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A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. The expired food might have come from a different

A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. Amazon will know but when you write your review or read someone else's, you won't. Same problem as counterfeit goods and commingling though iirc there are more control in place on perishables so this aspect of the problem rears its head less often. [†] they can't, we as customers don't have access to the information to know the route items took to get to us

mtgx 7y ago
Commingling also sounds like an Amazon problem created by itself. The customer shouldn't have to care or even think about that.
criddell 7y ago
I think the complaints are perfectly valid. If you sell something on Amazon I believe you can choose to not have your product commingled [1]. If you don't do this, then you are accepting the risk that comes with commingling. [1]: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/how-to-prevent-commingling/316711 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/how-to-prevent-com...
- froindt 7y ago
  Is there additional cost to not comingle? I can't find it mentioned after some searches. I wonder, at what point would it be economical to pay the additional costs to not comingle product? Would adding "For customer assurance, we do not comingle our product with other products sold on Amazon" yield additional purchases? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if nobody looks at your posting because it's 3-20% more exoensive than the knockoffs.
  - benologist 7y ago
    You can't have a "not-illegal" version for 3 - 20% more. The solution is to hold Bezos to the same laws as all other businesses so Amazon has appropriate due diligence instead of creating a quasi-criminal organization. Relentlessly apply the law until Bezos is working within it.
  - criddell 7y ago
    Knockoffs aren't the only reason to not commingle. For example, maybe I start a business called "Fresh Batteries" where all batteries I sell have at least 2 years until expiry. I don't want those commingled because a battery with one year until expiry isn't bad, it just isn't what I'm selling. My hypothetical batteries might be more expensive but depending on your needs, they might be a better value.
  - AnssiH 7y ago
    > Is there additional cost to not comingle? I can't find it mentioned after some searches. No direct additional cost. But then you need to apply seller-specific FBA barcodes to all your units (or pay Amazon to apply them for $0.20 per unit).
    - froindt 7y ago
      Did this change? I thought there used to be a direct additional cost to not comingle.
      - AnssiH 7y ago
        I'm not aware of it ever having been otherwise, but I haven't always followed FBA developments that closely.
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    So, effectively, you want to allow Amazon to offer a surcharge to "(help) minimize the risk of you buying counterfeit items"?? Also, if you are producing counterfeit items, presumably your costs are lower, so you're actually _better_ equipped to absorb the "no comingle" surcharge than the legitimate seller. Talk about perverse incentives and enabling.
bencollier49 7y ago
Are Amazon comingling foods? Wouldn't that make them responsible for the expiry dates? And a whole lot of other things to boot?
- ilamont 7y ago
  Exactly. Further, if I were an FBA seller, I would probably avoid shipping in expired goods in case they are checked. There's also the issue of goods passing expiry if they are warehoused too long. I suspect many of the expired food sellers are actually FBM, just like the used book sellers. Avoids a lot of potential headaches associated with FBA.
  - ReconBob 7y ago
    I work for an e-commerce data analytics. I don't have the exact numbers, but I recall many of the Grocery sellers are using FBA. Why do you think the booksellers don't use FBA? We see plenty of FBA sellers listing used books as new.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Is it possible that this is just a stupid, simple sorting bug in the warehouse software? As a battle scarred developer, I'm primed to think about issues like some algorithm decided LIFA was faster than FIFO, and it's worth my time to investigate whether my coworker didn't differentiate between perishable and non-perishable because they were so pleased with their shortest route algorithm that they couldn't be bothered by trivialities like reality and biology. They'll probably even blame it on their boss instead of on avoiding confrontation.
  - delecti 7y ago
    It's more likely that they have bins of stuff, and the pickers just grab whatever they grab without regard for first/last in/out.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  No, anything with an expiration date is ineligible for commingling.
hop 7y ago
Inventory isn’t commingled between sellers for the same SKU.
- hop 7y ago
  I don’t know why I’m being downvoted - Amazon FBA does not commingle seller inventory. The products sold by a seller are only the ones they shipped to FBA. If you request your inventory back, you will only get the ones back you sell. So if a seller sends in a bunch of counterfeit items for a listing, those are physically separated and don’t get mixed with the good inventory that is there. There are multiple sellers for the same product and they could definitely have bad/old inventory - and they will win the buy box with the lowest price - but it’s still not commingled.
  - qzw 7y ago
    I think you’re being downvoted because what you state is contrary to what most people have heard: i.e. that inventory for the same SKU from different sellers is in fact commingled. You might want to provide some citations if you want to convince people otherwise.
- dspillett 7y ago
  Apparently it is, but not always: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480
brudgers 7y ago
Commingling isn't a problem with the complaints. Commingling reflects a deliberate profit motivated decision at the highest level of Amazon's management. Amazon executives have evaluated the health risks of commingling food. The safety risks of commingling electronics. They've calculated it more profitable to lawyer up when bad things happen.
- ebg13 7y ago
  > Commingling isn't a problem with the complaints. I think they mean that commingling necessarily eliminates the viability of merchant malfeasance analysis in reading reviews, not that the complainers did anything wrong. Just that you can't trust the products from even the most trustworthy shop because someone _else_ might be trying to cheat the marketplace. The review system applies to products, but mostly it applies to individual product _specimens_. And if you don't know whether bad specimens came disproportionately from a particular merchant, then the real value of reviews has been diminished.
  - brudgers 7y ago
    Skip the spider. Big table. Borg. "Merchant malfeasance analysis" is simple. Amazon is the merchant. The other view is bullshit. Well promoted bullshit. But bullshit nevertheless.
    - ebg13 7y ago
      > Skip the spider. Big table. I don't understand these expressions.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - brudgers 7y ago
        "Spider," another name for web crawler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler "Big table" Google web database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtable "Borg" is the 'kubernetes' inside of Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(cluster_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(cluster_manager)
adrianmonk 7y ago
Commingling is bad, but does commingling mean they can't trace it back to which seller sent it to them for FBA? If they can, they can penalize that seller, not the other seller (who won the sale). I'm assuming Amazon has a unique id for every individual item in their warehouses. I'm not sure this is the case, but it seems likely given how their warehouses are organized and the location of stuff is very mixed up and only known to computers. (It would also be sufficient if they have unique ids for lots. If one seller sends 10 identical perishable items and Amazon groups those on a shelf together, they can still trace it back to the right seller.)
- fencepost 7y ago
  I've seen conflicting reports on whether they can but that's less important than (the appearance?) that they don't. "This terrible thing has happened in an area you're responsible for and you failed to catch/address it. Is this because you didn't have the required resources, because you're incompetent, or because you're corrupt? If it was resources, what do you need and why didn't you have it?"
- dspillett 7y ago
  > If they can, they can penalize that seller, not the other seller (who won the sale). That is fine for complaints raised directly through the specific complaint channel(s). It doesn't help with complaints recorded as (or as part of) reviews, which might not have a corresponding official complaint. If I see mention of expiry dates and similar issues in reviews I don't have any assurance that this refers to the supply of product I'd be getting items from if I ordered. People will often not bother with an official complaint unless it is an expensive item that they want a refund on, they instead go the "less paperwork" route of leaving a negative review, binning the item, and ordering from elsewhere.
  - adrianmonk 7y ago
    I see a LOT of product reviews that are really seller feedback, and I wish Amazon would fix this. They need to have it so that wherever the user happens to find themselves (product review page, order page, support page, etc.), they are guided toward leaving the right kind of feedback. Instead of relying on users to be really familiar with how Amazon works and find the right place on their own. For example, on the product review page, right now they have a blank called "Write your review". Instead, they could require you to indicate what kind of feedback you're offering, giving choices like "review the product itself" and "review the performance of Joe Schmoe, the seller for order #1234 on date 456" and with no default selected. Or just give you two blanks labeled "product review" and "seller review". You also raise another issue which is that there's baggage associated with raising an official complaint. People don't necessarily want to deal with it, or they don't want to cause trouble and feel like filing a complaint is the nuclear option. I'm sure Amazon's attitude is that if something is wrong it should be made right, but that's not what every customer realistically wants.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
What would that look like? “Item not as described / book clearly used / food item out of date, but probably came from a commingled bin so possibly not the result of the seller I purchased from. Full marks, five stars, perfect ten.”?
r00fus 7y ago
Fulfilled by Amazon is a complete mess and they should be tried for mail fraud. Co-mingling? Sellers should be furious, and customer should boycott. Why isn't this just called fraud? I can't trust Amazon to deliver what I ordered, period. Lesson learned.
- jhall1468 7y ago
  I'm confused as to what you think is mail fraud? Amazon is just fulfillment in these cases. It's clearly marked in the same place on every page, and as such, avoidable. It's purely a profit motive for Amazon, but I don't see how it's mail fraud.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
> A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. There is no problem with the complaints. Consumers ordered something, paid for it and got a bad product. They have every right to complain and shouldn't be required to "take into account" operational failures of the company they did business with. > The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. How is that the consumer's problem?
- TAForObvReasons 7y ago
  I think the parent's thought is "How do you rate an otherwise great product that is sullied by Amazon's poor inventory management?" In a situation like this, it seems like the best approach is to put pressure on Similac and others to remove their offerings from Amazon.
ReconBob 7y ago
Last I checked, Amazon does not commingle food; therefore, who you receive it from should be the seller. I agree, this is a big problem in other categories. For example, I bought some boots from Amazon as the seller- I didn't realize that Amazon comingled the manufacturer's product with 3P sellers. Turns out my boots are not warm. I blamed the manufacturer for a low-quality product- I wish I had known that the product could have been counterfeit.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
> The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. Amazon took my cash, amazon should be responsible. The fact that they can't keep track of the goods they sell (also seems to be a problem with counterfeits) is their problem, even if they do their best to blame their suppliers.
- dspillett 7y ago
  > The fact that they can't keep track of the goods they sell (also seems to be a problem with counterfeits) is their problem They can keep track. The do keep track. So it isn't a problem for them unless it causes enough issues for us (the buyers) that we start going elsewhere and affecting the bottom line. We don't have access to that information, so we can't track the matter. Perhaps even the vendors can't either (I've never sold via Amazon so don't know at all). [though others are saying the commingling does not affect products with expiry dates so we may be a little off topic for this sub-thread, unless that only applies to expiry dates and not best before dates which have difference legal standing - the discussion has got to the point where speculation is getting wilder and an injection of some cited facts may be needed to rein it in]
diebeforei485 7y ago
The seller is still Amazon. If Amazon chooses to "optimize" by shipping third-party garbage instead, that is their problem.
- octokatt 7y ago
  And they should still be able to be held liable for what they ship. If I get salmonella from lettuce at a grocery store, I still get to hold the grocery store accountable, even if the farmer was to blame.
MiroF 7y ago
"Oh hey! Sorry I hit you with this car, what you've got to understand is that I was trying to optimize my way through this red light." You can't "move fast and break things" if those things are basic food and safety regs.
- xxxtentachyon 7y ago
  1000%. If the Tylenol tainting scandal happened in 2019, would it have been sold through Amazon’s supply chain?
ikeboy 7y ago
Products that expire are not eligible for commingling, period. See https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480
bartread 7y ago
> A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. Why should they take comingling into account? Why should I, as a customer, care? I don't want to know the details of your implementation. I don't care. I ordered some stuff. I gave you money: ship me the stuff I ordered. Don't ship me some other similar stuff that isn't what I ordered, and don't ship me what I did order but in bad shape. Ship me what I ordered and paid for, and ship it in good condition. All you've told me with your statement is that the implementation sucks, and now you're trying to blame me for it. No, I'm sorry: Amazon commingling sucks. I know I sound grumpy, and will readily admit this is a first world problem, but I've just gone through nearly three weeks of arsing around to get an item returned substantially because of what appears to be a comingling issue[1]. Who has the time for this? Comingling sucks. It needs to stop. [1] Although I obviously can't be entirely sure it isn't the third party sellers fault.

mtgx 7y ago

Commingling also sounds like an Amazon problem created by itself. The customer shouldn't have to care or even think about that.

criddell 7y ago

I think the complaints are perfectly valid. If you sell something on Amazon I believe you can choose to not have your product commingled [1]. If you don't do this, then you are accepting the risk that comes with commingling. [1]: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/how-to-prevent-commingling/316711 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/how-to-prevent-com...

froindt 7y ago
Is there additional cost to not comingle? I can't find it mentioned after some searches. I wonder, at what point would it be economical to pay the additional costs to not comingle product? Would adding "For customer assurance, we do not comingle our product with other products sold on Amazon" yield additional purchases? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if nobody looks at your posting because it's 3-20% more exoensive than the knockoffs.
- benologist 7y ago
  You can't have a "not-illegal" version for 3 - 20% more. The solution is to hold Bezos to the same laws as all other businesses so Amazon has appropriate due diligence instead of creating a quasi-criminal organization. Relentlessly apply the law until Bezos is working within it.
- criddell 7y ago
  Knockoffs aren't the only reason to not commingle. For example, maybe I start a business called "Fresh Batteries" where all batteries I sell have at least 2 years until expiry. I don't want those commingled because a battery with one year until expiry isn't bad, it just isn't what I'm selling. My hypothetical batteries might be more expensive but depending on your needs, they might be a better value.
- AnssiH 7y ago
  > Is there additional cost to not comingle? I can't find it mentioned after some searches. No direct additional cost. But then you need to apply seller-specific FBA barcodes to all your units (or pay Amazon to apply them for $0.20 per unit).
  - froindt 7y ago
    Did this change? I thought there used to be a direct additional cost to not comingle.
    - AnssiH 7y ago
      I'm not aware of it ever having been otherwise, but I haven't always followed FBA developments that closely.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  So, effectively, you want to allow Amazon to offer a surcharge to "(help) minimize the risk of you buying counterfeit items"?? Also, if you are producing counterfeit items, presumably your costs are lower, so you're actually _better_ equipped to absorb the "no comingle" surcharge than the legitimate seller. Talk about perverse incentives and enabling.

bencollier49 7y ago

Are Amazon comingling foods? Wouldn't that make them responsible for the expiry dates? And a whole lot of other things to boot?

ilamont 7y ago
Exactly. Further, if I were an FBA seller, I would probably avoid shipping in expired goods in case they are checked. There's also the issue of goods passing expiry if they are warehoused too long. I suspect many of the expired food sellers are actually FBM, just like the used book sellers. Avoids a lot of potential headaches associated with FBA.
- ReconBob 7y ago
  I work for an e-commerce data analytics. I don't have the exact numbers, but I recall many of the Grocery sellers are using FBA. Why do you think the booksellers don't use FBA? We see plenty of FBA sellers listing used books as new.
hinkley 7y ago
Is it possible that this is just a stupid, simple sorting bug in the warehouse software? As a battle scarred developer, I'm primed to think about issues like some algorithm decided LIFA was faster than FIFO, and it's worth my time to investigate whether my coworker didn't differentiate between perishable and non-perishable because they were so pleased with their shortest route algorithm that they couldn't be bothered by trivialities like reality and biology. They'll probably even blame it on their boss instead of on avoiding confrontation.
- delecti 7y ago
  It's more likely that they have bins of stuff, and the pickers just grab whatever they grab without regard for first/last in/out.
ikeboy 7y ago
No, anything with an expiration date is ineligible for commingling.

hop 7y ago

Inventory isn’t commingled between sellers for the same SKU.

hop 7y ago
I don’t know why I’m being downvoted - Amazon FBA does not commingle seller inventory. The products sold by a seller are only the ones they shipped to FBA. If you request your inventory back, you will only get the ones back you sell. So if a seller sends in a bunch of counterfeit items for a listing, those are physically separated and don’t get mixed with the good inventory that is there. There are multiple sellers for the same product and they could definitely have bad/old inventory - and they will win the buy box with the lowest price - but it’s still not commingled.
- qzw 7y ago
  I think you’re being downvoted because what you state is contrary to what most people have heard: i.e. that inventory for the same SKU from different sellers is in fact commingled. You might want to provide some citations if you want to convince people otherwise.
dspillett 7y ago
Apparently it is, but not always: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480

brudgers 7y ago

Commingling isn't a problem with the complaints. Commingling reflects a deliberate profit motivated decision at the highest level of Amazon's management. Amazon executives have evaluated the health risks of commingling food. The safety risks of commingling electronics. They've calculated it more profitable to lawyer up when bad things happen.

ebg13 7y ago
> Commingling isn't a problem with the complaints. I think they mean that commingling necessarily eliminates the viability of merchant malfeasance analysis in reading reviews, not that the complainers did anything wrong. Just that you can't trust the products from even the most trustworthy shop because someone _else_ might be trying to cheat the marketplace. The review system applies to products, but mostly it applies to individual product _specimens_. And if you don't know whether bad specimens came disproportionately from a particular merchant, then the real value of reviews has been diminished.
- brudgers 7y ago
  Skip the spider. Big table. Borg. "Merchant malfeasance analysis" is simple. Amazon is the merchant. The other view is bullshit. Well promoted bullshit. But bullshit nevertheless.
  - ebg13 7y ago
    > Skip the spider. Big table. I don't understand these expressions.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - brudgers 7y ago
      "Spider," another name for web crawler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler "Big table" Google web database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtable "Borg" is the 'kubernetes' inside of Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(cluster_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(cluster_manager)

adrianmonk 7y ago

Commingling is bad, but does commingling mean they can't trace it back to which seller sent it to them for FBA? If they can, they can penalize that seller, not the other seller (who won the sale). I'm assuming Amazon has a unique id for every individual item in their warehouses. I'm not sure this is the case, but it seems likely given how their warehouses are organized and the location of stuff is very mixed up and only known to computers. (It would also be sufficient if they have unique ids for lots. If one seller sends 10 identical perishable items and Amazon groups those on a shelf together, they can still trace it back to the right seller.)

fencepost 7y ago
I've seen conflicting reports on whether they can but that's less important than (the appearance?) that they don't. "This terrible thing has happened in an area you're responsible for and you failed to catch/address it. Is this because you didn't have the required resources, because you're incompetent, or because you're corrupt? If it was resources, what do you need and why didn't you have it?"
dspillett 7y ago
> If they can, they can penalize that seller, not the other seller (who won the sale). That is fine for complaints raised directly through the specific complaint channel(s). It doesn't help with complaints recorded as (or as part of) reviews, which might not have a corresponding official complaint. If I see mention of expiry dates and similar issues in reviews I don't have any assurance that this refers to the supply of product I'd be getting items from if I ordered. People will often not bother with an official complaint unless it is an expensive item that they want a refund on, they instead go the "less paperwork" route of leaving a negative review, binning the item, and ordering from elsewhere.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  I see a LOT of product reviews that are really seller feedback, and I wish Amazon would fix this. They need to have it so that wherever the user happens to find themselves (product review page, order page, support page, etc.), they are guided toward leaving the right kind of feedback. Instead of relying on users to be really familiar with how Amazon works and find the right place on their own. For example, on the product review page, right now they have a blank called "Write your review". Instead, they could require you to indicate what kind of feedback you're offering, giving choices like "review the product itself" and "review the performance of Joe Schmoe, the seller for order #1234 on date 456" and with no default selected. Or just give you two blanks labeled "product review" and "seller review". You also raise another issue which is that there's baggage associated with raising an official complaint. People don't necessarily want to deal with it, or they don't want to cause trouble and feel like filing a complaint is the nuclear option. I'm sure Amazon's attitude is that if something is wrong it should be made right, but that's not what every customer realistically wants.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

What would that look like? “Item not as described / book clearly used / food item out of date, but probably came from a commingled bin so possibly not the result of the seller I purchased from. Full marks, five stars, perfect ten.”?

r00fus 7y ago

Fulfilled by Amazon is a complete mess and they should be tried for mail fraud. Co-mingling? Sellers should be furious, and customer should boycott. Why isn't this just called fraud? I can't trust Amazon to deliver what I ordered, period. Lesson learned.

jhall1468 7y ago
I'm confused as to what you think is mail fraud? Amazon is just fulfillment in these cases. It's clearly marked in the same place on every page, and as such, avoidable. It's purely a profit motive for Amazon, but I don't see how it's mail fraud.

matheusmoreira 7y ago

> A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. There is no problem with the complaints. Consumers ordered something, paid for it and got a bad product. They have every right to complain and shouldn't be required to "take into account" operational failures of the company they did business with. > The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. How is that the consumer's problem?

TAForObvReasons 7y ago
I think the parent's thought is "How do you rate an otherwise great product that is sullied by Amazon's poor inventory management?" In a situation like this, it seems like the best approach is to put pressure on Similac and others to remove their offerings from Amazon.

ReconBob 7y ago

Last I checked, Amazon does not commingle food; therefore, who you receive it from should be the seller. I agree, this is a big problem in other categories. For example, I bought some boots from Amazon as the seller- I didn't realize that Amazon comingled the manufacturer's product with 3P sellers. Turns out my boots are not warm. I blamed the manufacturer for a low-quality product- I wish I had known that the product could have been counterfeit.

SomeOldThrow 7y ago

> The expired food might have come from a different seller initially, but you were sent it because of Amazon's supply line optimisations. Amazon took my cash, amazon should be responsible. The fact that they can't keep track of the goods they sell (also seems to be a problem with counterfeits) is their problem, even if they do their best to blame their suppliers.

dspillett 7y ago
> The fact that they can't keep track of the goods they sell (also seems to be a problem with counterfeits) is their problem They can keep track. The do keep track. So it isn't a problem for them unless it causes enough issues for us (the buyers) that we start going elsewhere and affecting the bottom line. We don't have access to that information, so we can't track the matter. Perhaps even the vendors can't either (I've never sold via Amazon so don't know at all). [though others are saying the commingling does not affect products with expiry dates so we may be a little off topic for this sub-thread, unless that only applies to expiry dates and not best before dates which have difference legal standing - the discussion has got to the point where speculation is getting wilder and an injection of some cited facts may be needed to rein it in]

diebeforei485 7y ago

The seller is still Amazon. If Amazon chooses to "optimize" by shipping third-party garbage instead, that is their problem.

octokatt 7y ago
And they should still be able to be held liable for what they ship. If I get salmonella from lettuce at a grocery store, I still get to hold the grocery store accountable, even if the farmer was to blame.

MiroF 7y ago

"Oh hey! Sorry I hit you with this car, what you've got to understand is that I was trying to optimize my way through this red light." You can't "move fast and break things" if those things are basic food and safety regs.

xxxtentachyon 7y ago
1000%. If the Tylenol tainting scandal happened in 2019, would it have been sold through Amazon’s supply chain?

ikeboy 7y ago

Products that expire are not eligible for commingling, period. See https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480

bartread 7y ago

> A key problem with the complaints is that customer reviews don't† take into account the effect of commingling. Why should they take comingling into account? Why should I, as a customer, care? I don't want to know the details of your implementation. I don't care. I ordered some stuff. I gave you money: ship me the stuff I ordered. Don't ship me some other similar stuff that isn't what I ordered, and don't ship me what I did order but in bad shape. Ship me what I ordered and paid for, and ship it in good condition. All you've told me with your statement is that the implementation sucks, and now you're trying to blame me for it. No, I'm sorry: Amazon commingling sucks. I know I sound grumpy, and will readily admit this is a first world problem, but I've just gone through nearly three weeks of arsing around to get an item returned substantially because of what appears to be a comingling issue[1]. Who has the time for this? Comingling sucks. It needs to stop. [1] Although I obviously can't be entirely sure it isn't the third party sellers fault.