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I received a book that had been written all over, full of notes and scribbles... it was sold as "new".

I complained, and they sent another.

That too was scribbled all over, notes on every page.

The book wasn't that expensive, I was a bit annoyed, but it's a rounding error to me, so I just ordered another thinking no way would this happen again, and because I did need it quicker than I cared to go through the service desk again.

The third was also marked on every page.

I complained, and they gave a refund for the 2nd one but not the 3rd... all of them were ruined though, none of them could be gifted (which was my intent), and ultimately I just sent it to landfill / recycling / incineration.

I keep learning, if I actually care about what I receive I avoid using Amazon. They're fine for some things, but the list of things they're fine for seems to be ever decreasing.

All of this was UK btw, YMMV elsewhere and with different categories of goods, etc.

Also, when I got the refund, which took about 20 minutes of my time, the tone was weird "congratulations, we're able to offer you a refund today"... this wasn't a prize, it was crappy goods and you weren't even fully setting me good, I dread to think of the number of refunds for obviously damaged goods are not honoured such that this was worthy of congrats.

And that's just the immediately visible problems. In some product categories it's difficult to find a single product where the description doesn't outright lie about features or quality, and the only way to tell is the price.

Louis Rossmann recently tested some of the highest-rated fuses sold on Amazon. It took over 8A to blow a 2A fuse.

By now I only order there if I can't find a more local alternative, the only remaining area where Amazon is still ahead (or rather, not behind) are delivery times.

those are great fuse they don't blow up like the one they replaced!

5 stars, would burn again

Wow, 8A to blow a 2A fuse? That's 4x the value!

There's a lot of 'That depends...' when it comes to fuse ratings; for instance, a tardy porcelain fuse of the kind used domestically in Scandinavian countries until fairly recently were rated to take 90% over rated load for 1hr before melting; they were basically only going to provide short circuit protection.

Depending on the category of fuse and the time it held at a lower current before ramping it up to 400%, it may have operated as intended.

(Squinting at the C type trip diagram in my fuse box, it appears the fuse will withstand 2x rated load for 6 seconds before tripping, 4x for 1.5 seconds or so.)

He increased from 4-8A over a period of over 5 minutes. After going to 10A the fuse failed instantly.

What exactly were the scribbles?

Notes as if someone was using it for study or an exam?

If so, you would expect that they'd want it more than the 14 day return period.

the book is called "School of Life" https://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/tsol-press-who-am-i-jou... and it's designed to be written in. it's a series of self-exploration exercises, where it supports someone who is exploring themselves in some way.

I don't rate it highly, but the person who I was gifting it to expressed an interest in trying it.

the three copies I had were all completely filled by other people, meaning I'd received three peoples deepest internal reflections and outpourings in addition to the books all being ruined by being so heavily written in. I've no idea where Amazon gets their books from, these were all sold by Amazon (which was my attempt to try and avoid marketplace things).

I can see why you'd imagine study aids, I guess that happens too.

It's implied that he gets paid 0 times for either the return or the resold book. There's more discussion on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com/post/3khrp64a5pw22

But is that any time a book is returned and resold, or is it just for a few "author's copies" that (I would guess) weren't eligible to receive a royalty in the first place?

He's saying that he got some author's copies from Amazon, some of which he returned for being damaged. Rather than scrap those, Amazon resold the damaged copies as new. This robbed the author of a sale.

why would he get paid other than the initial buy of a book?

It sounds like he wasn't paid for the initial buy either.

where does he say that? if someone buys his books in bulk to sell them, isn't that the initial buy?

Not if it's a special author's copy with no royalties.

It's not completely clear what's going on, maybe returns cause other issues, but he's claiming no royalties from either sale. If he's not just confused that's a big deal.

Correct, author copies have no royalties, that’s what I was claiming there. So if Amazon resells those after I return them, it won’t register as a new print. Expanded more on it on another reply to this thread.

>Why would a return that is then resold result in a double royalty payment?

This was not marketed as a resold return to the customer, they were told they were buying a new book.

It obviously results in a loss of royalties - the customer goes to buy a new book, no new book is printed. Rather, Amazon sends a returned copy, and the author doesn't get the royalty that's paid when a new book is printed.

Feel free to bring out some pitchforks! Here's more info about the damage.

https://twitter.com/joabaldwin/status/1741484863985770912

I'm calling it "damage" just for simplicity's sake on the note, although some were properly damaged (bent covers, weird creases, etc, although not during shipping since they were surprisingly well packed in this case), while some were miscut/misprinted.

Regarding royalties, it's better explained on the reply I posted to the main thread. But I'm still unsure about how that might resolve, but I have the specific order number and will try to get an answer. I have not had time to deal with KDP support yet (will as soon as I get home next week).

looks like author responded https://twitter.com/joabaldwin/status/1741202134845247606

"That’s one page out of 600+, I returned 14 books: one was cut to the wrong size (actually cutting the text, like an inch smaller), others had totally bent covers and pages, others were printed beyond the bleed area (offset too far from the max allowed), or printed at an angle."

to me it seems a bit dramatic, if a customer felt that was an issue they'd just get a refund from amazon

It's not even that big an if. Every vendor of every product receives returns. And every vendor of every product has some kind of process for deciding what to do with them. A few product areas have specific regulation, but in general if you get an unused return that is still in new condition you're going to resell it. It's no different for Amazon than your corner bookstore, who does exactly the same thing.

Basically this author did a bulk order of his own book from Amazon[1], found something wrong, deliberately returned them and then laid a deliberate trap just to generate exactly this buzz.

[1] Pretty weird to begin with. Marketing copies of your own work are normally part of your contract with the publisher. Why is he getting them retail?

> Marketing copies of your own work are normally part of your contract with the publisher. Why is he getting them retail?

Because he's self-publishing. I can't imagine printers would offer that perk to self publishers, because then you just become a free vanity press.

Going by the bsky thread posted elsewhere, he's using Kindle Direct Publishing, so he is getting them from his publisher, Amazon. And the books he returned were author copies, sold to him at print cost.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G7BBN68RYX5UMDZF

Then why did he lay this trap? Again, this wasn't an accidental discovery, he knew or suspected he could get this publicity by going to war against his "publisher". I'll be honest, everything about this screams "bad faith" to me. Amazon didn't do anything that any other company wouldn't have done. Arguably-slightly-flawed-but-still-fine returned junk goes on the shelves of every store in the world. This is the only guy who planted bombs in it.

What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to be sold with your name on it?

He clearly didn't think it was "still fine" to be sold as "new".

> What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to be sold with your name on it?

Come on... If he was upset about the publishing quality he would have tweeted about that when he got the books, letting his fans know he was upset about it. He planted metaphorical bombs in these books and returned them! You know as well as I do he was looking for outrage, not book quality.

They're both problems, the initial print and sending it back out. I don't see what's wrong with doing a test for the latter. "metaphorical bomb" sounds ridiculous to me. It's a metaphorical tracking beacon.

Intended result with made up numbers for purpose of illustration.

Author pays 10x$10 for copies of their book to have/give away. No royalties are owed to anyone on these copies. 5 are returned as damaged they are refunded 50.

100 copies are sold at $20 and 2 per unit are paid to author.

Authors balance sheet

-100 +50 +200

Net +150

What actually happened

-100 +50 +190

Net 140

By re-using the royalty free copies which ought to have been destroyed as damaged they directly took money out of authors pocket and put it into their own whilst dishonoring the spirit of the agreement to pay n dollars per unit.

They didn't bitch about damaged product because such fuck ups come out of Amazon's bottom line whereas a form of theft literally every real publisher would recognize as theft comes out of theirs.

That’s exactly it (I’m the author). Now, regarding the “bomb” comment, it certainly was that—I saw someone post about this and wanted to see if I was suffering from the same issue, so I’m glad I planted those bombs to verify. And I see nothing wrong with doing it as an exposé on social media, because that’s how you get Amazon support to freak out and look at your case and solve the problem. It’s not an isolated incident, and I wish I could just say “fuck Amazon,” but being my first time publishing, I have no option here other than use Amazon or I’ll lose 95% of my sales. It’s unfortunate that I have to work with people who do this, but it’s just the reality for 99% of self-published authors.