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This seems so easy to me to fix... just have a decently-sized QA department and add in reputation score variations for sellers... if a seller gets caught sellin
by asdf21 7y ago
This seems so easy to me to fix... just have a decently-sized QA department and add in reputation score variations for sellers... if a seller gets caught selling anything counterfeit, their reputation takes a huge hit for 6 months or so and they barely show up on search results.
Trusted sellers would be folks who have managed to go several years without this happening..
I swear I could implement a whole solution for around ~$2M + $1M a year for ongoing QA staff / call center employees... basically nothing for a retailer the size of Amazon.
It makes me think they've done the CBA on it and somehow determined they would rather have all retailers selling on Amazon for some reason, even the shady ones, despite some damage to their reputation. I don't understand why though.
- briefcomment 7y agoWho has the last word on if something is fake?
- egdod 7y agoFacebook.
- kill_nate_kill 7y agoBrr-rr-rr-rr-rap!
- asdf21 7y agoYour decently-sized QA department would investigate, case-by-case. Some examples would probably be controversial and you'd need to escalate to a higher tier of analysis.
- dkonofalski 7y agoThe issue here is that, like YouTube, it's so simple to create a new account that you'd just be chasing an endless stream of nothingness. I mean, just look at Amazon's review system. That's a system that they actually do investigate and have a department for and yet there are hundreds of thousands of sellers that have fake reviews and paid reviews for lots of different products and brands.
- DrScump 7y agoYour decently-sized QA department would investigate, case-by-case This describes The Real Real's business model perfectly... but turns out a lot of their "curated" stuff... wasn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21477730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21477730
- asdf21 7y agoWow, very cool. That's a $1.6B company I've never even heard of. The stock hasn't gone down at all since that article was published either. They must be doing something right..
- TurkishPoptart 7y agoYour CBA might be accurate. If that's the case, they're digging their own coffin. Maybe Bezos should dump .com and go all in on AWS.
- DrScump 7y agogo all in on AWS Amazon Waste Services?
- headcanon 7y agoseller reputation wouldn't be a terrible idea, but the devil is in the details. Items certainly have their own quality, but people's opinions are fickle. Who gets to say what is counterfeit, unless you have a trusted authenticator looking at every item? If someone is unhappy with an item it could be for any number of reasons, and no seller is perfect, even ones with good intentions and operations. So from amazon's perspective, they have to spend a ton of time, effort, and money to risk alienating their sellers. So I think you're right - they've thought about it and decided that the risks were not worth the gains.
- asdf21 7y ago>but people's opinions are fickle. Who gets to say what is counterfeit, unless you have a trusted authenticator looking at every item? Correct, that's what I mean by a decently-sized QA department. I would never base the score directly on end-users opinions, although the opinions of end-users could certainly be used to initiate the verification process: Customers say something is fake --> raises ticket to QA department --> a few automatic orders are placed to different "fake" addresses over a period of weeks and months --> these delivered items are authenticated --> Reputation score modified --> customers are followed up with by the call center agents.