This seems to be a common pattern. Fly by night sellers whose pages disappear within a few days.
But I would imagine if you got in early enough, there weren't any negative reviews. There's definitely something wonky with how they aggregate reviews.
I see now Amazon has their own brand of battery. Presumably they don't have this problem. It's actually a pretty disgusting tactic: competitor brands are untrustworthy because of how Amazon handles inventory rather than the actual quality of the product.
I wonder what Amazon would do if you tried to sell your own Amazon batteries on their website.
Yeah, it takes some foresight and planning sometimes, since they can only be shipped UPS ground, but they are cheap, come in bulk, and Digikey certifies that they are genuine.
Or is the problem that FBA sellers are infecting legitimate "sold by Amazon" inventory?
was the product
- 3P
- Sold by Amazon
- Fulfilled by Amazon
As a customer with agency, I have the ability to not buy things on the Amazon site that aren't sold by amazon. When FBA stock contaminates sold by amazon stock, I lose that agency. That is a problem for my own personal uses of the Amazon site.
That some large portion of Amazon functions like a more industrial Ebay is for others to enjoy - YMMV.
What on earth is "3P" and how does a consumer know? What is the difference between "sold by Amazon" and "fulfilled by Amazon"? Isn't anything sold by Amazon also fulfilled by Amazon? Do they not fulfill some products they sell? Do they fulfill some things they don't sell? I've never seen an item on Amazon that they didn't take your money for. Everything I've ever bought there Amazon has charged my card for.
As a consumer, the nature of the business relationship between Amazon and its suppliers shouldn't be my concern.
So there is Amazon the retailer. That is what Amazon originally did - buy inventory from vendors then sell them. As Amazon gained scale they launched 3P aka 3rd party selling. This is essentially Ebay at scale. Returns for these products are more or less managed by the seller.
FBA then came where 3rd party sellers can take advantage of Amazon's delivery and warehouse logistics. The stock is held by Amazon and can tap into Prime delivery. IIRC returns are also handled by Amazon so you get no questions asked returns.
I will usually filter products by Prime and will then usually look for the "sold by Amazon" text on a product page (as opposed to "Fulfilled By Amazon")
In the same way I think twice about buying random things on eBay, I also think twice about buying 3P (and FBA to a degree) on Amazon.
Filtering out 3P on Amazon is fairly straightforward. Filtering FBA is more manual and takes reading of the page.
If fake inventory is being comingled that becomes impossible.
Amazon the retailer is (from my experience) reasonably priced, delivers goods in a day (sometimes less) and offers me a return policy that is hard to compete with anywhere else.
I would never buy cables or batteries from a 3P seller. I would think twice with a FBA seller.
Amazon is attempting to be a physical CDN, and that's bad news when what you're looking for is a guarantee that some product will be delivered from some specific seller to you after getting comingled.
Normally, that isn't much of an issue when you've got procurement going sanely.
When it is predated by fake/damaged good sellers predominantly though is where you run into problems.
No average consumer is going to know any of this. It's all Amazon as far as most people are concerned; Amazon goes to great lengths to make you think it's all them - right up until you have an issue.