Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 231 posts

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#161

Post by rockinghigh »

brian_herman__ wrote: post #105
m23khan wrote: post #104

Frankly speaking, the amount of steps a customer has to go through to ensure quality from Amazon -- check out reviews for buyers, cross check prices to ensure you are not getting ripped off, check out estimated delivery times, and then as the article (and comments here) state, be on look out for expiration date -- for me at least, it makes sense to use Amazon only for books. Everything else, even living in the First…

Sometimes amazon even sells fake books! https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/amazo...

I can confirm. I received an obviously fake book that seemed to have been printed on a cheap printer.

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#162

Post by jschwartzi »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #134
lotsofpulp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want a refund, I want to support companies that use the right processes to save me time, but companies that choose to commingle to save the company a penny and cost me time are not worth supporting.

What retail shop honestly saves you time? Does waiting in line at Walmart save you time? Yes, you have the option of checking the expiration in line, but is anyone really shopping at Walmart for the time savings?

It saves me time in the sense that I can trust that Walmart knows who is selling them products to stock. Amazon has no idea where their products come from or even if they're counterfeit. And they certainly couldn't be bothered to find out. They also don't really care if the stuff you buy from them actually arrives. I stopped buying anything from Amazon after the 3rd or 4th shipping screw up in as many orders.

The last shipment was just left somewhere in the building that I sublet in. Luckily the guy who runs that office was nice enough to complete the delivery. And before that they had apparently just lost an entire shipment of 24 orders. They were all marked as delivered, but nobody had any way to change that in the system so they wanted me to call customer service.

They were great about 10 years ago when I first signed up for Prime. I don't trust them anymore and will advise all of my friends not to trust Amazon for anything.

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#165

Post by [deleted] »

ebg13 wrote: post #159
brudgers wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skip the spider. Big table. Borg. "Merchant malfeasance analysis" is simple. Amazon is the merchant. The other view is bullshit. Well promoted bullshit. But bullshit nevertheless.

> Skip the spider. Big table. I don't understand these expressions.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#166

Post by ryan-c »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #90
ilamont wrote: post #13

A data analytics firm that specializes in the Amazon Marketplace recently analyzed the site’s 100 best-selling food products for CNBC and found that at least 40% of sellers had more than five customer complaints about expired goods. In other words, Amazon knows about the sellers who ship expired goods yet lets them continue to operate. It has the data and it still fails to take one of the easiest steps to address the…

This is why you should generally: 1) Review all negative ratings prior to a purchase 2) Refuse to buy anything that's less then 4/5 stars.

They commingle reviews for multiple "related" products too.

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#167

Post by matheusmoreira »

dspillett wrote: post #34

A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. Amazon will know but when you write your review or read someone else's, you won't. Same problem as counterfeit goods and commingling though iirc there are more control in pl…

> A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling.

There is no problem with the complaints. Consumers ordered something, paid for it and got a bad product. They have every right to complain and shouldn't be required to "take into account" operational failures of the company they did business with.

> The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations.

How is that the consumer's problem?

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#168

Post by ReconBob »

dspillett wrote: post #34

A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. Amazon will know but when you write your review or read someone else's, you won't. Same problem as counterfeit goods and commingling though iirc there are more control in pl…

Last I checked, Amazon does not commingle food; therefore, who you receive it from should be the seller. I agree, this is a big problem in other categories. For example, I bought some boots from Amazon as the seller- I didn't realize that Amazon comingled the manufacturer's product with 3P sellers. Turns out my boots are not warm. I blamed the manufacturer for a low-quality product- I wish I had known that the product could have been counterfeit.

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#169

Post by SomeOldThrow »

dspillett wrote: post #34

A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. Amazon will know but when you write your review or read someone else's, you won't. Same problem as counterfeit goods and commingling though iirc there are more control in pl…

> The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations.

Amazon took my cash, amazon should be responsible. The fact that they can't keep track of the goods they sell (also seems to be a problem with counterfeits) is their problem, even if they do their best to blame their suppliers.

Re: Amazon is shipping expired food, customers say

#170

Post by ReconBob »

ilamont wrote: post #82
bencollier49 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Amazon comingling foods? Wouldn't that make them responsible for the expiry dates? And a whole lot of other things to boot?

Exactly. Further, if I were an FBA seller, I would probably avoid shipping in expired goods in case they are checked. There's also the issue of goods passing expiry if they are warehoused too long. I suspect many of the expired food sellers are actually FBM, just like the used book sellers. Avoids a lot of potential headaches associated with FBA.

I work for an e-commerce data analytics. I don't have the exact numbers, but I recall many of the Grocery sellers are using FBA.

Why do you think the booksellers don't use FBA? We see plenty of FBA sellers listing used books as new.

Post reply on HN