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> 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
by 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 agoSounds 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 agoAmazon is the equivocal of the retail end. Any sufficient and provable complaint to Amazon will result in a refund.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI 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[deleted]
- not_a_cop75 7y agoWhat retail shop honestly saves you time? Does waiting in line at Walmart save you time? Yes, you have the option of checking the expiration in line, but is anyone really shopping at Walmart for the time savings?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoCostco, for one. Based on their track record, I don't think twice about purchasing something from there or something branded Kirkland Signature. I know what I buy is decent quality at a decent price. Target/Home Depot/Lowes also helps, I know what I buy from them doesn't come from a random reseller, and I don't have to filter through reseller garbage on their website either. They also have pickup in store options, as well as showing me where the items are in the store if I need to go find them. Also, I don't recall waiting in line more than a couple minutes. I just happen to use those stores as an example, I'm sure many others offer the same benefits. Point is, I don't want to worry about counterfeit, commingled, and all that nonsense. I also know sometimes Amazon hides the option to only show items shipped and sold by Amazon.com, and based on their attempts to deceive me, I assume they intentionally break search to make it not as easy to find things.
- jschwartzi 7y agoIt saves me time in the sense that I can trust that Walmart knows who is selling them products to stock. Amazon has no idea where their products come from or even if they're counterfeit. And they certainly couldn't be bothered to find out. They also don't really care if the stuff you buy from them actually arrives. I stopped buying anything from Amazon after the 3rd or 4th shipping screw up in as many orders. The last shipment was just left somewhere in the building that I sublet in. Luckily the guy who runs that office was nice enough to complete the delivery. And before that they had apparently just lost an entire shipment of 24 orders. They were all marked as delivered, but nobody had any way to change that in the system so they wanted me to call customer service. They were great about 10 years ago when I first signed up for Prime. I don't trust them anymore and will advise all of my friends not to trust Amazon for anything.
- serial_dev 7y agoYour anecdote is a good example that they don't listen. How many times did you complain before they took action? It looks like you had to complain multiple times which most people will not do (they complain once and try to not order from that seller).
- dpark 7y agoI believe my wife complained to a human twice. Most people probably complain zero times. Posting negative reviews of a product is a poor way to give feedback about a bad seller.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoAfter you stopped having problems with the bread did you ever try to log in with another account and buy it with another credit card and send it to another address - I just wonder if the seller retooled and put in an array of accounts that must not be screwed over because they complain too hard. I guess I'm overly paranoid.
- dpark 7y agoI absolutely did not do that. Who would? It’s possible that what you’re describing happened, but I’m not investing the time and energy to try to “trap them” like this. I also don’t think it’s terribly likely. I believe it was also FBA so they don’t have control over what item gets sent to which customer.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoI might, but that it the overly paranoid part I was talking about. But then since I don't trust or like Amazon and I'm in Europe I wouldn't have been in the position to do it.