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Amazon can be held liable for third-party seller products: U.S. appeals court
- wegs 7y agoGood ruling!
- mc32 7y agoThis is good for consumers, so I like it[1].Amazon has been able to exploit this asymmetry it enjoys compared to Wal*Mart, so I think this bring them to an even playing field with regard to that. I’d be happy if they simply stopped commingling inventory. [1]I guess they could argue the "Platform" angle, but I'm not sure that would hold water for them.
- berbec 7y agoI hope they do. That might put pressure on other "platform"s to better police themselves.
- bfdm 7y agoWalmart is pulling the same crap on their website now, too. Tons of products lists sold by junk third party sellers. I get so frustrated every time I forget to add the "available in store" filter while searching. The results are useless otherwise.
- lostapathy 7y agoI would love to find a browser extension that set this type of option for you on various sites, or at the very least alerted you when you forgot to.
- mrpigeonpants 7y agoI was just on Seller Central yesterday and the only current barrier to committing fraud or selling dangerous goods on the worlds largest marketplace is a $40 monthly fee, a bank account, and enough creativity to make up a company name. I hope this will help crack down on fraudulent product listings as well. There are a lot of bad actors. Youtube and facebook aren't the only major players with moderation issues
- janesvilleseo 7y agoDon’t know about that. My wife just created an individual account to sell some things around the house. She had to jump through so many more hoops than I thought. She needed to upload her passport to prove who she was. She had to have a credit card with her name on it. Plus she needed to prove she had access to the bank account (needed to have it show her name on the account). As well as the usual social security number being used at sign up. Way more than I thought, but she had some identity theft issues. So that may have impacted or triggered something.
- ikeboy 7y agoEvery new account requires proof of identity to be verified.
- robryan 7y agoSo what happens once you identify as Chinese national/ Chinese business, sent some counterfeits for a bit and eventually get kicked off? The penalty is just no longer being able to sell, nothing will happen with the products you have already sold unless a customer complains.
- astura 7y agoAnd you can just pay another Chinese person to use their identity to sign up again and keep sending in more counterfeits.
- Jeff_Brown 7y agoIf sellers can disappear, that's a problem. Amazon should be liable for ensuring sellers can be tracked down and prosecuted. In cases where they do manage to do that, though, should they still be on the hook?
- uponcoffee 7y agoAmazon should be held responsible, and they can recover damages by suing the third party. This protects the buyer in the case that the seller disappears or cannot afford the settlement. IMO, amazon would be better off moderating their platform.
- JamesBarney 7y agoNot to mention the costs associated with Amazon recovering that money from a third party as substantially lower than for an individual.
- stefan_ 7y agoAmazon does the entire sales process, collects the money, overwhelmingly ships and warehouses the products, tightly controls listings. I'm not sure there is any case where Amazon should not be liable. You buy something "fulfilled by Amazon" and at no point in the transaction is any sort of third party involved.
- Jeff_Brown 7y agoYeah that seems fair. And like an opportunity for an insurance market. It will raise the price of goods on Amazon, but whatever, safety costs money.
- maaaats 7y agoPeople think they buy from "Amazon" and not a "marketplace", as it's how it used to be. Even though it's now more or less just a high-valued ebay clone. Hundreds of duplicates, lots of shitty items.
- godzillabrennus 7y agoI regularly start my purchasing off amazon now that it’s so untrustworthy.
- OrgNet 7y agoI just try to avoid Amazon because of the horrible warranty experience I had with an Amazon Fire Kid Edition tablet
- StudentStuff 7y agoDid they refuse a warranty repair? They do pitch those tablets at a loss leader price to try and own the low end tablet market. I think the Fire tablets have severely undermined people's opinions of what a non-Apple tablet is.
- OrgNet 7y agoThey ended up replacing it after a month of back-and-forth repetitive communications... but it was a pain and it ended up costing me because I had to reship it to a family member in another country because it didn't come on time. They apparently lost the defective tablet that I returned somewhere in their system.
- liveoneggs 7y agoaren't they supposed to be no-questions replacement?
- peteretep 7y agoI know right? I actually used the Walmart website recently for a purchase _shudder_ of razor blades because I simply don’t trust Amazon any more. I cannot understand how this is good for them.
- bwb 7y agoAnyone with a legal background can you shed light on the ramifications for other platform plays? Is this just because they say its from Amazon or more any marketplace?
- kevingadd 7y agoIANAL, but this is covered in the article: In Wednesday’s opinion, Circuit Judge Jane Richards Roth, writing for a 2-1 majority of a three-judge panel, said Amazon may be liable in part because its business model “enables third-party vendors to conceal themselves from the customer, leaving customers injured by defective products with no direct recourse to the third-party vendor.” For context, concealment is bad here because co-mingling means Amazon doesn't even know which vendor shipped the defective product (and as mentioned in past posts on HN, they also blame the wrong vendor sometimes.) The fact that in this case the bad actor up and vanished is just unacceptable.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoIf I was Amazon, I would start tracking which vendor supplied a particular instance of a product. Seems less costly than dealing with owning the liability of third-party vendors.
- kevingadd 7y agoYou can supposedly opt out of co-mingling now, and I do wonder how much money they really save by doing it. A few expensive legal penalties might be enough to kill the program.
- CamelCaseName 7y agoThey are shifting part of this cost onto sellers with the Transparency program. My company has had a few calls with Transparency reps and will be enrolling in the coming months.
- ikeboy 7y ago
- crazygringo 7y agoDoesn't seem like a big deal, because: > In Wednesday’s opinion, Circuit Judge Jane Richards Roth, writing for a 2-1 majority of a three-judge panel, said Amazon may be liable in part because its business model “enables third-party vendors to conceal themselves from the customer, leaving customers injured by defective products with no direct recourse to the third-party vendor.” Seems like Amazon can just force third-party vendors to reveal their full legal identity to the customer then? I don't care who's liable as long as someone's liable and it's fully enforceable within the US court system.
- ryanhuff 7y agoIANAL, but what happens when the third party vendor is in China, effectively out of reach from a US consumer? Would Amazon be the defacto responsible party.
- onemoresoop 7y agoThey can be banned from amazon at least
- bdcravens 7y agoI think the issue is more than just exposing full legal identity. The shopping experience on Amazon is an abstraction. When looking at Product X, on different days, different sellers may be in the "buy box". From the customer's perspective, they are buying from Amazon, not the vendor.
- jammygit 7y agoAnd this is deliberately misleading
- paxys 7y agoIt is still a big deal, because customers are going to be a LOT more hesitant to buy stuff if they realize it's sold by a random Chinese dude and not Amazon.
- stevespang 7y ago'Bout time someone held Amazon accountable. They have been abusing the system for way too long. Would like to see some law firms file class actions against Bezos operation.
- brightball 7y agoIt’s about time. I just finished dealing with one of these vendors and they already had a laundry list of terrible reviews showing EXACTLY what I experienced but for bunches of other people. How in the world were they still a vendor?
- yborg 7y agoPeople like you keep buying from them.
- brightball 7y agoBought an item that was supposed to be Prime and it apparently wasn’t.
- lostmymind66 7y agoThe amount of counterfeits on Amazon these days is astounding. I was a legitimate seller about 10 years ago and I had a competitor buy one of my products and complained to Amazon that it was a counterfeit. My account was suspended and I had no recourse. To this day, I can't be attached to any seller account without it being put under review and eventually banned. At this point I had 100% positive feedback and I spent lots of time to please all of my customers. My money was held for 90 days and it nearly bankrupted me. I learned two things from this: 1) Don't base your entire business on a third-party platform. They become your boss and a single point of failure. 2) Fuck Amazon. I hope they get broken up and destroyed by the US government. They abused their third-party sellers for years and then when they couldn't extract enough profit anymore, they were systematically put out of business and pushed out.
- jammygit 7y agoIn the meantime, the top “recommended by amazon” result for windows 10 is counterfeit software sold for half price (at least in Canada). The whole first page of reviews is people complaining about fakes or licenses not working
- justhw 7y agoI've pretty much stopped buying anything over $100 on Amazon after being burned twice. I buy direct or from other competitors. Hope a solution is on the horizon.
- harry8 7y agoSo who are the wealthy companies that might use their financial might to stop amazon changing this law to their advantage? Is there another way amazon won't get the law changed to suit them?
- pkaye 7y agoWalmart or Target might see it as an advantage since they tightly control their supplier relationships.
- sjg007 7y agoHonestly if Target and Walmart get free shipping figured out (like Prime) they could eat away a large part of the Amazon customer base.
- opo 7y agoDoesn't Walmart basically have free shipping? I've never tried it, but according to their web site: NextDay Our fastest delivery option, available in qualifying ZIP codes. Free on $35+ orders of eligible items—no membership fee! Two Day Choose from millions of select items online—no membership needed! Free on orders of $35 or more. https://www.walmart.com/cp/free-shipping/1088989 https://www.walmart.com/cp/free-shipping/1088989
- jpambrun 7y agoI don't and shouldn't have to care who the supplier is or what kind of agreement they have with the store; I am conducting business with the store. My contractual interactions are with the store. It process the orders, handle payment, shipping, etc.. I don't get how they can claim otherwise.
- flowerlad 7y agoThere is no clear indication when you’re buying from third parties vs. Amazon. Too many times I have bought things thinking I am buying from Amazon but turns out I bought from a third party with a different return policy. Amazon needs to make this more obvious.
- sfifs 7y agoThis is interesting. Doesn't this make comingling a high business risk activity for Amazon? If the item shipped was from a different third party seller than the one billed, Amazon would get sued instead of the third party seller if it turned out to be defective or fake. Amazon makes a rich enough target that I imagine lawyers would accept cases on contingency whereas they might not against random small third party sellers?
- JamesMcMinn 7y agoMeanwhile, I can't ever get Amazon to accept liability for the 3 bits of cardboard and a deck of playing cards I received instead of a £209 SSD that was sold by Amazon directly: https://twitter.com/JamesMcMinn/status/1144537350602678273 https://twitter.com/JamesMcMinn/status/1144537350602678273
- yourfate 7y agoHas anything come of this yet? Did you report it yet?
- JamesMcMinn 7y agoNope. I am still down £209 and have gotten no further. I have: - Sent them a video of me opening the 2nd delivery to find playing cards (Literally from opening the Amazon box through to finding the playing cards inside the Samsung SSD box) - Reported the matter to my local police, who phoned Action Fraud on my behalf. I've got me a crime reference number from Action Fraud. - Signed 2 affidavits declaring what I did / did not receive I've phoned them numerous times, and twice now that has involved speaking to someone, being put on hold, and then redirected to my own voice mail. If I was the only person to have received card and a deck of playing cards I could understand their reaction, however they've removed the item from sale because a number of other people in recent days have received the same things [1]. When I spoke to my local police they were extremely confused by Amazon's behaviour. I gave Amazon the details of the officer I spoke to and the crime reference number, but that got me nowhere other that the same boilerplate email. At this stage, I fear I'm going to end up taking Amazon to the small claims court here in the UK just to get my money back. [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B07MBQPQ62/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_srt?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B07MBQPQ62/ref=cm_c...
- rnikander 7y agoGood. Amazon has sold me garbage and dangerous products. Example: I bought a MacBook power adapter from them (not Apple branded). When I went back to review it the product page was gone. In 220 volt countries, it would cause all connected touchscreens and touchpads to become unusable, and I got mild electrical shocks from the aluminum MacBook case. If you touched the aluminum laptop body, it felt like it was vibrating with electricity, even if it didn't shock you. (And yes it was rated for the higher voltage just like the authentic Apple adapter.)