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A data analytics firm that specializes in the Amazon Marketplace recently analyzed the site’s 100 best-selling food products for CNBC and found that at least 40

A data analytics firm that specializes in the Amazon Marketplace recently analyzed the site’s 100 best-selling food products for CNBC and found that at least 40% of sellers had more than five customer complaints about expired goods. In other words, Amazon knows about the sellers who ship expired goods yet lets them continue to operate. It has the data and it still fails to take one of the easiest steps to address the problem, removing bad actors from the marketplace (which would also make many other sellers clean up their acts). I've had a similar issue with buying books advertised as "new" and they are clearly used ... including one book that had a "USED" sticker on it. I complained about the seller, and nothing happened. As of the last time I checked this seller was still in business on Amazon, with 22% negative ratings in the last 30 days. The message to third-party sellers is clear: Win the buy box however you can. We won’t police your listings. We won’t punish you if you lie about the condition of the goods. Even if many of Amazon’s customers are complaining about you, you can still stay in business on Amazon.

amitport 7y ago
"more than five customer complaints" Five out of _? We should care about the proportion, and should consider some time decay (maybe the issues were a decade ago).
- michaelt 7y ago
  I work for a company that (among other things) sells food. The acceptable number of customers to send expired food is zero percent. It's not a complex or unusual requirement to make sure your goods are in-date - any properly designed warehouse management system will take care of this. This is absolutely table stakes if you're going to deliver food. Unopened baby formula has a shelf life of 6 months+ when properly stored, so they've got a gigantic margin of error here. It'd be pretty poor customer service to ship baby formula that only had 2 months of its 6 month shelf life remaining. There's really no excuse for shipping expired baby formula.
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    Actually, genuine question: how do you do that technologically? With multiple supplier deliveries that result in combined stock with multiple expiration dates, how do you ensure expired food isn't delivered? Because I assume a warehouse doesn't keep a separate shelf spot for each separate delivery of a unique expiration date? And also, the expiration dates are printed on products in places that can be hard to find and hard to read. (Every time I buy bacon or greens I spent sixty seconds trying to find where the hell the date is on the plastic.) It's also generally not cost-effective on low-margin food items to print out and scan a unique label for each item that would allow the expiration date to be machine-readable. So I've always just assumed new deliveries try to be put in a warehouse bin behind/under existing items, and workers try to check visually for expired items, but that neither of those will ever be perfect. So what's the properly designed warehouse management system that solves for this?
    - yifanl 7y ago
      So, if there isn't a solution to do something at scale, then the answer is to simply not do said something at scale. The defence that "this isn't technologically possible" isn't at all a defence. The _most_ charitable interpretation would be that this is Amazon stress-testing how well they can handle co-mingling of various product lines... but that's still not great if they don't pull the experiment immediately after realizing they can't.
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - deleted 7y ago
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    - michaelt 7y ago
      > Because I assume a warehouse doesn't keep a separate shelf spot for each separate delivery of a unique expiration date? Actually, that's pretty much what we do. If the goods arrive from the supplier as a whole pallet of a single product, every item on the pallet will have the same expiry date, and you track each pallet separately. If the goods arrive on a pallet with a variety of products on it, you split it up by product then do exactly the same thing. The warehouse management system knows where each pallet is, and what its expiry date is. If a pallet has expired, workers picking items are sent to to non-expired pallets instead, and someone working on 'purge' is sent to remove the expired goods for donation/recycling/discarding as appropriate. You need a system like this if you want any chance of selling things like bread, because gaining or losing one or two days of product life makes the difference between a customer who'll shop again and one who won't.
- ilamont 7y ago
  You are correct. I am assuming most marketplace sellers are low-volume sellers, therefore 5 negative seller reviews/ratings is enough to justify a red flag. If it's a high-volume seller with many hundreds or thousands of reviews in a 1-month period, then it's not as big of a concern. For the example I cited earlier of a 22% negative rating in the previous 30 days, that represented dozens of negative reviews.
mcgoo 7y ago
If you create a listing that competes with someone else’s high volume product you will get fake reviews claiming the product is expired. Multiple times this has happened on a brand new listing with no sales, before the product even arrives at Amazon. Expired is one of the go-to false complaints. In my experience Amazon reliably push expired product back to the seller, at least using the dates that were declared by the seller. This does not stop a seller from claiming what they like, I suppose.
Jean-Philipe 7y ago
Funny thing, my auntie once got banned for life from Amazon. She used to sell used books on Amazon (as "used", obviously) until she got one single complaint from a client. Even though the complaint was without basis, she offered him full refund while letting him keep the book. Still, she got banned by Amazon. They even banned the account of her husband, with no explanation and no possibility for recourse. She cannot ever sell anything ever again on Amazon, and she doesn't even know why.
- ilamont 7y ago
  I hear stories like that, and then I see my own experience with serial cheaters allowed to keep selling and racking up negative ratings. I am wondering if Amazon gave up enforcement, or just changed its practices/loosened the rules.
  - dpark 7y ago
    I hear stories like that and question innocence of the protestor. I know sometimes people get screwed over for no reason but I’m also aware of numerous cases where someone loudly protests the unfairness of being blocked for a single unintentional infraction and upon further review it turns out they had a history of abuse, sometimes with a secondary account that they assumed BigCo was too stupid to link to their “real” account. Sometimes it’s a bit of a failure on both sides (e.g. BigCo also fails to notify about the abuse on the other account). Sometimes it’s just bullshit on the part of the complainer (e.g. Endless public protestations of innocence from someone who was actually sharing child pornography). I’m too jaded to trust the intentions of corporations, but I’m also too jaded to blindly trust the claims of those who assert they’ve been screwed over, especially when my gut says the story doesn’t make sense.
    - papln 7y ago
      There's a cottage industry of this in HN, where someone posts a blog complainings about BigCo destroying their small business, getting hundreds of upvotes and comments, and then it turns out, every time, that oops their software developement was outsourced to a developer who is a known serial spammer or scammer, and it's "not fair" because mom&pop can't know that they hired a criminal so BigCo shouldn't blame them.
rwmurrayVT 7y ago
Book selling is an insane market on Amazon. I ran a used bookstore on Amazon with 380 positive reviews and 1 negative review over the last 12 months. The sellers are cut-throat. They're all trying to sell something they got from a thrift store for $0.50 on Amazon to make $3. Amazon intentionally allows "acceptable" books to take the buy box over "very good" just based on price and seller feedback. If you end up selling the acceptable book then you get bad feedback for having a terrible quality book. The whole thing is a damn mess. Many sellers will list as "new" either intentionally or unintentionally. I'd be lying if I didn't say I sold several books I found in pristine condition or even shrink-wrapped as "new". The difference between $15 and $9 for an FBA book sale is the difference between $1.75 and $8. Book selling on Amazon is insane.
- zaroth 7y ago
  As a buyer sometimes the deals are absurdly good. For example got my daughter a hardcover Harry Potter Cursed Child for $3 Like New, and that included next day delivery. Shows up as described, and I just saved $15. I’m slightly ashamed to admit I was actually at BN at the time where they were selling it for $30. But I did spend $100 during that trip, on books that were comparably priced to Amazon. I assume Cursed Child is an outlier because I’d guess a huge number of people are buying it expecting it to be something it’s not, and then likely returning or offloading the book in disappointment. Obviously no one made money on the transaction so I assume it was a buggy algorithm, but I’m not complaining!
  - rwmurrayVT 7y ago
    Repricers often go awry. If you bought it FBA then they could have repricing software set to match lowest FBA price, but the available repricing API only returns 20 lowest. If there aren't any FBA then you'll get the MF. The whole system is a mess.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
This is why you should generally: 1) Review all negative ratings prior to a purchase 2) Refuse to buy anything that's less then 4/5 stars.
- dpark 7y ago
  This doesn’t help if a single bad actor is co-mingling with multiple good sellers.
- ryan-c 7y ago
  They commingle reviews for multiple "related" products too.
dpark 7y ago
> In other words, Amazon knows about the sellers who ship expired goods yet lets them continue to operate. It has the data and it still fails to take one of the easiest steps to address the problem, removing bad actors from the marketplace I have anecdata contrary to this. We used to buy gluten free bread from Amazon because of my son’s gluten allergy. It was a pain to buy locally so we would buy 4 loaves at a time from Amazon. We started getting expired loaves from some seller. It happened multiple times, to about 50% of the orders. This bread has a long shelf life so these loaves were months old. We got reimbursed multiple times through the automated return system but it continued. Finally my wife called to complain. They apologized, gave us some credit, and said they look into it. The next time we got expired bread again. She called again and they promised they’d remove the seller. Indeed they did something this time. The bread was unavailable for about a month and when it came back we never had another expired loaf delivered. I think Amazon does listen. What they don’t seem to do is listen to people who complain in reviews. Reach out to Amazon directly if you want to complain about a real issue with a seller.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Sounds to me like amazon takes a 15% or 20% cut of the transaction, and the customer gets to do all the work of vetting sellers? I’d rather pay more and support a reputable manufacturer or vendor directly.
  - not_a_cop75 7y ago
    Amazon is the equivocal of the retail end. Any sufficient and provable complaint to Amazon will result in a refund.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      I don’t want a refund, I want to support companies that use the right processes to save me time, but companies that choose to commingle to save the company a penny and cost me time are not worth supporting.
      - deleted 7y ago
ReconBob 7y ago
The used books being sold as new is a big problem on Amazon. Amazon has ignored our request to remove these sellers. Amazon has become the place to pay for a new book, but receive a used.
Keverw 7y ago
> In other words, Amazon knows about the sellers who ship expired goods yet lets them continue to operate. It has the data and it still fails to take one of the easiest steps to address the problem Yeah, I wonder if companies are so big complaints are just noise to them that isn't even really looked at. I feel like I'm just a number that doesn't matter to any of these companies. Then also feel like a lot of the reps at companies are powerless, given limited training, tools and relies a lot on scripts. Some of these companies are huge, and some things are free like say Gmail. So I feel with all these internet companies, support is a challenge it seems for both the company and the customer sadly. Even the local cable company has a help link but it's just a knowledge base, they hide their phone number on another page now. I do like the approach of letting people try to solve issues on their own, but being able to talk to someone would be nice. About 2 years ago, I found a app on the iPhone App Store that would popup the in-app purchase by itself randomly, so when you go to exit the app using the home button Touch ID would then buy it for you using your fingerprint. I did get a refund though, less than $4 purchase but pretty scary that's possible. On newer iPhones with FaceID and the side button maybe it's less likely to happen since you pull down to go home instead of pushing a physical button. I figured the app would of been removed, but just checked it and seen a review from this year with the same problem... Then some big companies, everything is different departments walled off from each other, which unsure if they really communicate with each other. Just seems like support is pretty poor in general in tech, but other industries too like calling up your health insurance company due to a billing mistake. The other thing that super annoys me too, is when you get transfered from agent to agent it's like you have to start over again with companies. Not sure why they can't transfer a note and your account info already pulled up to the next agent. Have to repeat yourself over and over, was helping a relative set up a new phone and the transfer didn't seemed to go through, and got transferred like 6 times same and same. Gave up, and decided to just buy a new phone, transfer worked and then return the other phone. You just get the runaround, and feel powerless. Someone I follow who does the full time RV life was having trouble with his insurance company after changing his domicile to South Dakota, and after playing the phone game he just got sick of them and switched companies. Both companies had full time policies, but seemed like someone didn't know what they were doing. So due to poor customer support, they lost a loyal customer they had since he was a teenager driving, making payments on time, good record, etc. I guess some things are easier to switch though, just deciding to shop somewhere else or pay your money to another company and get a new proof of insurance card. While say switching phone or computer operating systems might be more difficult, especially if you like or rely on apps not available on the other platform. So something I think about, and would worry me about having my own startup, as I feel like support is key from the training, processes to the people. As the people they interact with is representing the company. Wouldn't surprise me if you get big enough, there's consultants too but it's a fear of getting this area wrong. Ideally things should work in the first place though. Plus I think doing things in house, who knows your products might be better than outsourcing. One call could be for company A, next call could be company B, etc so they are just jumping around and might not even be familiar with products.

amitport 7y ago

"more than five customer complaints" Five out of _? We should care about the proportion, and should consider some time decay (maybe the issues were a decade ago).

michaelt 7y ago
I work for a company that (among other things) sells food. The acceptable number of customers to send expired food is zero percent. It's not a complex or unusual requirement to make sure your goods are in-date - any properly designed warehouse management system will take care of this. This is absolutely table stakes if you're going to deliver food. Unopened baby formula has a shelf life of 6 months+ when properly stored, so they've got a gigantic margin of error here. It'd be pretty poor customer service to ship baby formula that only had 2 months of its 6 month shelf life remaining. There's really no excuse for shipping expired baby formula.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  Actually, genuine question: how do you do that technologically? With multiple supplier deliveries that result in combined stock with multiple expiration dates, how do you ensure expired food isn't delivered? Because I assume a warehouse doesn't keep a separate shelf spot for each separate delivery of a unique expiration date? And also, the expiration dates are printed on products in places that can be hard to find and hard to read. (Every time I buy bacon or greens I spent sixty seconds trying to find where the hell the date is on the plastic.) It's also generally not cost-effective on low-margin food items to print out and scan a unique label for each item that would allow the expiration date to be machine-readable. So I've always just assumed new deliveries try to be put in a warehouse bin behind/under existing items, and workers try to check visually for expired items, but that neither of those will ever be perfect. So what's the properly designed warehouse management system that solves for this?
  - yifanl 7y ago
    So, if there isn't a solution to do something at scale, then the answer is to simply not do said something at scale. The defence that "this isn't technologically possible" isn't at all a defence. The _most_ charitable interpretation would be that this is Amazon stress-testing how well they can handle co-mingling of various product lines... but that's still not great if they don't pull the experiment immediately after realizing they can't.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelt 7y ago
    > Because I assume a warehouse doesn't keep a separate shelf spot for each separate delivery of a unique expiration date? Actually, that's pretty much what we do. If the goods arrive from the supplier as a whole pallet of a single product, every item on the pallet will have the same expiry date, and you track each pallet separately. If the goods arrive on a pallet with a variety of products on it, you split it up by product then do exactly the same thing. The warehouse management system knows where each pallet is, and what its expiry date is. If a pallet has expired, workers picking items are sent to to non-expired pallets instead, and someone working on 'purge' is sent to remove the expired goods for donation/recycling/discarding as appropriate. You need a system like this if you want any chance of selling things like bread, because gaining or losing one or two days of product life makes the difference between a customer who'll shop again and one who won't.
ilamont 7y ago
You are correct. I am assuming most marketplace sellers are low-volume sellers, therefore 5 negative seller reviews/ratings is enough to justify a red flag. If it's a high-volume seller with many hundreds or thousands of reviews in a 1-month period, then it's not as big of a concern. For the example I cited earlier of a 22% negative rating in the previous 30 days, that represented dozens of negative reviews.

mcgoo 7y ago

If you create a listing that competes with someone else’s high volume product you will get fake reviews claiming the product is expired. Multiple times this has happened on a brand new listing with no sales, before the product even arrives at Amazon. Expired is one of the go-to false complaints. In my experience Amazon reliably push expired product back to the seller, at least using the dates that were declared by the seller. This does not stop a seller from claiming what they like, I suppose.

Jean-Philipe 7y ago

Funny thing, my auntie once got banned for life from Amazon. She used to sell used books on Amazon (as "used", obviously) until she got one single complaint from a client. Even though the complaint was without basis, she offered him full refund while letting him keep the book. Still, she got banned by Amazon. They even banned the account of her husband, with no explanation and no possibility for recourse. She cannot ever sell anything ever again on Amazon, and she doesn't even know why.

ilamont 7y ago
I hear stories like that, and then I see my own experience with serial cheaters allowed to keep selling and racking up negative ratings. I am wondering if Amazon gave up enforcement, or just changed its practices/loosened the rules.
- dpark 7y ago
  I hear stories like that and question innocence of the protestor. I know sometimes people get screwed over for no reason but I’m also aware of numerous cases where someone loudly protests the unfairness of being blocked for a single unintentional infraction and upon further review it turns out they had a history of abuse, sometimes with a secondary account that they assumed BigCo was too stupid to link to their “real” account. Sometimes it’s a bit of a failure on both sides (e.g. BigCo also fails to notify about the abuse on the other account). Sometimes it’s just bullshit on the part of the complainer (e.g. Endless public protestations of innocence from someone who was actually sharing child pornography). I’m too jaded to trust the intentions of corporations, but I’m also too jaded to blindly trust the claims of those who assert they’ve been screwed over, especially when my gut says the story doesn’t make sense.
  - papln 7y ago
    There's a cottage industry of this in HN, where someone posts a blog complainings about BigCo destroying their small business, getting hundreds of upvotes and comments, and then it turns out, every time, that oops their software developement was outsourced to a developer who is a known serial spammer or scammer, and it's "not fair" because mom&pop can't know that they hired a criminal so BigCo shouldn't blame them.

rwmurrayVT 7y ago

Book selling is an insane market on Amazon. I ran a used bookstore on Amazon with 380 positive reviews and 1 negative review over the last 12 months. The sellers are cut-throat. They're all trying to sell something they got from a thrift store for $0.50 on Amazon to make $3. Amazon intentionally allows "acceptable" books to take the buy box over "very good" just based on price and seller feedback. If you end up selling the acceptable book then you get bad feedback for having a terrible quality book. The whole thing is a damn mess. Many sellers will list as "new" either intentionally or unintentionally. I'd be lying if I didn't say I sold several books I found in pristine condition or even shrink-wrapped as "new". The difference between $15 and $9 for an FBA book sale is the difference between $1.75 and $8. Book selling on Amazon is insane.

zaroth 7y ago
As a buyer sometimes the deals are absurdly good. For example got my daughter a hardcover Harry Potter Cursed Child for $3 Like New, and that included next day delivery. Shows up as described, and I just saved $15. I’m slightly ashamed to admit I was actually at BN at the time where they were selling it for $30. But I did spend $100 during that trip, on books that were comparably priced to Amazon. I assume Cursed Child is an outlier because I’d guess a huge number of people are buying it expecting it to be something it’s not, and then likely returning or offloading the book in disappointment. Obviously no one made money on the transaction so I assume it was a buggy algorithm, but I’m not complaining!
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  Repricers often go awry. If you bought it FBA then they could have repricing software set to match lowest FBA price, but the available repricing API only returns 20 lowest. If there aren't any FBA then you'll get the MF. The whole system is a mess.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

This is why you should generally: 1) Review all negative ratings prior to a purchase 2) Refuse to buy anything that's less then 4/5 stars.

dpark 7y ago
This doesn’t help if a single bad actor is co-mingling with multiple good sellers.
ryan-c 7y ago
They commingle reviews for multiple "related" products too.

dpark 7y ago

> In other words, Amazon knows about the sellers who ship expired goods yet lets them continue to operate. It has the data and it still fails to take one of the easiest steps to address the problem, removing bad actors from the marketplace I have anecdata contrary to this. We used to buy gluten free bread from Amazon because of my son’s gluten allergy. It was a pain to buy locally so we would buy 4 loaves at a time from Amazon. We started getting expired loaves from some seller. It happened multiple times, to about 50% of the orders. This bread has a long shelf life so these loaves were months old. We got reimbursed multiple times through the automated return system but it continued. Finally my wife called to complain. They apologized, gave us some credit, and said they look into it. The next time we got expired bread again. She called again and they promised they’d remove the seller. Indeed they did something this time. The bread was unavailable for about a month and when it came back we never had another expired loaf delivered. I think Amazon does listen. What they don’t seem to do is listen to people who complain in reviews. Reach out to Amazon directly if you want to complain about a real issue with a seller.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
Sounds to me like amazon takes a 15% or 20% cut of the transaction, and the customer gets to do all the work of vetting sellers? I’d rather pay more and support a reputable manufacturer or vendor directly.
- not_a_cop75 7y ago
  Amazon is the equivocal of the retail end. Any sufficient and provable complaint to Amazon will result in a refund.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    I don’t want a refund, I want to support companies that use the right processes to save me time, but companies that choose to commingle to save the company a penny and cost me time are not worth supporting.
    - deleted 7y ago

ReconBob 7y ago

The used books being sold as new is a big problem on Amazon. Amazon has ignored our request to remove these sellers. Amazon has become the place to pay for a new book, but receive a used.

Keverw 7y ago

> In other words, Amazon knows about the sellers who ship expired goods yet lets them continue to operate. It has the data and it still fails to take one of the easiest steps to address the problem Yeah, I wonder if companies are so big complaints are just noise to them that isn't even really looked at. I feel like I'm just a number that doesn't matter to any of these companies. Then also feel like a lot of the reps at companies are powerless, given limited training, tools and relies a lot on scripts. Some of these companies are huge, and some things are free like say Gmail. So I feel with all these internet companies, support is a challenge it seems for both the company and the customer sadly. Even the local cable company has a help link but it's just a knowledge base, they hide their phone number on another page now. I do like the approach of letting people try to solve issues on their own, but being able to talk to someone would be nice. About 2 years ago, I found a app on the iPhone App Store that would popup the in-app purchase by itself randomly, so when you go to exit the app using the home button Touch ID would then buy it for you using your fingerprint. I did get a refund though, less than $4 purchase but pretty scary that's possible. On newer iPhones with FaceID and the side button maybe it's less likely to happen since you pull down to go home instead of pushing a physical button. I figured the app would of been removed, but just checked it and seen a review from this year with the same problem... Then some big companies, everything is different departments walled off from each other, which unsure if they really communicate with each other. Just seems like support is pretty poor in general in tech, but other industries too like calling up your health insurance company due to a billing mistake. The other thing that super annoys me too, is when you get transfered from agent to agent it's like you have to start over again with companies. Not sure why they can't transfer a note and your account info already pulled up to the next agent. Have to repeat yourself over and over, was helping a relative set up a new phone and the transfer didn't seemed to go through, and got transferred like 6 times same and same. Gave up, and decided to just buy a new phone, transfer worked and then return the other phone. You just get the runaround, and feel powerless. Someone I follow who does the full time RV life was having trouble with his insurance company after changing his domicile to South Dakota, and after playing the phone game he just got sick of them and switched companies. Both companies had full time policies, but seemed like someone didn't know what they were doing. So due to poor customer support, they lost a loyal customer they had since he was a teenager driving, making payments on time, good record, etc. I guess some things are easier to switch though, just deciding to shop somewhere else or pay your money to another company and get a new proof of insurance card. While say switching phone or computer operating systems might be more difficult, especially if you like or rely on apps not available on the other platform. So something I think about, and would worry me about having my own startup, as I feel like support is key from the training, processes to the people. As the people they interact with is representing the company. Wouldn't surprise me if you get big enough, there's consultants too but it's a fear of getting this area wrong. Ideally things should work in the first place though. Plus I think doing things in house, who knows your products might be better than outsourcing. One call could be for company A, next call could be company B, etc so they are just jumping around and might not even be familiar with products.