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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

#71

Post by ajross »

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

You can't give counterfeits away, you'll be sued. You can't give unlicensed or embargoed products away, you'll be fined. Give away damaged or defective goods and you'll see even worse PR than this story.

You can only give away the stuff you "could" sell but can't find a buyer for, which (1) pretty much means no one wants it and (2) will poison your relationship with the people who sell you the stuff you *can* resell!

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

#72

Post by anonAndOn »

okprod wrote: post #61
jschwartzi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Amazon definitely destroys most returns. I was informed that anything you can take to a Kohl’s is destroyed after return. That’s why sometimes it’s not available as an option.

For 5 years now I've actually been receiving Amazon returns at my office for some reason, and only for Raspberry Pi sound card components. I've tried contacting Amazon every way, including emailing the personal address of Jeff's (which led me to priority support), but they still keep shipping me these returns.

Either the universe or Amazon wants you to have a side hustle in Raspberry Pis.

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

#73

Post by fallinghawks »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #18
bombcar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but if you go to return some small value items Amazon tells you to just keep it/throw it away. Anecdotally, this isn't always true. I have only returned a handful of things over the years, but among them was a microphone windscreen that didn't really fit. It cost maybe €6 or so and they did have me send it back.

I think in the past it was more likely they would have you keep an item. It seems to me (also anecdotally) now they don't want to take back just food items.

I think there's a correspondence between the COVID-19 reduction of their real-human chat line and having us return everything except food now.

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

#74

Post by rob74 »

crazygringo wrote: post #55
jschwartzi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Amazon definitely destroys most returns. I was informed that anything you can take to a Kohl’s is destroyed after return. That’s why sometimes it’s not available as an option.

That's not true -- you were informed wrong, sorry. Tons of items on Amazon list "Amazon Warehouse" as a cheaper buying option, which are literally the returned items they're reselling, with a listed condition determined from inspection. This includes items that were returned at Kohl's. Amazon destroys some returns, but that happens after the inspection process, if they determine the specific item was damaged enough t…

Yup... it's just that inspecting the item also has a cost, which may lead to the item not being profitable to resell anymore, in which case it is destroyed without inspection. Or it's the individual employees who choose to play it safe and prefer to destroy an item rather than risk customer complaints if it get resold in less-than-mint condition.

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

#75

Post by kingsuper20 »

bdcravens wrote: post #24

A significant amount of items don't get destroyed however; many are sold on the liquidation market. https://www.liquidation.com/c/sourcedfromamazonliquidations

I've watched a couple of giant-box openings on youtube where people buy unsold/returned stuff (and feeling my soul draining through my eyeballs) and decided that the landfill is just exactly where most of this stuff needs to go.

Perhaps that can be the model of the New Economy. All of the 'knowledge workers' can design/manage surveillance and all of manufacturing can provide piles of things that go immediately to the dump.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #67
crazygringo wrote: post #43

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 spa…

> First of all, "130K" is a meaningless number except as a percentage of items sold/returned. No, it's not. 130k of _anything_ is a stupidly high amount. It may be 0.1% of items sold, it's still 130 000 perfectly good items destroyed. In many countries, supermarkets are obligated by law to give away unsold food as long as it is not perished. The exact same thing should happen to Amazon.

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by jtbayly »

crazygringo wrote: post #55
jschwartzi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Amazon definitely destroys most returns. I was informed that anything you can take to a Kohl’s is destroyed after return. That’s why sometimes it’s not available as an option.

That's not true -- you were informed wrong, sorry. Tons of items on Amazon list "Amazon Warehouse" as a cheaper buying option, which are literally the returned items they're reselling, with a listed condition determined from inspection. This includes items that were returned at Kohl's. Amazon destroys some returns, but that happens after the inspection process, if they determine the specific item was damaged enough t…

There are vast numbers of returns from Amazon and all sorts of other companies that are not sold by them again, (whether as new or via their “Amazon Warehouses” discounted price) nor destroyed. These items are sold in bulk by the pallet and semi-load to other companies who can do then triage the products and decide what to do with them. Sometimes they end up back on Amazon, for sale by a third party. One local company auctions items online on their own site for pickup only. Others go onto eBay, etc.

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

#78

Post by crazygringo »

rob74 wrote: post #74
crazygringo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true -- you were informed wrong, sorry. Tons of items on Amazon list "Amazon Warehouse" as a cheaper buying option, which are literally the returned items they're reselling, with a listed condition determined from inspection. This includes items that were returned at Kohl's. Amazon destroys some returns, but that happens after the inspection process, if they determine the specific item was damaged enough t…

Yup... it's just that inspecting the item also has a cost, which may lead to the item not being profitable to resell anymore, in which case it is destroyed without inspection. Or it's the individual employees who choose to play it safe and prefer to destroy an item rather than risk customer complaints if it get resold in less-than-mint condition.

Inspection is quite cheap. In cases where it's not worth returning+inspecting, Amazon generally tells you to just keep the item as well as the refund. That's generally the case with items under $10. If you abuse this, your account will ultimately be banned. If Amazon's bothering to accept the return in the first place, it's because it's worth inspecting.

Also, individual employees don't get to "play it safe" in either direction. There are expected rates for grading returned items. An employee will be penalized or lose their job for wrongly marking resellable items as non-resellable (destroy), just as much as the opposite.

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

#79

Post by xibalba »

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…

Yes.

There may be a portion of these items that is excess or obsolete and cannot be otherwise disposed of.

There are accounting rules (which are both reasonable and justified) which force companies to write down this kind of inventory (i.e. it hits the P&L). Additionally, there are real costs associated with keeping these items in the warehouse which justify their disposal.

I once worked on an E&O project at a large public company, and finding reasonable ways to dispose of this type of inventory was very difficult. Most ended up in the trash.

In any event, the reporting on this subject is, once again, pretty inadequate and reads as borderline advocacy in the media's opposition to all things Amazon.

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

#80

Post by fallinghawks »

Trashing returns of perfectly good products is unfortunately nothing new. I had a friend who worked at a transfer station in the early 2000s that got sent returns from PetSmart. The return reason was written on a label. Some stuff was defective of course, but others, it was some trivial reason like the customer didn't like the color. The item was in otherwise perfect condition and going to the landfill. I name PetSmart only because my friend was on the lookout for pet stuff; it would be no surprise if other retailers had the same policy.
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