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I have been encouraging anyone who will listen to not buy anything on Amazon. The co-mingling of goods (especially nutrition items) is going to result in some C

I have been encouraging anyone who will listen to not buy anything on Amazon. The co-mingling of goods (especially nutrition items) is going to result in some Chinese vendor sending a batch of poison in as supplements or baby food and get a bunch of people killed. That is the only way this is going to end.

Despegar 7y ago
>and get a bunch of people killed That's what it will take for Congress to amend Section 230 in a way that exposes the tech industry to liability (other than for sex trafficking, which was only done because victims and their families advocated hard for it).
- ohazi 7y ago
  I'm not even convinced that would do it. They'll grandstand, and make a big fuss about it, and try to use the tragedy for personal gain, sure. But at the end of the day, congress as a whole doesn't seem interested in fixing problems that affect actual people. They're only interested in making things easier for their corporate sponsors. They'll describe it as "we have to keep things in perspective" "don't want to stifle innovation" etc.
- sabalaba 7y ago
  Extreme alarmism is going to make the Internet an over-regulated hellscape that mostly benefits incumbents and further reinforces monopoly positions. We would all be worse off if something like what you’re describing was implemented.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Its hardly extreme alarmism to suggest Amazon's negligence is going to result in deaths (It likely already is and has).
  - simonh 7y ago
    It’s already becoming an unregulated hellscape, where vendors are locked in a race to the bottom, only the least scrupulous survive and it becomes impossible to distinguish come classes of products on quality. Yes maximal regulation would lead to much higher prices, fewer options and make it more difficult to find goods. I wouldn’t call that a hellscape but it’s not what we want. I do think the only way to dissincentivise Amazons behaviour is increased accountability. I am completely open to alternative suggestions on that though.
    - darawk 7y ago
      > It’s already becoming an unregulated hellscape, where vendors are locked in a race to the bottom, only the least scrupulous survive and it becomes impossible to distinguish come classes of products on quality. You say this, but if it were actually a problem for people, it's not like they don't have alternatives. I think the evidence of harm here is pretty minimal.
      - simonh 7y ago
        The only way most people will know they need to use an alternative is when they get ripped off. Even then they might think, ok I'll not buy from that vendor on Amazon again, only to get ripped off by another vendor on Amazon. They could ditch Amazon, but there's no guarantee any other site would be better. Trying multiple different options and getting cheated each time until you find one that isn't cheating you (yet) isn't an acceptable state of affairs. Individual consumers don't have the resources to evaluate each option available to them and make an informed decision, especially when much of the information in the form of reviews that they do have access to is poisoned by fakes. In these sorts of circumstances, offloading that task from individuals to a delegate that regulates the market and establishes basic standards is I think reasonable.
  - jpambrun 7y ago
    Food is already regulated. This is not about regulating "the internet", it's about applying existing rules to a retailer that just happens to operate mostly online. The argument that Amazon's suppliers are "retailers" to avoid any liability is disgusting. Imagine if Walmart did that in stores: "our shelves are just a vehicle for other retailers, take your health/counterfeit concerns to them". It's insane.
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    If that argument makes sense for the Internet, shouldn’t it also make sense everywhere else? Food trucks. Why are there any regulations? Same for restaurants. What about automobiles? Why are their safety features over regulated? Doesn’t that just benefit incumbents? I shop for prescription drugs at a pharmacy. Why are pharmacists regulated? Isn’t it a gatekeeping scam? Shouldn’t I be able to buy Oxycodin at the corner-store if I want?
- DuskStar 7y ago
  > other than for sex trafficking, which was only done because victims and their families advocated hard for it Citation very needed, because I seem to remember a lot of cops, support groups and sex workers saying it made their jobs harder. (And less safe for the trafficking victims, too)
  - Despegar 7y ago
    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/how-tech-lost-on-the-sex-trafficking-bill-423364 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/how-tech-lost-on-t...
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  And that workee out horribly for everyone involved - sex workers went back to pimps, sting operations got cut off, and because Backpage coopeated and got eliminated now they follow the standard "don't talk to the police no matter what you say". Even the evil bitch behind all of this knowing it wouldn't work lost re-eelection so I think we should learn from it instead of blindly repeating mistakes. If someone blindly criticizes Section 230 hit them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. I know it is hard - rolled up newspapers are hard to come by these days.
all_blue_chucks 7y ago
Co-mingling is fine for books or, really, the vast majority of products. That in itself is not much of a problem... returns are free. Supply chain definitely matters on anything you eat or ingest, though. Are you sure they co-mingle food and medicine?
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > Co-mingling is fine for books or, really, the vast majority of products. That in itself is not much of a problem... returns are free. I couldn't disagree more. One of the big reasons co-mingling works well for Amazon is because many counterfeit items aren't detected by consumers. But just because they aren't detected doesn't mean they don't do harm. If I buy an Apple USB charger, I expect to get an Apple USB charger. I don't have the equipment to check it for loaded voltage sag (check out some videos of knock off USB chargers for examples). However fast it charges is however fast it charges, but I'm still being harmed by an inferior product. If I buy a SpyderCo knife with expensive steel, that's what I expect to get. I don't have the equipment to determine whether something is AUS6 or S110V, so I'll probably just use it and sharpen it as needed. But just because I don't realize I've been sold a counterfeit doesn't mean that I haven't been harmed by an inferior product.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    > If I buy an Apple USB charger, I expect to get an Apple USB charger. I don't have the equipment to check it for loaded voltage sag (check out some videos of knock off USB chargers for examples). However fast it charges is however fast it charges, but I'm still being harmed by an inferior product. There's a very good chance you could be harmed when it bursts into flames.
    - peteri 7y ago
      Last time I bought any apple stuff I actually went to the Apple store to avoid shady knockoffs.
      - 7y ago
sjg007 7y ago
>supplements or baby food These are the things I buy locally... well I did buy the Amazon Elements which I believe is an Amazon original... but I will probably go with Costco next. I think there is probably a greater risk with chargers and fire. I remember Amazon banned the lithium balance things...
r00fus 7y ago
Consider me a pessimist it may be going there, but I surely don’t think it will end there. Amazon is too entrenched.
tehjoker 7y ago
I would point out that individual consumer choices don't affect the system as a whole, only a coordinated boycott would have a hope of changing Amazon's behavior. However, I do think your efforts prepare the ground for it when it happens by changing people's sentiment. Edit: Interestingly, against Amazon's retail business, even a small boycott would have an effect because their individual products are cut to extremely low margins. AWS is their cash cow with fat margins.
- angstrom 7y ago
  Even AWS's fat margins come from the comfort of having the retail site as the biggest customer least likely to leave the service.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    Amazon.com does not pay anywhere close to list price.
robomartin 7y ago
My wife ran a successful supplements business selling primarily on Amazon. She was very strict about testing every batch (which costs money), ensuring quality, etc. As an MD she approached the business with a seriousness we now know does not exist in that domain, well, on Amazon anyway. Things got seriously ugly when her products started to get to the top of the search results. This took time and a ton of money and effort. That's when the attacks started. Two forms of attacks prevailed: Fake reviews and click fraud. Competitors would post completely fake reviews about her products. They would claim things such as having had to go to the hospital or having diarrhea for three days straight. All false, unverified. The other way you could tell the reviews were fake was when the review posted before the product shipped out of the Amazon warehouse. I could not believe Amazon didn't have just a little bit of common-sense code to automatically reject such obviously false reviews. Sellers can advertise on Amazon. We did. Once her products started to show up at the top of search results her ad budget would be consumed in its entirety by 4 or 5 AM every day. You could look at the analytics and see, plain as day, that all the clicks happened during the span of an hour between 3 and 4 AM eastern US time. Thousands of clicks every day. This meant that our ads did not show by the time people got up. Oh, yes, the other method competitors used was to contact Amazon and make false claims about her products. They'd claim we were not disclosing true ingredients; fake copyright violations, etc. It was all-out war against her in the worst possible way. At the time I remember thinking that this experience had to be an approximation of what it would be like to deal with the mafia. I had never seen such dishonest, criminal behavior in my life. I captured analytics and put together analysis to show Amazon what was going on. Her business was being destroyed at a rapid rate. It was relentless. Amazon could not care less. It was impossible to deal with them. I persisted. It took them about six months to finally admit our data showed a coordinated effort on the part of competitors to destroy her business. They also claimed they identified who did it but refused to give us the information. They issued a refund that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars in wasted advertising. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales, nobody paid for that. In the end we decided we had zero interest in dealing with the mafia and quit, which, ironically, was probably exactly what these criminals wanted. We make more than enough money with our day jobs and tech business, no need to complicate our lives in that kind of an environment. My experience with Amazon, in this regard, was an eye opener. Today I do not buy anything on Amazon that isn't marked as "Sold and Shipped by Amazon". I want nothing whatsoever to do with their third party sellers. That entire ecosystem is permeated with people you just can't trust, even if all you are buying from them is a spoon. I still have friends I met along the way who sell on Amazon. The stories, years later, remain the same: Amazon does not seem to care about criminal behavior on their platform so long as they are making money.
didibus 7y ago
Those categories of products aren't commingled though, so what you described wouldn't happen. Edit: Well it could, but it would be from the actual seller you bought it from. Products that have expiration dates or best by dates don't get commingled for example. Here's a non exhaustive list of the product categories that aren't allowed to be commingled by sellers: OTC Medication Medical Supplies and Equipment Dietary Supplements Feminine Hygiene Contraceptives Industrial Supplies Professional Medical Devices Baby Food and Formula Baby Topicals Baby Stroller and Carrier Topicals Infant Toys Baby Feeding Kid and Baby Furniture Sports Equipment Baby Activity Gear Baby Diapering Baby Car Seats Toy Models and Kits Toy Building Blocks Learning Toys Outdoor and Sports Toys Laptop Batteries Phone Batteries & Chargers Fidget Spinners Solar eclipse glasses Normally, the categories are anything that could cause harm if it wasn't what was advertised and categories that they keep identifying as having a large volume of fakes. Source: The policies on sellercentral.amazon.com and online forums where sellers complain about why they can't commingle certain products.
- nathancahill 7y ago
  Very good to know. I've worried about buying replacement laptop batteries off Amazon. Thanks!

Despegar 7y ago

>and get a bunch of people killed That's what it will take for Congress to amend Section 230 in a way that exposes the tech industry to liability (other than for sex trafficking, which was only done because victims and their families advocated hard for it).

ohazi 7y ago
I'm not even convinced that would do it. They'll grandstand, and make a big fuss about it, and try to use the tragedy for personal gain, sure. But at the end of the day, congress as a whole doesn't seem interested in fixing problems that affect actual people. They're only interested in making things easier for their corporate sponsors. They'll describe it as "we have to keep things in perspective" "don't want to stifle innovation" etc.
sabalaba 7y ago
Extreme alarmism is going to make the Internet an over-regulated hellscape that mostly benefits incumbents and further reinforces monopoly positions. We would all be worse off if something like what you’re describing was implemented.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Its hardly extreme alarmism to suggest Amazon's negligence is going to result in deaths (It likely already is and has).
- simonh 7y ago
  It’s already becoming an unregulated hellscape, where vendors are locked in a race to the bottom, only the least scrupulous survive and it becomes impossible to distinguish come classes of products on quality. Yes maximal regulation would lead to much higher prices, fewer options and make it more difficult to find goods. I wouldn’t call that a hellscape but it’s not what we want. I do think the only way to dissincentivise Amazons behaviour is increased accountability. I am completely open to alternative suggestions on that though.
  - darawk 7y ago
    > It’s already becoming an unregulated hellscape, where vendors are locked in a race to the bottom, only the least scrupulous survive and it becomes impossible to distinguish come classes of products on quality. You say this, but if it were actually a problem for people, it's not like they don't have alternatives. I think the evidence of harm here is pretty minimal.
    - simonh 7y ago
      The only way most people will know they need to use an alternative is when they get ripped off. Even then they might think, ok I'll not buy from that vendor on Amazon again, only to get ripped off by another vendor on Amazon. They could ditch Amazon, but there's no guarantee any other site would be better. Trying multiple different options and getting cheated each time until you find one that isn't cheating you (yet) isn't an acceptable state of affairs. Individual consumers don't have the resources to evaluate each option available to them and make an informed decision, especially when much of the information in the form of reviews that they do have access to is poisoned by fakes. In these sorts of circumstances, offloading that task from individuals to a delegate that regulates the market and establishes basic standards is I think reasonable.
- jpambrun 7y ago
  Food is already regulated. This is not about regulating "the internet", it's about applying existing rules to a retailer that just happens to operate mostly online. The argument that Amazon's suppliers are "retailers" to avoid any liability is disgusting. Imagine if Walmart did that in stores: "our shelves are just a vehicle for other retailers, take your health/counterfeit concerns to them". It's insane.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  If that argument makes sense for the Internet, shouldn’t it also make sense everywhere else? Food trucks. Why are there any regulations? Same for restaurants. What about automobiles? Why are their safety features over regulated? Doesn’t that just benefit incumbents? I shop for prescription drugs at a pharmacy. Why are pharmacists regulated? Isn’t it a gatekeeping scam? Shouldn’t I be able to buy Oxycodin at the corner-store if I want?
DuskStar 7y ago
> other than for sex trafficking, which was only done because victims and their families advocated hard for it Citation very needed, because I seem to remember a lot of cops, support groups and sex workers saying it made their jobs harder. (And less safe for the trafficking victims, too)
- Despegar 7y ago
  https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/how-tech-lost-on-the-sex-trafficking-bill-423364 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/how-tech-lost-on-t...
Nasrudith 7y ago
And that workee out horribly for everyone involved - sex workers went back to pimps, sting operations got cut off, and because Backpage coopeated and got eliminated now they follow the standard "don't talk to the police no matter what you say". Even the evil bitch behind all of this knowing it wouldn't work lost re-eelection so I think we should learn from it instead of blindly repeating mistakes. If someone blindly criticizes Section 230 hit them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. I know it is hard - rolled up newspapers are hard to come by these days.

all_blue_chucks 7y ago

Co-mingling is fine for books or, really, the vast majority of products. That in itself is not much of a problem... returns are free. Supply chain definitely matters on anything you eat or ingest, though. Are you sure they co-mingle food and medicine?

nordsieck 7y ago
> Co-mingling is fine for books or, really, the vast majority of products. That in itself is not much of a problem... returns are free. I couldn't disagree more. One of the big reasons co-mingling works well for Amazon is because many counterfeit items aren't detected by consumers. But just because they aren't detected doesn't mean they don't do harm. If I buy an Apple USB charger, I expect to get an Apple USB charger. I don't have the equipment to check it for loaded voltage sag (check out some videos of knock off USB chargers for examples). However fast it charges is however fast it charges, but I'm still being harmed by an inferior product. If I buy a SpyderCo knife with expensive steel, that's what I expect to get. I don't have the equipment to determine whether something is AUS6 or S110V, so I'll probably just use it and sharpen it as needed. But just because I don't realize I've been sold a counterfeit doesn't mean that I haven't been harmed by an inferior product.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  > If I buy an Apple USB charger, I expect to get an Apple USB charger. I don't have the equipment to check it for loaded voltage sag (check out some videos of knock off USB chargers for examples). However fast it charges is however fast it charges, but I'm still being harmed by an inferior product. There's a very good chance you could be harmed when it bursts into flames.
  - peteri 7y ago
    Last time I bought any apple stuff I actually went to the Apple store to avoid shady knockoffs.
    - 7y ago

sjg007 7y ago

>supplements or baby food These are the things I buy locally... well I did buy the Amazon Elements which I believe is an Amazon original... but I will probably go with Costco next. I think there is probably a greater risk with chargers and fire. I remember Amazon banned the lithium balance things...

r00fus 7y ago

Consider me a pessimist it may be going there, but I surely don’t think it will end there. Amazon is too entrenched.

tehjoker 7y ago

I would point out that individual consumer choices don't affect the system as a whole, only a coordinated boycott would have a hope of changing Amazon's behavior. However, I do think your efforts prepare the ground for it when it happens by changing people's sentiment. Edit: Interestingly, against Amazon's retail business, even a small boycott would have an effect because their individual products are cut to extremely low margins. AWS is their cash cow with fat margins.

angstrom 7y ago
Even AWS's fat margins come from the comfort of having the retail site as the biggest customer least likely to leave the service.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  Amazon.com does not pay anywhere close to list price.

robomartin 7y ago

My wife ran a successful supplements business selling primarily on Amazon. She was very strict about testing every batch (which costs money), ensuring quality, etc. As an MD she approached the business with a seriousness we now know does not exist in that domain, well, on Amazon anyway. Things got seriously ugly when her products started to get to the top of the search results. This took time and a ton of money and effort. That's when the attacks started. Two forms of attacks prevailed: Fake reviews and click fraud. Competitors would post completely fake reviews about her products. They would claim things such as having had to go to the hospital or having diarrhea for three days straight. All false, unverified. The other way you could tell the reviews were fake was when the review posted before the product shipped out of the Amazon warehouse. I could not believe Amazon didn't have just a little bit of common-sense code to automatically reject such obviously false reviews. Sellers can advertise on Amazon. We did. Once her products started to show up at the top of search results her ad budget would be consumed in its entirety by 4 or 5 AM every day. You could look at the analytics and see, plain as day, that all the clicks happened during the span of an hour between 3 and 4 AM eastern US time. Thousands of clicks every day. This meant that our ads did not show by the time people got up. Oh, yes, the other method competitors used was to contact Amazon and make false claims about her products. They'd claim we were not disclosing true ingredients; fake copyright violations, etc. It was all-out war against her in the worst possible way. At the time I remember thinking that this experience had to be an approximation of what it would be like to deal with the mafia. I had never seen such dishonest, criminal behavior in my life. I captured analytics and put together analysis to show Amazon what was going on. Her business was being destroyed at a rapid rate. It was relentless. Amazon could not care less. It was impossible to deal with them. I persisted. It took them about six months to finally admit our data showed a coordinated effort on the part of competitors to destroy her business. They also claimed they identified who did it but refused to give us the information. They issued a refund that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars in wasted advertising. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales, nobody paid for that. In the end we decided we had zero interest in dealing with the mafia and quit, which, ironically, was probably exactly what these criminals wanted. We make more than enough money with our day jobs and tech business, no need to complicate our lives in that kind of an environment. My experience with Amazon, in this regard, was an eye opener. Today I do not buy anything on Amazon that isn't marked as "Sold and Shipped by Amazon". I want nothing whatsoever to do with their third party sellers. That entire ecosystem is permeated with people you just can't trust, even if all you are buying from them is a spoon. I still have friends I met along the way who sell on Amazon. The stories, years later, remain the same: Amazon does not seem to care about criminal behavior on their platform so long as they are making money.

didibus 7y ago

Those categories of products aren't commingled though, so what you described wouldn't happen. Edit: Well it could, but it would be from the actual seller you bought it from. Products that have expiration dates or best by dates don't get commingled for example. Here's a non exhaustive list of the product categories that aren't allowed to be commingled by sellers: OTC Medication Medical Supplies and Equipment Dietary Supplements Feminine Hygiene Contraceptives Industrial Supplies Professional Medical Devices Baby Food and Formula Baby Topicals Baby Stroller and Carrier Topicals Infant Toys Baby Feeding Kid and Baby Furniture Sports Equipment Baby Activity Gear Baby Diapering Baby Car Seats Toy Models and Kits Toy Building Blocks Learning Toys Outdoor and Sports Toys Laptop Batteries Phone Batteries & Chargers Fidget Spinners Solar eclipse glasses Normally, the categories are anything that could cause harm if it wasn't what was advertised and categories that they keep identifying as having a large volume of fakes. Source: The policies on sellercentral.amazon.com and online forums where sellers complain about why they can't commingle certain products.

nathancahill 7y ago
Very good to know. I've worried about buying replacement laptop batteries off Amazon. Thanks!