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

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

#321

Post by parliament32 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

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…

>for reasons beyond your control

I mean... I sympathize with him, but "let's put 100% of our liquidity into inventory we then ship to some known-malicious third party and pray they don't fuck us like they have hundreds of others" is kinda a bad plan, don't you think?

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

#322

Post by disown » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

Only if you are the "little guy". You can be sure that amazon responds to big companies. If someone from Apple, Samsung, etc contacted amazon about something, do you really think they'll be tossed into the trashbin of the algorithm?

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

#323

Post by robotnikman » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:13 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.…

The amount of people that seem "unable to regulate emotion like a healthy adult" as you say is surprising.

I used to work at a call center job many years ago, and the amount of people who just seem unable to act like a decent person is astounding. I had to leave the job after a few months for my own sanity.

I know its somewhat biased since obviously a call center position will deal with many unpleasant people, but it worries me how it seems like there is an overall decline in mental health of the general population

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

#324

Post by varispeed » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #234

varispeed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem is the stigma of using the mental health services, lack of access to therapists and generally useful things like mindfulness, some basic CBT principles are not being taught in schools. Many people view companies customer support as their "safe space" where they can vent their frustrations and problems and these days a valuable customer service operator needs to have training in psychotherapy,…

Some people create busy work. With someone who will keep everyone busy with meaningless work at all times. Took years of painful effort for her to accept “no” without a complete meltdown. On the flip side she will let her bosses do the same. 20 hour days, 7 days a week. She kept at it until she ended up in the hospital. I had to threaten to destroy her work computer for her to finally back it down to 18 hours a day s…

I also came across people who would report bugs that don't exist. The team would spend days trying to track down the problem user is reporting, but the problem was never there. One case I remember user would claim that he paid for an item, but it is not visible on his account and he would keep asking for a refund, but when checked the items looked as they should. We asked him to send some screenshots and apparently he had photoshopped the items out from the screens. He stopped asking when we told him that our support member would like to access his desktop remotely to fix the problem.

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

#325

Post by Miraste » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #212

einpoklum wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, monopolies are an example of market failure No they aren't. Markets tend towards monopoly, or at least an oligopoly. Market 'equilibrium' where prices are 'right' is an ideological fantasy. That said - this is an example of how the legitimacy for private commercial corporations being run dictatorially based on formal property ownership kind of blows up in people's faces when such corporations grow to the l…

This post has minimal relation to the scientific consensus on how economics works. It’s a lot like climate change denial posts saying that actually burning coal is good because of cloud albedos. Technically true, just very selectively so, in a manner that does not accurately reflect the bigger picture.

Economics isn't a science in the same way as climate science. I don't think you can label anything in the field a "scientific" consensus. Popular consensus maybe.

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

#326

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

dd36 wrote: post #267

newsclues wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"We charge $15 per phone call after the first 5 per tenancy".

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

#327

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #258

wombatmobile wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Hello...? Is that Gmail? I was just calling to let you know that I don't need Uncle Franks email anymore. He comes up whenever I press "F" for frank, but he's dead now so it doesn't make sense. Auntie Anna sees the same, so it must be a problem with your computers or something. Whenever I type Frank in on the Chrome he pops up on everything!"

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

#328

Post by treeman79 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #324

treeman79 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people create busy work. With someone who will keep everyone busy with meaningless work at all times. Took years of painful effort for her to accept “no” without a complete meltdown. On the flip side she will let her bosses do the same. 20 hour days, 7 days a week. She kept at it until she ended up in the hospital. I had to threaten to destroy her work computer for her to finally back it down to 18 hours a day s…

I also came across people who would report bugs that don't exist. The team would spend days trying to track down the problem user is reporting, but the problem was never there. One case I remember user would claim that he paid for an item, but it is not visible on his account and he would keep asking for a refund, but when checked the items looked as they should. We asked him to send some screenshots and apparently h…

Wow. That’s horrible.

20 years ago at Radioshack, I had a customer try and return a nice stereo. About 300 dollars or so. No receipt. So only store credit for last sell price.

Was in system but last sell price was $1.97 (we no longer sold it)

So “hours” of digging and endless questions on “you sure you got it here?”

Well she had gotten RadioShack and Frys Electronics mixed up. Apparently same store in her mind.

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

#329

Post by Hokusai » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

alangibson wrote: post #280

US-based meta-comment: I see lots of talk in this thread about the problem of customers just wanting to shout at customer support. Maybe I've got election brain, but does anyone else think this is a symptom of the frustration people feel under a political system that no longer responds to the legitimate grievances of people on the bottom of the social and economic order.

> no longer responds to the legitimate grievances of people on the bottom of the social and economic order. Not only the political system. Amazon itself is doing this. Once customers reach a human being they are extremely frustrated. That is bad for the customer and the employee, only Amazon profits from the situation.

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

#330

Post by didibus » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #298

didibus wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually Amazon knows precisely what items was shipped and if it came directly from the merchant or if they used some other merchants for the delivery (aka comingled). So when a buyer complains about an item, they know if it is the merchant's item or some other merchant's item. Comingled doesn't mean that they just bunch them all up in some bin and then can't tell which is which and where they were from. It means tha…

I don't think that's what the parent is talking about. Because customers don't get to choose who they buy from if a product is co-mingled, customers have no way of avoiding counterfeit items by deciding to only buy from very reputable sellers. This makes detecting counterfeits Amazon's responsibility

Oh I see, yes that's true. Though the seller is allowed to opt out of comingled, but ya, I always wanted as a buyer to be able to choose.