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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

#201
More anecdotal data, but our family (which used to spend $5k+ a year on Amazon) decided to actively buy locally and do what we can to reduce packaging waste (mainly for food). (note: I applaud Amazon's influence in the past decade fighting the clamshell package).

Just looked and we now spent less than $500 so far this year.

Reduced consumption, sometimes going without that new shiny thing and instead borrowing or buying used. For food, we simply cut out delivery (if we want resto food we go to a place that uses reusable cutlery, if we want staples, we just go to a store nearby and try to get bulk items).

Amazon has killed my trust in generic online stores. Fulfilled by Amazon sounds like a fraud engine, and I simply can't support that anymore. I'd like to know if there's a good alternative, but for now we just don't shop online if we can avoid it.

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

#202
I nearly bought a book in Audible last week, but hesitated because something seemed off with the reviews[0]. After a little digging I realised ALL the reviewers had only reviewed this book and another about Keto. And looking on Amazon for the same author "G.S. Hook" I noticed one of the books had reviews which while all unique, were basically all following the same template containing the same exact phrases[1].

I spoke with customer service and gave them specific examples to investigate. They didn't care in the slightest. It's made me realise that their reviews cannot be trusted. "Verified purchase" means nothing. I always chose Amazon over eBay and AliExpress because I thought it was worth the slightly higher prices to have peace of mind that the reviews were policed and what I would receive was genuine and safe. But that's clearly no longer the case.

[0] https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Communication-Skills-Training-T...

(The reviewers have since reviewed other books. But you'll still see the same pattern of the same books being reviewed.)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/COMMUNICATION-MARRIAGE-effective-comm...

(One recurring phrase "which made her realize she had a problem too"

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

#203
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…

Flip through our latest look book.

Check it out button leads to 404.

Going from homepage to 404 is NOT GOOD

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

#204

This is a totally solved problem. In the normal retail world, sellers are responsible for the defective items they sell, regardless of if they knew or not. If you buy a defective thing from best buy, they are responsible. They may turn around and sue the next person up the chain for doing the same (selling it to them). This incentivizes companies to be careful who they buy from. The problem here is that the article r…

> If you buy a defective thing from best buy, they are responsible. Not really. They just assume liability for competition's sake. They could effectively tell you to go pound sand, but that would hurt them competitively, so they offer a return policy instead. Same as if you get a defective product from a Craig's List seller - caveat emptor.

Not sure why you think this, in most states they, for example, cannot waive the implied warranties for consumers which has exactly the effect i said.

(there are other laws as well)

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

#205
post #103
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…

> because customer experience isn’t a KPI and so won’t get them promoted?

In a way, I think you may be on to something. At least indirectly.

Amazon are constantly pushing the narrative that they are obsessively customer-focused and constantly thinking about long term. I have my reasons to believe this might have been true at one time, but now is mostly about optics.

Having interviewed at the company a few years back, there sure was no long-term thinking about anything they internally advocate for potential new hires.[ß] To be honest, I was only exposed to one segment of their business, but I still find it hard to believe that kind of culture would be limited to a single part.

ß: an extreme example: one of their more senior managers explained to me that a 1-year old team is already too old and ready to be disbanded. Knowing, from personal experience, that it can take two years to build a well-functioning team - that was a massive red flag.

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

#206
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 metric you’re talking about is “churn.” It’s distinct from NPS, as NPS predicts growth —the additional value your brand has in people’s minds above the threshold for leaving, where it becomes a virality coefficient—whereas churn is just a self-evident measure of the percentage of people who see your brand as having value below the threshold. The fact that NPS (and measures like it) are predictors is useful, in th…

FWIW, I worked on a team that built a platform which used customer activity to predict their NPS score. The algorithm was straight-forward and the results were pretty accurate; enough so to be used by A/B testing platforms for testing new features on users. A side-effect of our research was insight into the key features that dictated a positive response. Even with a complicated product, success was highly dependent upon about four of the 200 or so features we collected.

I suspect that the minds at Amazon could come up with a much better solution than what we did. By virtue of having smarter, more experienced people on average, and a more simplistic product.

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

#207

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…

What would be a use case for lead paint that isn't satisfied by other options and isn't used somewhere people will be exposed to it? It's not just kids & through eating it that it can be absorbed. Being around it throughout normal environmental wear & tear is enough for exposure, enough that pregnant women are advised against any exposure at all. As for the general topic of harmful chemicals, it isn't a choice betwee…

Satisfied at what price point? Everything has a cost. Every dollar society spends on one thing is a dollar society can't use on another thing.

Nobody is going to be "exposed" to a highway overpass or the hull of a ship or some chemical storage tank outside a factory enough for it to measurably affect anyone. Why can't we paint it in lead if that lasts longer for a given price point? There's all sorts of things that are out there in the world that are not interacted with enough to affect anyone in any measurable way (obviously assuming the people who work with the lead paint when wet follow proper procedures).

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

#208
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My living depends on selling small-batch, high quality, independently made woodworking items and I've struggled with this. Selling on Amazon feels like you're relinquishing control over your product, much more so than Ebay or Etsy. Just yesterday I've had a third party seller somehow merge my product into their own product listing, taking the small number of 5 star reviews I earned organically with them. They sell a…

I've had a review I wrote for one product entirely switched to another product. I've seen some products for USB cables with reviews for books made for infants. Amazon is so untrustworthy now I'll either go to Alibaba or buy direct. It's dangerous to buy from Amazon. I wish you the best in this, I've reported ads like this for fraud before.

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

#209

We used to buy from Amazon since it was a stamp of quality. I tried buying a usb-c cable for my mac mini, and it was terrible. So many brands and no way of knowing what to get. Today you might as well buy from Ebay. What online store exists today, where I can be guaranteed to buy quality things? Do they no longer exist?

For cables? Monoprice.

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

#210

How much of this could be solved by a simple "know your supplier" law? As a consumer, I should be able to ask any retailer: "From whom did you source the actual item that you sold me?" Amazon should not be able to get away with saying they don't know. As it stands, Amazon is just a conduit for goods to bypass consumer safety laws.

Wow, it's rare that I scroll down 5 pages and see the best comment there.

That's a great idea.

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