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Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

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Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#171

Post by rhn_mk1 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #157
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Let me rephrase: I got an impression from your post that you atribute no fault to the merchant: he did everything right and got the short end of the stick.

What I want to point out is that if he was careful about his business partners, he'd be much better off now. It's not relevant why he wasn't.

He had the agency to mitigate the problem, and didn't. What happened was not an unpreventable natural disaster. The lesson out of this shouldn't be "you don't have agency so we need a safety net", but rather "we often have agency to stay afloat". Perhaps also "we need a safety net for when our bets don't pay off or when we don't".

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#172

Post by einpoklum »

bgorman wrote: post #50
Areading314 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not the automation, the problem is that a single authority has a complete monopoly on certain aspects of the e-commerce market. Full credit to Bezos and Amazon for their incredible execution in achieving this. However, monopolies are an example of market failure, and in this case, also an example of an authority able to act as judge + jury where the affected parties have no realistic recourse, while be…

How is Amazon a monopoly when customers can easily purchase an item from eBay, Walmart, Target, Aliexpress, and many others. Amazon is often the most expensive option for me.

I don't know about Target and Walmart as on-line entities, but I do know that there is limited overlap between the merchandise you find on eBay and the merchandise you find on AliExpress. So it is often (usually?) not true that if you can buy an item on website X you can also buy it at site Y.

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#173

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #119
ethanwillis wrote: post #9

The 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…

Just to give another perspective, I run a couple of small businesses with my wife and we handle support ourselves. This is an absolute pleasure for our USB oscilloscope business - intelligent, reasonable customers ask for help with a problem they have, we help them solve it and both parties move on with our lives. Our other business - dealing in retro video games, is an absolute nightmare. Almost all support question…

Whilst dealing with unsavoury people obviously isn't ideal, and I certainly don't envy your position. Is this not just the cost of doing business in that specific industry?

Typically you'd just raise your prices to factor in support costs. You'd have different margins for each industry.

Realistically, the reason you're unable to raise your prices is because you're stuck competing with companies that simply don't offer customer service themselves, and hence would undercut you.

If there was an appropriate amount of public outrage (and ideally legal repercussions) toward businesses not offering sufficient customer support, then your competitors would also have to increase their prices. You'd be no worse off, and general customer satisfaction would improve across the board.

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#174

Post by DoreenMichele »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #171
DoreenMichele wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Let me rephrase: I got an impression from your post that you atribute no fault to the merchant: he did everything right and got the short end of the stick. What I want to point out is that if he was careful about his business partners, he'd be much better off now. It's not relevant why he wasn't. He had the agency to mitigate the problem, and didn't. What happened was not an unpreventable natural disaster. The lesson…

No one ever does everything right. But some people have enough money, enough smarts, enough social capital, etc. that it gets mitigated.

We should be seeking to make sure more people have access to mitigation rather than looking for the one mistake someone made that somehow makes it okay in our eyes that they have gone from having over a million dollars in inventory to couch surfing with friends and relatives as the only reason they aren't on the street. And if their social network runs out of forbearance, the street could be the next step.

I'm not arguing he's some paragon of virtue who got screwed. I'm arguing that no one should be expected to be a paragon of virtue to have any hope of making their life work.

Paragons of virtue should see terrific outcomes, not merely "Oh, you get to not be homeless today. Go, you!"

Anyway, it's 3am. I think I shall stop here as I'm not clear more words will make anything clearer beyond this.

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#175

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

Narkov wrote: post #166
AussieWog93 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to give another perspective, I run a couple of small businesses with my wife and we handle support ourselves. This is an absolute pleasure for our USB oscilloscope business - intelligent, reasonable customers ask for help with a problem they have, we help them solve it and both parties move on with our lives. Our other business - dealing in retro video games, is an absolute nightmare. Almost all support question…

Got a link for the USB oscilloscope?

Asking the right questions! (I would also like the link)

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#176

Post by Narkov »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #169
Narkov wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a link for the USB oscilloscope?

Not going to pass up an opportunity to shill the business. :P https://espotek.com/labrador/

Bought! Too cheap though...double, or even triple the price.

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#177

Post by rhn_mk1 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #174
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me rephrase: I got an impression from your post that you atribute no fault to the merchant: he did everything right and got the short end of the stick. What I want to point out is that if he was careful about his business partners, he'd be much better off now. It's not relevant why he wasn't. He had the agency to mitigate the problem, and didn't. What happened was not an unpreventable natural disaster. The lesson…

No one ever does everything right. But some people have enough money, enough smarts, enough social capital, etc. that it gets mitigated. We should be seeking to make sure more people have access to mitigation rather than looking for the one mistake someone made that somehow makes it okay in our eyes that they have gone from having over a million dollars in inventory to couch surfing with friends and relatives as the…

> one mistake someone made that somehow makes it okay in our eyes that they have gone from having over a million dollars in inventory to couch surfing with friends and relatives

That's mischaracterizing my point. Should people feel consequences of their mistakes? Absolutely. Should people end up on the street for failing at business? Definitely not.

I think the standard consequence of total failure being "Now you have to look for a job while you're on unemployment" is good enough.

(Although it boggles me how someone with 1.5M in inventory didn't have enough savings to rent a room for a few months…)

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#178

Post by einpoklum »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #121
bleepblorp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're on the wrong side of the curve of history for something like that to happen in the US--or anywhere else where it isn't already in place. Social Darwinism has been the fashion for 40 years now, and it's not going anywhere.

Nothing takes the past away like the future. Nothing makes the darkness go like the light. We can choose. We aren't actually compelled to just keep collectively being assholes because that's what we have currently.

> We can choose.

This is true, but not in the sense of the leading candidates in the US presidential elections - both of whom oppose universal health care (despite its wide public support).

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#179

Post by AussieWog93 »

edude03 wrote: post #167
AussieWog93 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to give another perspective, I run a couple of small businesses with my wife and we handle support ourselves. This is an absolute pleasure for our USB oscilloscope business - intelligent, reasonable customers ask for help with a problem they have, we help them solve it and both parties move on with our lives. Our other business - dealing in retro video games, is an absolute nightmare. Almost all support question…

I'm really curious what sort of support the retro video game business needs. My (clearly naive) assumption is that it would be as simple as sending them the cartridge and telling them to have a great day, but if you're meeting so many seemingly unpleasant people it seems to be a lot more than that. Could you share more about the sort of issues you face?

So sometimes discs won't load or cartridges won't read in their console, or they're unhappy with condition - sometimes this is as simple as apologising and accepting a return, sometimes people aren't happy with that and just want to kick up a stink. More often than not, the people kicking up a stink return a perfectly working product, and they just wanted to make sure we'd accept it by them being as foul as possible.

Sometimes we'll get people just asking for more information on an item we sell. Usually you can tell whether or not these people are actually interested in the product or not by how they ask the question. If they're asking about a specific detail (for example, if they're looking for a particular serial number range on a console), they'll usually follow up if you give them a positive response. People asking less specific questions (such as asking for "more photos") are often just bored and have nothing better to do and will either disappear or ask more questions. You can waste literal hours serving these customers and in the process lose thousands of dollars worth of actual sales.

The worst group are just really badly socialised people - often people with serious mental health or drug-related issues. If you engage with them, they will demand massive amounts of your time and have absolutely zero concern for your feelings (let alone your business goals). If they feel you have slighted they, they will respond in the most foul and violent way possible. Just today, my wife was publicly berated by an incel-type guy because she didn't respond to a message he had sent over a week ago. There are at least 2 other occasions I can think of in the last year where this happened.

I think the thing to remember is that the average HN reader (and, by extension, most people that the average HN reader knows) is educated, values their time, and is socialised well enough to the point that they can hold down a job and maintain basic interpersonal relationships. The type of person who contacts customer support for products that shouldn't really require support are absolutely not like this. Mostly it's just people that don't value their own time (or the time of others), but multiple times every week we'll come across people with _serious_ social issues (I don't mean socially awkward, I mean "unable to regulate emotion like a healthy adult") and no-one to talk to about it.

Re: Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

#180

Post by einpoklum »

ikeboy wrote: post #35

Some quotes from the recent antitrust report from Congress. These were presumably verified and run by Amazon with opportunity to respond. >In another example, a third-party bookseller told Subcommittee staff that Amazon delisted 99% of his business’s inventory in September 2019.1674 The bookseller requested that Amazon return its products, which were stored in Amazon’s warehouses.1675 As of July 2020, Amazon had only…

> Amazon invest[s] hundreds of millions of dollars in XYZ

On the scale of Amazon, and over multiple years that's like saying "we make a modest investment in XYZ but no more than that".

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