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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

#251

Post by noxToken »

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?

Sometimes people just want to vent. There was a host on a podcast who admitted to venting to a company. He bought an item. It arrived and worked as advertised, but he was thoroughly underwhelmed by the product.

The podcaster emails the company talking about his dissatisfaction. The response was something like, "We understand your frustrations. Even if there's no issue, you can send it back for a refund." The podcaster realized that nothing was actually wrong. The product worked as advertised. It didn't break. It didn't arrive damaged. There were just unfulfilled expectations. I want to say that he responded by thanking them for their time but a refund wouldn't be necessary.

This guy inadvertently took up support time for an issue that wasn't really an issue. If you mix this scenario with entitled people or hobbyists who are very particular about minor details, sellers may spend lot of time on supporting very few customers.

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

#252

Post by InitialLastName »

dakna wrote: post #247
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…

> But this is fully automated bureaucracy. Except instead of having well known rules or human bureaucrats we can confront Reminds me of a novel that was written over 100 years ago: > The Trial (German: Der Process,[1] later Der Proceß, Der Prozeß and Der Prozess) is a novel written by Franz Kafka between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously in 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a m…

There's a reason they call getting stuck in this sort of bureocracy "Kafkaesque"

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

#254

Post by DoreenMichele »

torgian wrote: post #242
DoreenMichele wrote: post #78

Yeah, 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…

Not just health care, but income as well. Now, I live in a third world country, and have had cancer scares and other medical checkups that only cost me a few hundred US dollars vs. the tens of thousands that _would_ have cost me if I had lived in the US. I'm probably never going back, partially because of this. I make a good living. Better than I would be back in the States.

If we had universal health care in the US and a sufficient supply of small, low cost housing in walkable neighborhoods, that would dramatically shrink how much one needs to simply subsist. If it were possible to make life work as a single adult with a part-time job, then people could pursue building their future as they see fit.

With healthcare, housing and transportation being the three biggest cost burdens in the US, taming those would go a long way towards letting "the 99 percent" enjoy life again and stop being prisoners of a broken system.

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

#255

Post by sjansen »

mwexler wrote: post #228
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…

Back in 2003, Seldon and Colvin wrote a pretty good book about Angel Customers and Demon Customers ( http://geoffcolvin.com/books/angel-customers-demon-customers... ) which examines many of these issues. A bit of friction, if applied correctly, is not a terrible thing if an interaction's cost outweighs it's value. Getting the balance right is tricky but worth considering some alternatives to just "putting up with it"…

> A bit of friction, if applied correctly, is not a terrible thing

I observed the same thing in a different context in my previous gig doing Linux training. We strived to make our books as clear and simple as possible. When we discovered streps in our labs that confused students, we would rewrite them to avoid repeating the problem in future classes. Eventually I started noticing a tipping point where if the lab did too much hand holding students would disengage mentally and start having more problems instead of fewer.

I’ve tried sharing this insight with the UX designers at my current gig, but for some reason they’re skeptical when I suggest making our UI harder for customers to use. ;-)

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

#256

Post by srtjstjsj »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #183
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 offe…

The issue is not so much about offering _customer_ service. Genuine customers will only ask for help when they actually need it and do it in a way that respects everyone's time. Instead, it's more about taking time away from your business to deal with people who have no intention of buying from you but are just bored, lonely or mentally ill. While the latter group might only represent 25% of the people who contact yo…

You donate a portion of your income or time to charitable causes, right? Deduct this volunteer therapy work from that.

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

#257

Post by amelius »

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/

Hi, does your scope have a ground that is isolated from USB ground? This would be a very useful feature.

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

#258

Post by oblio »

wombatmobile wrote: post #196
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 can understand why organisations like Amazon would set up these bureaucratic support "walls" and/or outsource all support to a Filipino call centre staffed by people that don't even know what Amazon is. The systems are designed to make getting support hard, because most people contacting consumer support literally don't even have a problem that good support staff could solve. That doesn't make sense. You are in f…

> Instead of spending "hours with mentally ill people" (your terminology), why not perfect the art of triage and funnel people without problems appropriately?

Because some problems are NP complete.

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

#259

Post by Karunamon »

wil421 wrote: post #208
tomp wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people like you keep ranting about "universal healthcare" when obviously about 50% of your country so strongly opposes it that I think it's sooner that hell freezes than US getting social healthcare. Instead, why don't you propose alternative solutions? E.g. in Switzerland, it's illegal for your healthcare to be paid by the company, and also it's obligatory to have healthcare insurance (probabl…

You are looking at the healthcare coverage problem and you think it’s the only issue. Coverage is a big problem for some but not the biggest problem. The biggest issue is arguably billing and pricing. You have no idea how much something will cost until it’s done. Medicade is paying over 80% more for prescription drugs than the EU. > In 2016 the U.S. spent 18% of its GDP on healthcare, whereas the next highest country…

One of the few good things our current US president did was get a bill passed that requires hospitals to disclose their pricing.

This is unambiguously a good thing, but it doesn't help as much as you think it would. The result is extremely complicated, but so is the entire list of services that any hospital would provide (imagine every single ICD procedure code with a dollar amount next to it - that's the level of complexity we're discussing).

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

#260

Post by chipsa »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #225
zrobotics wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice looking board, but I agree, you should charge more. One market to consider is automotive scopes- since it already can interface with a phone, putting different connectors on there and with a case would suffice for most uses. Compare to a Pico scope for the market leader in this segment. It definitely doesn't need to be a 100% finished consumer product (that's already covered), you wouldn't be selling to hackers…

Honestly, I designed it when I was a student because there was nothing usable at the low-end of the market. While I could possibly charge a little bit more for it, I don't think the specs justify a $50+ price point (as-is), and for a lot of people that extra $20 makes a big difference. There were some thoughts a while back of making a higher-end product to fill the $50-$80 gap, and possibly even a stripped down Labra…

You could just add another kit to let the user turn it into an automotive scope.
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