Legislation would unmask third-party sellers, but Amazon is fighting it
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
There is a public interest in making /someone/ liable for defective products, as it provides a incentive for sellers to do due diligence on what they sell.
The party most able to root out sellers of defective or counterfeit goods is probably Amazon, but they currently have no incentive to do so as the liability is offloaded to judgement-proof Marketplace sellers.
Amazon's business innovation here is figuring out how to run a multi billion dollar retail business without product liability, and that's negative for society.
> California’s Court of Appeal (Second Appellate District) determined that Amazon could be held strictly liable for injuries a consumer suffered from a defective hoverboard she bought from the retailer, even though Amazon neither manufactured nor sold the product.
> The plaintiff in this latest case, Kisha Loomis, bought a hoverboard through the Amazon marketplace. The Amazon marketplace carries both products sold by Amazon and by third parties. In this case, the hoverboard was sold by a Chinese company called SMILETO.
> The Court of Appeal... [held] that a party who has control over and is integral to the chain of commerce, and receives a financial benefit from it, is strictly liable for injury caused by a product’s defects.
So, in California, you can now make product liability claims against Amazon, despite their terms and conditions.
[1] https://cases.justia.com/static/pdf-js/web/?file=/california...
[1] And the first jurisdiction globally, I think.
But if you weren't yourself negligent, you can recover your losses from an upstream supplier. In practice it's manufacturers or importers who bear most of the insurance cost.
The whole point of the doctrine is that someone injured by a faulty product shouldn't have to hunt down the negligent party, who may have chosen to sell through a byzantine supply chain in order to protect themselves. Similarly, a downstream seller shouldn't be free to benefit from such an arrangement, either. IOW, retailers and other sellers should (and because of strict product liability do) have some responsibility to choose their suppliers wisely.
Note that at least conceptually strict liability lessens the need for centralized product regulation. By making recovery for actual damages more efficient, there's less need for government to try to prevent negligence beforehand. And at least in theory that makes it easier for industry to innovate--to take calculated risks. Alas, the U.S. doesn't embrace this potential as well as it could.
I've been disentangling my purchasing habits from Amazon, but I don't know too many other people who are.
See Walmart for an example of this. They force manufacturers of otherwise decent stuff to make lower quality versions of products to sell only at Walmart, just to lower the end price.
Considering that Walmart is one of the largest companies in the world, this seems to be a winning tactic.
Everything else will be as cheap as can be bought (so probably 90% of purchases).
But you can know the exact price before the purchase.
People are optimizing based on the information they have.
yall probably know rule 34, but I'm pretty sure there should be another rule of the internet: "if a product exists, it will be counterfeited on amazon". just try taking a look at how many people on the amazon sellers forum have their businesses/brands seriously harmed by the myriad of counterfeiters on amazon.
i also recommend this write-up for more perspective on the extent and nature of fraud on e-commerce platforms: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/20_0124...
The headphones are only average quality.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25459434
Once again, the good guys (customers and honest sellers) lose out while the bad guys win, with no repercussions.
You only need to keep ahead of the other items in the same product category in terms of average score and review count. That's public information, so it's pretty clear how many of these gift cards you need to give out to top the category.
German source here: https://www.golem.de/news/bundestag-amazon-und-ebay-zu-mehr-...
I sometimes buy specialized tools and equipment from Amazon due to the convenience of Amazon's great catalog and suggestion system, it can be quite useful.
However, sometimes I receive items that are clearly B-stock, returns, mislabeled defective, improperly packaged, etc from these third party sellers who "win the buy box".
The subtle difference between useful and completely useless is really hard to demonstrate to someone who is not familiar with the usage and normal appearance of these products.
When I have a problem with some of these specialized industrial products I often cannot simply return them for service or warranty to the reseller, I am required to return them to the authorized reseller (Amazon is often one of these) for warranty service.
The problem with this is that the manufacturer often only warranties their product when sold from their authorized reseller. Even though Amazon may be an official reseller affiliate, the third party reseller that I purchased it from (again, FBA, but sold by GUYA JICKSV LLC) is not on this list!
In order to get the warranty service I now have to go to the manufacturer, who is wary of theft, counterfeit, returns, and a really surprising number of times I discover that there is a part missing or duplicate parts, and this renders the warranty void.
Dealing with the manufacturers in these situations is really annoying and often fruitless. To them its just one unit and they do industrial sales volume, but to me it is several hundred dollars and days of hassle. This costs me much more money than the cost of replacing the thing.
I am now very wary of buying certain types of products from Amazon, as they often appear to be sold by Amazon, but is actually not sold by Amazon, but only technically sold by amazon because of this buy box behavior.
Its is incredibly opaque, error prone, and nobody cares except me and my customers (with whom I sure do have a relationship, unlike the Amazon seller does with me.) As a result, I have reduced my purchasing from Amazon. Cest la vie.
Instead of PO BOX 1234, Anytown, ST USA you use Street Address of Post Office, Unit # PO BOX Number, Anytown ST USA.
In addition to giving you a "real" street address, it works for any services unable to otherwise deliver to a PO BOX like UPS, Fedex or DHL, because as long as they deliver during business hours, the post office will sign for your package.
I use this to great effect as package theft is so rampant in my area. It does add a one day delay since the package is signed for by my post office and not delivered into my po box until the next day. And I've had to call and complain to Amazon a few times until they stopped trying to use their vans to deliver to that address. The drivers rarely read the instructions that say "You must deliver during business hours as this is a post office." When Amazon actually ships via USPS to my po box I get the packages same day as delivery so it's the best of all scenarios. Really I don't know why people have a such hate on for the post office. I love it.
https://postalpro.usps.com/mailing/competitivepoboxes
But yeah most likely a process server will leave the post office frustrated. I'm not sure if that's a bug or a feature. :-)
I recall efforts to reduce stress as apparently managers were tired of being murdered.
Maybe new phrase will be “Going Amazon”
Veterans with PTSD and weapons training sometimes flip out and shoot people.
For a long time, the USPS would simply refuse to accept deliveries from competitors, which always struck me as the utmost in anticompetitive, non-interoperable-by-design bullshit. I'm glad to hear they have stopped.
It’s probably one of those things that starts as a feature and quickly morphs into a really, really big bug.
As a result, the U.S. Post Office is not what it used to be (it used to offer banking services!!!) but it’s still one of the best things we have left. Not to mention its glowing record of equal employment.
-- "let me do anything I want, I want to succeed and be huge!"
-- "make sure I can stop anyone that wants to do the same thing, I want to be the only one to succeed and be huge!"
So I got a PO Box...Aaaannnd of course the P.O. couldn't forward that 1 piece of mail properly :-p
so yeah - I find them useless and actively avoid any items that will be delivered by them (eg 'e-packet' stuff from aliexpress is a no go)
Weirdly I have the opposite experience using foreign delivery services: my wife buys items from Japan regularly that come DHL and I've never lost one. But I don't use my po box to forward mail, just receive it.
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remo...
Maybe the difference is due to my "PO Box" actually being at a store and not an actual Post Office? It's at a local ups store/mailboxes etc. type store, so the Post Office would actually have to forward the mail, not just drop it in a PO Box on premise.
The USPS does an absolutely terrible job, by objective measure. Many of their locations are significantly understaffed, with 30-60 minute waits for basic services (for paying customers!). Rude, unhelpful employees are the norm.
Why should package and letter delivery be a public service? Their approach is not working.
> Why should package and letter delivery be a public service?
Because everyone needs equal access to those services. Everyone, no exceptions, regardless of how profitable it is or not.
I'm sure others will have had other anecdotal experiences, both bad and good, that's just the nature of a large organization. I've lived in several different cities over time and USPS has been consistently fine.
That's absolutely not true in most parts of their coverage area, especially the extremely dense ones (for example in Manhattan). With FedEx, it is.
> Because everyone needs equal access to those services. Everyone, no exceptions, regardless of how profitable it is or not.
This, even if we take its premise on faith, seems like an argument for subsidy, not necessarily a publicly operated service like the USPS. Food access is required for all people but we don't have government farms, we give people food credits. We have private hospitals and Medicaid, for another example.
I'm also not sold on the idea that in 2021 (that is, email, webapps, and government subsidized smartphones with browsers and government subsidized network service) that equal access to postal mail is the necessity it once was. Many services now are unusable without an email address, and while they require a postal address the stuff there can be ignored forever if you can access the website and receive email.
I can see that argument about food, water, healthcare, maybe even electricity and internet but postal services? It’s pretty low down the “need” pyramid.
My experience going to FedEx and other post office competitors is the polar opposite. Everyone there is pissed off they're forced to schlep across the city to some grubby terminal staffed by permanently disaffected employees. FedEx is fortunately a couple of miles away but if I'm forced to go to UPS that's a ten mile drive and DHL is more like 23 miles and that's in traffic because I'm not taking a day off for a package pick up.
So I don't agree aggregation down to a few physical places for package pick up when otherwise service will be for me worse and equally bad or worse for everyone else is an improvement. The only change will be a publicly traded company will be chasing new levels of poorer service every quarter because their #1 duty is not to their customers but their shareholders. It's exactly the opposite of what you want in a customer-facing service.
You only have to look at customer ratings of the local competitors to see what the public thinks of corporate run delivery services now. They hate them. I am skeptical yet another delivery service could improve much less disrupt anything, other than ruin a public service. Hate the post office? Then engage in the political process and help it improve.
I got a PO Box, not that my local P.O. seems to be able to actually honor a change of address form. And I actively avoid anything that uses postal delivery. I'm much happier now :-P
I give you exhibit A.
Its not hard. Amazon is just not interested in fixing it
If anything, regulations hinder little guys from competing.
Whos passing laws? Who is giving money to politicians?
Hint: its not the tutors, community banks and its not the bodegas contributing to pols. Its the universities, monster banks, and supermarket chains.
The much better version is to make Amazon fully liable for everything they sell, even third party merchandise. Amazon can then figure out what it needs to do to fix the issue. Consumers shouldn’t have to worry about it.
Product manufacturers track these unauthorized sellers and do pretty deep investigations into who they are to stop counterfeit / unauthorized distribution.
Source: I worked on software that tracked pricing and unauthorized sellers for 4 years.
Source: I actively manage about 30 different vendor/seller accounts as a consultant. Tracking sellers is a fools errand.
You'll often see sites like Amazon match the pricing of a smaller unauthorized seller. Amazon's response to a MAP enforcement email in that case is when you stop the other guy, we will go back to MAP. So it is very important to stay on top of those sellers.
Parent is right. Small manuf / authorized resellers get shafted and have no resources to do this sort of audit work.
Fortune 500 have tight integrations with partners and proper controls in place to identify where the leaks are and to address them.
Amazon opening up names of sellers will help parricularly small firms that dont have the sophisticated means that large fortune500 firms have to root out unauthorized sellers
What bothers me about Amazon is that they are actively providing anonymity to enterprises engaged in consumer-hostile activities including fraud, and are resisting efforts to pierce the shield they are providing.
And Amazon is complicit in this just as much as Aliexpress and all the other platforms that are enabling product spam coming from China.
The business/GOP view of the world is that responsibility is for individuals not corporations. Freeing corporations so they can do whatever they want without fear.