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Comment by OnlineGladiator | Hacker News Reader

> Happened to me once with a watch strap, but the price wasn't high enough for me to go through the hassle of returning it

In my experience, Amazon will just refund cheap items without even asking for you to return anything. I have no idea how many things I've returned to Amazon over the years, but it's a lot - easily many dozens of products. I'd guess about 20% of the time, because the item is cheap, they just let me keep it and give me back my money.

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"Just send it back" is not the solution here. And not just for - as one real example - safety carabiners (for mountain climbing).

Deceiving people is not okay. Ever. And especially not on the scale of Amazon. They're not tricking people to survive or feed their family, but as a multi billion dollar business modal.

Being happy to be able to send back is either ignorance or sticking your head the sand. (that's being blunt, but still meant as friendly debate)

You are out of your mind for buying a carabiner from amazon (or any huge online retailer). Don't risk your life like this, please. The only big retailer I would buy from is REI, and probably in person. Most likely I'd go to an actual local climbing shop.

Yes but at the same time we can hold Amazon (or any other seller) accountable when they misrepresent what they're selling.

I did not. And more importantly, that wasn't the point at all. (other than that: yes I fully agree!)

And then what am I supposed to do with a cheap, fake watch strap I don't want? Throw it in the trash? No thanks. I'd rather not get sent the item in the first place.

>Throw it in the trash? No thanks.

Why not? I'd understand the problem if you were talking about some large appliance, but you're talking about a watch strap.

It's still wasteful.

Spending time worrying about the wastefulness of tossing a fake watch strap worth a couple of cents would be far more wasteful.

The waste occurred when the item was manufactured, not when it was sent to you. Given that nobody wants it, creating it was a destruction of the value of the raw materials that went into it. Whether you throw it away or do anything else with it is irrelevant; the value is already destroyed.

Worrying about the fate of that watch-strap is a bit like fishing some food-soaked plastic wrap out of your garbage bin, and then feeling bad about throwing it back into the garbage bin. The plastic became non-recyclable earlier on, when it interacted with the food during packaging. It interacted with the food before you ever bought it. The standalone recovery-value of the plastic wrap was destroyed in the manufacturing facility, and would be destroyed whether or not you chose to buy the item. Just like those cheap watch straps nobody wants would have been manufactured whether or not there was demand for them. (Because there isn't demand for them, and they still clearly are manufactured.)

> whether or not you chose to buy the item

Only partially. Vendors will buy more to replace sold stock. If it never sells, the manufacturer will never get another order for production, and the total waste is capped at what's already been created.

I find that in AliExpress land, the long tail of stuff being sold (i.e. the stuff outside of the brand-names) was almost always created as a single batch by a process that can’t be replicated (e.g. because the people who made it only came together at that place and time to make that thing), and when that stock is depleted, the individual item is never sold again. If there turns out to be high demand, then another product will be produced that will be similar (sort of a knock-off, but sometimes it’s better rather than worse) but not identical.

One place you’ll run into this approach with higher-ticket items (i.e. not a $0.03 comb) is in the handheld emulation-console market. Some cool little device was created that everyone wants (e.g. the aluminum-alloy RetroGame 350)? Too bad, they can’t make more even if they wanted to.

Recently ordered a bathing suit for my kid on Amazon. Supposed to arrive in three days. Email that it shipped after a day. Four days later an email that basically says "We have no idea where it is. Click here if you want your credit card reimbursed." Overall weird experience.

Stuff gets lost during shipping all the time, why is the automatic refund process weird?

Four days is nearly instantaneous in logistics-system terms. I'd be surprised they managed to lose the thing, realize they lost the thing, and then give up on the thing turning up later on, all so quickly.

Four days is more than long enough to figure out that a tracked delivery has probably been lost. You refund and tell the delivery company to return to sender.

This wasn't even a direct refund, just an email making it easy for the customer claim one.

For domestic transit, that might be true.

For international shipping—often something will be in a black hole on various boats + transdock facilities + customs for two months or more, before anyone knows where the package is, or whether it was received at all.

And, at that point, you often deal with carrier hand-off, such that the package immediately stops getting tracking updates from carrier A and there's potentially >4d of delay before you start getting tracking updates from carrier B.

>For international shipping—often something will be in a black hole on various boats + transdock facilities + customs for two months or more, before anyone knows where the package is, or whether it was received at all.

Is that very often the case with Amazon? I've done 500+ orders and haven't seen that happen unless I go out of my way to order from outside the EU (Ok, crossing EU borders is technically international, but not the way you meant it.)

the "automatic" adjective is what the problem is. i had the exact same experience. i expect an "automatic" refund. i had to search my order, and notice the comment, as if the refund is optional. any other companies would have issued the refund without asking if i really want it, and hoping i will not check the order and notice the question

You would’ve eventually received an automatic refund (or the product!) even if you did nothing.

Amazon really isn’t trying to screw you here, they’re just being transparent about a likely delivery issue and offering you the opportunity to cancel the order.

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