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Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

californiaglobe.com

21–30 of 386 posts

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#21
eBay is not same-same, it's much more marketplace-esque.

eBay does not use a consolidated product listing, much more like a bulletin board each sellers products being sold under it's own URL. Amazon consolidates the listing for all sellers into a single product and uses their own ranking algorithms to determine which seller is in the "buy box" (which accounts for 97% of the items sales velocity). Amazon treats the entire experience as their transaction, they anonymize the emails and don't allow sellers to send follow-messages to clients or market other products to them (package inserts). The cart-checkout process isn't broken down by seller either, it's a unified payment and "1 click" checkout. I don't feel bad for Amazon at all - they've had it coming!

FWIW .. I was the first person (as a 3rd party) to develop an integration with Amazon's marketplace. I also personally won eBays' star developer award. I recall the year the Internet Retailer show was in San Diego and Amazon didn't have an employee there. It was against Amazon corporate rules to allow employees to spend the night in CA in fear it would create sales tax nexus. Amazon employees would need to fly back to Seattle and then fly back to San Diego if they came down for a friday meeting and wanted to spend the weekend on personal time! Amazon has gamed the rules, they compete directly with their clients (sellers) using the sales data to decide what product to source. They ran their warehouses as 3rd party entities to avoid nexus and begrudging accepted 3rd party (non-Amazon owned) sellers when the courts ruled that wholly owned entities would create sales-tax nexus. I feel no pity for them.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#23
post #22

In what world does this not just become a contractually required insurance policy covering Amazon, paid for by the third party. Granted, whoever pays in name, the cost will be passed on to consumers.

Well, maybe, maybe not.

At least, it incentivizes Amazon to chase the culprits. The question is whether that incentive is big enough for them to fix / improve things.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#24
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal isn’t as much of a thing these days for ebay transactions

It's not? I use PayPal for all my eBay transactions and what few items I sell (abeit rarely) also seem to be paid for via PayPal.

Yesterday I purchased the first thing in a long time from eBay. I was surprised that I could just use my credit card and no longer needed to use PayPal.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#25
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Product had been listed on eBay: Yes Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses. Had facilitated payment: Maybe, but eBay typically just links one Paypal account to another Paypal account. eBay does not actually touch the funds. (Paypal has been it's own separate company for awhile now.) Shipped it out in eBay packaging: Unless they're using a service, typically shipping is up to the eBay sell…

> Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses. eBay used to have a service where you could take any random junk to their mall kiosk or a FedEx store and eBay would sell it on your behalf. That would pretty much require them to have warehouses. Is that service dead?

They have a Consignment Center [0] but that only really seems to hook you up with on the the various "I'll sell your crap on eBay" that exist instead of doing it themselves.

[0] https://pages.ebay.com/rcp/consignmentcenter/#/

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big fan of Amazon here... I’ve been using Amazon since 1990-something… yet the co-mingling counterfeit items has caused me to stop using it for many items I formally purchased there. Amazon make inefficient use of truck rolls for delivery, often sending many trucks through my small residential subdivision every day, needlessly delivering one non-urgent item at a time. This is probably the key competitive challenge fa…

I keep seeing these complaints on HN... Is co-mingling a bigger problem in some regions, or have I just gotten consistently lucky? Or maybe I'm a sheep and haven't noticed? In all honesty, I would appreciate an excuse to stop using Amazon, because the amount that I buy from them compared to any other store makes me uncomfortable. But the co-mingling thing just hasn't come up for me...

Probably depends on what you are buying. I am a board gamer and counterfeit board games from Amazon is a huge problem. I stopped purchasing board games from Amazon after getting three counterfeits in a row.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#27
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Appellate Court didn’t agree with Amazon’s stance, noting that the product had been listed on Amazon, was stored in an Amazon warehouse, had facilitated payment, and shipped it out in Amazon packaging, proving it to have a hand in getting it to Bolger and thus being liable under California law. eBay does not meet the second qualifier and rarely meets the last. Additionally, it is more obviously a marketplace -…

Product had been listed on eBay: Yes Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses. Had facilitated payment: Maybe, but eBay typically just links one Paypal account to another Paypal account. eBay does not actually touch the funds. (Paypal has been it's own separate company for awhile now.) Shipped it out in eBay packaging: Unless they're using a service, typically shipping is up to the eBay sell…

> eBay does not actually touch the funds.

They do now. They are in the middle of moving most of their sellers to a program called Managed Payments. eBay handles the payment processing through the program. Sellers do not receive money via paypal, but their own bank accounts. eBay batches the proceeds of the sales and ACHs the money daily M-F.

The transition is ongoing, but the goal is all sellers with stores will move to it eventually.

https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/service-and-payments/ma...

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution being to make FBA marketers buy stakes in the warehouse until a bunch of dropshipping bloggers own them all.

Or amazon just makes it more clear when you’re buying from a non-Amazon party that uses FBA.

Physical stores should do this too. Gets rid of the liability for what you sell.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#29
post #9

Common sense. Amazon want to ‘own’ the customer relationship and go to great lengths to that end then it follows they will have to ‘own’ any liability too. Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product and they were to try fob you off saying you need to go to their supplier/wholesaler/manufacturer. It mostly doesn’t work that way thanks to most consumer protection laws in place.

>“Most courts have said they’re not a seller at all which makes California’s case interesting. They’re pretty much saying that, in California, if it’s on the website for sale, they’re selling it.

What kind of monkey circus are we living in where this is not common sense. Is Amazon really taking the same position as OfferUp? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bmBxQHbZQQ

Regrettable, when I lived in Bolivia I dreamed of being able to purchase things online. Having that security was priceless to me. Now that I live here it seems Amazon has become a fleamarket website. I buy things through Walmart now, only the things sold by Walmart themselves.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big fan of Amazon here... I’ve been using Amazon since 1990-something… yet the co-mingling counterfeit items has caused me to stop using it for many items I formally purchased there. Amazon make inefficient use of truck rolls for delivery, often sending many trucks through my small residential subdivision every day, needlessly delivering one non-urgent item at a time. This is probably the key competitive challenge fa…

I keep seeing these complaints on HN... Is co-mingling a bigger problem in some regions, or have I just gotten consistently lucky? Or maybe I'm a sheep and haven't noticed? In all honesty, I would appreciate an excuse to stop using Amazon, because the amount that I buy from them compared to any other store makes me uncomfortable. But the co-mingling thing just hasn't come up for me...

Hard to tell between lucky and have you gotten some and not noticed. Some things are definitely more faked than others so it can really depend on what you're buying and when.
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