Why? The article seemed to focus more on the "what" and "how".
> Why are hundreds of thousands of products being destroyed in this way? The answer is Amazon’s hugely successful business model. Many vendors choose to house their products in Amazon’s vast warehouses. But the longer the goods remain unsold, the more a company is charged to store them. It is eventually cheaper to dispose of the goods, especially stock from overseas, than to continue storing the stock
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-21/amazon-destroying-millio...
Amazon has been fiddling with sellers inventory space on Amazon fulfillment centers for some years, and they keep reducing it, and penalizing sellers who don't sell enough (either by increasing their inventory fees, or reducing their storage volume).
For some sellers destroying inventory is probably the best option. Some product returns can't be sold, so you pay to have them destroyed.
So it's not just Amazon decision (I mean, if you leave stranded inventory and you don't move it, Amazon will warn you, and if you don't do anything then they'll destroy it).
I mean, the naive idealist in me just want stuff that has already been produced to at least get used for a bit, even if it ends up being sold on ebay or craigslist.
But they've not been able to do their normal auctions during the pandemic, and I expect remainder auction places have full warehouses and staffing issues. So if they're not able to take the excess stock from Amazon, Amazon's next easiest option is to dump it in the landfill.
(Source: I've bought a lot of stuff from that John Pye warehouse, including Amazon returns, and live locally to the Amazon warehouse in question.)
So most likely they won't do it for legal/logistical reasons.
Remember that Amazon doesn't move a finger if you don't pay them.
I don't see people paying amazon to have their products auctioned and amazon profiting from it. Neither I see how Amazon would split the bid between sellers. Who would be liable for that item?
You're not naive, you have products being mande and shipped from China to be destroyed in Amazon Fulfillment Centers. It's absurd.
But I guess it's the price of globalization.
They're destroying new products too!
You can try to offload it via a box of junk auction, and they do do that, but I'm not sure how tractable it is at scale.
The article is heavy on implication and light on facts.
They are destroying things for a reason, which isn't given. It could be a bad reason of course, but probably isn't.
The amount of retail "wastage" that occurs would be surprising to many - one you may have seen is the "book without cover has been reported destroyed" you sometimes see - it's not worth it for publishers to have booksellers ship back unsold inventory.
For example, I randomly picked a 24V power supply:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B07P4N3H1F/
Cost: GBP 16.99, non-new + GBP 4.99 shipping.
Yet From ebay an equivilent item, inc shipping, is [1] costing GBP 4.43 (brand new). From Aliexpress the item costs GBP 4.87. On Google, there are 10+ companies all offering this device for similar prices.
There is some kind of market failure going on that is allowing Amazon to be substantially higher priced for the same items even when the item is in non-new condition.
It can also result in very good prices when the "new" item drops with a coupon or similar.
Anecdotally, this isn't always true. I have only returned a handful of things over the years, but among them was a microphone windscreen that didn't really fit. It cost maybe €6 or so and they did have me send it back.
I think there's a correspondence between the COVID-19 reduction of their real-human chat line and having us return everything except food now.
Correction. It's expensive in comparison to the cost of discarding (including disposal/environmental damage fees).
Which is something we can actually change.
If a customer returns an item they don't like the color of, Amazon will see the package has been opened, and mark it unsellable.
If the manufacturer wants to get the item back to sellable condition (for example, by refurbishing it, and selling it as such), they have to pay for return shipping from the customer (~$6) and a "cross border removal order", costing ~$10 per item. Then they get the item back, and have to have staff to check and refurbish it, and then need to resell it (paying all of Amazons fees again, up to 40% of the retail price)
For most items, it's cheaper just to trash the item and manufacture a new one.
It's not cheap, and iirc cost increases over time. Amazon doesn't want their warehouses full of shit that doesn't move.
If the 3rd party stops paying and doesn't want to pay to have it shipped back to their own facility, then they need to get rid of it.
Amazon charges a monthly storage fee[2]. If your inventory hasn't moved within a year, you'll start getting charged a supplemental long-term storage fee[3] on top of that.
If you want Amazon to ship the inventory back to you, there's a removal fee[4] for that. Or Amazon can get rid of it for you, but there's a disposal fee[1] for that. And the fees for both options are actually the same, the deciding factor is really just whether you want to keep control over it (and have the capacity to receive/store it somewhere) or you want to pay Amazon to take it off your hands entirely (at which point they can do what they want with it).
... thinking about it, I wonder if this is how counterfeits end up working their way into the official "Sold by Amazon" supply chain.
[1] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/G5FKTA8LXU...
[2] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/help.html?...
[3] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/help.html?...