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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

#31

Post by gulfie »

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…

This is _exactly_ the situation that this society came up with a new agreement to avoid. E.g. Presumption of innocence, and Habeas corpus to mention two.

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

#32

Post by ikeboy »

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…

He tried to remove the inventory and wasn't allowed to.

>When he tried to submit an inventory removal order through Amazon's web portal, it wouldn't let him.

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

#33

Post by m463 »

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…

A friend of mine worked for a company whose operators answered late night tv infomercials. They had humans answering the phone, but everything about it was scripted and highly optimized. Purchasing the thing was very very easy, but after that there was an upsell gauntlet to get through before hanging up. "This is rediculous, I don't want to hear about this" "But sir, people call back after they've missed these offers etc..." The ONLY method to escape it was to say "I will cancel my order". Additionally the call center employees would be fired if they deviated from the script.

Given that, it's quite easy to see why it's hard to find a customer service phone number or any other option except the one they want you to find.

Personally the one that annoyed me was amazon customer service to find "Package says delivered but not received". Searching for this finds lots of variants in the quick-search bar, and a "helpful" faq that says something like "ask a neighbor" or "look under the porch", but no way to contact customer service about it despite forms for hundreds of other meaningless interactions.

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

#35

Post by ikeboy »

Some quotes from the recent antitrust report from Congress. These were presumably verified and run by Amazon with opportunity to respond.

>In another example, a third-party bookseller told Subcommittee staff that Amazon delisted 99% of his business’s inventory in September 2019.1674 The bookseller requested that Amazon return its products, which were stored in Amazon’s warehouses.1675 As of July 2020, Amazon had only returned a small fraction of the bookseller’s inventory and continued to charge him storage fees.1676 Amazon blocked the bookseller both from selling its products on its marketplace and retrieving its inventory, precluding the seller from trying to recover some of his losses by making sales through another, albeit lesser, channel.

>During the Subcommittee’s sixth hearing, Mr. Bezos testified that Amazon “invest[s] hundreds of millions of dollars in systems” that police counterfeits.1823 However, Amazon’s approach appears to be ineffective, resulting in suspensions of many innocent, third-party sellers, with devastating effects on some sellers’ businesses.1824

>One third-party seller told the Subcommittee that Amazon blocked some of her listings, citing a number of her products as “inauthentic.” 1827 The seller provided evidence to Amazon that, not only were her vendor’s products authentic, but Amazon actively sold the same products, sourced from the same vendor, through its first-party sales.1828 Despite elevating the issue to Amazon executives in July 2020, this issue has still not been resolved as of September 2020.

I've had very similar experiences, as I've discussed [0] here numerous times. I currently have an antitrust lawsuit against TP-Link [1] for making false counterfeit complaints against my Amazon account.

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16562550/thimes-solutio...

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

#36

Post by bawolff »

yeneek wrote: post #8

Selling on Amazon is really hard. Just one fake product claim from a customer can make your seller account blocked. And because customer is always right, seller has to prove product validity.

Im ok with the onus being on the seller to prove they are selling real goods.

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

#37

Post by bawolff »

Johnny555 wrote: post #5
vorpalhex wrote: post #3

So he had $1.5m in merchandise that was totally authentic, sent it all to Amazon and yet couldn't reclaim it? And he has no insurance on literally a million and a half of clothing? How did he go from holding $1.5M of merch for over a year to being homeless and having to couch surf? So, I had this $2M bridge up in Wisconsin, but Elon Musk took it out with a cybertruck one night after a few too many mimosas and...

Is there any insurance that would pay for merchandise that Amazon destroyed because they determined that it's fake? Why would the insurance company take his side when they could just side with Amazon and save $1.5M? He can produce invoices that show he bought $1.5M of legit merchandise, but how can he prove that what he sent to Amazon was not fake?

Why would insurance ever side with a person making a claim? It would be more cost effective to always deny claims regardless of legitimacy

Answer: Because contracts and if the insurer breaches them courts get involved and penalties get handed out.

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

#38

Post by ikeboy »

aschatten wrote: post #34

Regarding forced arbitration: isn‘t the party that forces arbitration by law required to pay for it and if they refuse, then it can be brought in court?

No, it depends on the rules of the particular arbitration group, which can be modified in the contract. For the AAA, the one bringing it pays an initial fee and the parties split the ongoing cost, but a final award can include costs going to one side if the arbitrator decides that.

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

#39

Post by ikeboy »

vorpalhex wrote: post #30
Johnny555 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any insurance that would pay for merchandise that Amazon destroyed because they determined that it's fake? Why would the insurance company take his side when they could just side with Amazon and save $1.5M? He can produce invoices that show he bought $1.5M of legit merchandise, but how can he prove that what he sent to Amazon was not fake?

He can show invoices that are over a year old. Which means that for at least a year, he held _at least_ two cargo containers of high end clothing somewhere before selling them in bulk on Amazon. He has no warehouses, no physical storefront, nothing - that doesn't strike you as strange for someone with 1.5M of merchandise? That is a _ton_ of merchandise both in terms of physical bulk and space, and in cost to have sit…

The invoices for the particular product was a year old. But it could be the majority of that inventory was turning over every 90 days, which would mean he was selling 500k/month.

>For what it's worth, removing THAT much merchandising from shelving is a serious labor and time sink. You don't do that because you got one or two complaints about crushed boxes or off sizes.

The system is automated. A destroy order gets put in, then a warehouse employee goes and fulfils that order without knowing or caring why it was placed. Sellers can place destroy orders as well.

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