3 ms·

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 dis

by 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.

3 ms·

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 dis

by 43920 7y ago

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.