Hacker News Reader

Comment by cddotdotslash | Hacker News Reader

I’ve had multiple purchases recently where the product I ordered (new) arrived in obviously-used condition. First was a metal kitchen trash can that had scratches and small dents on it. Second was a stroller cover for the airplane that arrived with tons of dirt and black streak marks all over it. In both cases I got a refund but it makes me wonder how many other “new” products I’m getting from Amazon that are likely used.

View on HN

Could be literally anything. Amazon does nothing more than a weight test for inventory verification. Sellers have put bricks in a box with the correct barcode for some product send it to the Amazon warehouse where it enters the pool of inventory from multiple sellers for that product. When a sale comes through the seller's account Amazon takes a random item from the inventory pool. Chances are it won't be a box with a brick in it so it gets sold and not returned. Some other seller is going to have the brick in the box delivered to one of their customers and lose a sale and reputation from people who have no idea what really happened. And because Amazon doesn't track this stuff (not cost effective) only the fraudulent seller knows.

> Could be literally anything. Amazon does nothing more than a weight test for inventory verification.

Someone used this to defraud (?) Amazon by ordering asphalt, using it to fix potholes, and then shipping back sand:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mXCSMu0fH4

This is gold thx :) (Hopefully it was Amazon the first party seller and there is no mixed inventory to other marketplace sellers).

Forced stock commingling by Amazon is the absolute worst. It's a negative-sum game where honest actors get the bitter end of the stick.

As have I. It's given me pause on buying from Amazon as it appears they are completely out of control.

I’ve cancelled Prime and just buy things from Target, Costco, Home Depot, etc now

Amazon is just full of junk, the 2-day shipping too often becomes 3-4 for me, and general concerns about the health and safety of products on there (I have no idea how people trust them enough to buy things like toothpaste or other stuff that goes in your body)

For home depot you ought to make sure its an in store product. They are starting to list the dropshipped junk that permeates amazon for some products at least. Same with lowes.

Target is the same way.

And Walmart.

Home Depot has sold me a returned product that was missing parts before.

I've seen home depot workers lament on their subreddit how so many people buy a tool just to return it and steal the battery. Shrink must be absurd at these stores. They at least try and do something about it; I've seen people walked out in cuffs at the home depot when I've gone a few times now.

Even acting in good faith, the nature of their shopping experience (goods are undifferentiated, often unpackaged, often either very large or very small and self-checkout predominates) makes it easy to make mistakes. I'll willingly admit that I've gotten to my car and realized I didn't scan (or under-counted) an item at least once (and I'm rather compulsive about checking my work).

You want to save money by making customers do the checkout labor for you, you're going to lose some money on goods.

With return rates at about 15%, a good rule of thumb is probably going to be that about 10% of what you get sent will have been returned by someone else already.

It's way worse for clothing items, but what else are you going to do? You steam it, bag it and put it back into stock as new.

Maybe wash/dump it if it has poop marks.

Yeah, this is happening all the time now.

I received an item recently that was actually just a bunch of hardware pieces [0] in one of the return bags you use at Whole Foods when you do a return there. Very clearly not the original packaging. It looked fine so I didn't fuss. But when I went to install the thing, I noticed about 1/3 of the pieces were missing. I returned it and ordered another one thinking surely it wouldn't happen again; I really liked the product but needed all the parts. The next order came before I even made the return and it was clearly in a box and labeled as the original manufacturer intended. They obviously resale returned items without even inspecting them at all.

I now won't buy anything from them besides the junk that's hard to find else where because of this. I've learned to inspect everything immediately because the return window might lapse before I intend on using the product. The thing I mentioned above I sat on for about 28 of 30 days of the return window before I went to install it and noticed I was short a lot of parts. It created some logistical headaches because I would have really liked to install it the day I tried to ... had some guests coming in town, had a nice weather day to do the work, etc. then had to scramble to find time to do it when the replacement came and my guests were at my house I installed it while my wife entertained them... stuff like that

[0] The nature of the item being a kit of several dozen nuts and bolts to hang something outside.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com