Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
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Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#2Why? The article seemed to focus more on the "what" and "how".
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#3Saw this first on the last season of "Shameless".
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#4Amazon warehouses are shelters for things. Either someone pays the fee and adopts the thing, or it goes to the farm upstate.
There are lots of thing mills breeding special things that wind up in the shelter. It's a cold and cruel business, but that's humans trying to make a buck for you.
If things don't get adopted, they don't always get killed though. Sometimes they get adopted for pennies on the dollar, and move elsewhere in the system.
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#5Why? The article seemed to focus more on the "what" and "how".
A lot of products are returned in used state, or have very slight use marks like scratches, tiny dents, protective foil that's been removed, etc. These items therefore can't be resold as new. Finding out exactly which items are and are not good enough is expensive, and therefore the items are just discarded.
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#6Presumably there is a reason these products are being destroyed, safety recalls etc., but the article doesn't seem to have any mention of that?
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#7Why? The article seemed to focus more on the "what" and "how".
A lot of products are returned in used state, or have very slight use marks like scratches, tiny dents, protective foil that's been removed, etc. These items therefore can't be resold as new. Finding out exactly which items are and are not good enough is expensive, and therefore the items are just discarded.
Amazon Warehouse attempts to get some value out of things that are easy enough or worth it to do a cursory inspection - but if you go to return some small value items Amazon tells you to just keep it/throw it away.
The amount of retail "wastage" that occurs would be surprising to many - one you may have seen is the "book without cover has been reported destroyed" you sometimes see - it's not worth it for publishers to have booksellers ship back unsold inventory.
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#8Why? The article seemed to focus more on the "what" and "how".
A lot of products are returned in used state, or have very slight use marks like scratches, tiny dents, protective foil that's been removed, etc. These items therefore can't be resold as new. Finding out exactly which items are and are not good enough is expensive, and therefore the items are just discarded.
>About half of the items marked for destruction were still in their shrink-wrap, while the other half were returned items in good condition, they said.
They're destroying new products too!
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#9Why? The article seemed to focus more on the "what" and "how".
It's due to the way amazon prices 'returns'.
If a customer returns an item they don't like the color of, Amazon will see the package has been opened, and mark it unsellable.
If the manufacturer wants to get the item back to sellable condition (for example, by refurbishing it, and selling it as such), they have to pay for return shipping from the customer (~$6) and a "cross border removal order", costing ~$10 per item. Then they get the item back, and have to have staff to check and refurbish it, and then need to resell it (paying all of Amazons fees again, up to 40% of the retail price)
For most items, it's cheaper just to trash the item and manufacture a new one.
Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses
#10This has been known for years, at least in Europe. German article from 2018: https://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/handel/das-ist-ein-riesengro...
Edit: people replying seem to think that I'm saying that:
1. only Amazon does this; 2. it can be prevented but Amazon just chooses not to.
I didn't say any of those things.