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Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

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Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#41

Post by joosters »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #27

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? What's the reason for these items being marked for destruction? What percentage of the products are these; how many items go through the warehouse per week that are not destroyed? I expect these are products returned with defects, that have been issued recalls…

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week?

Not content with them going to the trouble of infiltrating Amazon to publish this report, you now insist on them doing the same to another company on a different continent, because without this context, the report isn’t very useful?

Get over yourself!

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#42

Post by jschwartzi »

NKosmatos wrote: post #33

Ok, I can understand that this is how capitalism and consumerism work, it's a lot cheaper just to trash the item and manufacture a new one instead of to check returns, but why don't they donate them to schools, communities, churches (or even better gift them to low paying amazon warehouse workers)??? Out of ~130k items per week they only donated ~30k items.

A lot of what gets returned is plastic garbage that doesn’t even do what it says it does

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#43

Post by crazygringo »

First of all, "130K" is a meaningless number except as a percentage of items sold/returned. Curiously, the article neglects to mention this. Plus, you need to compare that percentage with other retailers.

Second, this happens with any business.

For new products, it's stuff Amazon has determined simply isn't selling and is unprofitable to continue storing in the limited warehouse space. Better to chuck it and make space for products that are actually selling.

While for returns, they're going to be items that are similarly unprofitable to sell. "Amazon Warehouse" is the seller on Amazon that sells returned items -- and they resell a ton of the returns -- but there isn't always a price point that is both low enough that people are willing to buy the cheaper returned item, but still high enough that it's profitable for Amazon to continuing stocking it and ship it.

Now a lot of businesses (e.g. BestBuy I'm assuming) sell certain types of returned items, particularly electronics, in bulk to eBay resellers. That's where you can people selling things like a single model of webcam in "open box" condition for ~50% off retail, they've got 100 units for sale that "may have cosmetic scratches but 100% functional" and the photograph is "representative". Which is great. But since Amazon has its own internal "Amazon Warehouse" reseller, I'm not sure it ever does this.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#44

Post by xeromal »

joosters wrote: post #41
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #27

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? What's the reason for these items being marked for destruction? What percentage of the products are these; how many items go through the warehouse per week that are not destroyed? I expect these are products returned with defects, that have been issued recalls…

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? Not content with them going to the trouble of infiltrating Amazon to publish this report, you now insist on them doing the same to another company on a different continent, because without this context, the report isn’t very useful? Get over yourself!

Chill out! Wow. I think he's just asking as a baseline. You see reports that "Costco spills 1000 gallons a day of water" but if you don't have any reference point, how do you know if that's low, average, or high. lol

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#45

Post by nradov »

silicon2401 wrote: post #26
ajross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALL retailers destroy unsellable inventory. Items can be defective, counterfeit, damaged, under legal injunction like a trade dispute, incorrectly licensed, or just plain unwanted. If you trade in any item anywhere eventually you're going to end up with something in stock you can't sell. I mean, what do we want to happen? These things to sit idle forever in a warehouse taking up space?

Give them away for free. we should incentivize under-production, not over-production. charge more for waste disposal

Charging more for waste disposal results in illegal dumping.

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#46

Post by joosters »

xeromal wrote: post #44
joosters wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report would be a lot more useful if there were some context for this data. How many items do comparable places like Wal Mart warehouses destroy each week? Not content with them going to the trouble of infiltrating Amazon to publish this report, you now insist on them doing the same to another company on a different continent, because without this context, the report isn’t very useful? Get over yourself!

Chill out! Wow. I think he's just asking as a baseline. You see reports that "Costco spills 1000 gallons a day of water" but if you don't have any reference point, how do you know if that's low, average, or high. lol

Walmart isn’t willingly going to publish reliable bad information about themselves, just like Amazon don’t. Discovering it will be a lot of effort, but the OP demands it!

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#49

Post by trynumber9 »

croon wrote: post #30
libertine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be about inventory space, shipping costs, returns, and stranded inventory. Amazon has been fiddling with sellers inventory space on Amazon fulfillment centers for some years, and they keep reducing it, and penalizing sellers who don't sell enough (either by increasing their inventory fees, or reducing their storage volume). For some sellers destroying inventory is probably the best option. Some product…

What's stopping them from doing a lot auction (a la storage wars). Is it brand damage to whatever products are in it? I mean, the naive idealist in me just want stuff that has already been produced to at least get used for a bit, even if it ends up being sold on ebay or craigslist.

I'm not clear on the terms of the contract. If your inventory is stranded, then does Amazon have the right to donate it or resell it themselves? It seems plausible they wouldn't have that. If it's a product they don't list, would Amazon even want to assume the extra liability for selling it directly?

Re: Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses

#50

Post by londons_explore »

bombcar wrote: post #7
float4 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of products are returned in used state, or have very slight use marks like scratches, tiny dents, protective foil that's been removed, etc. These items therefore can't be resold as new. Finding out exactly which items are and are not good enough is expensive, and therefore the items are just discarded.

Amazon Warehouse attempts to get some value out of things that are easy enough or worth it to do a cursory inspection - but if you go to return some small value items Amazon tells you to just keep it/throw it away. The amount of retail "wastage" that occurs would be surprising to many - one you may have seen is the "book without cover has been reported destroyed" you sometimes see - it's not worth it for publishers t…

It's curious to me that used items in amazon Warehouse sell for very high prices...

For example, I randomly picked a 24V power supply:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B07P4N3H1F/

Cost: GBP 16.99, non-new + GBP 4.99 shipping.

Yet From ebay an equivilent item, inc shipping, is [1] costing GBP 4.43 (brand new). From Aliexpress the item costs GBP 4.87. On Google, there are 10+ companies all offering this device for similar prices.

There is some kind of market failure going on that is allowing Amazon to be substantially higher priced for the same items even when the item is in non-new condition.

[1]: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191620564194

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