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Here's a cheap thing they can do: you don't have to stop commingling entirely, but you can give me a way to opt out of it. Either via account settings or lettin

Here's a cheap thing they can do: you don't have to stop commingling entirely, but you can give me a way to opt out of it. Either via account settings or letting me specify during checkout. Sometimes I may not care which seller it comes from and just want the closest one. Other times, I'm OK with waiting if it means I am more sure of what I'm getting.

allthecybers 7y ago
That's actually a pretty simple solution and something I would totally opt into. Just a checkbox in your account settings that says I don't want to see any FBA or verified sellers only.
- PKop 7y ago
  I don't think it's that simple because the problem is on the backend / logistics, not the UI for the user. There's not really a half-measure solution here. They either have to completely redo their supply chain management (not co-mingle) or it won't work. What pool of goods do they pull from to fulfill your order? Where do they store these goods? Well, that separate pool of goods now has to be maintained. How man separate piles from how many "trusted" suppliers do they create? The probably should start doing something like this, but I don't think it's simple.
43920 7y ago
In order for Amazon to do that, they would either have to ship from further away (which costs more), or have a separate, Amazon-only set of products in each distribution center (which defeats the point of commingling). Also, the vast majority of people aren't going to turn it off, so how would it help?
- tomjakubowski 7y ago
  Imagine a demon supervising the people and bots picking items for an Amazon order. If any of them pick an item from a bin also containing inventory from another seller (commingling), the demon puts the item back and removes it from the order. I would like Amazon to, effectively, offer that demon as an option, to guarantee the provenance of an order's items. Of course, it might work better to filter commingled items out at search time, if that's possible, or put a big warning banner up on the product or order page when you might get your item from another seller's inventory.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    That would be almost every item.
  - PKop 7y ago
    Think of how many layers of both the fulfillment logistics, supply chain, and actual tech stack have to be modified/re-imagined to achieve this. They should move this way, but it is extremely complicated & expensive. The difference between 1 fungible pile of a good spread out everywhere, and multiple distinct piles is enormous.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  Yeah, you make a good point. They'd have to either make an explicit choice (no default) or opt-in, because most people don't know the platform well enough to even understand that the choice even exists. It's only a guess, but I would think the added expense wouldn't be that big of a deal. With popular products, they already have lots of units everywhere so it would very rarely be an issue. With other products, it is more likely to be an issue, but still not every time.
OscarTheGrinch 7y ago
Yeah I agree, but I think the problem is that Amazon doesn't know who the bad actors are. To actually verify all the goods would require an enormous amount of physical checking, requiring an enormous amount of staff trained to tell a good raincoat from a piece of shit one (a week of wearing?), compounded by bad actors simply shifting identities. It's a similar problem to Facebook not being able to tame disinformation: how can a trust based system police maleficence at scale?
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  They can start to isolate and A/B test. Banks look for common merchants in cases of credit card theft... Seller A is a seller-in-common of 5 counterfeit goods, they're a likely candidate. Even if you can't demonstrate it immediately, you can then start to bin out their stuff. High index that that seller is counterfeiting/selling it? Start un-mingling their stuff, internally - you don't -need- to physically verify authenticity, but if you're unmingling their stuff due to suspicion they're a bad actor and you keep getting complaints... probably a good sign. > compounded by bad actors simply shifting identities Identities have to keep getting paid. Start requiring ACH/EBT payments only for those actors (i.e. no more checks or whatever). They might be able to keep 'creating' identities - it might be harder to keep creating bank accounts.
- badlucklottery 7y ago
  Fixing commingling doesn't involving solving the underlying bad seller problem. It just draws a line for savvy users between known-good sellers and the wild west.
- petra 7y ago
  Rfid tags have reached a cost of one-cent, at least according to this: http://www.smart-alliance.com/en/news_ms_2883.html http://www.smart-alliance.com/en/news_ms_2883.html At this point, it's possible to put the on most/all commingled products and automatically verify authenticity. How hard are those to fake, btw?

allthecybers 7y ago

That's actually a pretty simple solution and something I would totally opt into. Just a checkbox in your account settings that says I don't want to see any FBA or verified sellers only.

PKop 7y ago
I don't think it's that simple because the problem is on the backend / logistics, not the UI for the user. There's not really a half-measure solution here. They either have to completely redo their supply chain management (not co-mingle) or it won't work. What pool of goods do they pull from to fulfill your order? Where do they store these goods? Well, that separate pool of goods now has to be maintained. How man separate piles from how many "trusted" suppliers do they create? The probably should start doing something like this, but I don't think it's simple.

43920 7y ago

In order for Amazon to do that, they would either have to ship from further away (which costs more), or have a separate, Amazon-only set of products in each distribution center (which defeats the point of commingling). Also, the vast majority of people aren't going to turn it off, so how would it help?

tomjakubowski 7y ago
Imagine a demon supervising the people and bots picking items for an Amazon order. If any of them pick an item from a bin also containing inventory from another seller (commingling), the demon puts the item back and removes it from the order. I would like Amazon to, effectively, offer that demon as an option, to guarantee the provenance of an order's items. Of course, it might work better to filter commingled items out at search time, if that's possible, or put a big warning banner up on the product or order page when you might get your item from another seller's inventory.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  That would be almost every item.
- PKop 7y ago
  Think of how many layers of both the fulfillment logistics, supply chain, and actual tech stack have to be modified/re-imagined to achieve this. They should move this way, but it is extremely complicated & expensive. The difference between 1 fungible pile of a good spread out everywhere, and multiple distinct piles is enormous.
adrianmonk 7y ago
Yeah, you make a good point. They'd have to either make an explicit choice (no default) or opt-in, because most people don't know the platform well enough to even understand that the choice even exists. It's only a guess, but I would think the added expense wouldn't be that big of a deal. With popular products, they already have lots of units everywhere so it would very rarely be an issue. With other products, it is more likely to be an issue, but still not every time.

OscarTheGrinch 7y ago

Yeah I agree, but I think the problem is that Amazon doesn't know who the bad actors are. To actually verify all the goods would require an enormous amount of physical checking, requiring an enormous amount of staff trained to tell a good raincoat from a piece of shit one (a week of wearing?), compounded by bad actors simply shifting identities. It's a similar problem to Facebook not being able to tame disinformation: how can a trust based system police maleficence at scale?

FireBeyond 7y ago
They can start to isolate and A/B test. Banks look for common merchants in cases of credit card theft... Seller A is a seller-in-common of 5 counterfeit goods, they're a likely candidate. Even if you can't demonstrate it immediately, you can then start to bin out their stuff. High index that that seller is counterfeiting/selling it? Start un-mingling their stuff, internally - you don't -need- to physically verify authenticity, but if you're unmingling their stuff due to suspicion they're a bad actor and you keep getting complaints... probably a good sign. > compounded by bad actors simply shifting identities Identities have to keep getting paid. Start requiring ACH/EBT payments only for those actors (i.e. no more checks or whatever). They might be able to keep 'creating' identities - it might be harder to keep creating bank accounts.
badlucklottery 7y ago
Fixing commingling doesn't involving solving the underlying bad seller problem. It just draws a line for savvy users between known-good sellers and the wild west.
petra 7y ago
Rfid tags have reached a cost of one-cent, at least according to this: http://www.smart-alliance.com/en/news_ms_2883.html http://www.smart-alliance.com/en/news_ms_2883.html At this point, it's possible to put the on most/all commingled products and automatically verify authenticity. How hard are those to fake, btw?