I don't understand the story. He was given several warnings that his stuff would be destroyed. Why is it Amazon's fault now?
Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
151–160 of 363 posts
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#152Unpopular opinion: He was told multiple times to remove the inventory or it would be destroyed, in accordance with the contract he signed. He didn't remove the inventory.
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#153Amazon in Australia is not very good (yet). It's nothing like America or Japan, which have huge inventories and same or next day delivery. This is a really really bad look for Amazon, which is in the process of expanding in Australia. Retailers are already nervous about their expansion plans here and this does further bad for their brand.
Amazon in Australia has had great delivery times during Covid as they run their own Uber like app for people delivering in their own cars.
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
While fatal disasters can happen to anyone, this story isn't a case of getting in trouble regardless of personal virtues. The man put all his eggs in one basket, creating a single point of failure. When that failure actually happened, he was hosed. How would the story play out if he kept part of his inventory outside of the "Fulfilled by Amazon" system, or even outside of Amazon altogether? He wouldn't lose all of it…
That amounts to Monday Morning Quarterbacking and blaming the victim. The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket. -- Andrew Carnegie When it works, it works. When it doesn't, it doesn't. Paul Graham has said that a successful startup "does everything right and also wins the proverbial lottery" (or something along those lines). In other words, you can do everything right an…
I do agree that a safety net is a useful thing to have.
But I disagree with the impression from your post that a safety net would have been the preferred solution to this merchant's woes. It would only keep him slightly afloat, compared to being careful about his business, where he could have kept a significant portion of it.
The line between being careless and blaming the victim is blurry, so I'm not going to discuss it.
However, building a successful startup is fundamentally different from running a sustainable business: in the former case, you deliberately make a high-risk, high-reward bet, while in the latter you want to take only enough risk to keep going. I had the impression that the story was about a business trying to be sustainable getting ruined.
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#155The merchants must navigate a largely automated, guilty-until-proven-innocent process in which Amazon serves as judge and jury. Their emails and calls can go unanswered, or Amazon's replies are incomprehensible, making sellers suspect they're at the mercy of algorithms with little human oversight. This is something our modern society was and is not ready for. Bureaucracy and the bureaucrats that administered it is a…
Sounds like the movie Brazil.
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#156“ The spokeswoman said Amazon repeatedly asked Govani to provide evidence that the products sold were authentic but that the invoices he sent were either illegible or didn't match the records of the brand owners.”
May have been grey market goods, which is bound to be problematic on Amazon for branded high end fashion.
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
That amounts to Monday Morning Quarterbacking and blaming the victim. The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket. -- Andrew Carnegie When it works, it works. When it doesn't, it doesn't. Paul Graham has said that a successful startup "does everything right and also wins the proverbial lottery" (or something along those lines). In other words, you can do everything right an…
I do agree that a safety net is a useful thing to have. But I disagree with the impression from your post that a safety net would have been the preferred solution to this merchant's woes. It would only keep him slightly afloat, compared to being careful about his business, where he could have kept a significant portion of it. The line between being careless and blaming the victim is blurry, so I'm not going to discus…
There's a pandemic on. Up to a third of Americans can't pay their rent/mortgage this year.
Some people are taking risks because of the general climate around them. Living steeped in craziness can impair your judgment by making it genuinely difficult to figure out what strategy is actually sensible while the world is a case of "Please, stop this merry go round. I would like to get off now."
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#158Yeah, you know, when people keep saying "You aren't as far from being homeless as you imagine you are" this is what they mean. Just because your life has not come unraveled overnight doesn't mean it can't for reasons beyond your control having nothing to do with personal virtues or lack thereof. We really need to get universal health care in the US, among other things, to limit how far people can fall when something…
While fatal disasters can happen to anyone, this story isn't a case of getting in trouble regardless of personal virtues. The man put all his eggs in one basket, creating a single point of failure. When that failure actually happened, he was hosed. How would the story play out if he kept part of his inventory outside of the "Fulfilled by Amazon" system, or even outside of Amazon altogether? He wouldn't lose all of it…
How many small retail businesses keep multiple bricks and mortar locations solely as a backup in case one location becomes unusable? How many retail businesses have two locations just in case the street outside their premises is permanently removed without notice by the owning municipality?
There is a limit to how much risk individuals and small businesses can realistically hedge against. Insurance can cover many risks, but it doesn't necessarily cover the impacts of legal, but arbitrary, abuses by business partners. Unpredictable, uninsurable, risks should not be offloaded onto people who are unable to withstand them.
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
In any case it could be very hard to prove that the items are fake by inspection, it’s mostly a fight about distribution and the supply channel.
If you can't tell they're fake by inspection how did the complaining customers identify them as fake?
often fakes (in fashion at least) are just overquota items produced from the same sweatshop that produce the legit items, which the sweatshops sell on the side to earn that dollar more per month.
brands thus moved to control counterfeit pursuing anything that isn't coming off their sales chain end to end, even if the fake is virtually identical to the legit product.
Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
#160The merchants must navigate a largely automated, guilty-until-proven-innocent process in which Amazon serves as judge and jury. Their emails and calls can go unanswered, or Amazon's replies are incomprehensible, making sellers suspect they're at the mercy of algorithms with little human oversight. This is something our modern society was and is not ready for. Bureaucracy and the bureaucrats that administered it is a…
Kafka and Orwell were right. They might have understated their cases.
I don't think people understood how tech could exaggerate and accentuate some of the worst in humanity and create massive centralisation which can create more and more stifling bureaucracy. At least before, you could be ignored by a bureaucrat, now it is a faceless, nameless, heartless system