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Amazon's spokesperson said the company uses a combination of humans and artificial intelligence to monitor the 22 million-plus pieces of customer feedback received weekly for product quality and safety concerns. Amazon may remove products or suspend an account if the seller violates its policies.
"We work hard to make sure customers receive high-quality products when they order from our store," the spokesperson said. "We have robust processes in place to ensure customers receive products with sufficient shelf life.
"If customers have concerns about items they've purchased, we encourage them to contact our Customer Service directly and work with us so we can investigate and take appropriate action," the spokesperson added.
[...]Amazon says it feeds data from suspended listings and accounts into its AI systems so they can get better at detection and at blocking suspicious activity. Human moderators can also trigger an investigation if they receive feedback suggesting a product is unsafe. In the food category, Amazon uses a database called "Heartbeat" to monitor customer commentary through reviews, phone calls, emails and seller feedback for safety issues.
Even with all these tools, several consultants who advise sellers say Amazon needs to rely on more than just customer complaints and refunds to catch expired foods. They argue that Amazon needs to devise new strategies to police the marketplace more effectively and improve detection of questionable products, while strictly enforcing its policies when third-party sellers break the rules.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:39AM (4 children)
Meanwhile bankrupting local stores with fresh food products. It is said that Amazon has yet to make profit and is actively bankrupting profitable local businesses in order to take over their business. And _then_ it will become profitable after raising prices. (It also uses other services for shipping, which mostly run on public money.)
They always talk about revenue and avoid speaking of profit, but profit is all that matters, otherwise it is a fraud. Amazon indeed is a fraud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:42AM (2 children)
AWS. Revenue == Profit
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:57AM
Indian company InfoSys has just had some whistle-blowers saying it has been inflating profit. How long before AWS is exposed as unprofitable? (unprofitable spyware ?) Electricity also costs money. And all that spyware they install on their machines to monitor users and steal their data. And maybe mine some cryptocurrencies paid for by users.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday October 22 2019, @01:15PM
Umm, no. Revenue is the money that gets paid to you, before subtracting the money you paid to other people.
If you pay $10 for a widget, and sell it to me for $12, then your revenue from that transaction is $12, while your profit is only $2.
If you instead sold it to me for $9, then your revenue is $9, and your "profit" is a $1 loss. And I likely conclude that either the widget was a "loss leader" to try to lure me into buying more profitable items at the same time... or you're trying to drive your competition out of business so that you can raise prices. Both are pretty common.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @05:22PM
Really? Please cite your sources.
I'll go first: https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin [ycharts.com]
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/gross-profit [macrotrends.net]
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-profit-doubles-to-set-a-record-high-for-a-fourth-consecutive-quarter-2019-04-25 [marketwatch.com]
Feel free to disagree with Amazon's business model and business practices, but I'd suggest applying some critical thinking to the sources you listen to. Put another way, you think it is realistic that one of the largest retailers in the world, rivaling Walmart and Target in scope, whose market capitalization is in the billions, could have lasted 20 years and not turn a profit? I'll admit it is possible, but I'd suggest that should be enough to "hey, wait a second" to trigger doing some independent research rather than just accepting the statement at face value.
(Relatedly, how did that comment get to +4 Insightful?)