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I think the viewpoint that Amazon doesn't care is too cynical. They probably do care but are stuck with the issue of looking at effective counter measures that
by Jaygles 7y ago
I think the viewpoint that Amazon doesn't care is too cynical. They probably do care but are stuck with the issue of looking at effective counter measures that are too expensive to consider.
What is more realistic is that they are just stumped at this point.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoIf they cared, they would let you filter for items only sold by Amazon.com and not commingle inventory. What they really want is for others to take all the inventory risk and liability and take a 15% cut of all purchases. They used to let you filter for items sold by Amazon.com, but they removed it, so I think that clearly proves their goal of being a platform rather than a retailer one can rely on for quality goods, as presumably the former has nice profit margins whereas the latter is famous for barely having profit margins.
- occamrazor 7y agoI can still filter by vendor, at least on the European websites.
- dman 7y agoDoes not mean anything because of commingling. If you have 500 merchants selling the same item you have no way to control whose inventory you get things from. No filtering by merchant doesnt help, I wish it did. As a result I have mostly stopped buying from Amazon after running into a few obvious fakes.
- BeetleB 7y ago> I can still filter by vendor, at least on the European websites. At least in the US, Amazon comingles new products unless the seller requests them not to. So if you buy something shipped and sold by Amazon.com, you may be getting the one vendor ABC had shipped to Amazon's warehouses. Agree with GP. If they cared, they wouldn't comingle. Comingling saves Amazon money, though, as they don't have to track whose goods are in which warehouses.
- didibus 7y agoIt doesn't. Even when commingling, they individually track each good. The only advantage is that comingling is faster and cheaper deliveries, because they can just and you the item nearest to your house.
- toast0 7y agoMost goods aren't individually tracked. If I send three, and you send four of some ASIN to some distribution center, and it is a comingled SKU, to all indications, all seven items are in one bin, and can't be distinguished afterward. Having one bin instead of two saves space (and therefore cost) in the distribution center. If the goods were stored separately, even if they still did buy from any vendor and ship from the most cost effective inventory, they would be able to track down counterfeit goods much more effectively.
- didibus 7y agoI don't know, I'm just going off based on their documentation: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480?language=en-US&ref=mpbc_200243180_cont_200141480 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480?... It says: > For inventory tracked with the manufacturer barcode, each seller’s sourced inventory of the same ASIN is stored separately in our fulfillment centers. We can also track the original seller of each unit. So at least their documentation clearly says that each seller's items are stored grouped by seller.
- BeetleB 7y agoI've heard this claim before, and I've never been shown evidence of this. Certainly Amazon didn't disclose this to me when I used to sell stuff on FBA.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThey let you filter by vendor, but they don’t let you choose Amazon.com.
- 0x0000000 7y agoI just searched for an item and had no trouble selecting a "seller" filter for Amazon.com; on what basis are you making this claim?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI just searched for "toyota oil filter", "logitech mouse", and "play yard", and I never got an option on the left side to restrict the search results to a specific seller.
- JonathonW 7y agoFiltering by seller doesn't show up consistently-- I've yet to identify what exactly the pattern is, but, once you've drilled down far enough into their search results, it usually shows up for me. It very rarely shows up for me after a general search (from the search bar on the Amazon homepage), though-- for example, if I search for "T-shirt" from the homepage, I can't filter by seller, but, if I drill down to the "Men's Shirts" category in the left-hand bar on that search results page, I can filter those results by seller (and select "Amazon.com" to see things they claim they're selling themselves).
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI think they intentionally hide it depending on what the product is. Intentional or not, it doesn’t meet my use case, and when I go shopping, I’m willing to pay a premium to not have to worry about quality of the product.
- Waterluvian 7y agoThe amount to which they care is proportional to their apparent ability to fix the problem. You'd be amazed how quickly something can get fixed if their company is burning down over it. In this case I expect their response will be just enough to avoid any truly damaging outcomes while not spending any resources beyond that.
- bb88 7y agoI'm in the camp they just don't care. There was a point in time not too long ago where amazon refused to sell Google Chromecasts, but they would sell knock-offs including those that were marked with a "G" in an apparent trademark violation. Some retailers are selling repackaged medical equipment -- in this case cpap masks -- in ziploc bags. There may or may not be anything wrong with the mask itself, but the real bags are high quality packaging and factory sealed -- not a ziploc bag with a sticker on it.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI have seen it many times that companies can fix things rapidly if they really want to. I think they don't care enough, as far as their revenues are going, things are fine, and there is is no easy way to fix this without making less money.