Dirty diaper resold on Amazon ruined a family business | Hacker News Reader

Dirty diaper resold on Amazon ruined a family business

arstechnica.com

29 pointsarittr10 comments

> Amazon says that it prohibits negative reviews that violate community guidelines, including by focusing on seller, order, or shipping feedback rather than on the item's quality.

I've always really disliked this policy, especially on items that are shipped by the seller instead of fulfilled from Amazon. Say you want to buy some of those Japanese Kit Kats that come in unusual flavors (at least to the American palate). Feedback that candy from Seller A arrived stale or melted and that candy from Seller B arrived in great shape would be helpful. I don't need yet more reviews of the product in the abstract, I need information about what condition it will be in when it arrives at my door, and seller practices can absolutely influence that.

I purchased an item advertised as "fulfilled by Amazon" with Prime shipping. However, when I tried to return it, the seller insisted I pay $56 for overnight shipping. After returning the item as requested, the seller refused to refund my money, claiming the item had been opened, which wasn't true.

(But how do you prove it wasn't opened after the fact, especially when they have pictures of it opened? Shady!)

When I wrote a review detailing my experience, it was removed the next day because it focused on the seller's return policy. So now, I'm not only out $100 for the AC sensor itself but also $56 for return shipping. What's worse, I can't even warn others about the seller's shady practices.

My review included screenshots of the seller's communication, but all of it was removed. This allowed the seller to falsely imply they offer free returns when they clearly don't.

I'm frustrated that Amazon didn't provide real support and simply told me to use the seller's return system. And then to have them also censored my review... that all just leads to a junky experience for future buyers who won't have a full picture.

Compare this to Costco... ugh. Anyway, look I just want a human at Amazon to remember how much I spent there, and be like, "Oh great, we see you've had an account for 25+ years, we value that, we'll take care of you! We don't want shady sellers on our platform!" But... nope.

Amazon is really broken. (Yelp too for that matter.)

They don't force customers to update the product when the manufacturing or size of the products change. So you'll get a "buy it again!" but it's fundamentally not the product you purchased.

And a company can sell something "good" for a few months, and offer rewards / incentives to give good reviews, then use those reviews for the "old" product to sell a revised and "junk" version. Shrinkflation is so real.

Companies are free to use Prime to for delivery, but their own processes for returns. "Oh, I have to spend $56 to ship something using DHL over-night now because that's the only delivery method the seller accepts for returns? Uh..."

Making sure when you see a "Prime" logo, it also means Prime Returns -- like the drop off at Whole Foods style free returns policy.

Also... there's like no real way to talk to a human when you have a real issue with a seller.

Reviews seem... less than honest a lot of the time. Looking at pictures, it's often "old" versions of the product at this point. And there are a bunch of settings for reviews, so ratings could be on the "group of products" rather than the specific product you're ordering. Like, "Oh this is all tennis shoes we sell, not the shoes you ordered."

Anyway, some simple tools would really help... like giving consumers the ability to filter reviews based on when the reviews were created. "Only show me products with 100 reviews in the last week... then sort by customer review rating." Or, "For the rating, only count reviews from my country buyers from the last month." Stuff like that would be easy to do with the data they have, and would help reduce scammer-sellers.

Recently I bought a little sensor for my AC system... turns out I didn't need it, so I went to return it. I hadn't opened it. The seller told me I had literally 3 days to get it back to them... and told me that I had to send it a certain shipping method... and then when I did, they refused to give a refund because they said I had opened the box. For proof, they had opened the box and took a picture of the item open.

So I got to pay for the item, and pay $56 shipping, only to not get a refund. Amazon closed the case without ever letting me talk to a human. Shady.

> Amazon says that it prohibits negative reviews that violate community guidelines, including by focusing on seller, order, or shipping feedback rather than on the item's quality.

You'd think they'd try to use AI to flag this stuff instead of whatever the hell their current chatbot is supposed to be for — I still regularly see "product damaged in shipping" 1-star reviews

Additionally, anyone that's regularly tried to order "open box" from "Amazon Warehouse" to save a few bucks can probably speak to the inaccuracies of the return process... it's pretty common to get broken (or completely mislabeled) goods from this program.

it seems like actual humans at Amazon reviewed the situation yet let the complaint stand and the original complaint poster now is informed that the complaint blamed the wrong party yet didn't take the effort to update her product review.

lol pretty dissappointed in the humans involved in those two situations and its hard not to be angry on behalf of the previously successful business that was victimized like this.

In what way did the complaint blame the wrong party? I guess "the company" can be read in multiple ways, I read it as blaming Amazon:

> The diaper arrived used and was covered in poop stains. (See pics) Nothing could have been more disgusting!! I am assuming someone returned it after using it and the company simply did not check the item and then shipped it to us as if it was brand new. These were not small stains either. I was extremely grossed out. Thank god I saw the stains and didn’t put it on my baby! I will be returning this ASAP and I sure hope they check it out when they get it back but I wouldn’t be surprised if they just ship it to some other unsuspecting parent.

I can see it as an honest complaint originally I mean who wouldn't? But apparently she was contacted about the really disproportionate and innaccurate representation it left in readers minds and I guess thought it was not worth her time to pitch in and help clarify, so I'm disappointed in her value judgements. Amazon could have also just removed the complaint because it inaccurately portrayed the family business as willing to sell used diapers of all things, its not like they are that picky about which reviews to remove in the first place.

Not to mention just plain bad QA on Amazons part.

Any of the least little bit of help from anybody could have went a long way here. Disappointment all around.

I guess I don't fully believe the story about the single review causing such disproportionate harm. The entrepreneurs were said to be scaling up their business (was it too quickly, did they overproduce?) and if they were so successful, they were presumably drawing attention from competitors (what's the moat for a contract-made swim diaper with snaps)?

There aren't any hard numbers for the business in the Ars Technica story or the Bloomberg story it links to, Bloomberg just says "Sales plummeted".

If I search Amazon for "swim diaper snaps", the brand from the article (Beau & Belle Littles) is in the second row of results - the first row is all sponsored results.

This just feels like a case of folks having too many of their eggs in a single precarious basket.

>I guess I don't fully believe the story about the single review causing such disproportionate harm.

I do, who's going to take a chance of receiving a biohazard lol

>This just feels like a case of folks having too many of their eggs in a single precarious basket.

this is true, but Amazon's position in this space means their the default choice in many cases. It also rings true that due to their gigantic market presence, they don't have to worry about being outcompeted because of their own mistakes.

I often select Amazon warehouse or refurbished items (don't recall precise wording) and from experience, the quality often is surprisingly shabby, or put differently, that category of merchendise is substantially under-discounted. Metal supports bent, components missing, protective packaging conspicuously breached or smashed. I found this article insightful as it tends to explain the processes that lead to such items being listed as if they are undamaged, conforming and nearly-new. At this point I assume products distributed in that channel are significantly defective albeit probably functional with some effort.

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