4 ms·

I notice this article talks a lot about hope, but not about returning the item, getting your money back, or fining the seller or Amazon. Does the US not have an

by mcv 4y ago

I notice this article talks a lot about hope, but not about returning the item, getting your money back, or fining the seller or Amazon. Does the US not have any consumer protection laws? This is blatant false advertising. There should be fines for both the seller and for Amazon, and all money paid by customers who bought this, should be paid back. Make it automatic for obvious frauds so the scammers also get punished for their review scam. It's ridiculous that this is allowed to exist. This is exactly why a free market requires some regulation; you've got to know what you're buying.

MattGaiser 4y ago
Amazon has the most generous refunds I have ever experienced. I once had a return and complained to customer service that their chosen delivery provider was a bit far, so they just let me keep it.
- pasc1878 4y ago
  But it still costs tyhe customer. In time which is more precious than anything else.
NavinF 4y ago
Dude, Amazon will refund you for any reason including "I no longer need this product" without charging a restocking fee. All large retailers (Costco, Walmart, Target, etc) are like like this in the US. Every wondered why Americans roll their eyes when Europeans brag about consumer protection laws?
- rwmj 4y ago
  The return policies you've described are guaranteed by law in Europe. I'd rather had the law cover guaranteed minimum return policies across all shops.
  - mcv 4y ago
    But even with return policies, many of the buyers of these things will not even realise they've been scammed, or when they do, might feel returning the item to be too much trouble. So return policies aren't going to fix this. There needs to be actual enforcement of consumer protection laws.
pas 4y ago
free market requires competition, otherwise it stops optimizing for providing better and better value propositions each market is an optimization algorithm, but if the search space is too big, it gets into a pathological state (market failure), and any economic surplus resulting from optimization goes into keeping it in this state (which is likely profit maximizing for a small subset of participants, sellers or buyers, depending on monopoly or monopsony situation of course) Amazon spends its profit on crushing competition instead of providing a better marketplace. Regulations are ineffective if they can't move the market out of this failure mode. (I.e. fines have to be big enough and the actual compliance has to affect a large enough part of the market.) As long as it takes a few months (or less) to set up a new established seller of things, and as long as the advantage of having a non-fraudelent business is less than doing these scams, the scamming will continue. Fundamental dilemma of Amazon is that they want fungibility. A book is a book, even if it's new, mint condition, used, dusty, hardcover, paperback, large font, high quality, cheap paper, fancy cover, etc. But this works well only for books, where it's obvious to check. (Are every page readable and present? yes, great. no? refund.) But this breaks down almost immediately where fakes and knockoffs and cheap shit is much cheaper to produce (so the price is very competitive), works kind of okayish initially (so hard to check for non-experts). For example any appliance and furniture (see the endless variations on office and "gaming" chairs, tablets, powerbanks, USB hubs, cables, gadgets, mouses, keyboards, monitors, dietary supplements, fitness machines, car addons, etc.)

by mcv 4y ago

MattGaiser 4y ago

Amazon has the most generous refunds I have ever experienced. I once had a return and complained to customer service that their chosen delivery provider was a bit far, so they just let me keep it.

pasc1878 4y ago
But it still costs tyhe customer. In time which is more precious than anything else.

NavinF 4y ago

Dude, Amazon will refund you for any reason including "I no longer need this product" without charging a restocking fee. All large retailers (Costco, Walmart, Target, etc) are like like this in the US. Every wondered why Americans roll their eyes when Europeans brag about consumer protection laws?

rwmj 4y ago
The return policies you've described are guaranteed by law in Europe. I'd rather had the law cover guaranteed minimum return policies across all shops.
- mcv 4y ago
  But even with return policies, many of the buyers of these things will not even realise they've been scammed, or when they do, might feel returning the item to be too much trouble. So return policies aren't going to fix this. There needs to be actual enforcement of consumer protection laws.

pas 4y ago

free market requires competition, otherwise it stops optimizing for providing better and better value propositions each market is an optimization algorithm, but if the search space is too big, it gets into a pathological state (market failure), and any economic surplus resulting from optimization goes into keeping it in this state (which is likely profit maximizing for a small subset of participants, sellers or buyers, depending on monopoly or monopsony situation of course) Amazon spends its profit on crushing competition instead of providing a better marketplace. Regulations are ineffective if they can't move the market out of this failure mode. (I.e. fines have to be big enough and the actual compliance has to affect a large enough part of the market.) As long as it takes a few months (or less) to set up a new established seller of things, and as long as the advantage of having a non-fraudelent business is less than doing these scams, the scamming will continue. Fundamental dilemma of Amazon is that they want fungibility. A book is a book, even if it's new, mint condition, used, dusty, hardcover, paperback, large font, high quality, cheap paper, fancy cover, etc. But this works well only for books, where it's obvious to check. (Are every page readable and present? yes, great. no? refund.) But this breaks down almost immediately where fakes and knockoffs and cheap shit is much cheaper to produce (so the price is very competitive), works kind of okayish initially (so hard to check for non-experts). For example any appliance and furniture (see the endless variations on office and "gaming" chairs, tablets, powerbanks, USB hubs, cables, gadgets, mouses, keyboards, monitors, dietary supplements, fitness machines, car addons, etc.)