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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that the review is now co-mingled too. You weren't the seller but it was your inventory. That review needs to go against you and your inventory, not the other seller. That is another area with reviews that is bad. You should only see reviews for this product and seller combination.

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Amazon sees the review and knows which seller to punish.

Reviews shouldn't be used for describing problems with the seller, anyway. Use seller feedback for that.

Are you saying that if I buy a widget from vendorX, but due to co-mingling, the seller is actually vendorZ, Amazon correctly files my review against vendorZ? So, they co-mingle but still know exactly which seller put a specific instance of the widget into circulation?

Yes. See https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480

"For inventory tracked with the manufacturer barcode, each seller’s sourced inventory of the same ASIN is stored separately in our fulfillment centers. We can also track the original seller of each unit."

That's good for Amazon, but from a consumer's (and responsible vendor's) perspective, until a bad actor vendor gets caught by this system and kicked off Amazon along with all the reviews of their counterfeit/bad inventory, consumers have no way to protect themselves. A consumer on Amazon cannot even protect themselves by ONLY ordering from Amazon's own seller listings. I've done that myself and ended up with used/repackaged stuff sold as new.

It creates a natural "market for lemons" experiment on Amazon. I can't imagine that is healthy for Amazon in the long run.

I agree with you but that isn't what people do. People also leave reviews that the shipping was 4 days instead of two.

“1 star. Shipment was late.” I’m genuinely curious why people think that’s ok? How is saying the product sucks going to solve a problem with Amazon Logistics? Or even USPS/UPS/FedEx?

With their transaction volume, Amazon should be able to detect and properly address these reviews. You're not going to change consumer behavior here, it's on Amazon to adapt.

They do, to some extent. I've seen reviews like this with a little flag below that "Amazon takes responsibility for this issue."

That's only for Fulfillment by Amazon shipments.

> to some extent

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