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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

#51

Post by rossjudson »

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…

Because the end of the path here for Amazon is destruction of the inventory in question, I guess we'll never really know what's real or not. There's nothing to be inspected...which seems rather problematic, right? In criminal cases people don't run around destroying evidence. That's viewed rather negatively by judges.

So here we have Amazon destroying the inventory in question. No way to have even a partial sample of that inventory still available for checking? No laws that regulate how and when Amazon can destroy inventory, particularly in the presence of mandatory arbitration? No checks and balances on that process at all?

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

#52

Post by alliao »

justusw wrote: post #12
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…

Don’t forget that sellers agree to an arbitration clause, so a legal recourse in court is impossible.

have always wanted to know, how watertight are those clauses? surely legal recourse is some sort of right that'd trump a lot of these type of boiler plate contracts?

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

#53

Post by egonschiele »

In a much smaller example, I've been running Instagram ads for the last week. I've been trying to stop this ad for the last 5 days, but there's a bug in Instagram's UI that won't let me. I also can't get hold of an Instagram support person, or FB support. So I've kept spending money I don't want to spend.

FB and Instagram are core parts of society now as one of the major places to advertise. Lack of support of this kind seems like a really bad sign of a future where all you talk to are robots.

Also, average cost per conversion thru Instagram is $16 - $33. That is just a straight up toll that is paid to Facebook by every product that wants to advertise on their platform. I'm not saying it should be free, but surely they can afford better customer service.

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

#54

Post by aeternum »

Areading314 wrote: post #44
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…

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…

Why does it matter that this happened with Amazon? It could have also happened with ebay, walmart, or a local uncle bob's discount closet shop.

We have a judicial system to deal with issues like this which generally handles things fairly regardless of the size of each party.

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

#55

Post by Johnny555 »

bawolff wrote: post #45
Johnny555 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Insured claims that they shipped $1.5M of merchandise to Amazon. Amazon claimed merchandise was counterfeit and destroyed merchandise after given the insured multiple attempts to retrieve merchandise which were not acted on. In the absence of any evidence that the now destroyed goods were legitimate, we are denying compensation for this claim." He, of course, can try to sue his insurance company to pay the claim (ha…

Indeed in this situation he's unlikely to win because he is pretty clearly in the wrong and his story is rediculous. My point is just that the insurance company can't just arbitrarily decide to side with amazon because they feel it (for that matter, amazon isn't really a party when it comes to the insurance) they have to look at the evidence and facts of the situation.

My point is that the last party to have had possession of his merchandise claimed it was counterfeit. The evidence is he shipped the merchandise to Amazon, Amazon said it was counterfeit and if he didn't product evidence to the contrary, they'd either destroy it or he could retrieve it, and he chose not to retrieve it.

I really don't see why insurance would pay out under these circumstances.

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

#56

Post by chabad360 »

Google234 wrote: post #24
grishka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being an Android developer is a similar experience. If your app gets removed from Google Play, even if it's clearly by mistake, good luck having it reinstated. Unless you know a googler or two. Then it's a breeze. Going through official channels you'll be hitting a wall.

Doubt that is true. Every company has internal policies to stop favoritism like that.

It's not that it's favoritism, it's just a way to trigger a manual review...

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

#57

Post by ikeboy »

alliao wrote: post #52
justusw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget that sellers agree to an arbitration clause, so a legal recourse in court is impossible.

have always wanted to know, how watertight are those clauses? surely legal recourse is some sort of right that'd trump a lot of these type of boiler plate contracts?

Courts have consistently held up Amazon's arbitration clause for sellers.

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

#58

Post by Areading314 »

bgorman wrote: post #50
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…

How is Amazon a monopoly when customers can easily purchase an item from eBay, Walmart, Target, Aliexpress, and many others. Amazon is often the most expensive option for me.

Its not a monopoly over all ecommerce. However there are certain markets where the sellers, for example book publishers, are totally at the mercy of amazon because they have become the only de facto distribution channel for certain products like e-books (there are others as well). So its great for customers but it still has severe negative consequences for authors and publishers. Technically this is known as a "monopsony" but it's bad just in the same way a monopoly is.

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

#59

Post by discordance »

Amazon in Australia is not very good (yet). It's nothing like America or Japan, which have huge inventories and same or next day delivery.

This is a really really bad look for Amazon, which is in the process of expanding in Australia. Retailers are already nervous about their expansion plans here and this does further bad for their brand.

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

#60

Post by lxe »

> Hoping to have his account reinstated and continue selling on the site, Govani put off the decision. He received a total of 11 emails from Amazon each giving him different dates at which time his inventory would be destroyed if he hadn't removed it.

> "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."

I understand the core point here -- Amazon does have the upper hand when making deals with 3rd party sellers. But this is on the seller: he stored his inventory at Amazon, who decided they want to break their deal -- then he failed to move his inventory after what seems like a very lengthy communication, so they ended up doing what they said they would.

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