Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

Post by joshuak » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #284

sjansen wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I once ran an ecommerce site, and due to a bug every customer saw a fairly cryptic error message. It was something along the lines of "You must login to perform that action". Our site didn't have a login system. By fixing that bug, conversions went down . We literally did an A/B test to prove that giving the user a stupid error increased revenue. We even played with the text of the error to maximize revenue. We never…

    Experimenters recruited 40 Princeton students to take the 
    CRT [Shane Frederick's Cognitive Reflection Test]. Half 
    of them saw the puzzles in a small font in washed-out 
    gray print. The puzzles were legible, but the font 
    induced cognitive strain. The results tell a clear story: 
    90% of the students who saw the CRT in normal font made 
    at least one mistake in the test, but the proportion 
    dropped to 35% when the font was barely legible. You read 
    this correctly: performance was better with the bad font. 
    Cognitive strain, whatever its source, mobilizes System 2 
    [slow, conscious, laborious thinking], which is more 
    likely to reject the intuitive answer suggested by System 
    1 [the immediate, unreflective thinking by which we make 
    most of our minute-to-minute judgments].[1]

Post by gruez » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

ethanwillis wrote: post #46

erik_seaberg wrote: post #40

I keep wondering why Amazon deals with guys like this instead of going to Calvin Klein’s wholesaler. He wouldn’t have better prices for legit merchandise, right?

I think the idea is that it allows for Amazon to remove some strength from the official wholesaler side. If the wholesaler isn't the only source of goods they have less bargaining power. But at the end of the day the wholesaler has to sell to someone. Here are my thoughts on how this relationship could work to Amazon's advantage. Think of this scenario: **Wholesaler**: Give us $10 per unit to list our products on Ama…

Post by 542354234235 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #130

Areading314 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not the automation, the problem is that a single authority has a complete monopoly on certain aspects of the e-commerce market. Full credit to Bezos and Amazon for their incredible execution in achieving this. However, monopolies are an example of market failure, and in this case, also an example of an authority able to act as judge + jury where the affected parties have no realistic recourse, while be…

> However, monopolies are an example of market failure No they are not. It’s only considered a failure when the position is abused to prevent competition. You can have a monopoly situation where competition just doesn’t bother to enter because the monopoly holder hasn’t abused the situation to make entering the market attractive. Additionally, the government frequently grants monopolies because they don’t really want…

Post by totalZero » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #262

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)?

Post by 542354234235 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #274

Karunamon wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

I would argue that it doesn't really help at all for most people, and is legitimately just a feel-good political sell for soundbites. Sure, I can shop around for my surgery, but what about emergencies? What about when they're in for the surgery I have scheduled, and end up doing something entirely different because they found something else? What about people who live where there is only one healthcare provider? A me…