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Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

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Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#51

Post by 51lver »

rootusrootus wrote: post #13

As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…

Right there with you. I moved all my purchases to ebay. At least there you know who you are buying from, and many manufactures have official stores. There are still bootlegs, but you have some say in how much risk you are willing to take. Eg, don't buy classic nintendo games from overseas. If amazon let you research a seller and see if they are a knockoff mill that would be a huge step forward, but they would ALSO have to isolate inventory again for it to be reliable.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#52

Post by erichocean »

rootusrootus wrote: post #13

As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…

> As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers.

Last I heard, it was ~50% of their revenue. And they take a 15% cut of the price, plus a per-transaction fee, for the cost of maintaining a product catalog (which they already do).

Not a chance they'll drop it.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#53

Post by ilovetux »

sigfubar wrote: post #43
GhostVII wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money were they offering? I definitely would have taken it, and then re-posted the same review a day later.

I was just thinking the same thing. Street taught me that criminals can be victimized to no end because they won’t call the police no matter what.

while that's true in a lot of cases, I'd be careful. calling the police is far from the only recourse available to people.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#54

Post by TeMPOraL »

roymurdock wrote: post #39
decebalus1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. It's not a secret that lots of business models coming out of Silicon Valley are just regulatory workarounds/loopholes. It's a matter of chance that they coincide with some 3rd world country models as the latter's fuels are survival/corruption/perceived lawlessness while o…

cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game, and first world regulations are costs SV can ignore. sometimes the quasi employees suffer the burden (but get increased flexibility), sometimes the consumer suffers (lower price but increased variance in quality of goods/service)

> cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game

I'd say "socializing losses, privatizing gains" is the name of the game. Those popular disruptive startups dump plenty of externalities on everyone around them. Don't think for a moment that anyone there is increasing efficiency for the sake of increasing efficiency globally; it's just disrupting the society and hoping money pours through the cracks.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#55

Post by tcarn »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #19
strictnein wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the prices on some of the stuff is just weird, with a lot of the Amazon provided stuff now stuck behind Amazon Prime Pantry. I used to order a lot of our daily household stuff from Amazon: cleaners, dish soap, detergent, etc. So much of that stuff now is priced just horribly. $4 for a bottle from Amazon, but it's just from Prime Pantry so you have to order a bunch of stuff or be stuck with a high shipping cost. I…

>If you go with one of the other sellers, the prices are frequently 2-3x normal retail, I guess preying on the fact that people don't realize they're getting ripped off. And as a result, I've become much more careful about checking prices on Amazon, which can't be good for Amazon overall. By contrast, when I go to the grocery store, I generally assume the amount I'm paying is more-or-less the same as what I would pay…

Agreed, which is why I really love camel camel camel. Makes me a much more informed consumer. I wish they had other sites that they tracked.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#56

Post by LordHumungous »

I was shopping with my fiancee on Amazon last night, and she mentioned that she always ignores the first row of search results, which are often highly reviewed but unknown Chinese brands, and goes for the brands that she knows and trusts. She feels that the reviews are not always trustworthy.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#57

Post by secabeen »

tcarn wrote: post #55
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you go with one of the other sellers, the prices are frequently 2-3x normal retail, I guess preying on the fact that people don't realize they're getting ripped off. And as a result, I've become much more careful about checking prices on Amazon, which can't be good for Amazon overall. By contrast, when I go to the grocery store, I generally assume the amount I'm paying is more-or-less the same as what I would pay…

Agreed, which is why I really love camel camel camel. Makes me a much more informed consumer. I wish they had other sites that they tracked.

They used to, but I think the other vendors made them stop, and they don't have the same affiliate program that Amazon does.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#58

Post by decebalus1 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #54
roymurdock wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game, and first world regulations are costs SV can ignore. sometimes the quasi employees suffer the burden (but get increased flexibility), sometimes the consumer suffers (lower price but increased variance in quality of goods/service)

> cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game I'd say "socializing losses, privatizing gains" is the name of the game. Those popular disruptive startups dump plenty of externalities on everyone around them. Don't think for a moment that anyone there is increasing efficiency for the sake of increasing efficiency globally; it's just disrupting the society and hoping money pours through the cracks.

> "socializing losses, privatizing gains"

Never seen this formulated as such but I really like it. I was reading a book which tangentially dealt with that [0]. It changed my perspective on how new businesses are increasingly externalizing their costs to the consumers.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Work-Unpaid-Unseen-Jobs/dp/161...

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#59

Post by secabeen »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #34
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there's a lot of specific products that are always wildly overpriced on Amazon. Mostly anything that is out of print/out of production, no matter how recently it went out or how easy it is to find, but I recently ran into it with Hanes underwear of all things--there wasn't a single seller that wasn't asking at least 50% over Target's online price. For out-of-print books/toys/games/etc., eBay is usually your bes…

I expect out of print stuff to fetch a high price, I'm more talking about standard grocery items. I've seen ridiculous markups on penne pasta, diet soda, certain brands of hand-soap, etc etc. Some of these items, like the pasta, are things I'd previously ordered from Amazon for a fraction of the current price. Which, again, has caused me to be much more cautious—every time I reorder something nowadays, I have to chec…

The reality is is that shipping an amazon item costs between $3-7. For expensive items, they can cover that cost out of the wholesale/retail markup, so you don't really have to pay it. For cheaper items, or items without that much of a markup, it starts showing up in the price. Now, sometimes a manufacturer will want to buy some market share, so they'll sell an item to Amazon cheaper to reduce that impact, and then it's available. However, it will usually go back up to the normal price, with them hoping that you won't notice.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#60

Post by cco »

rootusrootus wrote: post #13

As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…

Maybe a more "nearly trillion-dollar company" twist on your idea: The Prime Marketplace, only official providers, e.g. Sony, Bose, and products sold, and vetted, by Amazon only available to Prime members.
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