Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by iamatworknow » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

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…

Have you considered a bundle that includes a case? I don't do a lot of maker/tinkering stuff so having the chip loose or on a breadboard wouldn't work for me in most situations. But I do sometimes have a need for an oscilloscope or multimeter, and would gladly pay ~$50 for one that had a case and some basic/standard connections, especially if it's supported by open software like yours.

Edit: I still bought one as is, lol.

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

#262

Post by ProAm » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

hevelvarik wrote: post #7

This is a case for the courts. The article is completely one sided, and there’s no way to know whether or not some or much or most of the merchandise was counterfeit. He does admit to ignoring up to 11 notices that his inventory would be destroyed if left unclaimed. He mentions conflicting dates for the notices but we’ve no way of knowing to make of that. I don’t know what to say other that I read the piece with some…

Since when does Amazon care if they sell counterfeit goods (if they even were)?

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

#263

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

>"In order to ensure that customers can shop with confidence on Amazon, we take 'inauthentic' complaints seriously,"

>That inventory was everything I had. Amazon ruined my life, and I did nothing wrong

This is what a perfect win for IP maximalists looks like - an automated ruination of lives, whenever IP seems to be disrespected.

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

#264

Post by oliwarner » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

TL;DR: Forced arbitration is the worst.

Arbitration has its place, but I rather think there should be a "small claims" pecuniary limit on what can be considered eligible for this sort of clause. Anything over a few grand and you're talking about sums of money that can literally break people.

Seems somewhat inhumane to stifle recourse.

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

#265

Post by offtop5 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

>After being unable to resolve the matter following several appeals as part of our dispute resolution process, we informed this seller six separate times that they needed to remove their inventory from our store by specific dates or it would be destroyed," she said. "The seller failed to request to remove their inventory by the dates provided."

This seems more than fair. I'm not sure why he would put all his eggs in the Amazon basket though.

This very much reads like he wanted to keep selling on Amazon despite them trying to get him off the platform

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

#266

Post by mattferderer » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

This sounds like an awful position to put your business in even if the alternatives weren't better.

You're the middleman between manufacturers who view you as small & Amazon who would view you as small.

To me it seems like you're just asking to be squeezed out here & taking on a lot of risk. Am I missing something?

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

#267

Post by dd36 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #223

AussieWog93 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That doesn't make sense. You are in favour of systemic obfuscation and low quality support to discourage people who don't have problems from taking up the time of support staff? Even though the barriers make life hell for people with legitimate problems like the guy whose $1.5m inventory was destroyed? I'm never said I'm personally in favour of that approach, I just saw a lot of comments talking about how terrible i…

I worked AppleCare tech support and there were people who would call in to talk to people or troll, perhaps they were ill, but they would call repeatedly and there problems were largely made up. Eventually they become known and are handled separately because they would fake problems and drive people insane. Some people should be banned from support.

You should try being a large landlord. To some people, you become their only social interaction.

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

#268

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

didibus wrote: post #137

lotsofpulp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The old solution of Amazon mostly ignoring the fakes and just compensating people who complain avoids this scenario. Being a proper retailer and sourcing goods from reputable sources, performing quality control, and then reselling them to the public without the commingling nonsense also avoids this scenario.

Not really though, cause then as a small retailer, you still have no way to compete. Nobody is going to buy "real" Hugo Boss from some random fishy small website. So Amazon is both a blessing and a curse to small retailers I feel.

I don’t see why a random fishy website should be able to compete. Either it provides value or it doesn’t. If I want Hugo Boss, I’m going to the Hugo Boss or maybe Nordstroms website, since I know both of those will result in a minimal chance of me getting counterfeit and highest chance of getting the highest quality.

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

#269

Post by willturman » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #250

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…

> "provide good, human support to everyone" - it creates as many problems as it solves. Agreed with all your points except they really should have some `if (claim > minForHumanAgent){ bypassAutomatedHandling(); }` logic for millions of dollars.

This comment feels so ... wrong. As a society, so many of our institutions seemingly prioritize attention or outcomes effectively in exactly this fashion, but seeing it in code makes it that much more cold and ruthless.

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

#270

Post by mistersquid » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #179

edude03 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Thank you for these details about the difficulties in handling support requests from people with underlying socialization and/or mental health issues.

As someone who is mostly emotionally and cognitively balanced and who has been trained to communicate in order to reach mutually satisfactory outcomes, I don't even think to consider that some people are too maladjusted to use support resources (i.e. communication) in productive ways.