251–260 of 272 posts
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!…
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!…
Iirc. Britain has made some sort of deal or passed some sort of law to control this explicitly.
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!…
Another pet peeve: product descriptions are frequently insufficient to inform a purchase decision. I recently had to resort to using jet.com for some under-the-sofa storage boxes and amazon just did not have sufficient product description detail to make me confident in the purchase.
I am assuming they now this and figure that the costs of fixing this problem outweigh the benefits they'll experience from fixing it.
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…
You have to admire the grit and tenacity it takes to maintain that kind of ethos for 23 years straight. What Jeff is basically saying here in this letter is that the pedal is to the metal, forever: We can't have process as the foundation because it ossifies the organization! Be nimble to the rules of the game. When translated however, that means you are either empowering your organization to change and make new proce…
The hardest part of running a marathon is training -- hitting mileage goals, pushing yourself during workouts, prioritizing running above social outings, staying injury-free, and staying healthy. Not to mention the occasional psychological hurdle and hormonal changes. It really lines up quite well with the startup experience...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've bought lots of flash cards, flash drives, chargers, and cables from Amazon and have never had a problem (or they were great counterfeits, in which case I'm not too upset). I don't do much research either, choosing mostly based on search results, brand name, reviews, and shipping/sold by Amazon.
I'd strongly advise against high-voltage/power, questionable quality electronics, because even counterfeit charger will work fine most of the time, until one day, it fails and burns your home down. It's usually not functionality that differs between cheap/counterfeit and quality electronics, but protection, failsafe mechanisms, durability and quality control. I do order myself plenty of cheap, low quality electronics…
And as a reminder since you mentioned them explicitly, a USB charger counts as 110/220V, not 5V.
You have to admire the grit and tenacity it takes to maintain that kind of ethos for 23 years straight. What Jeff is basically saying here in this letter is that the pedal is to the metal, forever: We can't have process as the foundation because it ossifies the organization! Be nimble to the rules of the game. When translated however, that means you are either empowering your organization to change and make new proce…
At the risk of coming off as pedantic, Olympic marathoners DO run 5 min mile marathons very regularly (the world record is at around 4:41 pace currently). That said, I fully agree with the comparison of startups/businesses to marathon running. As someone who does both, the parallels are really interesting. The hardest part of running a marathon is training -- hitting mileage goals, pushing yourself during workouts, p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm mystified by this personally. I frequently purchase from Amazon, and haven't(to my knowledge) received counterfeit goods. Generally I stick to "fufilled by Amazon" or otherwise first-party sellers, so that may have something to do with it. Maybe I'm not purchasing niche enough products to run into this issue.
Unfortunately, Amazon does not appear to keep different sellers products separate in the warehouse. All it takes is one seller sending counterfeit products to the warehouse for their inventory to be contaminated by counterfeits. This makes "fulfilled by Amazon" more risky in some respects.
If you send items in to the warehouse with the UPC, they will be considered co-mingled which means anyone else sending the same product with just the UPC will all be stored together. THIS is where you have the issue of the possibility of buying counterfeit products.
If you send the items in with the FNSKU, they will be considered separate from the co-mingled inventory. Anyone that buys from a seller that has the FNSKU will get the items THAT seller sent in, and not from the co-mingled batch.
For retail items, it's really up to the seller how they want to send the items in. For the sake of seller metrics, it would be wise to send in items with an FNSKU so you avoid the issue of a customer buying from you as the seller, but possibly getting a counterfeit item.
To clarify another incorrect statement in this thread: Amazon does not charge extra to not co-mingle the items. They do offer a service where they will add the FNSKU label to your items at .20/piece, but that's only if the seller doesn't want to do it prior to sending the items in.
Source: I'm a seller on Amazon.
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…
This has been discussed here in the past. If you look at the FBA program they explicitly charge extra to not co-mingle your inventory.
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…
While this is a problem from a consumer perspective, the goods aspect is already day 2 for Amazon and others. There was in interesting discussion on HN a few weeks back about the profitability of the shipping business and how what the future holds for content/hosting services instead.
Me: You're moving into day 2 with all this counterfeit and weaksauce crap in your inventory
Them: We've got a process for reporting that
Me: See Jeff's paragraph about relying on process, and any process that requires the customer to have a bad experience to activate isn't a long term win.
Them: Hmmmm.
For me, the crux is if Amazon can crack the problem of being able to preemptively identify seller fraud and bad actions ahead of the customer being effective. They have a lot of tools at their disposal to put onto that.