' own pages was the Dyson V8 Origin Cordless Stick Vacuum at Target.com: $439.99, no paid membership required, and a clearly…
with memoryno readable brand-owned pagerefused by dyson.com, walmart.comobserved2026-09-20
  1. 1Customer missionAmazon decision — same customer with relevant memory
    • delivered total (item + tax + shipping) at most $450 without joining any paid membership
    • return window of at least 30 days from delivery with no restocking fee, stated plainly
    • delivery within 3 days of ordering
    • human phone or chat support for order problems (preference)
    Remembers: “In March 2026 a marketplace order arrived damaged and the third-party seller refused the return; the platform took three”
  2. 2Evidence12 searches, 10 pages: dyson.com, bestbuy.com, target.com, walmart.com +1
  3. 3BeliefNothing established about the brand
  4. 4DecisionNever entered the comparisonNONENo retailer could be confirmed, from a readable/brand-sourced or consistently-reported fact set, to satisfy all four requirements at once. Target's own help page (read di…
no memoryno readable brand-owned pageobserved2026-09-20
  1. 1Customer missionAmazon decision — customer with no relevant memory
    • delivered total ≤ $450 including tax and shipping, without joining a paid membership
    • return window ≥ 30 days from delivery with no stated restocking fee
    • delivery within 3 days of ordering
    • human phone/chat support available for order problems (preference)
  2. 2Evidence10 searches, 12 pages: target.com, bestbuy.com, walmart.com
  3. 3BeliefNothing established about the brand
  4. 4DecisionNever entered the comparisonNONENo candidate could be confirmed, from a readable source, to meet all three required facts (delivered total ≤$450, ≥30-day no-restocking-fee return, delivery ≤3 days) with…
with memoryno readable brand-owned pagerefused by walmart.com, dyson.comobserved2026-09-20
  1. 1Customer missionAmazon decision — same customer with relevant memory
    • delivered total (item + tax + shipping) at or under the customer's budget, without joining…
    • return window of at least 30 days from delivery with no restocking fee stated
    • delivery within 3 days of ordering
    • human phone or chat support for order problems (preference)
    Remembers: “In March 2026 a marketplace order arrived damaged and the third-party seller refused the return; the platform took three”
  2. 2Evidence6 searches, 8 pages: target.com, walmart.com, dyson.com
  3. 3BeliefCould not establish: total price usd; return window days; delivery days
  4. 4DecisionNamed, not researched before the budget ran outNONENo candidate could be confirmed, from the retailer's own pages, to meet all three required facts (delivered total ≤$450 with no paid membership, a ≥30-day no-restocking-f…
no memoryno readable brand-owned pagerefused by dyson.comobserved2026-09-20
  1. 1Customer missionAmazon decision — customer with no relevant memory
  2. 2Evidence7 searches, 7 pages: walmart.com, target.com, bestbuy.com, dyson.com
  3. 3BeliefNothing established about the brand
  4. 4DecisionRan out of page reads before decidingNo decision: the action budget ran out after 7 page reads, before a readable Amazon page.