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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

#171

Post by AlexDragusin »

In other words, this Amazon is burning as well!

It's time to reconsider the relationships with these kind of markets, which contributed to the demise of countless small businesses across the country, these were typically run by passionate people who cared both about their product and customer generally, sure, exceptions were to be found.

We need to move on from the get something for nothing attitude on top of the fact that we don't need to buy unlimited stuff (as one could say the smaller stores system cannot cater to all of our cravings).

Quality over quantity; and let's take back our internet, build a website, a nice following, take good care of your customers and build a brand. Personally, I never went for any kind of markets, stuck to my website and I am still in business (since 2004) due to my customers whom I care for dearly every time they need my services.

The internet was designed as a decentralized system, why would anyone give that up so easily? Cheap stuff and convenience.

A quality obituary is in order if we continue this way.

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

#172

Post by dsfyu404ed »

x0x0 wrote: post #127
djsumdog wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Kids' toys aside, using the lowest cost option that satisfies your customers' requirements sounds a lot like "giving a shit" to me.

The fact that lead paint is totally banned (here in the US) instead of just banned in paint marketed for use on/in inhabitable structures and allowed with warning labels required is asinine. There's tons of chemicals out there that will screw up kids and adults if they eat them and we don't ban them. We just let the civil court system assign appropriate judgements to anyone dumb enough to use them on things that will come in close enough contact with people to be harmful.

Edit: The stereotypical effect of lead exposure is that it makes people stupid. I hope you people appreciate the irony in the fact that we can't have a serious discussion about the pros and cons of lead paint.

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

#173

Post by mywittyname »

derefr wrote: post #103
ethbro wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like the only rational explanation is "Bezos wants it like this." I know the folks at Amazon are talented, but the abject failure to optimize for quality over quantity is pretty much only explainable as intentional. I guess a second runner up would be that they're so organizationally KPI-focused, and their KPIs are so myopic, that no one actually realizes how much they're screwing up customer experience. But…

Or perhaps they’re so KPI-focused that they do know they’re screwing up the customer experience, but they don’t care , because customer experience isn’t a KPI and so won’t get them promoted? Interesting factoid: I’ve never seen Amazon attempt to take any net-promoter-score-like “Would you recommend Amazon to your friends” measure. Google does these (I just had one pushed on me while using the GCP console.) Apple prob…

Amazon may have created a more object way of measuring the same thing, but without needing to actually ask customers. They probably know at least a some of garbage products sold on their platform. If that's the case, merely tracking visits and revenues from customers who received poorly made products and comparing with customers who've received well made products over time probably produces a more accurate picture of the effects that low-quality products have on their bottom line over time.

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

#174

Post by floren »

fmajid wrote: post #139
DataWorker wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, when someone is caught doing this in China, they are executed. In the US, their fancy lawyers get them off with a slap on the wrist.

Generally, they blame a "temporary worker", bribe a disinterested party official, and stop putting the poison in that particular product... For now, anyway.

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

#175

Post by astura »

thinkmassive wrote: post #154
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…

Based on my limited experience of visiting Walmart, I think most of their low end products are of significantly better quality than low end products from Amazon.

In fact, Amazon is so overrun with low quality products that I'd even go as far as saying the average Walmart product is better quality than the average Amazon product.

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

#176

Post by astura »

jjoonathan wrote: post #93
AlexandrB wrote: post #64

Their shipping practices have also degraded. Amazon usually ships anything they can in bubble-padded envelopes. This is ok for many things, but for books it's a disaster - softcovers almost always end up with damaged covers, hardcovers get dented corners from being dropped without any protection. I've also received movies and video games with cases damaged worse than what you'd see in a second-hand store. The (suprem…

Another favorite: receiving your item freely bouncing around in a much larger box alongside a single bubble pack that neither tries to nor succeeds at filling any appreciable amount of the empty space available for said bouncing around.

Bonus points when its a glass product.

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

#177

Post by btown »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #172
x0x0 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Kids' toys aside, using the lowest cost option that satisfies your customers' requirements sounds a lot like "giving a shit" to me. The fact that lead paint is totally banned (here in the US) instead of just banned in paint marketed for use on/in inhabitable structures and allowed with warning labels required is asinine. There's tons of chemicals out there that will screw up kids and adults if they eat them and we do…

How do you enforce this? How can a consumer know that their contractor isn’t cutting corners? Sometimes the only solution is to stop the problem at its source.

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

#178

Post by Nasrudith »

chenning wrote: post #158
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…

You know, I've seen countless times when, say, Walmart or some other retailer gets caught and body slammed for stocking a product on their shelves that was known to be manufactured under substandard working conditions. It's possible that I'm just not seeing the same frequency of articles lobbed at Amazon, but there's no doubt they are guilty of the same thing on some level. Is it because Amazon found a way to sort of…

Well the thing is "unfair working conditions" is subjective and lacks binding force unlike say illegal trade with a sanctioned country. So the consequences are "whatever the consumers decide".

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

#179

Post by dsfyu404ed »

btown wrote: post #177
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids' toys aside, using the lowest cost option that satisfies your customers' requirements sounds a lot like "giving a shit" to me. The fact that lead paint is totally banned (here in the US) instead of just banned in paint marketed for use on/in inhabitable structures and allowed with warning labels required is asinine. There's tons of chemicals out there that will screw up kids and adults if they eat them and we do…

How do you enforce this? How can a consumer know that their contractor isn’t cutting corners? Sometimes the only solution is to stop the problem at its source.

How does a consumer ever know their someone they've hired isn't cutting corners? When you pay for asbestos remediation how do you know they actually did it right? When you pay an accountant how do you know they're not half-assing it?

When you make your living doing a thing it's far more lucrative to do things right than to do them wrong. There's a bunch of incentives business owners who provide services operate within and they generally align to doing things the right way.

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

#180

Post by danso »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #88
danso wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulling a listing is not the same as issuing a recall. And your arithmetic does nothing to account for the hit to reputation and trust.

Pretty sure it’s a spin on a Fight Club quote.

Er, what's your point? That, because it comes from Fight Club it must be only in an ironic sense?
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