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Comment by SantiagoDraco | Hacker News Reader

Inventories are not "commingled" they are completely separate in the warehouses. Just because multiple vendors sell the same product and use the "fulfilled by Amazon" service to fool you doesn't mean Amazon is accidentally sending you an item from the wrong seller.

If you purchase from Amazon and don't check that it's "shipped and sold by Amazon" then you are asking for trouble.

The biggest issue is that Amazon has allowed, because of corporate greed, Amazon to become the new Chinese Ebay. The crap you have to wade through to find trusted sources is ridiculous. Amazon has lost a huge amount of trust because of this.

That said if you take the time to verify who the seller is you WILL get items from that seller and NOT from some other random seller. They are not just tossed into inventory together.

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„...That said if you take the time to verify who the seller is you WILL get items from that seller and NOT from some other random seller...“

Wrong.

Source: Amazon seller

Mostly wrong. Amazon does not put all the inventory together into one bin, but they explicitly tell FBA sellers that they will ship a different seller's product with the same SKU if it is in a warehouse closer to the buyer, for example. Then, they make up for this by taking one of your product and putting it in the other seller's inventory. Thus inventory is commingled, both at shipment time and then in the inventory to make up for any commingling that happened at shipment time.

This is 100% untrue. What is your basis for this post?

If a seller chooses commingled inventory when setting up their account, they have no obligation to re-label the product, as amazon uses the existing barcode on the product. If you order a pack of pencils from XYZ_Pencilmart and they are using commingled inventory, amazon will just grab any old item from all the commingled sellers, then deduct an imaginary unit from XYZ_Pencilmart's account.

This is why commingled inventory is a nightmare for resellers - it's your reputation on the line, but someone else's inventory.

Amazon says that by default they are comingled: "Important: Items in your inventory that are identified and tracked using manufacturer barcodes are commingled with items of the same products from other sellers who also use manufacturer barcodes for those items."

- https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

My apologies... I violated my own pet peeve and spoke as if I knew when I hadn't taken the time to actually research for the truth... the truth being, as you all have said, that Amazon does commingle inventories. It's a sad day for me as it's just another mark against Amazon and it further erodes my trust in them as a consumer friendly company.

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