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…
Disclaimer: Amazon employee, opinions are my own This claim really doesn't say much on its own. There are millions (billions?) of products on Amazon. This would be potentially a lot more damning if they released how many items they searched through to identify those 4,152. It would also be nice if they provided some data on how prevalent these problems are at other retailers and marketplaces. There's reason to believ…
Good point, but I think the point is that any mass violation (let's say more than 10 SKUs) is usually an isolated event (e.g. it's one small retailer in a local environment), as opposed to "this is just the cost of doing business for any large retailer". The more apt question would be - how many violations happen in the past at a place like Walmart.
Traditional retailers are slow to introduce SKUs compared to Amazon simply for this reason - everything is hand curated and has to go through gates to ensure safety.
> There's reason to believe the problem is probably worse at Amazon
What other marketplace in the western world has nearly as many SKUs? Like even in the same stratosphere? I'd be amazed if there is anyone even close. It's easy to manage that many SKUs at scale when you get to ignore regulation that has legitimate human safety implications. So, that's what the article is saying - don't consolidate power if you're unwilling to deal with edge cases.