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I don't get why they don't fix it. It's a huge problem and it's eroding confidence in Amazon. It's not even hard: just require anyone selling on Amazon to wire
by devit 9y ago
I don't get why they don't fix it. It's a huge problem and it's eroding confidence in Amazon.
It's not even hard: just require anyone selling on Amazon to wire a large enough deposit before they are allowed to sell (magnitude depending on the price, volume of their items and possibly their assumed trustworthiness); then, if they are found selling counterfeits or otherwise misrepresenting their products or their company, Amazon pockets a third of it, rewards another third to the person reporting it to Amazon and distributes the remaining third to affected shoppers.
It seems to me that the gains would far outweigh any possible reduction in the number of legitimate sellers and products.
- skgoa 9y agoThey have started to implement a prototype form of this. You can only be labeled as a verified sale, if they have received at least $50 from you in the past. Though that's still not enough to weed out all of the paid reviews written by professional reviewers. And another questionable thing that is starting to happen more and more is that you get something for free from the seller if you leave a review. It's very difficult for Amazon to guard against this, because the offer is made in the parcel you receive.
- craftyguy 9y ago> And another questionable thing that is starting to happen more and more is that you get something for free from the seller if you leave a review. This doesn't seem to be that hard to guard against. Amazon could offer a large bounty to report sellers that do this, and since Amazon has direct access to seller funds they could debit their account to pay for the bounty.
- rayuela 9y agoThis is actually a great idea and somewhat obvious come to think of it. Having outsized penalties to compensate for the probability of getting caught and deterring others considering partaking in the same type of fraud would be much like what many regulatory bodies have found to be a very effective way of curbing unwanted market behaviour.
- falcolas 9y ago> It's a huge problem and it's eroding confidence in Amazon. Personal opinion: They have consumer confidence to burn, and selling these products is almost pure profit. Amazon doesn't have to source or pay up front for these materials, and only has to pay a minimal storage/shipping fee on them (where they even store the items themselves). It's hard to turn that kind of profit down, or to slim down the profit by adding more checks and balances.
- macintux 9y agoIf they revoked Bezos' trusted traveler privileges each time Amazon brokered a counterfeit import, you can bet the problem would be fixed in a month.