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

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

#121

Post by thefreeman »

duxup wrote: post #46

That and they've gone the wall-mart route of actually PUSHING anything / the lowest price possible. I get stuff that's like 5% cheaper but quality looks to be about 50% the quality pushed on me all the time on Amazon now. I went to Amazon originally to find QUALITY products that my local stores didn't carry because of price pressures. Now Amazon seems to be switching to just being ... wall-mart and that's already nea…

Kind of off topic, but do you have a recommendation on a good HDMI switch? I have struggled with the crappy ones from amazon many times. The most frustrating part is that their "remotes" all seem to overlap with regular tv remote frequencies or something, such that changing the volume on the tv ends up triggering an input switch.

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

#122

Post by myvoiceismypass »

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,…

Yep. My amazon purchases are getting tougher and tougher to complete. And they are getting less transparent about who is delivering and who is responsible for defective shit from a return perspective.

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

#123

Post by ineedasername »

I'd say it's a combination of both some unwillingness and some inability. I think the unwillingness would come more from a desire to avoid a murky, difficult to execute & resource intensive process, and not from a purely mercenary desire to sell more product. Because it would be a better shopping experience and spur more activity if there was greater trust in the 3rd party marketplace.

The inability stems mainly from the same problem large content aggregators always have. Like Youtube's filter generating false positives or false negatives for blocking content or flagging IP issues, or the filter for Youtube Kids letting through inappropriate content. It's all too much to adequately police without unreasonably high (from their perspective) resources.

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

#124

Post by mrosett »

hunterloftis wrote: post #119
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 conta…

That's exactly how I felt about it. They undermined themselves rhetorically by using the number of balloon listings to increase the count of dangerous products. However, the fact that Amazon hasn't fixed even that well-defined a problem is concerning.

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

#125

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

My biggest problems with Amazon:

1. Sellers pretending to be legitimate brands. I’ve bought things thinking I’m buying from this brand I know, turns out it’s just a copycat.

2. Accidentally buying used products which seem to be old models. I’ve made the mistake on a few occasions buying used when I specifically wanted a new item.

Amazon has plummeted in quality but I get a feeling they don’t care. Their ultimate goal is most likely to flush out the top sellers and replace their goods with amazons own brand.

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

#126

Post by DataWorker »

djsumdog wrote: post #90
cs702 wrote: post #58

Yikes: > A Wall Street Journal investigation found 4,152 items for sale on Amazon.com Inc. ’s site that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators—items that big-box retailers’ policies would bar from their shelves. Among those items, at least 2,000 listings for toys and medications lacked warnings about health risks to children. > Of the 4,152 products…

I always wondered how we got all these reports of lead in products and children's toys. There was a post a few weeks back where someone explained it and it made perfect sense: recycling. China takes a ton of US recycling. They often melt down metals, e-waste and solder and it's difficult to separated out lead and unleaded source material. A lot of it just gets put together and used in bulk.

They have these issues due to corruption, greed and negligence. With recycling as with other stuff, China cheats and poisons people to make a quick dollar, decades go by and nothing changes and nobody goes to prison. Think of how many people use Chinese made pots and pans, or knives, and have no clue they’re poisoning themselves and their families just to save a few bucks by buying the cheap Chinese version.

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

#127

Post by x0x0 »

djsumdog wrote: post #90
cs702 wrote: post #58

Yikes: > A Wall Street Journal investigation found 4,152 items for sale on Amazon.com Inc. ’s site that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators—items that big-box retailers’ policies would bar from their shelves. Among those items, at least 2,000 listings for toys and medications lacked warnings about health risks to children. > Of the 4,152 products…

I always wondered how we got all these reports of lead in products and children's toys. There was a post a few weeks back where someone explained it and it made perfect sense: recycling. China takes a ton of US recycling. They often melt down metals, e-waste and solder and it's difficult to separated out lead and unleaded source material. A lot of it just gets put together and used in bulk.

Also, if you don't give a shit about your customers, lead paint often dries faster, is more durable, and is cheaper than alternatives. I suspect this is a more common reason.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/business/worldbusiness/10...

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

#128

Post by dchichkov »

dahart wrote: post #92

> At one point in 2013, some Amazon employees began scanning randomly selected third-party products in Amazon warehouses for lead content, say people familiar with the tests. Around 10% of the products tested failed, one says. The failed products were purged, but higher-level employees decided not to expand the testing, fearing it would be unmanageable if applied to the entire marketplace, the people familiar with th…

There was a recent study that also had crossed a threshold of anecdotes [1]: "The Attorney General’s Office, in partnership with the Washington State Department of Ecology, tested children’s school supplies for harmful levels of lead and cadmium in 2017 and 2018. The tests targeted products the two agencies suspected might contain toxic metals. In total, two rounds of tests identified 51 products sold on Amazon.com that tested positive for illegal levels of lead and cadmium. In the first round of testing, 16 of the 43 products from Amazon tested positive for illegal levels of toxic metals. In the second round of tests, the two agencies found that 35 of 41 products examined exceed the legal limits. The Department of Ecology paid for the first round of testing and the Attorney General’s Office funded the second round. " [1] https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-ferguson-amazon....

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

#129

Post by hyperrail »

savrajsingh wrote: post #66

It seems like the best way to get stuff changed at Amazon is to have the Wall Street Journal send them feedback. WSJ is essentially doing free work for amazon - “hey these products are not legit” “oh shucks, our bad, let’s remove those, yea” “hey they reappeared,” “oh our bad let’s remove them again sry”. clearly it’s not a priority for amazon...

I wouldn't say WSJ is doing "free" work for Amazon - subscriptions are very expensive:

https://store.wsj.com/shop/US/US/wsjussblds0919/

They are currently running a 2 months for $1 sale and a half off for 1 year sale, but a digital subscription normally goes for $38.99 per month.

Oddly, it's a couple of dollars cheaper per month to buy the print newspaper and digital subscription together than to buy the digital sub alone.

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

#130

Post by rabidrat »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #97
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.

> Side note: I'm filled with dread just thinking about buying a motorcycle helmet from amazon. Don't, I wouldn't. Revzilla, sells all sorts of motorcycle gear and has a great reputation. https://www.revzilla.com/

Where do we aggregate all these places with great reputations for nice products?
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