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The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistak

The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them. e.g. - the "fines" Google and Facebook keep getting for breaking privacy and other laws which are laughably small. - customer support teams not dealing with serious customer issues until they get attention (viral tweet, front page HN etc) - monopolies in most forms: e.g. the big-tech anti-poaching agreements Generally I'm all for "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" but that assumes that you are acting in good faith but still sometimes screw up. It seems like "screwing up" has become a good way to ensure short-term profits and as everyone is obsessed with KPIs and OKRs at a 1-week to 3-month time frame, the incentives are all wrong. And "mission statements" and "cultural values" are too synthetic to come close to fixing this.

aboringusername 6y ago
I honestly don't think any country in the world actually cares about monopolies or the abuses by these companies. Apple no longer has to pay a fine the EU gave them. The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google. So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. They're still in dominant positions, where AI or computer made decisions can devastate the "little guys" like being wiped off Google (or the play store removing your app), or the horror stories of businesses on Amazon. Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.
- AnssiH 6y ago
  > So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. That seems like hyperbole. E.g. all the three big EU-Google anti-trust cases (Shopping, AdSense, Android) resulted in Google changing their practices on the issues in question. (Shopping, Android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google, AdSense: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_1770 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...)
- dbliss 6y ago
  I can't speak for all the companies listed, but I know we've spent a lot of SDE time ensuring we're compliant with GDPR and various privacy laws. Building new systems and changing existing systems (on the scale of dozens, probably 100+, of individual teams). It's more likely that it's hard to quickly change the direction of large ships. I've certainly seen my leadership (and engineers) take things like GDPR compliance extremely seriously, to the point that I've seen it as a cultural shift over the last couple of years.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Apples fines were because EU commissioners demanded Ireland charge them higher tax rates. The courts ruled they were wrong in doing so. Not an anti trust issue at all. Do you really want to live in a world where bureaucrats can issue fines without recourse?
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  > The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google. > Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future. First of all, Google has paid their EU fines. Secondly, I think you misunderstand the nature of what's going on with these fines. A combination of strong trade agreements and savvy tax jurisdiction selection has left most EU countries with little capacity to tax US tech companies, so they have resorted to fines. The play is old hat at this point. Pass a piece of vague legislation that probably applies to the target company's activities, then fine them before clarifying the law to the extent that the company can actually avoid breaking it. Rinse and repeat. The EU fined Google a few billion dollars last year, and the year before, and now this year, and they will surely do it again next year and the year after that. This is just a roundabout means of taxing Google. It will of course never change anything about Google, except that each year once the law is clarified Google's lawyers will make sure that they are scrupulously no longer violating this year's new regulation, but the extent of the regulation and the value of the fines is calibrated to not be so high that it would actually drive Google to extract itself from EU jurisdiction. Now that it's clear they've lost their tax battle with Apple I expect the EU will begin fining them as well.
isoprophlex 6y ago
Being an asshole apparently works out great, at scale. A mom and pop shop would be hit much harder by a scam like this, I think.
danilocesar 6y ago
But from a business POV, it makes sense. Assuming that they have a million returns monthly, and from those only a dozen are scams (I have no idea about the real numbers, just guessing), it would be way more expensive to them to do a deep inspection on every returned item than do a soft/cheap check on the returns. When something falls throught the cracks (and the user find out), customer care will just send a new one (usually it's hassle free) and the company absorb the damage from that one scam, which it's usually cheap. I know it hurts when amazon relies on real customers to do their deep inspection, but it's all about costs. I don't expect this to change. I would love to stop using amazon for a million reasons, but this is not one of them.
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  The HDD swap isn't unique to Amazon either, this is something that has plagued retail since birth. There was always jokes about "rocks in the box" in the 90's when I worked at an electronics store. You hit the head of the nail though, it's a calculated loss / cost. With retail they dealt with physical theft way more than this and anticipated up to 10% of inventory loss for a plethora of reasons. It's not surprising the thieves have transitioned here. I would expect that between this and mixed inventory, these issues are far more common that people would think. While amazon is at fault for passing it back on, I imagine they make it right. They have always fixed issues for me with no hesitation. It sucks, but I wouldn't get out a pitchfork unless they denied it. And like I mentioned above, Amazon isn't unique, any company has this happen.
  - an_opabinia 6y ago
    Of course they always make it right. The question is where does the discount from my doing their inspection for them go? It doesn't go to the prices, they're the same everywhere. It doesn't go to the shipping, that's my Prime account.
    - danilocesar 6y ago
      well, Amazon prices are low. And I'm not ignoring the fact that they also can do that because they run a huge monopoly that crushes the mid-size business and destroys the competition, I'm just pointing that they are low. Usually lower than the competition. That's basically your reward. Imagine that mister Bezos start spending millions of dollars and employing an army to do deep-check into every item returned. Who's paying that bill? Amazon's stockholders won't. You will. I will. But, as I said in a previous post, I'm not defending Amazon's behavior. I'm just pointing out that it's all about cost and the vast majority of users benefit from this as well (with lower prices and no-question-asked-return-policy), while a tiny-tiny minority of them might face an inconvenience of returning an used item from time to time.
bredren 6y ago
From what I can tell tricks are being pulled directly by brands in all online sales. Repackaging, or even directly steering imperfect merchandise to online orders is happening all of the time. “Model” or perfect versions are sent to retailers where consumers will interact with the product is purchased. Online, photos and videos show the same “perfect” products. I’ve seen clear examples of this by Fossil and Pendleton. I believe Apple does this in some cases, at least in repackaging. There are rational reasons to do this as a business but it can be a bad thing for consumers. Fwiw, Amazon has among the best return policies and the least friction in completing a return. Return friction is where a company‘s selective inventory quality steering borders on anti-customer.
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  This practice predates internet shopping; before Amazon, it was the discount retailers like Walmart that were getting seconds.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Is this still true? I recently went to a Walmart for the first time in a decade+, and it was obvious most of the items weren't seconds, they were just cheaply made. Even higher-end retailers with outlet stores have just started making lower-end merchandise specifically for outlet stores.
    - kd5bjo 6y ago
      I meant seconds in the sense of second-quality items: ones that wouldn't pass QA for their primary distribution channels, whether that's high-end department stores or their own storefronts. That's different from secondhand items, which are items that had been previously sold, used, and then refurbished to be sold again.
    - linuxftw 6y ago
      Walmart doesn't sell 'seconds' as you might normally consider. They do often receive inferior quality merchandise from their suppliers, often under the same SKU. This is how they compete on price. It's like the mattress business, at scale.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Pure players are getting EAFP on us rather than LBYL, I wonder where they learned that frop...
doublesCs 6y ago
Amazon's example is completely different from that of Google or Facebook. - In Amazon's case, it is only Amazon that is that victim of its mistakes: if they decide it's more efficient to give money to scammers than to avoid getting scammed, I couldn't care less. - In the case of Google and Facebook, they're not the victims for disrespecting their user's privacy, their users are. So, regulators should keep making the fines larger until it really really hurts them.
- teachrdan 6y ago
  The victim isn't Amazon, it's the next customer who buys the returned product--which wasn't even necessarily labeled as such. Now if Amazon included a guide with returned products, instructing customers what to evidence of fraud or tampering to look for? That would be a different story.
  - doublesCs 6y ago
    No, the next customer will just return it as well. It's a mild inconvenience, the customer is hardly the victim. I'm for regulation of bad corporate actors, but punishing for mediocre customer service is going too far.
    - treis 6y ago
      If they're buying something as "new" and getting something that has been returned and is not factory sealed then they're getting ripped off. This time the buyer caught it, but what if it had been swapped for the same item with 80% of it's expected life used?
      - jowsie 6y ago
        In this case it was a known return. That's what amazon warehouse deals is.
        treis 6y ago
rmrfstar 6y ago
> Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them What we're seeing is a widespread use of "fractional fraud". Transactions and business lines that are 1%-5% fraudulent are unlikely to be challenged, but have a huge effect on profitability. The best example I've seen is Bunnie Huang's deep dive on counterfeit SD cards [1]. Margins on SD cards are like 1%, so blending in defective cards at a 1% rate can double your profit. Another example is retail trade payment for order flow. A major broker-dealer was just sanctioned for front-running its clients. As long as your defect ("mistake") rate stays below your customer's response threshold, you can keep doing it. It is impossible to overstate how important social norms are for policing this kind of misconduct. [1] https://nostarch.com/hardwarehackerpaperback https://nostarch.com/hardwarehackerpaperback
- crawsome 6y ago
  At Google, they say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission".
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    At Google, they say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission". I hope you're not under the impression that this is another SV "innovation," because it's been a saying since at least the 1600's. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/
- rement 6y ago
  I'm reminded of an internet fable > A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. > The next day the farmer drove up and said: “Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey died.” > Kenny replied, “Well then, just give me my money back.” > The farmer said, “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.” > Kenny said, “OK, then just unload the donkey.” > The farmer asked, “What ya gonna do with him?” > Kenny: “I’m going to raffle him off.” > Farmer: “You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!” > Kenny: “Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he is dead.” > A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, “What happened with that dead donkey?” > Kenny: “I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at $2 a piece and made a profit of $998.00.” > Farmer: “Didn’t anyone complain?” > Kenny: “Just the guy who won. So I gave him his $2 back.” > Kenny grew up and eventually became the chairman of [company you want to mock]
product50 6y ago
As a user I am totally happy with Amazon's service. They shouldn't change their entire setup and make things a lot more expensive for everyone based on these infrequent use cases. And Amazon customer support is awesome. Your bullet 2 is false.
stkdump 6y ago
> The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them. In general I agree that this is a problem. But I don't see how this is an instance of that. I mean, how are they supposed to respond? "We will find the customer that scammed us and sue him. We will find the employee that checked this item and fire him."
- lstamour 6y ago
  You could start taking photos during the inspection of the returned item and before sending it, send a photo to the customer to confirm it’s what they ordered? You could establish a policy where you offer posted discounts (and lose money) if items aren’t as described? You could involve manufacturers in the re-certification process such that for high value items there’s maybe an extra shipping expense and time delay to market but the item’s quality could be verified before resale? You could strictly accept and sell only new items, putting returned or third-party FBA items in less efficient markets but completely isolated from the main market of trusted goods from known validated sources in your supply chain?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

aboringusername 6y ago

I honestly don't think any country in the world actually cares about monopolies or the abuses by these companies. Apple no longer has to pay a fine the EU gave them. The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google. So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. They're still in dominant positions, where AI or computer made decisions can devastate the "little guys" like being wiped off Google (or the play store removing your app), or the horror stories of businesses on Amazon. Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.

AnssiH 6y ago
> So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. That seems like hyperbole. E.g. all the three big EU-Google anti-trust cases (Shopping, AdSense, Android) resulted in Google changing their practices on the issues in question. (Shopping, Android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google, AdSense: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_1770 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...)
dbliss 6y ago
I can't speak for all the companies listed, but I know we've spent a lot of SDE time ensuring we're compliant with GDPR and various privacy laws. Building new systems and changing existing systems (on the scale of dozens, probably 100+, of individual teams). It's more likely that it's hard to quickly change the direction of large ships. I've certainly seen my leadership (and engineers) take things like GDPR compliance extremely seriously, to the point that I've seen it as a cultural shift over the last couple of years.
valuearb 6y ago
Apples fines were because EU commissioners demanded Ireland charge them higher tax rates. The courts ruled they were wrong in doing so. Not an anti trust issue at all. Do you really want to live in a world where bureaucrats can issue fines without recourse?
dodobirdlord 6y ago
> The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google. > Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future. First of all, Google has paid their EU fines. Secondly, I think you misunderstand the nature of what's going on with these fines. A combination of strong trade agreements and savvy tax jurisdiction selection has left most EU countries with little capacity to tax US tech companies, so they have resorted to fines. The play is old hat at this point. Pass a piece of vague legislation that probably applies to the target company's activities, then fine them before clarifying the law to the extent that the company can actually avoid breaking it. Rinse and repeat. The EU fined Google a few billion dollars last year, and the year before, and now this year, and they will surely do it again next year and the year after that. This is just a roundabout means of taxing Google. It will of course never change anything about Google, except that each year once the law is clarified Google's lawyers will make sure that they are scrupulously no longer violating this year's new regulation, but the extent of the regulation and the value of the fines is calibrated to not be so high that it would actually drive Google to extract itself from EU jurisdiction. Now that it's clear they've lost their tax battle with Apple I expect the EU will begin fining them as well.

isoprophlex 6y ago

Being an asshole apparently works out great, at scale. A mom and pop shop would be hit much harder by a scam like this, I think.

danilocesar 6y ago

But from a business POV, it makes sense. Assuming that they have a million returns monthly, and from those only a dozen are scams (I have no idea about the real numbers, just guessing), it would be way more expensive to them to do a deep inspection on every returned item than do a soft/cheap check on the returns. When something falls throught the cracks (and the user find out), customer care will just send a new one (usually it's hassle free) and the company absorb the damage from that one scam, which it's usually cheap. I know it hurts when amazon relies on real customers to do their deep inspection, but it's all about costs. I don't expect this to change. I would love to stop using amazon for a million reasons, but this is not one of them.

ganoushoreilly 6y ago
The HDD swap isn't unique to Amazon either, this is something that has plagued retail since birth. There was always jokes about "rocks in the box" in the 90's when I worked at an electronics store. You hit the head of the nail though, it's a calculated loss / cost. With retail they dealt with physical theft way more than this and anticipated up to 10% of inventory loss for a plethora of reasons. It's not surprising the thieves have transitioned here. I would expect that between this and mixed inventory, these issues are far more common that people would think. While amazon is at fault for passing it back on, I imagine they make it right. They have always fixed issues for me with no hesitation. It sucks, but I wouldn't get out a pitchfork unless they denied it. And like I mentioned above, Amazon isn't unique, any company has this happen.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Of course they always make it right. The question is where does the discount from my doing their inspection for them go? It doesn't go to the prices, they're the same everywhere. It doesn't go to the shipping, that's my Prime account.
  - danilocesar 6y ago
    well, Amazon prices are low. And I'm not ignoring the fact that they also can do that because they run a huge monopoly that crushes the mid-size business and destroys the competition, I'm just pointing that they are low. Usually lower than the competition. That's basically your reward. Imagine that mister Bezos start spending millions of dollars and employing an army to do deep-check into every item returned. Who's paying that bill? Amazon's stockholders won't. You will. I will. But, as I said in a previous post, I'm not defending Amazon's behavior. I'm just pointing out that it's all about cost and the vast majority of users benefit from this as well (with lower prices and no-question-asked-return-policy), while a tiny-tiny minority of them might face an inconvenience of returning an used item from time to time.

bredren 6y ago

From what I can tell tricks are being pulled directly by brands in all online sales. Repackaging, or even directly steering imperfect merchandise to online orders is happening all of the time. “Model” or perfect versions are sent to retailers where consumers will interact with the product is purchased. Online, photos and videos show the same “perfect” products. I’ve seen clear examples of this by Fossil and Pendleton. I believe Apple does this in some cases, at least in repackaging. There are rational reasons to do this as a business but it can be a bad thing for consumers. Fwiw, Amazon has among the best return policies and the least friction in completing a return. Return friction is where a company‘s selective inventory quality steering borders on anti-customer.

kd5bjo 6y ago
This practice predates internet shopping; before Amazon, it was the discount retailers like Walmart that were getting seconds.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Is this still true? I recently went to a Walmart for the first time in a decade+, and it was obvious most of the items weren't seconds, they were just cheaply made. Even higher-end retailers with outlet stores have just started making lower-end merchandise specifically for outlet stores.
  - kd5bjo 6y ago
    I meant seconds in the sense of second-quality items: ones that wouldn't pass QA for their primary distribution channels, whether that's high-end department stores or their own storefronts. That's different from secondhand items, which are items that had been previously sold, used, and then refurbished to be sold again.
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    Walmart doesn't sell 'seconds' as you might normally consider. They do often receive inferior quality merchandise from their suppliers, often under the same SKU. This is how they compete on price. It's like the mattress business, at scale.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Pure players are getting EAFP on us rather than LBYL, I wonder where they learned that frop...

doublesCs 6y ago

Amazon's example is completely different from that of Google or Facebook. - In Amazon's case, it is only Amazon that is that victim of its mistakes: if they decide it's more efficient to give money to scammers than to avoid getting scammed, I couldn't care less. - In the case of Google and Facebook, they're not the victims for disrespecting their user's privacy, their users are. So, regulators should keep making the fines larger until it really really hurts them.

teachrdan 6y ago
The victim isn't Amazon, it's the next customer who buys the returned product--which wasn't even necessarily labeled as such. Now if Amazon included a guide with returned products, instructing customers what to evidence of fraud or tampering to look for? That would be a different story.
- doublesCs 6y ago
  No, the next customer will just return it as well. It's a mild inconvenience, the customer is hardly the victim. I'm for regulation of bad corporate actors, but punishing for mediocre customer service is going too far.
  - treis 6y ago
    If they're buying something as "new" and getting something that has been returned and is not factory sealed then they're getting ripped off. This time the buyer caught it, but what if it had been swapped for the same item with 80% of it's expected life used?
    - jowsie 6y ago
      In this case it was a known return. That's what amazon warehouse deals is.
      - treis 6y ago

rmrfstar 6y ago

> Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them What we're seeing is a widespread use of "fractional fraud". Transactions and business lines that are 1%-5% fraudulent are unlikely to be challenged, but have a huge effect on profitability. The best example I've seen is Bunnie Huang's deep dive on counterfeit SD cards [1]. Margins on SD cards are like 1%, so blending in defective cards at a 1% rate can double your profit. Another example is retail trade payment for order flow. A major broker-dealer was just sanctioned for front-running its clients. As long as your defect ("mistake") rate stays below your customer's response threshold, you can keep doing it. It is impossible to overstate how important social norms are for policing this kind of misconduct. [1] https://nostarch.com/hardwarehackerpaperback https://nostarch.com/hardwarehackerpaperback

crawsome 6y ago
At Google, they say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission".
- reaperducer 6y ago
  At Google, they say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission". I hope you're not under the impression that this is another SV "innovation," because it's been a saying since at least the 1600's. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/
rement 6y ago
I'm reminded of an internet fable > A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. > The next day the farmer drove up and said: “Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey died.” > Kenny replied, “Well then, just give me my money back.” > The farmer said, “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.” > Kenny said, “OK, then just unload the donkey.” > The farmer asked, “What ya gonna do with him?” > Kenny: “I’m going to raffle him off.” > Farmer: “You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!” > Kenny: “Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he is dead.” > A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, “What happened with that dead donkey?” > Kenny: “I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at $2 a piece and made a profit of $998.00.” > Farmer: “Didn’t anyone complain?” > Kenny: “Just the guy who won. So I gave him his $2 back.” > Kenny grew up and eventually became the chairman of [company you want to mock]

product50 6y ago

As a user I am totally happy with Amazon's service. They shouldn't change their entire setup and make things a lot more expensive for everyone based on these infrequent use cases. And Amazon customer support is awesome. Your bullet 2 is false.

stkdump 6y ago

> The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them. In general I agree that this is a problem. But I don't see how this is an instance of that. I mean, how are they supposed to respond? "We will find the customer that scammed us and sue him. We will find the employee that checked this item and fire him."

lstamour 6y ago
You could start taking photos during the inspection of the returned item and before sending it, send a photo to the customer to confirm it’s what they ordered? You could establish a policy where you offer posted discounts (and lose money) if items aren’t as described? You could involve manufacturers in the re-certification process such that for high value items there’s maybe an extra shipping expense and time delay to market but the item’s quality could be verified before resale? You could strictly accept and sell only new items, putting returned or third-party FBA items in less efficient markets but completely isolated from the main market of trusted goods from known validated sources in your supply chain?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]