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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

#101

Post by lotsofpulp »

z77dj3kl wrote: post #94
lotsofpulp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Nike address anything? I assumed everyone was still manufacturing in poorer countries due to more lax labor and environmental laws. They might run some ads how they changed suppliers or something, but people are not going to pay double or triple for clothing so a factory worker in Bangladesh can get a better quality of life at work. People will not even pay more so their neighbors and countryman can have a better…

No, but they will pay 2% more to fix something if it means 5% of customers don't write them off as "awful, unethical, big corp" and not buy stuff from them. There are plenty of examples of companies that did or did not react to negative PR, but the effect is in the statistics, not the individual anecdata.

What are the statistics? All of these companies are still contracting out their labor to factories in countries with lower labor and environmental standards.

Nike chooses not employ any laborers for a reason. I do not see them advertising that the people making the clothes badged with the Nike symbol are working maximum 8 hour days, or maximum 40 hours per week, or getting vacation days.

It is all prose. The sweatshop conditions and disparities in quality of life at work between developed and developing countries have been known for 30+ years. The only thing causing improvements for the laborers in developing countries is increased demand for their labor, not some unverifiable PR response by Nike.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#102

Post by agotterer »

jschwartzi wrote: post #34
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #27

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? What's the reason for these items being marked for destruction? What percentage of the products are these; how many items go through the warehouse per week that are not destroyed? I expect these are products returned with defects, that have been issued recalls…

No Amazon definitely destroys most returns. I was informed that anything you can take to a Kohl’s is destroyed after return. That’s why sometimes it’s not available as an option.

I’m pretty sure I just saved a previously returned item from this fate. I bought something just yesterday from Amazon labeled as “new, but with a damaged box”. The item was heavily discounted, I think around 40% off. I could care less what the box looks like or if the individual parts aren’t wrapped perfectly if the item is in good working condition.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#103

Post by slownews45 »

fallinghawks wrote: post #91
slownews45 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue is the liability risk. Especially food type products, retailers are really worried about putting something back on the shelf that has been out of their control. What's the brand damage if returned petsmart food kills 20 animals because someone was tampering with it? For most folks it's not worth the risks.

I'm not talking food, but items like automatic watering bowls, nail clippers, pet carriers, still in package, some sealed in that plastic that is really hard to cut open.

Consumer goods returns generally follow a pattern.

Some items, especially for third parties, disposal is determined by the third party. This means if the item is not selling well and the third party (amazon has lots of these) doesn't want to or is not big enough to go through the liquidation approach, and doesn't want to pay storage fees and penalties for slow sales.

Other products are not selling well.

A retailer may go through a liquidator if the quality of returns is high (mostly new in box). You'll see people flipping this stuff on ebay all the time.

For premium brands there may be restrictions on resale to avoid devaluing the retail brand. Or they'll only sell in store for physical pickup (outlet style etc).

In the end calculation are made, cost to process, sort, return, restock, liquidiate etc. For items $25 or less it can quickly be not worth it to cycle the product. Especially if there ends up being scuffs and dings on the instore product etc (shoppers are rediculously picky sometimes).

That said, if this is hard to find items, they usually find a good market (returned AMD processors etc).

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#104

Post by Arnt »

Symbiote wrote: post #64
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #27

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? What's the reason for these items being marked for destruction? What percentage of the products are these; how many items go through the warehouse per week that are not destroyed? I expect these are products returned with defects, that have been issued recalls…

> Economics are immune to guilt, you have to find another way to penalize the behaviors you dislike or incentivize the behaviors you want. Aren't articles like this part of that "other way"? The start of the long path to regulation.

How would you regulate this?

The entity that throws these things away is called something like "Amazon Warehouse 123", and its business is to accept goods that belong to others in bulk, keep them for a while, and finally either ship them singly to regular buyers, in bulk to the owner or someone else, or throw the away. The discarded goods are ones for which the owner either has told Amazon Warehouse 1234 to discard, or the owner has stopped paying or otherwise relieved the warehouse of its obligation to… warehouse those goods.

Would you regulate the owner (which is often another Amazon subsidiary, but may also be someone else)? The warehouse? And what would you make them do?

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#105

Post by Fwirt »

crazygringo wrote: post #43

First of all, "130K" is a meaningless number except as a percentage of items sold/returned. Curiously, the article neglects to mention this. Plus, you need to compare that percentage with other retailers. Second, this happens with any business. For new products, it's stuff Amazon has determined simply isn't selling and is unprofitable to continue storing in the limited warehouse space. Better to chuck it and make spa…

What's beyond me is why they can't find a minimal effort solution that still nets them a minimal profit or at least costs them less than disposal. I'm sure they're paying to dispose of this stuff.

Around the US, Goodwill has what it calls "outlet stores", where anything that didn't sell at Goodwill (a low bar to clear) gets sent and dumped into giant bins to be sold as-is by weight, as a last chance at redemption before the landfill. Despite the low quality of the goods, the stores are usually packed, and even Goodwill rejects have value. Before the pandemic my wife and I enjoyed the cheap entertainment of picking stuff up for a song and reselling it on eBay for fun.

I for one would gladly sift through bins of Amazon returns and buy them by weight. If you have "valuable" waste like this there's no need to ship it, people will come to you.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#106

Post by throwaaskjdfh »

skybrian wrote: post #86
throwaaskjdfh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. I disagree with this, or at least the implication that there should have been more information gathered before publication. If the data is surprising against a common-sense set of expectations, it's Amazon's burden to provide a context for interpretation where the surprising information makes sense, not the report. Assuming the report's…

It would be useful but it would probably require Amazon’s cooperation. I agree that it doesn’t mean the reporter did anything wrong to run the story with the info they could gather. Maybe someone from Amazon will explain in response to this story? But there is a mystery at the heart of this story. Amazon’s decisions seem hard to explain. We should let it remain a mystery until we learn more, without either assuming t…

> Amazon’s decisions seem hard to explain. We should let it remain a mystery

This gets back to what I disagree with. If Amazon's decisions seem hard to explain, the decisions should be brought to the public's attention and Amazon should explain them. There is no reason for it to remain a mystery. And they'll never explain it unless there is a price to be paid for not explaining, e.g. being perceived as wasteful.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#107

Post by pera »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #67
crazygringo wrote: post #43

First of all, "130K" is a meaningless number except as a percentage of items sold/returned. Curiously, the article neglects to mention this. Plus, you need to compare that percentage with other retailers. Second, this happens with any business. For new products, it's stuff Amazon has determined simply isn't selling and is unprofitable to continue storing in the limited warehouse space. Better to chuck it and make spa…

> First of all, "130K" is a meaningless number except as a percentage of items sold/returned. No, it's not. 130k of _anything_ is a stupidly high amount. It may be 0.1% of items sold, it's still 130 000 perfectly good items destroyed. In many countries, supermarkets are obligated by law to give away unsold food as long as it is not perished. The exact same thing should happen to Amazon.

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted: 130k is a lot, specially when you consider this is just one warehouse in the UK. Extrapolate this number (including other retailers) and we might be talking about millions of products being destroyed daily on this planet just to increase profit margins for a few people.

The negative externalities from this must be tremendous.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#108

Post by tweetle_beetle »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #54
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #27

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? What's the reason for these items being marked for destruction? What percentage of the products are these; how many items go through the warehouse per week that are not destroyed? I expect these are products returned with defects, that have been issued recalls…

Shh! You're destroying the narration! Who would otherwise find it shocking? /s Media outlets suck at providing context to numbers. It's ironic they always measure every goddamn thing with football fields and olympic swimming pools, but can't be bothered with percentages.

The data was gathered by an undercover reporter who presumably had limited access to systems and reported on what they could. Amazon were free to provide the context, but chose not to. They are also virtually alone in the scale of their business, so context stops really having any meaning: even if they actually destroy ten times less (as a percentage of items sold) than other smaller retailers, a single Amazon warehouse in a single country destroying ~20,000 items a day is still noteworthy.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#109

Post by zeruch »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #27

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? What's the reason for these items being marked for destruction? What percentage of the products are these; how many items go through the warehouse per week that are not destroyed? I expect these are products returned with defects, that have been issued recalls…

"The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? What's the reason for these items being marked for destruction? What percentage of the products are these; how many items go through the warehouse per week that are not destroyed?"

If you read the article you might have caught some context:

"Many vendors choose to house their products in Amazon’s vast warehouses. But the longer the goods remain unsold, the more a company is charged to store them. It is eventually cheaper to dispose of the goods, especially stock from overseas, than to continue storing the stock."

and

""Overall, 50 percent of all items are unopened and still in their shrink wrap. The other half are returns and in good condition. Staff have just become numb to what they are being asked to do.”"

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#110

Post by [deleted] »

Fwirt wrote: post #105
crazygringo wrote: post #43

First of all, "130K" is a meaningless number except as a percentage of items sold/returned. Curiously, the article neglects to mention this. Plus, you need to compare that percentage with other retailers. Second, this happens with any business. For new products, it's stuff Amazon has determined simply isn't selling and is unprofitable to continue storing in the limited warehouse space. Better to chuck it and make spa…

What's beyond me is why they can't find a minimal effort solution that still nets them a minimal profit or at least costs them less than disposal. I'm sure they're paying to dispose of this stuff. Around the US, Goodwill has what it calls "outlet stores", where anything that didn't sell at Goodwill (a low bar to clear) gets sent and dumped into giant bins to be sold as-is by weight, as a last chance at redemption bef…

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