Comment by blendergeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blendergeek | Hacker News Reader

Edit: It seems that it is easier now to see the feedback broken down by seller than when I had last used Amazon or I didn't fully understand how it worked previously.

Will these be separated by seller?

Last I checked there was no way to review a seller on Amazon (or if there was, it was so well hidden that a week of effort and calling customer support only got me a refund). Rather Amazon lets you review "products". Given that a "product" can differ between sellers (either because the products are of varying natural quality like with used items or because one seller straight up sells fakes and broken items), it is much more useful to review the seller than the item.

Knowing that DVD copies of Jurassic Park are frequently returned (or that Jurassic Park has amazing reviews) helps me not one iota when I am buying from an unknown seller who might be sending out pirated DVDs with always-on Arabic subtitles.

Until Amazon breaks down user feedback (reviews, return rate) by seller, I will continue to urge friends, family, (and everyone else) to stay away from Amazon at all costs. You just never know who you are buying from or whether they are trustworthy.

The way Amazon works now (or at least my understanding from past articles and seller interactions outside of the platform), for some of the items you are not guaranteed that you received the item that your specific seller sent to the fulfillment center. If an item has multiple vendors, you will receive probably the closest one, not the one from the seller you selected. If that item is fake (even though the seller you selected is selling original items), reviewing the seller would mean penalizing the good actor.

I had an interaction ~10 years ago with an Amazon seller that kept also their online store. They did not deliver directly to my country but directed me to their Amazon store that did deliver. I ended up getting a slightly different version (same item but a different revision). Talking to the seller, it was not one that they sent to Amazon; it also came from a warehouse in a different country.

I was under the impression that internally Amazon can track whose item you got because every item gets a tracking sticker when it enters the warehouse (or even sooner, if the seller labels them to save money). It would be a bit of an UI problem, but Amazon could take your review and just attribute it to whichever seller provided the item you received, instead of whichever you bought from.

Of course that's of limited help because you can't reliably order from a specific seller, but it would help Amazon fix the problem, e.g. by giving them an easy justification to reject to do Fullfillment by Amazon for sellers with low ratings.

> Last I checked there was no way to review a seller on Amazon

You can: https://www.amazon.com/feedback

Just only for orders that are not "Fulfillment by Amazon".

Ultimately the problem is inventory comingling and Amazon not actually knowing which seller your product is from.

It may not know when you order but surely knows when the return happens whose inventory was used

This happens to be yet another way they end up protecting scams and their bottom line. Scammers co-mingle fake inventory, consumers get screwed, they try to review the seller negatively, and amazon removes the review because it's not the sellers fault because it was FBA.

Try to post a review about the product itself being a fake? Well that's not about the product either! Removed.

> Last I checked there was no way to review a seller on Amazon

What do you mean? Just click the Sellers name on the product-site, to get to their profile with all the reviews about them. There you will find a button to review them. Maybe there is an edgecase where it's not available?

EDIT And looking through my order-history, the review-buttons appears there too for older orders. Maybe when the date of return is up?

Well, like I said, I couldn't find it. And the reviews under a product seem to be for the general concept of the product and not for X product from Y seller. And maybe its different for "Fulfilled by Amazon" and regular products. I don't know. It is all inscrutable.

In theory much of the inventory is pooled, so if it it 'Dispatched by Amazon' you aren't actually buying from that sell, but from a pooled inventory that the seller put stock into.

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