Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#111

Post by ibdf » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

Dropshipping and the dream of selling anything online without having to manage products, warehouses, customers is what happened to amazon. I often get bombarded with "make quick money selling on amazon" ads. Quality has gone down, you never really know what you are getting anymore unless it's from a well known brand. But customers have also become lazy, not doing any research, buying things that are way too cheap and then complaining about the quality.

Bad products and fake copies have been available for years you just had to know where to look... it's just easier to find it now.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#112

Post by derefr » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

It seems like the main problem everyone has with Amazon is their curation. Or, to put it more amusingly, “they have too much stuff!” (They have the good stuff you want, but it’s buried in bad stuff that you don’t, too.)

Is this really Amazon’s problem to solve, though? Or is this just a symptom of a bad value-chain ecosystem? Shouldn’t other players be cropping up to be external “shopping search engines” that find you the real, quality items on Amazon’s (and other stores’) huge junk-piles, the way that Google finds you real, quality web pages among the junk-pile that is the web?

Sure, it’d be nice if Amazon solved the problem itself. But I don’t see a reason that it has to be the one to solve the problem. Amazon can just provide infrastructure to allow anyone to sell anything, and then someone else can build “retail experiences” on top. Just like AWS isn’t trying to be Salesforce with a full platform experience.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#113

Post by mfer » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #73

I don’t get it. I had about 150 purchases last year. Toothbrushes, Apple Watch bands, hard drives, diapers, truffles, pasta, foot massagers, hats, books, etc. I had 1 bad purchase. I bought a used Roomba 980 sold by Amazon. There was a used 680 in the box. Amazon apologized and sent a brand new 980 the next day. Am I some sort of uberresultsfilter, or do the whiners just get way too much attention?

This assumes you know everything bad in those purchases. In the article they talked about buying some children's products and found one with levels of lead that exceeded federal limits. limits put in place for safety. Would you know that about any of the 150 items you purchased last year? In my purchase history I know I wouldn't.

We don't tend to know all the details about everything we buy. We assume the purchase was fine if it looks like we got what we expected, it wasn't broken, and it was at the price we expected. But, when it comes to things like product safety we trust what it says on the label. In some cases those are known lies. Like the helmet in the article that was labeled as being DOT certified but wasn't. I would not have known this if I were in that situation. Would you have?

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#114

Post by gdulli » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

iwasakabukiman wrote: post #41

For me, Amazon's main purpose is to get them to price match Best Buy. Why wait 3 days when I can just go to Best Buy, show them the same item for $30 cheaper on Amazon and get it immediately?

Right. Amazon has become a better showroom than a store.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#115

Post by usrusr » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #36

stanski wrote: post #24

They were sued for the recklessly mislabeled helmet and still didn't take the posting down? Even if they could've argued that they themselves were fooled by the seller initially, not following up after the guy was killed points to a much bigger issue. Basically they just don't give a shit. Side note: I'm filled with dread just thinking about buying a motorcycle helmet from amazon.

Take the number of helmets in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

This kind of cynical profit calculation has nothing to do with the problem at hand.

The most likely explanation why they would not remove the listing in a regression-safe way even after getting dragged to court is that the team dealing with the lawsuit is paid for being good at lawsuits, not for avoiding them, while the team responsible for managing third party listings is paid for snacking third party listings. It's almost surprising that the listing apparently did disappear while the court was watching.

Put all this into an organisation that has a multi-decade tradition of sidelining mundane, conventional company goals like striking a profit in favor of enigmatic founder strategy and nobody will ever risk rocking the boat by pointing out problems outside their job description.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#116

Post by circa » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

leemcalilly wrote: post #57

Darmody wrote: post #13

Amazon overall quality has droped in recent years. I use to buy from Amazon because I knew I was buying original brands and no chinese cheap copies. Well, that changed a lot. There are specific things that I still buy from Amazon but on most things there's almost no difference between they and Aliexpress. I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days. Thankfully there are…

As a small niche retailer that makes and sells guitar straps in Nashville I couldn’t agree more. Our experiments selling on Amazon have only hurt us, but Prime is a huge time & shipping $$ saver for re-ordering supplies for our shop and even materials used to make our products. We’ve experimented with selling on a lot of different sites (Amazon, Etsy, Reverb, etc) and have found the best way to control the brand and…

love the site!

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#117

Post by mysterydip » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #34

This among many reasons is is why I cancelled my prime membership. The quality control is abysmal. It's become an eBay, but without a proper dispute system, and crazy prices. Many goods get listed at multiples of the price available elsewhere and if you're not paying attention you can get screwed. It's totally buyer beware. The trust that Amazon established over the years has been lost. I ordered something on Amazon…

At least with eBay you can see the actual product that will be shipped to you, and if not represented correctly you can dispute (as you mentioned). With Amazon you might buy something that gets "fulfilled by one or more third parties" which may or may not look like the picture.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#118

Post by CaptainZapp » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

mffnbs wrote: post #91

CaptainZapp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you stumble over stories like this[1]. In a way it's her own damn fault. If I invest a significant amout of money into a branded product I'd probably visit the store of the brand, or a reseller licensed by the brand. But I sure as hell wouldn't order a $1000 coat from Amazon. That just yells: RIP ME OFF! [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/count...

I read the story and honestly don't see that the writer is at fault. Sure, criticize the woman for not knowing better, but that's where her blame stops and Amazon takes the rest.

Sure, Ultimately it is Amazon's fault for not policing their site and allowing blatant fakes to be sold.

I'd still argue that it's really better to buy expensive brands at shops licensed by the brand.

I can be pretty sure that I don't get a dud, when I drop 800$ on a Rimowa suitcase in one of their stores. Not so much, when ordering from Amazon.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#119

Post by hunterloftis » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

mrosett wrote: post #47

A few thoughts: * Amazon is a total mess right now, and this is great investigative reporting. I think Amazon is going to go through a rough year or two in PR terms. They need to get this under control quickly. * Amazon can pretend that it's just a platform, but in practice they benefit from consumers assuming that everything on the site has some stamp of approval (even if it's not as full a stamp as, say, buying the…

> Some of the violations pointed out here are pretty dumb. How much does not labeling balloons as choking hazards actually threaten safety? Of course, that reflects a tolerance of rule-breaking and law-breaking that reflects poorly on Amazon.

I was surprised to see the WSJ go into detail about balloons above the toys with 400x allowed lead and motorcycle helmets falsely stamped "DOT Approved" that crack open on contact.

From an engineering perspective, however, it shows that Amazon isn't even willing to devote a minimum of resources (or is actively avoiding its duty to check). How hard would it be to query for any product with "balloon" in its title that lacks "choking hazard" in its description?

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#120

Post by dwyerm » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

leemcalilly wrote: post #75

martythemaniak wrote: post #30

I wonder if Amazon won't somehow kill itself with poor quality. I needed a bunch of LED bulbs recently and I knew exactly what I was looking for - about a dozen 40W eq, two 60w eq and two 100w eq, all in 2700K and two 100w in 3000K. Amazon was a mess - prices were all over the place, exact products were hard to find, etc. Dollarama had them all for $2.50, $3.50 and $4.00 a piece, usually in all three flavours (2700,…

I’ve long thought this sort of thing would be a really good business model. You could launch a bunch of vertical sites and use the same shipping / fulfillment system. Huge irony would be if you did this with Fulfillment by Amazon, but it would probably work. I guess the core problem is that when you’re looking for something new, browsing Amazon is a total mess. It would be much easier to do a web search and find bull…

For me, personally, the way Amazon has captured me is more in the cart than in the fulfillment. Yes, it is nice to get things to my door practically overnight, but the fact that I can make that happen without typing my personal and financial information into a skeevy website that could be anywhere is the real value to me. PayPal (...and Apple Pay and Google Wallet and Samsung Something and Venmo an Beanz and and and...) is the technology that should be making this friction go away, but it appears to be difficult to provide this without turning evil.

So, to your idea, I also appreciate the idea of one, trustworthy, site that would do all of that for me. The thing is, Amazon is that site, for the most part.