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Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

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Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#81

Post by xboxnolifes »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #77
Judson wrote: post #64

The realities of a warehouse operation make this inevitable (I’ve run an 8-figure/yr online distributor). Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Folks just click “damaged” to get a refund and Amazon has to have warehouse workers, not professional book inspectors, receive the returns and note their condition. This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagre…

>Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. I'm curious if you think this is appropriate in other circumstances too: a customer at the grocery store returns a bag of candy. Do you want the cashier to check it and decide to put it back on the shelf for you to buy? >This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree…

> Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario.

And creates other scenarios.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#82

Post by aowiejtriawj »

manicennui wrote: post #51

If you care about the condition of books you buy, don't buy from Amazon. They'll throw a $100+ hardcover in a lightly padded envelope and chuck it around. Or they'll put it in a box with some other random item and a few inflatable shipping bags, but not enough to keep things from shifting around freely.

100% agree. Just about every book I've bought from amazon has arrived severely damaged due to crap packaging. I wanted to buy a really nice limited release folio recently, but for some reason the printer only sold it through Amazon. Why would you sell your $200 art book through a company that guarantees 90% of them will be trashed? I emailed the printer, they confirmed the books were only available through amazon, I bought one, and returned it because it looked like it had been thrown down a flight of stairs.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#83

Post by aowiejtriawj »

bmitc wrote: post #54
manicennui wrote: post #51

If you care about the condition of books you buy, don't buy from Amazon. They'll throw a $100+ hardcover in a lightly padded envelope and chuck it around. Or they'll put it in a box with some other random item and a few inflatable shipping bags, but not enough to keep things from shifting around freely.

Their packing has gotten comically bad, particularly for sensitively items like books and such. I've greatly reduced my Amazon buying over the years due to issues with damaged items, and lately, Amazon is getting more aggressive about discouraging returns. But I'm not going to pay $30+ for a new hardcover that comes damaged and covered with dirt and grime.

It seems like all shipping companies have gotten comically bad in the past year or two. This past summer I mailed boxes to seven family members via USPS. Only 3 of 7 boxes made it to their destinations intact. Three were delivered but destroyed, crushed, like either someone drove over them with a truck or literally jumped up and down on them several times, and one just disappeared. UPS has also delivered to me several completely destroyed packages in the past few months, also looked like they were driven over by trucks.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#84

Post by cool_dude85 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #81
cool_dude85 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. I'm curious if you think this is appropriate in other circumstances too: a customer at the grocery store returns a bag of candy. Do you want the cashier to check it and decide to put it back on the shelf for you to buy? >This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree…

> Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. And creates other scenarios.

Well, like what? The book gets thrown away?

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#85

Post by KennyBlanken »

gurchik wrote: post #72

From the author's perspective, this is not expected according to their agreement with Amazon. Unfortunately from the consumer's perspective, this is not surprising at all. Everyone I know has received a "used" item sold as "new, sold by Amazon.com." Whether it's due to commingling, or an attempt to reduce waste, or plain corporate greed, I have no idea. Just saying that if I returned a book on Amazon, I wouldn't be s…

It's blatantly illegal under federal law to sell used items as new, full stop, end of story. But Bezos gets invites to the white house pretty regularly so it seems federal regulators get the message that enforcement against Amazon is a no-go.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#86

Post by KennyBlanken »

aowiejtriawj wrote: post #83
bmitc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their packing has gotten comically bad, particularly for sensitively items like books and such. I've greatly reduced my Amazon buying over the years due to issues with damaged items, and lately, Amazon is getting more aggressive about discouraging returns. But I'm not going to pay $30+ for a new hardcover that comes damaged and covered with dirt and grime.

It seems like all shipping companies have gotten comically bad in the past year or two. This past summer I mailed boxes to seven family members via USPS. Only 3 of 7 boxes made it to their destinations intact. Three were delivered but destroyed, crushed, like either someone drove over them with a truck or literally jumped up and down on them several times, and one just disappeared. UPS has also delivered to me severa…

I've been ordering stuff online for two decades and "badly packed stuff" is nothing new, I assure you.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#87

Post by RecycledEle »

I found this quote enlightening:

> From: Joaquín Baldwin, @joabaldwin > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book > is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I > don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed. They > stole my money while scamming a customer.

So the author wants to be paid royalties on books he says are "damaged" that are brand new but that he says can not be sold to customers?

We recently discussed abuses of copyright law. This qualifies as an abuse of copyright law IMHO.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#88

Post by RecycledEle »

joabaldwin wrote: post #44

Author from original post here! For clarification, this is not a new thing, but something I learned to do from this post: https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbix... In her case, she ordered author copies (that gives you no royalties, of course) and got the same copies sold again to herself as author copies. In my case, I also ordered author copies, but they were resold to a normal customer after…

I assume Amazon thought the author was too picky, so they shipped him another 14 books from their inventory and put the 14 he returned into inventory.

I frequently get books that have the errors this author described. It's normal in cheap books. I've even seen those errors in guilt-edged, leather-bound collectible books.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#89

Post by anonimo37 »

pbnjeh wrote: post #13

They also ship books in oversized boxes with no padding. If you're "lucky", they combined your book order with your order for something hard and heavy that can help beat the book up while the box tumbles. Not always, but often enough that if I order a book from them, I try to remind myself to to wait to order until nothing else I've ordered has yet to ship. Then wait after I've ordered the book, until the book has sh…

They do this with hard drives as well. The first and last time I ever purchased hard drives from Amazon, the two drives arrived in an oversized box with no protection other than the antistatic bags they were in. I sent them back but I'm sure they'll just sell them to someone else.

Most of the time my Amazon books have arrived in good condition mostly due to sheer luck given the way they were packed. Sometimes a hardcover had a dented corner or a paperback had a bent spine. Not worth the hassle of returning and reordering (especially if the price went up since ordering as Amazon refuses to honor the original price). I do miss Book Depository as they would ship each book individually even when I ordered multiple items.

These days I try to avoid Amazon but keep getting sucked in when the price + shipping is cheaper or I can't be bothered creating an account on a website I have not used before.

Re: Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

#90

Post by [deleted] »

aowiejtriawj wrote: post #83
bmitc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their packing has gotten comically bad, particularly for sensitively items like books and such. I've greatly reduced my Amazon buying over the years due to issues with damaged items, and lately, Amazon is getting more aggressive about discouraging returns. But I'm not going to pay $30+ for a new hardcover that comes damaged and covered with dirt and grime.

It seems like all shipping companies have gotten comically bad in the past year or two. This past summer I mailed boxes to seven family members via USPS. Only 3 of 7 boxes made it to their destinations intact. Three were delivered but destroyed, crushed, like either someone drove over them with a truck or literally jumped up and down on them several times, and one just disappeared. UPS has also delivered to me severa…

[deleted]
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