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Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#241

Post by kalleboo »

carl689 wrote: post #221
x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

A little behind the scenes info, I work for a pretty good sized seller on Amazon. If a customer who purchased an item reports it as counterfeit * All items we sell of that brand are taken down * We are required to email a copy of an invoice of between us and that vendor. I think there is a date requirement here also * We are not permitted to ship comingled FBA shipments for that brand until resolved If the manufactur…

If someone bought something from your listing but the item that shipped was actually commingled from another seller, who gets the ding and the report? You or the other seller?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#243

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #209
ChuckMcM wrote: post #69

I wrote an email to Jeff suggesting that Day 2 might be started by losing control over what is sold in his shop. I really respect the way he thinks about the company and I have bought stock in it as a reflection of that respect. My hope is that he will be able to match 'focus on the customer' with 'don't sell the customer counterfeit or shoddy crap'. With their investment in Machine Learning one would hope they could…

There's a lot of talk about counterfeit goods in this discussion, but my problem is the amount of sellers selling the same thing, and using bad search terms to get their listing to the top, and generally making everything harder to find. Have you ever tried to search on something that doesn't have, like 3 or 4 really, really obvious market-leading options? And then sort by anything other than the default? It's imposs…

> I think it's creating opportunities for more-focused competitors, like Wayfair.

I was just looking for something that's nigh impossible to find anywhere except on Amazon and Wayfair, and I'd almost pulled the trigger. However, as I've never used or heard of Wayfair before, I decided to do a little research first, and it appears that Wayfair is primarily a drop-ship retailer. So their products come from third-parties as well. I'm not sure this is any more trustworthy than "fulfilled by Amazon".

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#244

Post by skrtskrt223 »

As an employee of the amazon returns facility a lot of the issue is because of employee error, which is the lack of opening the box and making sure it is the right item being returned, part of the process is sending ot to liquidation to where it is sold at discount prices, warehouse deals sellable to where it becomes a sale although it has cosmetic issues, brand new sellable, and destroy. If they check the box and it is caught as being the wrong item, it is investigated on amazons part to see if it was a item sent back by mistake, an item that was sent out by mistake, or if the costumer is trying to pull a fast one. If it is the wrong item it is an easy fix as long as amazon sells the item that was returned.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#245

Post by praetorian84 »

_gi12 wrote: post #22
mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the…

The unhealthy fascination with burn down charts and Scrum in general continually amazes me. I have witnessed the same debates about what Scrum points system to use so many times and witnessed teams of intelligent people waste days of developer time earnestly discussing relative point values.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#246

Post by ethbro »

gpawl wrote: post #218
ethbro wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true (and I suppose Amazon's the only one who really knows, absent a supplier orchestrating a test), then I can't believe there wouldn't be grounds for a class action lawsuit. Because, crucial, Amazon also comingles reviews for the same product. I'd assume they have boilerplate in their legal agreements that waive rights to do so. But it seems blatantly obvious that if I put a novel item on Amazon, attract…

Amazon comingles _reviews_ for _different_ similar products.

This is the thing that really annoys me. It doesn't seem that technically difficult (aside from the migration pain) that recognizes product:seller as a primary key, rather than just product.

They're already swimming in reviews. So I can't see them not getting more than they're losing by empowering customers to torpedo bad sellers.

Of course, this would also mean fundamentally changing their logistic practice, which is probably why they aren't interested in doing it.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#247

Post by Androider »

nebabyte wrote: post #217
Androider wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it used to be a no-brainer to buy things on Amazon, one click and done. Now I have to very carefully vet the listing before buying, inspect the product once received etc. Certain categories of items I would now never buy from Amazon in its current state (vitamins, fish oil etc.) Amazon has built a great reputation and trust with their customers, and they're going to lose it the way they're going.

What you're essentially describing is the blind trust people think they can put in a brand name, applied to a store. I like and use Safeway, but I would hardly fault them if they carried something I didn't thoroughly check out if it turned out to be a shitty brand. > Now I have to very carefully vet the listing before buying, inspect the product once received etc. Did you not research products before you bought them…

You're talking about researching a product in general, I'm talking about buying a SanDisk brand SD card and receiving a cheap knockoff with SanDisk poorly printed on it and totally different specs.

I do think it is Amazon's responsibility to not sell fake stuff. Even buying only Amazon shipped and fulfilled products does not help, as all the inventory is co-mingled by the product ID. They've taken the poor approach of not sanitizing their inputs, and now their product inventory & database is corrupt, and it's going to be really hard to fix.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#248

Post by JustSomeNobody »

devopsproject wrote: post #143
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition, that person is not a manager. He's a boss. Managers manage, and Boss's react. This is one of those times where you line up another job, wait until he goes off on you and for every "point" he tries to make, you counter with the policy. Shut him down. Won't be permanent, but oh well.

Its time to come back to down to reality. Your manager would be laughing at your little outburst all week. It would actually make him happier.

That's not a manager. That's a boss. And so what? Everyone else who watched it would get a kick out of it and mr manager would be even deeper in respect debt.

Maybe it would inspire others to leave such a crappy job too. Let the miserables commiserate with the miserables.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#249

Post by mercutio2 »

noahm wrote: post #190
devopsproject wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These tech workers seem to say otherwise about both working conditions and turnover: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4fg44p/1... Glassdoor is filed with them too I'm glad you are happy at your job. Many people disagree.

Sure, but just as with customers, the dissatisfied (ex-)employees are going to be most vocal. Do you really think Amazon could build things like AWS, Alexa, the Go Store, etc, if it was a sweatshop where everybody but Jeff was in hell? I don't.

> Sure, but just as with customers, the dissatisfied (ex-)employees are going to be most vocal.

Agreed that Glassdoor is an outrageously bad indicator about a company, taken in isolation.

> Do you really think Amazon could build things like AWS, Alexa, the Go Store, etc, if it was a sweatshop where everybody but Jeff was in hell?

Nobody is claiming that every single employee has a terrible life at Amazon. But new college grads who don't mind and/or mind but don't really believe better working conditions are possible can build most of what you referenced.

I have only anecdotal evidence, but the majority of ex Facebook, Apple, and Google employees I know say pretty balanced pro/con things about their former workplaces.

Of the six ex Amazon employees I know well enough to discuss this with, they universally decry the horrible work cultures they experienced there.

So, I'm glad you like your work culture, but I know I'd never even consider working at a Jeff Bezos company. Despite how awesome I thing Blue Origin is.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#250

Post by doorty »

x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

But you also want the lowest price?

Multiple sellers compete on a product page to sell you the product by being the seller in the "buy "box"--the seller with the lowest price.

The alternative solution would be to only allow the product owner or licensed seller to sell the product, but that would require a LOT of manual labor for verification. But they will do this for big, important brands.

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