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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

#261

Post by dang »

tsunamifury wrote: post #238
dang wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That crosses into personal attack, which isn't ok here. Also, please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting some when you're not. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You are right of course, but in light of defending truly bad decisions, how else do we help our community hold itself responsible for its decisions at work?

I'm not sure I saw the GP "defending truly bad decisions", but the answer in such cases is to explain why the decisions are bad without breaking the site guidelines.

The guidelines are there to prevent the community from destroying itself, so they're a precondition for "helping our community to hold itself responsible" and other higher-order activities of that sort.

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

#262

Post by CamperBob2 »

athenot wrote: post #39
isolli wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you assess quality on eBay, e.g. for cables?

For an active cable (lighning, etc.) look for new and look at the seller's feedback. Look at the other stuff they are selling. Is it junk, is it all off-brand? How long have they been selling? It's not fool-proof and I still find myself buying only cable brands I trust (I don't mind overpaying for peace of mind when it comes to that). But the likelyhood of fakes (imitations of legitimate brands) is much lower, in my…

eBay's opaque feedback system and captive seller relationships aren't the answer. The core problem is that they don't make it easy to associate individual listings with specific feedback for those items. In combination with the increasing popularity of "private" items, this encourages exit scams, among other things. A seller might garner 100% positive feedback for selling 500 Beanie Babies or whatever at $0.25 each, marking all the listings "private," then switch to ripping people off for $25K on nonexistent cars or machine tools or whatever.

eBay could easily fix this in the common case where bulk sales are involved simply by adding a "Show feedback for this item only" feature. But they care even less about providing effective search tools than Amazon does, which is really saying something.

Regardless of the question, the answer from the customer's point of view should involve more transparency rather than less. None of the major online retailers seem to agree, least of all eBay.

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

#263

Post by pmiller2 »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #170
Darmody wrote: 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…

Ya, my rule is that if it's under $10 then I can probably find it on aliexpress (unless I need it relatively quickly). If it's a well known brand, I'll probably buy it from that brand's website. Everything in between is usually ok to buy on amazon, but even that list is getting shorter and shorter for me.

I tend to buy mostly name brand stuff and books from Amazon (e.g. my TV, personal laptop, B&W laser printer, and water flosser came from Amazon). One exception is lightning cables, where I try to buy heavy duty, Apple certified cables, regardless of brand. Another exception is certain personal care items, like shampoo and conditioner, where if what I get is "fake," it won't be of much consequence.

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

#264

Post by cr0sh »

penagwin wrote: post #222
Darmody wrote: 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…

> I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days. I use aliexpress for things I don't need for 2-4 weeks, I'm really curious, normally 2-3 delivery is like $40+ (Which I prefer not to spend on something that's $1.75)

Also - if the item you purchase is small enough, it might be able to fit into one of those China Post "e-packets" (or whatever they call 'em) - which is basically a government subsidized free fast airmail shipping option.

Virtually bypasses customs it seems. But the parts have to be relatively small and fit into a padded envelope about 6x4" or something like that. I've gotten many electronic components in that manner, within a few days of ordering.

Of course, anything larger, and you're looking at weeks - mainly because of customs on both ends. Big enough, they stick it in a shipping container (in addition to customs) and it takes the slow-boat over the ocean.

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

#265

Post by pmiller2 »

Liquix wrote: post #234
berdon wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a top-of-the-front-page, well-researched article in a leading newspaper -- it's the kind of coverage that destroys hard-earned reputations built over decades. It's the kind of thing that _should_ destroy reputations. But that doesn't happen all that much anymore. We're in a weird place with information and communication where shameful acts are accepted either in ambivalence, apathy, or bullheadedness.

It's also the matter of convenience / personal life impact - Amazon is ingrained in many people's weekly routine at this point. It's not that people genuinely don't care about an article like this, they just don't care enough to justify negatively impacting their life. Dale Carnegie on the concerns of the individual: "A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people.…

For me, it's that Amazon has virtually everything. I would be much happier if I could buy everything I buy from Amazon from Costco instead, but Costco's model isn't the same as Amazon's "A to Z" model. Costco wants to offer good deals on a smaller selection of stuff, rather than go for a broad selection.

It also doesn't hurt that Prime Video is bundled with Prime. On a per annum basis, Prime costs me about 2/3 what Netflix does, but I'd say I get roughly half to a third the value of Netflix out of Prime Video alone.

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

#266

Post by tsunamifury »

dang wrote: post #261
tsunamifury wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right of course, but in light of defending truly bad decisions, how else do we help our community hold itself responsible for its decisions at work?

I'm not sure I saw the GP "defending truly bad decisions", but the answer in such cases is to explain why the decisions are bad without breaking the site guidelines. The guidelines are there to prevent the community from destroying itself, so they're a precondition for "helping our community to hold itself responsible" and other higher-order activities of that sort.

I'm sure your answer is right from an enlightened rationalist position, and I respect your desire to defend the community. Unfortunately I believe there should also be room for stronger emotional responses to truly damaging behavior in the real world. And I suppose finally going separate way from this community is required for that value.

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

#267

Post by lozaning »

rgbrenner wrote: post #224
leemcalilly wrote: post #57

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…

Just FYI, prime tos prohibit its use for ordering items intended for resale. I would have done the same for my business, but I didn’t want to risk getting a huge bill later when they figure it out.

Can you extrapolate more on this?

Am I understanding correctly that Amazon will not allow me to buy something off their site with prime shipping if i intend to resell that product?

Is the the scope of this limited to only include me taking orders for item X at price y on my own Amazon marketplace account and then placing my order with an FBA partner who's price for X is below y?

Otherwise wouldn't you run into all kinds of issues with first sale doctrine? Who is amazon to tell me I cant sell something I bought through them?

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

#268

Post by cr0sh »

ethbro wrote: post #232
berdon wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a top-of-the-front-page, well-researched article in a leading newspaper -- it's the kind of coverage that destroys hard-earned reputations built over decades. It's the kind of thing that _should_ destroy reputations. But that doesn't happen all that much anymore. We're in a weird place with information and communication where shameful acts are accepted either in ambivalence, apathy, or bullheadedness.

> We're in a weird place with information and communication where shameful acts are accepted either in ambivalence, apathy, or bullheadedness. The 1980s?

Depends on the act, and the accused, I guess. I'm sure similar things happened in the 1980s - I was a kid who didn't pay much attention to that kind of thing back then.

But there were plenty of scandals of a lesser nature that would ruin people, with even a hint of impropriety. Again - it depended on the act, the person(s) involved, and perhaps the way our society's wind was blowing (as always).

I can guarantee you, though, that some of things we currently witness on a daily basis would have absolutely destroyed people, careers, brands, you name it - even just 10 years ago, yet today it's just "oh, that's nice - let's see what happens tomorrow" - yesterday's scandal already forgotten.

Again - it does depend on the act and the person; you can think about many recent people who have "been in the news" for similar accusations, if not all-but-proved acts, and wonder "Why this guy, and not this other one?"

For some reason, we skewer only a selected few, and in many cases, not the ones who really need and deserve it, either.

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

#269

Post by nabnob »

nickjj wrote: post #240
nabnob wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know which flea treatment this was?

Yeah, it was this Hartz one: https://www.amazon.com/Hartz-UltraGuard-Topical-Prevention-K... Look at how many 1 star ratings there are. We sorted by 1 stars and then by newest reviews. If you go back for a few months it's just an endless amount of scary negative reviews but it wasn't so bad years ago.

Thanks. Those reviews are pretty fucking scary.

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

#270

Post by losteric »

bostik wrote: post #205
derefr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Amazon is customer obsessed in the same way that Google does no evil.
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