A feces-encrusted swim diaper tanked a family business after Amazon re-sold it as new, Bloomberg reported, triggering a bad review that quickly turned a million-dollar mom-and-pop shop into a $600,000 pile of debt.
Paul and Rachelle Baron, owners of Beau & Belle Littles, told Bloomberg that Amazon is supposed to inspect returned items before reselling them. But the company failed to detect the poop stains before reselling a damaged item that triggered a one-star review in 2020 that the couple says doomed their business after more than 100 buyers flagged it as "helpful."
"The diaper arrived used and was covered in poop stains," the review said, urging readers to "see pics."
[...]
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. Other one-star reviews for the same product that the Barons seemingly accept as valid comment on quality, leaving feedback like the diaper fitting too tightly or leaking.
[...]
But Amazon ultimately declined to remove the bad review, Paul Baron told Bloomberg. The buyer who left the review, a teacher named Erin Elizabeth Herbert, told Bloomberg that the Barons had reached out directly to explain what happened, but she forgot to update the review and still has not as of this writing."I always meant to go back and revise my review to reflect that, and life got busy and I never did," Herbert told Bloomberg.
Her review remains online, serving as a warning for parents to avoid buying from the family business.
[...]
On Amazon's site, other sellers have complained about the company's failure to remove reviews that clearly violate community guidelines. In one case, an Amazon support specialist named Danika acknowledged that the use of profanity in a review, for example, "seems particularly cut and dry as a violation," promising to escalate the complaint. However, Danika appeared to abandon the thread after that, with the user commenting that the review remained up after the escalation.
[...] The Barons told Ars they've given up on resolving the issue with Amazon after a support specialist appeared demoralized, admitting that "it's completely" Amazon's "fault" but there was nothing he could do.
[...]
Amazon promises on its site that "each item at an Amazon return center is carefully inspected and evaluated to determine if it meets Amazon's high bar to be re-listed for sale."The company supposedly evaluates the packaging for broken seals, then opens the package to "confirm the item matches the description, check for any signs of use, and assess any product damage" before it's deemed to meet Amazon's "high standards" and can be resold as new.
[...]
Earlier this year, the company apologized for selling a customer in India a "new" laptop that was obviously used and had a warranty that had started six months before it was purchased, Hindustan Times reported. In one Reddit thread accusing Amazon of a "laptop scam" viewed by thousands, a user claimed that Amazon's refund process resulted in an investigation on his account for "suspicious activity."
[...]
The Federal Trade Commission is currently focused more on probing how Amazon allegedly stifles competition rather than on reports of harms to consumers and sellers through allegedly deceptive advertising, though. That investigation will take years to wrap up, Reuters reported, with the trial not expected to start until 2026.
[...]
For the Barons, the damage control continues despite a decade of mostly glowing reviews for their baby products and years of contacting Amazon seeking assistance. They worry Amazon might still be reselling used items, but they cannot stop using the platform because Amazon remains their primary source of sales, the couple told Ars. Last summer, The Strategist ranked the item hit by the bad review among the "best swim diapers," and this summer, so did Parents.com. So far, though, hoping to bury the bad review with positive endorsements seems to have done little to help the Barons turn their business around."Amazon talks a big game about helping small businesses," Paul Baron told Bloomberg. "But they really don't."
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Related Stories
Amazon today said it can't stop fake product reviews without help from social media companies, and it blamed those companies for not doing more to prevent solicitation of fake reviews.
In a blog post, Amazon said its own "continued improvements in detection of fake reviews and connections between bad-actor buying and selling accounts" has led to "an increasing trend of bad actors attempting to solicit fake reviews outside Amazon, particularly via social media services."
Amazon Unlawfully Confiscated Union Literature, NLRB Finds:
Amazon illegally prohibited an employee from giving workers pro-union literature, confiscated that literature, and gave workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled at the company's Staten Island fulfillment center in New York, according to National Labor Relations Board charges and other documentation reviewed by Motherboard.
An NLRB investigation found that Amazon illegally prohibited Connor Spence, a Staten Island employee involved in union organizing, from distributing pro-union literature in a break room on May 16—and then confiscated the literature—also in violation of U.S. labor law, according to evidence provided by the NLRB to the union’s attorney.
Connor Spence, a 25-year-old warehouse worker in Amazon's JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, who filed the unfair labor practice charge, told Motherboard that on May 16, he was in the break room distributing leaflets about unions and copies of a notice that Amazon had to post in a Queens warehouse for violating workers’ union rights, when an Amazon security guard approached him and told him he did not have permission to distribute the leaflets.
“He took the union literature away and wouldn’t give it back,” Spence told Motherboard. “I filed the charge so that there’s accountability in place that prevents them from doing this in the future.”
Following the defeat of a high-profile union drive at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama this April, Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island have been busy organizing their own independent union, known as Amazon Labor Union.
Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny:
Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it "challenged" a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.
The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do". "Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs," the smart speaker said.
She said: "We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one." That's when the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had "found on the web".
The dangerous activity, known as "the penny challenge", began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.
Metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live electrical sockets can cause electric shocks, fires and other damage.
"I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms," Michael Clusker, station manager at Carlisle East fire station, told The Press newspaper in Yorkshire in 2020. "The outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt."
Amazon lied about using seller data, lawmakers say, urging DOJ investigation:
Amazon lied to Congress about its use of third-party seller data, the House Judiciary Committee said today. In a letter to the Department of Justice, the committee chairs asked prosecutors to investigate the company for criminal obstruction of Congress.
"Amazon lied through a senior executive's sworn testimony that Amazon did not use any of the troves of data it had collected on its third-party sellers to compete with them," the letter says (emphasis in the original).
[...] "Amazon has declined multiple opportunities to demonstrate with credible evidence that it made accurate and complete representations," the letter says. "Amazon's failure to correct or corroborate those representations suggests that Amazon and its executives have acted intentionally to improperly influence, obstruct, or impede the Committee's investigation and inquiries."
Congress held a series of hearings as part of a 16-month antitrust investigation that scrutinized the practices of Amazon, Google parent company Alphabet, Apple, and Facebook, now known as Meta. During those hearings, lawmakers questioned Amazon executives about whether third-party seller data was used to develop private-label products or to privilege its own products in search results.
"We do not use any seller data to compete with [third parties]," Nate Sutton, associate general counsel for competition, told Congress in sworn testimony in July 2019. "We do not use any of that specific seller data in creating our own private brand products."
Yet as today's letter points out, subsequent investigations by The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and The Markup revealed that not only did Amazon employees working on private-label items have access to third-party data, but they routinely used it, even discussing it openly in meetings. "Amazon employees regularly violated the policy—and senior officials knew it."
Amazon, Google Busted Faking Small Business Opposition To Antitrust Reform:
For decades now, a favorite DC lobbying tactic has been to create bogus groups pretending to support something unpopular your company is doing. Like "environmentalists for big oil" or "Americans who really love telecom monopolies." These groups then help big companies create a sound-wall of illusory support for policies that generally aren't popular, or great for innovation or markets.
Case in point: this week both Politico and CNBC released stories showcasing how Amazon and Google had been funding a "small business alliance" that appears to be partially or entirely contrived. The group, the Connected Commerce Council, professes to represent small U.S. businesses, yet has been busy recently lobbying government to avoid antitrust reform (which would, generally, aid small businesses).
When Politico reached out to companies listed as members of the organization, most of them had mysteriously never heard of it, and were greatly annoyed their company names were being used for such a purpose:
The four-year-old group listed about 5,000 small businesses in its membership directory before it removed that document from its website late last month. When POLITICO contacted 70 of those businesses, 61 said they were not members of the group and many added that they were not familiar with the organization.
Google is not your friend!
Amazon's smart speakers may've landed the tech giant in hot water:
A Federal Trade Commission complaint could lead the US government to sue Amazon over children's data the retail giant collected through its line of smart speakers, according to a Bloomberg report on Friday.
At issue is whether Amazon's series of Alexa-powered smart speakers were collecting data on children under the age of 13 without parental consent and retaining it even after users attempted to delete it, which children's advocacy organizations asked the FTC look into back in 2019, the report said.
Now the FTC is now recommending issuing a complaint that Amazon didn't confirm parental consent before collecting data and that most of the Alexa activities designed for kids didn't have a privacy policy, sources told Bloomberg. The Justice Department could take the next step and file a lawsuit against Amazon next month.
The Amazon suit comes amid an FTC crackdown on data collection over the last few years under Chair Lina Khan, including fining the company formerly known as Weight Watchers for improperly storing kids' info. The commission also ordered Fortnite creator Epic Games to pay $520 million in fines and refunds for tricking kids into making in-game purchases and violating their privacy.
[...] Should the lawsuit find Amazon at fault, it's unclear how much it could be forced to pay in penalties. While Amazon reportedly claimed to be in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), if it's found to have violated those rules dictating how children's data should be protected, the company could pay $50,000 per child affected, according to Politico.
The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to file a major antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of "leverag[ing] its power to reward online merchants that use its logistics services and punish those who don't," Bloomberg reported today. Bloomberg described the forthcoming lawsuit as "the big one," following several earlier lawsuits filed by the FTC under Chair Lina Khan.
"In the coming weeks, the agency plans to file a far-reaching antitrust suit focused on Amazon's core online marketplace, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and three people familiar with the case," the report said.
[...]
Third-party sellers can rely on Amazon for warehousing, shipping, and other services through the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) system, but it takes a big cut out of their revenue. A recent Marketplace Pulse study based on profit and loss statements from a sample of sellers found that "Amazon is pocketing more than 50 percent of sellers' revenue—up from 40 percent five years ago," because "Amazon has increased fulfillment fees and made spending on advertising unavoidable."
[...]
The FTC's current investigation began two years before Khan became chair. "Amazon received the initial investigation notice in June 2019, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg.
Amazon ships more than a million packages daily, but there's at least one person in a million who frowns when she encounters a smiling box placed on her doorstep.
A Canadian woman, Anca Nitu, told CBC that over the past two months, more than 50 packages have arrived at her home. Each package contained a return slip and a pair of shoes from an Amazon buyer located in North America who wrongly shipped their rejected shoes to Nitu's address.
[...]
Amazon said that typically the company advises any recipient of an unwanted package to fill out a Report Unwanted Package form. That Amazon page says to report any unsolicited packages "immediately," confirming that "third-party sellers are prohibited from sending unsolicited packages to customers."For Nitu, her worries won't necessarily end, even if the packages ever do stop coming. She told CBC that she has no idea whether the Amazon sellers that are using her information to ship unwanted return items are doing anything else with her information. She also worries that if Amazon doesn't unlink her name from the seller accounts, she could one day be charged Amazon seller fees.
Related:
'It's an absurdity': Oak Park woman says unwanted shoes keep showing up on doorstep
Amazon announced today that Prime Video users in the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK will automatically start seeing advertisements "in early 2024." Subscribers will receive a notification email "several weeks" in advance, at which point they can opt to pay $2.99 extra for ad-free Prime Video, Amazon said.
That takes the price of ad-free Prime Video from $8.99/month alone to $11.98/month and from $14.99/month with Prime to $17.98/month.
[...] Prime Video subscribers who don't pay the extra $2.99 (and don't just cancel their subscription altogether) are promised "meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers."
[...] With current prices starting at $9.99 per month, Prime Video was one of the cheapest ways to get streaming TV without ads. While the changes put pricing for ad-free Prime Video more on par with its competitors, it may still disappoint budget-minded cord-cutters. Streaming services started off as a cheaper, simpler alternative to cable TV. But as an influx in services, changes in pricing, confusing bundles, and scattered content have proven, we haven't gotten that far from cable after all.
The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon, claiming the online retail giant illegally maintains monopoly power.
[...] The FTC announced that it filed the lawsuit in US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The FTC press release said it is "seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that would prohibit Amazon from engaging in its unlawful conduct and pry loose Amazon's monopolistic control to restore competition."
The lawsuit seeks declarations that Amazon's conduct violates federal and state laws. It asks for an injunction prohibiting the conduct described in the lawsuit along with unspecified "structural relief" that would be "necessary to redress and prevent recurrence of Amazon's violations of the law." Structural relief could involve breaking up the company.
The drink had all the hallmarks of a beverage sensation. Striking design, bold font, and the punchy name Release. But inside, each bottle was filled with urine allegedly discarded by Amazon delivery drivers and collected from plastic bottles by the side of the road.
That didn't stop Amazon from listing it for sale, though. Release even attained No. 1 bestseller status in the "Bitter Lemon" category. It was created by Oobah Butler for a new documentary, The Great Amazon Heist, which airs on Channel 4 in the UK today.
Butler is a journalist, presenter, and renowned puller of stunts—he's probably most famous for turning his shed in a London garden into the number one ranked restaurant on Tripadvisor.
[...]
Drummond [Amazon spokesperson] says this was a "crude stunt" and that the company has "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed."
[...]
The Great Amazon Heist doesn't tell us anything particularly new. (Drummond says the documentary is a "heavily distorted picture of our processes and operations that do not reflect the realities of shopping with or working for Amazon.") But placing all of these elements alongside each other in an hour of television paints a stark picture. Drivers and warehouse workers put up with the conditions because they have no choice. Dangerous products were listed and sold to children with no checks in place. Byzantine structures shield the company from local authorities. According to Amazon's mission statement, it "strives to be Earth's most customer-centric company, Earth's best employer, and Earth's safest place to work." The Great Amazon Heist portrays a company that simply doesn't seem to care.
OEMs are increasingly focused on using TVs as a way to show customers ads:
People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements.
[...] Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display placement ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could jeopardize the TV-watching experience for owners.
For example, Amazon is preparing to make Alexa with generative AI more useful for finding content on Fire TVs. This could help Alexa, which has struggled alongside other tech giants' voice assistants to generate significant revenue. Amazon gets money every time someone interacts with digital content through Alexa.
However, the company is double-dipping on this idea by also tying ads to generative AI on Fire TVs. When users ask Alexa to help them find media with queries such as "play the show with the guy who plays the lawyer in Breaking Bad," they will see ads that are relevant to the search.
[...] Maines told StreamTV Insider that advertisers had been asking for a way to advertise against Fire TV searches. "It just makes sense to expand our existing sponsor tile offering to show advertisements on the search screen with no extra effort or cost for the advertiser," she said.
[...] Amazon Fire TV users will also start seeing banner ads on the device's home screen for things that have nothing to do with entertainment or media. This ad space was previously reserved for advertising media and entertainment, making the ads feel more relevant, at least. Amazon opening the ad space to more types of advertisers is similar to a move Google TV made early this year.
The company seems to be aware of how dominating these types of advertisements can be. Maines emphasized to StreamTV Insider how the native ads are "right at the top of the Fire TV's home screen" and take "up half the screen."
[...] The banner ads will occupy the first slot in the rotating hero area, which Amazon believes is the first thing Fire TV users see. These users may have purchased a Fire TV primarily for streaming content from ad-free subscriptions, but Maines described how Fire TVs can still manage to force ads on these users.
After a spy camera designed to look like a towel hook was purchased on Amazon and illegally used for months to capture photos of a minor in her private bathroom, Amazon was sued.
The plaintiff—a former Brazilian foreign exchange student then living in West Virginia—argued that Amazon had inspected the camera three times and its safety team had failed to prevent allegedly severe, foreseeable harms still affecting her today.
Amazon hoped the court would dismiss the suit, arguing that the platform wasn't responsible for the alleged criminal conduct harming the minor. But after nearly eight months deliberating, a judge recently largely denied the tech giant's motion to dismiss.
Amazon's biggest problem persuading the judge was seemingly the product descriptions that the platform approved. An amended complaint included a photo from Amazon's product listing that showed bathroom towels hanging on hooks that disguised the hidden camera. Text on that product image promoted the spy cams, boasting that they "won't attract attention" because each hook appears to be "a very ordinary hook."
Early each summer, the bus began to fill with teenagers. Tang Mingfang, a 40-year-old office manager, watched as his shuttle from the workers' dormitories to Foxconn Hengyang, an Amazon supplier factory in southern China, grew more crowded with kids brought in to assemble Kindle ebooks and Echo speakers for Christmas. By the peak of the production cycle, there were so many that Tang was unable to squeeze on to the bus. Sent by their vocational schools, the students arrived in their hundreds, as part of an arrangement with Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant that operates the plant.
An exclusive assembler of many Apple and Amazon products, Foxconn is China's biggest private employer, with more than 700,000 workers. But during Chinese factories' busiest periods, it's common to see students from age 16 being bussed in to meet the higher demand for products. Once they reached the Hengyang factory, their task was to put together electronic devices often for up to 10 hours per day. Not that the students had much choice. If they said no, their teachers could refuse to let them graduate.
Tang knew it was illegal for students to work overtime or nights. It also seemed unfair. While his generation of graduates had grown up expecting formal contracts for skilled work, these young students were getting a raw deal. Subjected to the intense discipline of the assembly line, their work was limited to mindlessly repeating the same minuscule movements every few seconds. And he disliked the harsh way the children were treated by the teachers who were responsible for them at the factory. A short, serious figure with youthfully round cheeks, Tang uses a single phrase to describe himself: "well behaved". So, at first, he kept his reservations about what was going on private.
Tech CEO Gets 6 Years for Selling Fake Cisco Gear on Amazon, eBay:
A Miami-based CEO will serve over six years in prison for selling counterfeit Cisco equipment to numerous buyers on Amazon and eBay, with some of the shoddy hardware ending up in sensitive US government systems.
On Wednesday, 40-year-old Onur Aksoy was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for raking in at least $100 million from the counterfeit sales.
Aksoy committed the fraud from at least 2013 to 2022 — the year he was arrested— by buying the fake Cisco equipment from suppliers in China. The counterfeits were then resold as legitimate Cisco products for an estimated retail value of over $1 billion.
"Aksoy sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit computer networking equipment that ended up in US hospitals, schools, and highly sensitive military and other governmental systems, including platforms supporting sophisticated US fighter jets and military aircraft," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said in a statement.
The scheme persisted for nearly a decade, with Aksoy selling the counterfeit gear through 19 companies, along with 15 Amazon storefronts and at least 10 eBay storefronts, according to the Justice Department. But the fake hardware performed poorly once installed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday July 21, @04:09PM (25 children)
The takeaway of the story here is that if your livelihood is dependent on Bezos' dystopian marketplace, you have a problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aafcac on Sunday July 21, @04:30PM (9 children)
This sort of thing is a large part of why I've cut back to practically no purchases through them. Every once in a while there's a product that I can't easily do without that is only available through their store, but that only happens a couple times a year. The bigger issue is that I'll receive packages in the mail that come through Amazon fulfillment, which means that they're getting money even though I don't know that up front. Not to mention the fact that the Amazon price is required to be the lowest price option for a particular store.
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Sunday July 21, @05:55PM (8 children)
Often times my local stores have better prices than Amazon.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 22, @02:31AM (7 children)
And if you look at an item and then reload the page, Amazon will often offer you a higher price.
Apparently they mistake "interest" for "captive market".
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Monday July 22, @05:29AM (6 children)
Get a cellphone. Independent IP and MAC address.
One that has no history on Amazon.
Go to Amazon's site. Do Not Sign In!
You don't want Amazon knowing their "new guest" is you. You want them to offer the "new customer" price.
Go ahead and browse. Compare to what your logged-in machine shows.
I have heard Amazon is doing dynamic pricing, but haven't personally seen it yet.
I do this same thing with multiple cellphones so I can get multiple promo discounts. I usually have to instantiate an additional email alias for each phone.
It's hard for me to pass up a free sandwich or bag of tater chips!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Monday July 22, @06:20AM (5 children)
Yep, that works, but usually I don't care enough to log out and use some other email, I just go off to eBay and find whatever at a lower price, often from the same seller.
You have to watch out with Prime too, because they'll sometimes gift it on you for the free-trial month (with automatic charges thereafter) even tho you did NOT click the Yes Do It button. Had that happen several times now.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 22, @10:08AM (4 children)
On Amazon....
"You have to watch out with Prime too, because they'll sometimes gift it on you for the free-trial month (with automatic charges thereafter) even tho you did NOT click the Yes Do It button. Had that happen several times now."
,Thanks for the warning! Especially that you were aware of their "dark pattern" to sign you up.
I am also aware of their boobytrap and they change it once in a while... I found two of them in there..
One when you try to place the order
The other is when you try to claim the free shipping they advertised.
Yes...I still remember AOL. I've been very leery of signing up for anything ever since! Just one-time purchases of small items. No subscriptions.
I wish Amazon wouldn't push Prime so hard. It smacks of someone trying to pull a fast one on me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 22, @02:16PM (3 children)
If you use Amazon a lot, Prime makes sense; you don't need to save up $35 worth to order before you qualify for free shipping. And shipping can add up rapidly on small items. (I guess it also comes with some free video access, if you care.) If your buying there is scattered or sporadic, then it's not worth the $120/year or whatever it is now. Basically same principle as Costco.
I take advantage of the free month, then cancel. Serves 'em right.
Free shipping is always as advertised, but often you have to switch it from a default of fast shipping before the free shipping shows up. There's no logic to it, it's not necessarily perishables or fragiles.
On eBay, I take free shipping (especially of electronics) as evidence of the seller's faith in his own merchandise (ie. not making his profit on shipping and handling of items known bad that will be returned).
AKA exactly the advice in your excellent sig. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday July 22, @06:36PM
I've had Amazon Prime for a few years here in Germany. I've even had their CC. Then I've cancelled it all since I do not order from them much and they've bumped Prime price to 80€ from 60€... I still get free shipping to different places, like DHL packet shop down the street or some whatever. And since they never delivered home anyway, or just packages on steps even if someone's home (without ringing the bell), it's no different.
As for prices, there are several discounters 10 min walk from here. Action, Woolsworth, Mäc-Geiz, Euro Store, etc... plenty that have all the cheap things for cheaper and other retailers that have higher quality products. Amazon is basically for niche products these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, @07:58PM (1 child)
Prime is unacceptable to me from a privacy perspective. unfortunately.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 22, @08:28PM
Practically the whole commercial internet, come to it. But sometimes practical considerations trump that, unfortunately.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday July 21, @04:46PM (2 children)
While this is true, you could translate that into "If you plan on having anything to do with any form on online retail, you have a problem.". If you think you know just how bad the Amazon monopoly is, this is really worth the watch:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/amazon-empire/ [pbs.org]
I personally avoid Amazon almost entirely. Bezos thinks he's some fucking visionary genius. The reality is that almost all of that is just the product of being in the right place at the exact right time in human history.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 21, @04:55PM (1 child)
FWIW, video is unavailable when I go to that address. I used a different browser, routed through a US VPN, and magically it was available. I didn't even get the usual warning that viewers from the European Union are not welcome, the video was just unavailable.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Sunday July 21, @08:02PM
Sadly that makes sense. While PBS is donation-supported(thus free) in the US, they arrange distribution deals in other regions with for-profit distributors. Which means they won't have the rights to distribute their own content elsewhere.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday July 21, @04:48PM (8 children)
I doubt a single bad review, even one that bad, was enough to torpedo a business with that kind of sales, much less drive them massively into debt. Something else was going on.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Sunday July 21, @06:13PM (5 children)
Heh. No, it's not. That's like saying Red Lobster had another street misadventure. This is a "corp is too big" problem.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 21, @09:26PM (4 children)
Sure, return processing has some non-computer service aspects, but it is heavy on the computing services side. This is exactly the sort of widget that clouds have with the usual problems that cloud services have.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday July 21, @09:38PM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 22, @02:35AM
If I read the article right, the toxic review happened because Amazon sold a well-used return as new.
Seems to me these people have a good lawsuit prospect here, and maybe getting soaked in court would teach Amazon something.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday July 22, @05:26AM (1 child)
I don't agree that the review was toxic. The underlying issue was the dependency on return processing by Amazon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, @08:05PM
"I don't agree that the review was toxic."
no, shit! You send someone a shitty diaper and they are not supposed to mention it or *they* are "toxic"? yeah right.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 22, @07:10PM (1 child)
Also, outsourced their customer service to Amazon. Amazon customer service USED TO BE legendarily good. It has gradually transitioned to the opposite over the years.
Amazon's size related problem is they seem to be transitioning into trying to become a logistics company and that sector of the company was always and still is their weakest sector. Also back when they were shoving books into boxes and slapping a shipping label on it around the turn of the century, the barrier to entry was relatively high and mildly capital intensive, compared to their modern "We're a web page front end for AliExpress and our deliveries are slightly cheaper than UPS/Fedex but vastly less competent, but we do charge more for worse service" so they are open to catastrophic rate of decline and eventual replacement.
Being the "K-Mart" of logistics is great, back when K-Mart was a market dominator. But quality collapsed fast enough that ... well, you can see where K-Mart is now. Being the best at grabbing nickels in front of steamrollers is fun while you're the best at it and not so fun after you are no longer the best and get squooshed. And that's riiiight about where Amazon is now, right on the cusp of becoming the K-Mart of online retail, with all that implies.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, @08:08PM
"Also, outsourced their customer service to Amazon. Amazon customer service USED TO BE legendarily good. It has gradually transitioned to the opposite over the years."
IOW, used to be White, and now they replaced Whitey with Beach Shitters.
India: The Worst Country on Earth: https://odysee.com/@thisworldworks:1/s1MyMcqGMumpVTsa:6 [odysee.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21, @05:33PM (2 children)
I never bought anything from Amazon (they lied about status of our reference book, back when they were a book seller). Like others commenting in this thread, a few times things have arrived in Amazon packaging, even though I purchased through eBay.
However, my personal boycott just ended with a single purchase. We're re-doing our kitchen and an Amazon seller had the right kitchen light fixture--looked really hard but could not find it anywhere else. Just arrived the other day, no poop anywhere to be seen.
So much for my career as an idealist(grin), but in my defense I did use someone else's account for the purchase...
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday July 21, @06:12PM (1 child)
> I never bought anything from Amazon
I never bought anything from Amazon out of respect for my local shopowners, and because I don't want a wage slave laborer to prepare my order. And whenever possible, I avoid big box stores like Wally World, and online. First I go to the mom and pop store, then the mall, then big box, then the internet in decreasing order of preference. But even if they're the only ones to carry what I want, I'll never buy from Amazon. That's a hard rule for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, @03:01AM
> ... That's a hard rule for me.
You are a harder man than I. She found the lighting fixture and I agreed it was the correct one. No one else had it (I searched more than once, for some time)...and I gave up my lifetime Amazon boycott.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 21, @04:48PM (1 child)
This is disgusting, and I really want to bash the individual who "inspected", and then shipped this item. But, we've all read the articles about the work place environment in Bezos' warehouses. It's all about production, you don't get any time for restroom breaks, or whatever. Inspectors have to meet a quota, just like everyone else. Inspector has a thousand items in front of him, that he has to process before he can take a lunch break. The package looks good, what could be wrong with a box of diapers? Rubber stamp the damned thing, and get it out of the way. NEXT!!
I don't even work for anyone as bad as Bezos, but I have signed off on things I wasn't really happy about, because the boss was pressuring me to hurry up. Maybe Bezos should go into his own warehouses, and work a day or six, doing the things he expects his employees to do. I've always had more respect for a boss (or an officer - I have a great sea story about an Navy officer who made me grow up some) who gets his hands dirty.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday July 21, @06:06PM
I've always had more respect for a boss (or an officer - I have a great sea story about an Navy officer who made me grow up some) who gets his hands dirty.
Yes, that's the sign of good leadership, they "walk the walk" to use business-speak. They show that they understand what they're managing and what they're asking you to do. Then, when they give you feedback, you know it's valuable and not just hot air.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Sunday July 21, @05:18PM (6 children)
I mean...yeah, good, sort of. Online reviews being BS because sellers remove anything negative is dumb. But it sounds like it was Amazon's fault in the first place here.
You gave an interview about this but still haven't removed the review?! Just do it on your phone in the middle of the interview! WTF!
Or is this a smokescreen and you still want to ruin this business or something
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Sunday July 21, @05:39PM (1 child)
I wouldn't go as far as saying the reluctance to remove the review is malicious, but it does make me wonder if there is something more to this story than we have heard so far. Perhaps they were hoping for a big financial apology but the story has now run away from their control.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 22, @06:22AM
Yeah, that was my next thought, after "this is lawsuit bait, Amazon can afford it."
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 21, @05:53PM (3 children)
I've mentioned that I was invited to participate in the Amazon Vine program. That doesn't make me an "insider" or anything. But, I've seen things that make a guy scratch his head, and go "hmmmm".
This example is an item I purchased, for cash money. The shipper didn't ship for a couple weeks. I sent an inquiry asking about a tracking number. I got nothing back. I finally asked for a refund, and was promptly refunded. I then took time to read all the reviews left by other customers. Turns out the vendor had a lot of complaints about items never shipping. Oddly - Amazon posted replies to most all of those complaints, to the effect that the vendor was not at fault, but that Amazon was responsible for late shipments. That seems awfully peculiar to me - something was happening behind the curtains that I was not privy to. One or two such instances, yeah, we might expect flukes. But, it happens again, and again, and again with the same vendor? Peculiar.
Other examples of vendors asking Amazon to take down my own reviews. Amazon has consistently left my reviews in place, with a statement that reviewers are to publish their own honest opinions of a prooduct. If the product is shit, I say so, and Amazon is cool with that. If I think the product is the bee's knees, no one ever questions that.
I've had vendors contact me, to incentivize me (read "bribe") to edit my review. I just report them for attempted bribery. I don't know what Amazon does with those reports, but I can say that two vendors have disappeared from Amazon.
I guess that the Vine program mostly works, but I really do scratch my head over some of the things I see. On the other hand, I've identified a number of other Vine reviewers who only ever rate anything at 4 or 5 stars. It's like they believe leaving a bad review might get them kicked off the program.
Meanwhile, I'm getting free shit from Amazon. As I say, some of it is shit, some of it is great, and a lot of it is just mediocre stuff sold by typically mediocre vendors. And every review I leave is my own honest opinion.
Hey, I'm tickled that Bezos tosses a little of his filthy lucre in my direction. I'd be even happier if he shared some of that lucre with the people on the ground, who make his empire work.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Monday July 22, @02:04AM (2 children)
I frequently shop Amazon for hard to find specialty items. But I still go to the mom-n-pop for things they stock. ( Is my local Grainger a mom-n-pop? ).
In the event of thousands of Amazon reviews...I often only read the negative ones, and mark it "helpful" if they reveal exactly how the product failed to meet their expectation. Primarily it's bad design that I want to know about...I can fix about anything else, but as some say, "You can't fix stupid!" . It's things like parts that easily break, but are not commonly available.
Too many things are designed by marketers. Great presentation. Lousy design. I should not be able to damage gardening tools with my bare hands! If it fits, it cuts! Not breaks! It's gotta be stronger than I am... And that's not asking a lot for a sedentary grandpa.
I am also aware some businesses pay for glowing Amazon Reviews, so I can't give too much credibility to glowing reviews, especially those that sound just like an ad. People generally won't say much if everything is hunky-dory, but if it disgusted them enough to leave a warning for others...well that's just human nature, and I'm a fool if I don't heed their advice.
I have left quite a few Amazon reviews if I felt it was either exceptional or shoddy. I haven't gotten any free stuff from Amazon, I guess because of my order history...mostly electronic parts. The wrong one is useless. And I am not Prime.
I note the mom-n-pop stores usually have higher prices, but they mostly won't sell poor quality stuff, as they don't want it coming back. They will curate an assortment of good stuff so I don't have to try-and-see if anything is good.
I bought a tree-lopper at a mom-n-pop hardware store over 50 years ago. I have not treated it all that well. That thing still looks and cuts like it was brand new. It was not cheap. What sold me was both a clever gear design and how it was made.
It hasn't even as much as rusted or dulled. I don't how they did that.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday July 22, @03:00PM
Online reviews in general are just ruined these days. Normally my process begins with, dismiss any company that doesn't have many reviews. If you have 8 reviews and they're all positive, it doesn't mean anything; if you have 800 reviews and they're all positive, that's a better sign (although as the number climbs, it also gets suspicious if there are zero bad reviews, as that probably means they're removing them). Then as you said, look at the quality of the negative reviews. Are they one sentence "the product sucked and I hated it", or are there actual details? Was there a problem in shipping, or was there something actually defective with the product itself? Are the reviewers just idiots? (I had to roll my eyes when I looked at the reviews for like an $8 Casio watch that had a gold-colored plastic face, and people were complaining that it wasn't real gold. For $8? Really?)
I recently had to get my garage door serviced, and I went on Yelp to look around at different companies. I'm not sure if it's just Yelp, but of the 6 or so companies I looked at, every one of them had a handful of scathing reviews with some amount of detail. Apparently only angry people post on Yelp...so I wound up basically just picking one at random in the end.
I suppose I really shouldn't expect much for free. And we've long known that the crowd isn't exactly wise; in fact it's one of our principles of government.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 22, @06:55PM
It varies by product category.
For example, with dev board type hardware, if you want a name brand real device you have to buy it from Digikey/Mouser or ship direct from mfgr if you want a legit one that will probably work out of the box. Amazon is entirely clones from AliExpress drop shipped and marked up 20 to 400 percent of profit for the middleman, so just buy from Aliexpress yourself the middleman isn't providing much value.
For example lets say you wanted a retro I2C light sensor, a TSL2561 I2C dev board. Adafruit used to sell them for $6 a piece (plus shipping) and they always worked. You can buy Chinese clones on AliExpress today for about $2 to $3 and somewhere between 50% and 100% work., so it's net cheaper but you better buy more than 1 from more than one seller to guarantee you'll have at least one working device. Amazon sells the exact same AliExpress boards, including the same picture as seen on AliExpress for around $6 to $8 each, which due to inflation is now more than what Adafruit sold them for in the old days LOL.
Ironically AMS replaced the '61 with the '91 around late 2000s decade and a newer '91 board on AliExpress sells for less than an ancient clone '61 on Amazon, LOL.
I don't recall the difference between the ancient '61 and the old '91 but it was probably lower noise / better power specs maybe better dynamic range. Old stuff. If you want a good time measuring light in 2024 try the multispectral chips that cost about as much as a dinner, they're 1000x more fun than the single channel devices and only cost like "$20 more". Consider the AS726x family.
(Score: 5, Touché) by acid andy on Sunday July 21, @05:18PM
If an item has been returned it should be listed as refurbished or similar, and will usually need a corresponding drop in the price, otherwise this is deceptive IMHO.
Amazon should at the very least give sellers the option to mark all returns in such a way.
Consumerism is poison.
(Score: 2) by ShovelOperator1 on Sunday July 21, @05:56PM
As in most large online shops, or rather shop aggregators, they will get all handy ideas from the product, outsource the manufacturing to Asia and sell "their" product.
Any questions? Just sue them.
I've seen this many times, in my country Amazon is not very popular, but every large shop-of-shops who also has own products (or puppet sellers) does this, tried this or will do this as quickly as they realize they have an immunity with the army of lawyers.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22, @01:12AM
1 bad review = business ruined unjustifiedly? I doubt it, it's rare. Doesn't Amazon allow the seller to post a reply to a bad review, what was their response? More likely they failed badly and are trying to put most of the blame on Amazon.
After all, CrowdStrike is probably getting lots of bad reviews but unfortunately I don't think they will go bust. Lots seem to want that buggy spyware[1] on their systems.
Maybe those unjustified bad reviews not being removed are due to Amazon layoffs? Maybe soon the reviews and appeals will be reviewed by AI if not already...
Hopefully by then more buyers would have learned to better judge bad reviews.
[1] https://safecomputing.umich.edu/crowdstrike-falcon/endpoint-protection [umich.edu]