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Amazon investigates after high-value orders were switched for cheaper products

121 points by vanilla-almond 3y ago

throwaway22032 3y ago
I had this happen years ago, an order above £1k in value replaced with nappies. It was sorted relatively quickly. I do wonder what happened along the chain and whether it was investigatwd.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Amazon has gotten to the point, where I no longer use it for orders over about $50 (USD). I go directly to the vendors' sites; even if they are more expensive (sometimes, the vendor uses Amazon for fulfillment, but at least, I can be sure I am getting the real thing). To give them credit, they are quite responsive, when it comes to refunds (I have even had to use the Amazon guarantee, once, because the seller ghosted me). To give them shame: When you do something quite often, you get good at it.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I haven't used Amazon in years (I do what you do or buy it in person), but my understanding was that even FBA posed risks: Amazon will commingle "equivalent" stock by SKU, meaning that a vendor who uses FBA for their own site may end up shipping you a counterfeited or spoofed item. That understanding may be old or incorrect, but that's the story I've heard from others before.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    At least some who do this have a contract that Amazon won.t comingle.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      And in the worst case, you have the seller’s customer support available.
    - BeetleB 3y ago
      When you send new goods to Amazon to sell, you can tell them not to comingle. This way if someone buys from you, they are guaranteed to get the item you sent them.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Why they don’t slap a label on each box is beyond me.
    - cosmie 3y ago
      That's the default option. Commingling is an opt-in process to use the manufacture barcode instead of a unique label on each box, and makes it easier for Amazon to potentially fulfill orders by being able to pick inventory from a wider range of warehouses and make shipping more efficient.
  - cosmie 3y ago
    It's called stickerless, commingled inventory[1], and it's where they commingle inventory from multiple sources based on the manufacturer barcode instead of a unique seller-item-specific barcode label, and will use any product with the same barcode in their distribution network to fulfill the purchase regardless of which source/seller provided that individual piece of inventory originally. From reading [1] it looks like they've tightened up the requirements for it, and put some mitigations in place around counterfeits. But it's also an opt-in process, so would be nice if they made it visible when you are or aren't purchasing from a seller utilizing it so you can decide yourself on a given purchase whether to go with the cheapest option or potentially opt for a more expensive listing but knowing that a product isn't commingled and was provided by the seller you're purchasing from. [1] https://www.sourcing-monster.com/amazon-commingled-inventory/ https://www.sourcing-monster.com/amazon-commingled-inventory...
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Twice so far in the last 2 years, I decided to pay extra to buy from a brand’s official website (small time, not a big company), only to end up receiving the order from Amazon. Now I just try to buy from the big non Amazon retailers, or other very reputable brands.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Anker started trying to direct you to Amazon at some points in your shopping. There’s no fucking way I’m buying electronics off of Amazon anymore.
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    I didn't know Amazon does this, but it's smart. If you're a small-time company, shipping orders on your own is a pain. If you can pay Amazon to do the warehousing and fulfillment, you avoid the hassle, and your customers get better delivery time.
PaulKeeble 3y ago
I found Amazon historically has been very good about refunds and replacements, better than almost anywhere else. However nowadays its getting harder and their chat service has been replaced with automation as has the phone service and while they exist you have to search quite hard to find them. The automation unfortunately isn't dealing well with this sort of problem. As Amazon is automating via web interface a lot of this sort of thing its also too narrowly defined the refund/replacement service and its bound to cause issues. Not having an easy fall back to a human is also the error which a lot of silicon valley companies seem to fall into. So I tend to use Amazon only for things I can't find elsewhere or relatively cheaper items, anything expensive is usually cheaper and better supported elsewhere.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  > Not having an easy fall back to a human is also the error which a lot of silicon valley companies seem to fall into it is explicitly cheaper and scales, to automate all response. Companies that paid humans to do customer service have been crushed by the scale of the new companies. A dozen hundred-year-old retailers in the USA are closing all their stores, they had hundreds of people making sales and doing customer service, while earning a living for themselves and their families.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    It's cheaper but ineffective. The trick is to use automation as much as possible and not a drop more. Excellent customer service agents are actually helpful for this. The agents you have aren't mindless drones, they're people and they don't want to do yet another stupid call where they explain that button X does thing Y, even though it's labelled X, they can gladly explain what needs improving because they're interacting with your customers all day - and then you can fix it. Cherish these people. My good bank (First Direct) has done really well at this. I can call them about anything 24/7, a human answers about as quickly as a person would answer their own phone, maybe 5-10 seconds, not long enough for one of those stupid "We're very busy" messages. But I rarely talk to them because all routine stuff just works correctly so I don't need to. I called them once to ask what happens if I need a whole lot of cash right soon (since they don't have physical locations, the answer was for very large amounts I need to give a lot of notice but a courier brings me the cash) and decades ago I called them because I wanted my debit card to work in the ATMs for other banks (remember when it didn't? Maybe you're too young). Also I called them to transfer money to buy my current home because that's too much money to be authorised by a web form apparently.
fortran77 3y ago
Is this just a mistake (the person responsible for picking and labeling got the wrong box) or did wharehouse workerw figure out how to steal items somehow?
- uxhacker 3y ago
  Does anybody know how this happens?
  - falcolas 3y ago
    Comingled inventory from 3rd party sellers "Fulfilled by Amazon" and returns that look like they were never opened, and are thus re-sold.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      The returns thing doesn't fly. No one in amazon is taking sealed shipping boxes and putting a new label on them, assuming that the item is inside.
      - spzb 3y ago
        No, but if you have the facility to apply new shrink wrap so it looks factory sealed, Amazon aren’t going to x-ray it to check what’s inside.
        aix1 3y ago
        Hm, that's an interesting fraud vector. Presumably it applies to pretty much any retailer though? And doesn't apply to items with tamper-proof factory seals that are hard to counterfeit.
        waqf 3y ago
        You only have to counterfeit it to the standard of Amazon's returned-items check though, not to the OEM's standard.
djtango 3y ago
Disclaimer: used to work for Amazon a long time ago I'm a little surprised to hear this as Amazon has only ever been a fantastic CX when it came to returns and this was by design from the early days. That said, I can see a confluence of factors coming together - Amazon is needing to shore up costs as its share price is being hammered. This would lead to customer service being squeezed (or automated) and more stringent returns policies. Also in the UK the cost of living crisis is def causing a measurable uptick in crime presumably at every node of the logistics pipeline, from picking & packing through to delivery and in the window between delivery and customer receiving the package. In London package theft is a huge problem atm and wouldn't be surprised if this was a deliberate bait n switch rather than benign accident
- throwaway173738 3y ago
  A lot of the CS issues I’ve had with Amazon started during the pandemic and I’ve since stopped using them. Stuff was always a day or two later, or it would disappear entirely for a few days. Contacting CSRs usually wouldn’t even understand my questions and would repeat the same few options like robots. The last straw was when someone delivered an empty package to my front porch and the CSR asked me to return the item for a refund.
Reason077 3y ago
I purchased a refurbished iPhone 13 recently from Amazon's renewed store, as it seemed like a better deal than blackmarket.co.uk and more reliable than eBay. Probably the most expensive thing I ever bought from Amazon but I'm very happy with it. Despite being one of the lower "grades" of refurb, it looks brand new, has 100% battery health, and is still under Apple warranty until October. Saved hundreds of £ compared to buying new! I have had a couple of instances in the past of "wrong product sent" (eg: ordered toothbrush heads, got a phone case?!) with Amazon but it certainly didn't happen on this occasion.
- 77pt77 3y ago
  > has 100% battery health Better than my brand new laptop that came at around 90%.
ACV001 3y ago
This reply from amazon says everything you need to know: "We are sorry that these customer experiences did not meet the high standards we expect." I somehow read this as - the customer is guilty ;)
- hinkley 3y ago
  I think there’s a heretofore unnamed evil twin to semantic satiation where you edit copy too much and sound like a narcissist.
toasterlovin 3y ago
(Source: Sell on Amazon, understand their processes) There are several potential explanations for what’s going on here. These are the most likely (imo): 1. Customers are engaging in return fraud where they “return” an expensive item for a refund, but send back a different, cheaper item. Amazon’s warehouse personnel don’t catch it and then the cheaper item ends up in inventory as the more expensive item, which then gets shipped out to a different customer. 2. 3rd party sellers are engaging in fraud by sending in cheaper inventory and claiming it is actually more expensive items. Customers then receive the cheaper items when they order the more expensive item. The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Everyone gives Amazon a hard time, but in our experience, they are usually pretty good about doing the right thing for customers. They’re actually trying to solve a hard problem at scale (be a universal marketplace that delivers in 1-2 days). They make mistakes, but imo actually do a pretty good job.
- Macha 3y ago
  > The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from” and “sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Thanks to comingling, this is not a cure-all. Amazon will store all the e.g. canon cameras from themselves and third party shippers in a single area in their warehouse, and just deduct 1 from the inventory of the one who made the sale.
  - toasterlovin 3y ago
    They don't commingle inventory. They know exactly which supplier/seller sent in which units. Here is a quote from their seller support article about the topic: "Used by default for eligible products, manufacturer barcodes use virtual tracking to trace the source of the products throughout the fulfillment process. Identical items from different suppliers are not physically stored together in a fulfillment center. However, Virtual tracking allows Amazon to fulfill orders using identical products from different suppliers. This enables us to process a customer order more efficiently and expedite its delivery from the fulfillment center closest to the customer." So they will use inventory from different sellers/suppliers to fulfill an order, but they can trace counterfeit/incorrect inventory back to the source if there's an issue.
Someone1234 3y ago
I've received multiple counterfeit, or tempered with items shipped & sold by Amazon.com. My most recent example was box containing six Lego Minifigs before Christmas. Luckily we opened the outer box, to find all six of the Minifig bags had been opened, Minifigs removed, and random plastic put in the box (to make up the weight?), then box carefully resealed. Amazon did replace it, but ultimately Amazon cannot know if it was us or some previous returnee who committed the return fraud against them because they don't individually track previously returned items. That's the big problem with Amazon's process, when an item is returned, before it is released back into inventory, they need to uniquely track it. If it gets returned twice they need to know (and associate blame correctly).
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  Yup, I think most of Amazon's issues would be solved if they could uniquely identify items. Unfortunately, that would take human labor (can't trust third parties to be honest about it) and there's still room for errors--after getting the same wrong item again I looked at it carefully. They were shipping me a wrong but very similar (to the point that someone without domain knowledge would likely mistake them) item with a label stuck on that was for the item I was actually after. The probably could do it with returned items, though.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  A lot of this is their own fault for starting a marketplace and doing nothing to curate it though. Everything I had problems with were marketplace items not sold by Amazon but some nonsense-name "company" from Hong Kong or Shenzhen.
- fmajid 3y ago
  Normally Amazon doesn't reuse returned items, they are sent straight to specialist recovery firms that bid for cratefuls of returned items by weight in the hope of finding some gold in the dross. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-returns-liquidation-warehouses https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-returns-liquidation-w... Most likely your problem is linked to Amazon's "stickerless commingled inventory" program, where inventory from third-party merchants, including crooked ones, is mixed with Amazon's own, so even if you order "sold and shipped by Amazon" you might still get counterfeit goods or worse. Frankly, Amazon has reached a level of untrustworthiness you really want to shop anywhere else, specially for electricals and other items that potentially pose a safety hazard. I go to B&H Photo for all my electronics.
lerela 3y ago
A few years ago, the package I received contained a bottle of water instead of the phone I ordered. Amazon promptly refunded me and I was quite pleased, because I was a bit concerned by how I would sound to the customer service representative telling this story
prakhar897 3y ago
I ordered AC from amazon and received an older version. The whole ordeal was interesting, to say the least. I've written about it here: https://pgpt.substack.com/p/how-amazon-deceives-its-customers https://pgpt.substack.com/p/how-amazon-deceives-its-customer... The main point is that these companies can waste hours or even days of your time while automating everything on their end. Hence, they are incentivized to make profitable "accidents" and hope you're not stubborn.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > these companies can waste hours or even days of your time while automating everything on their end Amazon itself, as the seller, is one of "these companies". Shipped me a damaged, obviously repackaged monitor as "new", then misdirected me to (well, semi-automated) chat as "quickest way to return". This was a flat-out lie, what it actually led to was a series of three progressively higher discount offers. After refusing all, half a day later I was told to follow the standard online instructions for a return.
- kube-system 3y ago
  That’s interesting, is the installation through Amazon? I’m guessing not in the US? I bought an AC unit on Amazon here in the US and they just send it like any other product in a box, and it’s up to you to figure the rest out.
omgomgomgomg 3y ago
As a former amazonian, I am actually a bit surprised to read this. Am outside on mobile, so I have to be brief. During covid, there was this mercy period for delayed deliveries, as it wasnt really amazon causing the delay, but rather the last mile service or the whole supply chain. They used to absolutelly always refund no questions asked and depending on the service they would send return labels. If you have worked at amazon, then you will know this can only happen due to comingling(usa issue mostly) or malicious sellers in for a quick buck. To make money with bad products its pretty hard on amazon, they will simply refund the orders the buyers request a refund for and additionally hold the sellers fund in reserve until account health metrics are sorted out. That, or amazon has changed their overall strategies making refunds now harder, but all their internal rules speak against that. Their first level support is so so, their second level and seller support is sonething of the best in the world. Keep in mind, the final buyer is not their customer, the seller is. But brand pr comes before sellers, make no mistake.
villgax 3y ago
Xray/ of products being warehoused & weighing/laser scanning until delivery would be a way to deter the drivers from doing mischief as well
Havoc 3y ago
Had a switched gfx card on a warehouse purchase. Essentially a weaker one. Pretty sure that was an unethical customer not Amazon though
PaulAJ 3y ago
One thing to remember: Small Claims Court (or whatever it is called where you live). Most jurisdictions have something like this: a light-weight court system without lawyers for low-value cases. Pay a minimal fee, like 10% of your claim, up front, and your claim is in. Just make sure you know exactly who your counterparty is. If the item is sold by someone else via Amazon then your first target is the seller, not Amazon. HOWEVER there may be the Amazon A-Z guarantee, which is part of their deal with you, and which you can sue them over. I'm always amazed about how stories like this never seem to talk about "here is how you use the court system when MegaCorp stonewalls you".
- RHSeeger 3y ago
  For a lot of people the filing fee plus the cost of an entire day off work (for court) is pretty steep. Honestly, for anything expensive, I tend to use Amazon as part of the "greater source of reviews", but I order it as close to direct from the manufacturer as possible.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    I stopped ordering from manufacturers, even like Dell, because you won’t reliably find the invoice and get decent shipping. I’ve just made a CC refund on Xiaomi for example, I thought it was a well-enough established company, I’m still waiting for the package.
- gist 3y ago
  Winning in small claims (or any court) and actually collecting the money are two different things. I found a very interesting paradox from doing a fair amount of small claims cases many years ago. Basically if we were right (we were the company making the claim and should have been paid) the defendant lied and we lost. However if we were wrong (ie the claimant was right had a valid defense to not paying) we typically won (because they were honest and we could exploit and dance around what they were saying.
  - tyingq 3y ago
    For larger companies, they may offer to settle before the court case to avoid the cost of sending a lawyer.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
I bought a Pixel 7 Pro from Amazon because Google doesn't sell them in my country. Amazon was the best of many bad options. It's a high value purchase just like the one in TFA... I hope nothing of the sort happens to me.
GlacierFox 3y ago
Off on a tangent here but I purchased a Logitech mouse from Amazon. The middle mouse button stopped working but it was still under warranty. After contacting the Logitech support centre they gave me a code to give to Amazon for a replacement. I ended up on live chat with someone who did not understand what a warranty was - telling me "You have used it, so the warranty is void." 2 hours later he passed me onto someone else who immediately came across as 'not inside an Indian support centre megabuilding in Dheli'. Sorted it out in 2 minutes.
noncoml 3y ago
Amazon? Oh you mean AliExpress of the west? It’s sad what became to this company. Myriad of cheap Chinese knockoffs, counterfeit items even when sold by “Amazon”, delivery times in weeks now, and always the possibility of getting scammed if you are not careful enough, aka “third party sellers”
- fmajid 3y ago
  Please do not insult AliExpress this way. I've never received a counterfeit product from AliExpress, unlike Amazon, and on the one occasion the product wasn't what was advertised, they took care of it without making excuses like what the OP article mentions.
  - noncoml 3y ago
    :) fair enough! Lol
m3kw9 3y ago
ordered a lot from amazon 100s, never had a problem.
voytec 3y ago
> Some victims were denied refunds until the BBC put their complaints to Amazon. So people complained to the BBC instead of involving lawyers or reporting Amazon's fraud to the police? I get it that media coverage can help but refusal to replace fraudulent deliveries calls for law-related actions, not asking if Amazon can graciously inspect things on their end. WTF.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > So people complained to the BBC instead of involving lawyers or reporting Amazon’s fraud to the police? Lawyers aren’t free and police aren’t going to do anything (the right government consumer protection authorities might, but the timeline is likely to be longer than if you happen to attract useful media attention.)
todd8 3y ago
This has happened to me twice at brick at mortar stores. Now, I open packages before I check out where practical (like over the counter at a camera store) or as soon as I exit the store otherwise. In one case, at Best Buy, I purchased a camera and at home I discovered a less expensive camera in the box than the one I paid for. Best Buy took care of it even though I brought it back around an hour after I purchased it. My other experience was much worse. A local computer parts store sold me a tape drive and the box contained a cheaper model. They simply wouldn’t let me return or exchange it. In general, my experience has been that the big box stores like Home Depot or Best Buy will take returns for something that doesn’t function properly without question while a small local store will sometime refuse. I’ve lived in the same city for decades and there is a ceiling fan store that I will not shop at because of an experience I had there twenty five years ago —- maybe I should drop the grudge at this point.
Tempest1981 3y ago
So customers need a BBC news story to get good support. Great. How does this scale?
wolverine876 3y ago
Stop using Amazon if they treat you poorly, or if you see them treating others poorly and reasonably expect the same. Without much trouble at all, I've cut my Amazon usage ~98%. A tip to HN readers: With the Internet, a nearly free, global, wide-area network, you can connect to any business in the world and buy there. Seriously, you may be accustomed to using Amazon and so it's immediately easier. But imagine Amazon went out of business. You will quickly become accustomed to other retailers and forget all about Amazon.
mrtweetyhack 3y ago
[dead]

throwaway22032 3y ago

I had this happen years ago, an order above £1k in value replaced with nappies. It was sorted relatively quickly. I do wonder what happened along the chain and whether it was investigatwd.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

Amazon has gotten to the point, where I no longer use it for orders over about $50 (USD). I go directly to the vendors' sites; even if they are more expensive (sometimes, the vendor uses Amazon for fulfillment, but at least, I can be sure I am getting the real thing). To give them credit, they are quite responsive, when it comes to refunds (I have even had to use the Amazon guarantee, once, because the seller ghosted me). To give them shame: When you do something quite often, you get good at it.

woodruffw 3y ago
I haven't used Amazon in years (I do what you do or buy it in person), but my understanding was that even FBA posed risks: Amazon will commingle "equivalent" stock by SKU, meaning that a vendor who uses FBA for their own site may end up shipping you a counterfeited or spoofed item. That understanding may be old or incorrect, but that's the story I've heard from others before.
- bluGill 3y ago
  At least some who do this have a contract that Amazon won.t comingle.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    And in the worst case, you have the seller’s customer support available.
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    When you send new goods to Amazon to sell, you can tell them not to comingle. This way if someone buys from you, they are guaranteed to get the item you sent them.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Why they don’t slap a label on each box is beyond me.
  - cosmie 3y ago
    That's the default option. Commingling is an opt-in process to use the manufacture barcode instead of a unique label on each box, and makes it easier for Amazon to potentially fulfill orders by being able to pick inventory from a wider range of warehouses and make shipping more efficient.
- cosmie 3y ago
  It's called stickerless, commingled inventory[1], and it's where they commingle inventory from multiple sources based on the manufacturer barcode instead of a unique seller-item-specific barcode label, and will use any product with the same barcode in their distribution network to fulfill the purchase regardless of which source/seller provided that individual piece of inventory originally. From reading [1] it looks like they've tightened up the requirements for it, and put some mitigations in place around counterfeits. But it's also an opt-in process, so would be nice if they made it visible when you are or aren't purchasing from a seller utilizing it so you can decide yourself on a given purchase whether to go with the cheapest option or potentially opt for a more expensive listing but knowing that a product isn't commingled and was provided by the seller you're purchasing from. [1] https://www.sourcing-monster.com/amazon-commingled-inventory/ https://www.sourcing-monster.com/amazon-commingled-inventory...
lotsofpulp 3y ago
Twice so far in the last 2 years, I decided to pay extra to buy from a brand’s official website (small time, not a big company), only to end up receiving the order from Amazon. Now I just try to buy from the big non Amazon retailers, or other very reputable brands.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Anker started trying to direct you to Amazon at some points in your shopping. There’s no fucking way I’m buying electronics off of Amazon anymore.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  I didn't know Amazon does this, but it's smart. If you're a small-time company, shipping orders on your own is a pain. If you can pay Amazon to do the warehousing and fulfillment, you avoid the hassle, and your customers get better delivery time.

PaulKeeble 3y ago

I found Amazon historically has been very good about refunds and replacements, better than almost anywhere else. However nowadays its getting harder and their chat service has been replaced with automation as has the phone service and while they exist you have to search quite hard to find them. The automation unfortunately isn't dealing well with this sort of problem. As Amazon is automating via web interface a lot of this sort of thing its also too narrowly defined the refund/replacement service and its bound to cause issues. Not having an easy fall back to a human is also the error which a lot of silicon valley companies seem to fall into. So I tend to use Amazon only for things I can't find elsewhere or relatively cheaper items, anything expensive is usually cheaper and better supported elsewhere.

mistrial9 3y ago
> Not having an easy fall back to a human is also the error which a lot of silicon valley companies seem to fall into it is explicitly cheaper and scales, to automate all response. Companies that paid humans to do customer service have been crushed by the scale of the new companies. A dozen hundred-year-old retailers in the USA are closing all their stores, they had hundreds of people making sales and doing customer service, while earning a living for themselves and their families.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  It's cheaper but ineffective. The trick is to use automation as much as possible and not a drop more. Excellent customer service agents are actually helpful for this. The agents you have aren't mindless drones, they're people and they don't want to do yet another stupid call where they explain that button X does thing Y, even though it's labelled X, they can gladly explain what needs improving because they're interacting with your customers all day - and then you can fix it. Cherish these people. My good bank (First Direct) has done really well at this. I can call them about anything 24/7, a human answers about as quickly as a person would answer their own phone, maybe 5-10 seconds, not long enough for one of those stupid "We're very busy" messages. But I rarely talk to them because all routine stuff just works correctly so I don't need to. I called them once to ask what happens if I need a whole lot of cash right soon (since they don't have physical locations, the answer was for very large amounts I need to give a lot of notice but a courier brings me the cash) and decades ago I called them because I wanted my debit card to work in the ATMs for other banks (remember when it didn't? Maybe you're too young). Also I called them to transfer money to buy my current home because that's too much money to be authorised by a web form apparently.

fortran77 3y ago

Is this just a mistake (the person responsible for picking and labeling got the wrong box) or did wharehouse workerw figure out how to steal items somehow?

uxhacker 3y ago
Does anybody know how this happens?
- falcolas 3y ago
  Comingled inventory from 3rd party sellers "Fulfilled by Amazon" and returns that look like they were never opened, and are thus re-sold.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    The returns thing doesn't fly. No one in amazon is taking sealed shipping boxes and putting a new label on them, assuming that the item is inside.
    - spzb 3y ago
      No, but if you have the facility to apply new shrink wrap so it looks factory sealed, Amazon aren’t going to x-ray it to check what’s inside.
      - aix1 3y ago
        Hm, that's an interesting fraud vector. Presumably it applies to pretty much any retailer though? And doesn't apply to items with tamper-proof factory seals that are hard to counterfeit.
        waqf 3y ago
        You only have to counterfeit it to the standard of Amazon's returned-items check though, not to the OEM's standard.

djtango 3y ago

Disclaimer: used to work for Amazon a long time ago I'm a little surprised to hear this as Amazon has only ever been a fantastic CX when it came to returns and this was by design from the early days. That said, I can see a confluence of factors coming together - Amazon is needing to shore up costs as its share price is being hammered. This would lead to customer service being squeezed (or automated) and more stringent returns policies. Also in the UK the cost of living crisis is def causing a measurable uptick in crime presumably at every node of the logistics pipeline, from picking & packing through to delivery and in the window between delivery and customer receiving the package. In London package theft is a huge problem atm and wouldn't be surprised if this was a deliberate bait n switch rather than benign accident

throwaway173738 3y ago
A lot of the CS issues I’ve had with Amazon started during the pandemic and I’ve since stopped using them. Stuff was always a day or two later, or it would disappear entirely for a few days. Contacting CSRs usually wouldn’t even understand my questions and would repeat the same few options like robots. The last straw was when someone delivered an empty package to my front porch and the CSR asked me to return the item for a refund.

Reason077 3y ago

I purchased a refurbished iPhone 13 recently from Amazon's renewed store, as it seemed like a better deal than blackmarket.co.uk and more reliable than eBay. Probably the most expensive thing I ever bought from Amazon but I'm very happy with it. Despite being one of the lower "grades" of refurb, it looks brand new, has 100% battery health, and is still under Apple warranty until October. Saved hundreds of £ compared to buying new! I have had a couple of instances in the past of "wrong product sent" (eg: ordered toothbrush heads, got a phone case?!) with Amazon but it certainly didn't happen on this occasion.

77pt77 3y ago
> has 100% battery health Better than my brand new laptop that came at around 90%.

ACV001 3y ago

This reply from amazon says everything you need to know: "We are sorry that these customer experiences did not meet the high standards we expect." I somehow read this as - the customer is guilty ;)

hinkley 3y ago
I think there’s a heretofore unnamed evil twin to semantic satiation where you edit copy too much and sound like a narcissist.

toasterlovin 3y ago

(Source: Sell on Amazon, understand their processes) There are several potential explanations for what’s going on here. These are the most likely (imo): 1. Customers are engaging in return fraud where they “return” an expensive item for a refund, but send back a different, cheaper item. Amazon’s warehouse personnel don’t catch it and then the cheaper item ends up in inventory as the more expensive item, which then gets shipped out to a different customer. 2. 3rd party sellers are engaging in fraud by sending in cheaper inventory and claiming it is actually more expensive items. Customers then receive the cheaper items when they order the more expensive item. The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Everyone gives Amazon a hard time, but in our experience, they are usually pretty good about doing the right thing for customers. They’re actually trying to solve a hard problem at scale (be a universal marketplace that delivers in 1-2 days). They make mistakes, but imo actually do a pretty good job.

Macha 3y ago
> The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from” and “sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Thanks to comingling, this is not a cure-all. Amazon will store all the e.g. canon cameras from themselves and third party shippers in a single area in their warehouse, and just deduct 1 from the inventory of the one who made the sale.
- toasterlovin 3y ago
  They don't commingle inventory. They know exactly which supplier/seller sent in which units. Here is a quote from their seller support article about the topic: "Used by default for eligible products, manufacturer barcodes use virtual tracking to trace the source of the products throughout the fulfillment process. Identical items from different suppliers are not physically stored together in a fulfillment center. However, Virtual tracking allows Amazon to fulfill orders using identical products from different suppliers. This enables us to process a customer order more efficiently and expedite its delivery from the fulfillment center closest to the customer." So they will use inventory from different sellers/suppliers to fulfill an order, but they can trace counterfeit/incorrect inventory back to the source if there's an issue.

Someone1234 3y ago

I've received multiple counterfeit, or tempered with items shipped & sold by Amazon.com. My most recent example was box containing six Lego Minifigs before Christmas. Luckily we opened the outer box, to find all six of the Minifig bags had been opened, Minifigs removed, and random plastic put in the box (to make up the weight?), then box carefully resealed. Amazon did replace it, but ultimately Amazon cannot know if it was us or some previous returnee who committed the return fraud against them because they don't individually track previously returned items. That's the big problem with Amazon's process, when an item is returned, before it is released back into inventory, they need to uniquely track it. If it gets returned twice they need to know (and associate blame correctly).

LorenPechtel 3y ago
Yup, I think most of Amazon's issues would be solved if they could uniquely identify items. Unfortunately, that would take human labor (can't trust third parties to be honest about it) and there's still room for errors--after getting the same wrong item again I looked at it carefully. They were shipping me a wrong but very similar (to the point that someone without domain knowledge would likely mistake them) item with a label stuck on that was for the item I was actually after. The probably could do it with returned items, though.
wkat4242 3y ago
A lot of this is their own fault for starting a marketplace and doing nothing to curate it though. Everything I had problems with were marketplace items not sold by Amazon but some nonsense-name "company" from Hong Kong or Shenzhen.
fmajid 3y ago
Normally Amazon doesn't reuse returned items, they are sent straight to specialist recovery firms that bid for cratefuls of returned items by weight in the hope of finding some gold in the dross. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-returns-liquidation-warehouses https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-returns-liquidation-w... Most likely your problem is linked to Amazon's "stickerless commingled inventory" program, where inventory from third-party merchants, including crooked ones, is mixed with Amazon's own, so even if you order "sold and shipped by Amazon" you might still get counterfeit goods or worse. Frankly, Amazon has reached a level of untrustworthiness you really want to shop anywhere else, specially for electricals and other items that potentially pose a safety hazard. I go to B&H Photo for all my electronics.

lerela 3y ago

A few years ago, the package I received contained a bottle of water instead of the phone I ordered. Amazon promptly refunded me and I was quite pleased, because I was a bit concerned by how I would sound to the customer service representative telling this story

prakhar897 3y ago

I ordered AC from amazon and received an older version. The whole ordeal was interesting, to say the least. I've written about it here: https://pgpt.substack.com/p/how-amazon-deceives-its-customers https://pgpt.substack.com/p/how-amazon-deceives-its-customer... The main point is that these companies can waste hours or even days of your time while automating everything on their end. Hence, they are incentivized to make profitable "accidents" and hope you're not stubborn.

everybodyknows 3y ago
> these companies can waste hours or even days of your time while automating everything on their end Amazon itself, as the seller, is one of "these companies". Shipped me a damaged, obviously repackaged monitor as "new", then misdirected me to (well, semi-automated) chat as "quickest way to return". This was a flat-out lie, what it actually led to was a series of three progressively higher discount offers. After refusing all, half a day later I was told to follow the standard online instructions for a return.
kube-system 3y ago
That’s interesting, is the installation through Amazon? I’m guessing not in the US? I bought an AC unit on Amazon here in the US and they just send it like any other product in a box, and it’s up to you to figure the rest out.

omgomgomgomg 3y ago

As a former amazonian, I am actually a bit surprised to read this. Am outside on mobile, so I have to be brief. During covid, there was this mercy period for delayed deliveries, as it wasnt really amazon causing the delay, but rather the last mile service or the whole supply chain. They used to absolutelly always refund no questions asked and depending on the service they would send return labels. If you have worked at amazon, then you will know this can only happen due to comingling(usa issue mostly) or malicious sellers in for a quick buck. To make money with bad products its pretty hard on amazon, they will simply refund the orders the buyers request a refund for and additionally hold the sellers fund in reserve until account health metrics are sorted out. That, or amazon has changed their overall strategies making refunds now harder, but all their internal rules speak against that. Their first level support is so so, their second level and seller support is sonething of the best in the world. Keep in mind, the final buyer is not their customer, the seller is. But brand pr comes before sellers, make no mistake.

villgax 3y ago

Xray/ of products being warehoused & weighing/laser scanning until delivery would be a way to deter the drivers from doing mischief as well

Havoc 3y ago

Had a switched gfx card on a warehouse purchase. Essentially a weaker one. Pretty sure that was an unethical customer not Amazon though

PaulAJ 3y ago

One thing to remember: Small Claims Court (or whatever it is called where you live). Most jurisdictions have something like this: a light-weight court system without lawyers for low-value cases. Pay a minimal fee, like 10% of your claim, up front, and your claim is in. Just make sure you know exactly who your counterparty is. If the item is sold by someone else via Amazon then your first target is the seller, not Amazon. HOWEVER there may be the Amazon A-Z guarantee, which is part of their deal with you, and which you can sue them over. I'm always amazed about how stories like this never seem to talk about "here is how you use the court system when MegaCorp stonewalls you".

RHSeeger 3y ago
For a lot of people the filing fee plus the cost of an entire day off work (for court) is pretty steep. Honestly, for anything expensive, I tend to use Amazon as part of the "greater source of reviews", but I order it as close to direct from the manufacturer as possible.
- eastbound 3y ago
  I stopped ordering from manufacturers, even like Dell, because you won’t reliably find the invoice and get decent shipping. I’ve just made a CC refund on Xiaomi for example, I thought it was a well-enough established company, I’m still waiting for the package.
gist 3y ago
Winning in small claims (or any court) and actually collecting the money are two different things. I found a very interesting paradox from doing a fair amount of small claims cases many years ago. Basically if we were right (we were the company making the claim and should have been paid) the defendant lied and we lost. However if we were wrong (ie the claimant was right had a valid defense to not paying) we typically won (because they were honest and we could exploit and dance around what they were saying.
- tyingq 3y ago
  For larger companies, they may offer to settle before the court case to avoid the cost of sending a lawyer.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

I bought a Pixel 7 Pro from Amazon because Google doesn't sell them in my country. Amazon was the best of many bad options. It's a high value purchase just like the one in TFA... I hope nothing of the sort happens to me.

GlacierFox 3y ago

Off on a tangent here but I purchased a Logitech mouse from Amazon. The middle mouse button stopped working but it was still under warranty. After contacting the Logitech support centre they gave me a code to give to Amazon for a replacement. I ended up on live chat with someone who did not understand what a warranty was - telling me "You have used it, so the warranty is void." 2 hours later he passed me onto someone else who immediately came across as 'not inside an Indian support centre megabuilding in Dheli'. Sorted it out in 2 minutes.

noncoml 3y ago

Amazon? Oh you mean AliExpress of the west? It’s sad what became to this company. Myriad of cheap Chinese knockoffs, counterfeit items even when sold by “Amazon”, delivery times in weeks now, and always the possibility of getting scammed if you are not careful enough, aka “third party sellers”

fmajid 3y ago
Please do not insult AliExpress this way. I've never received a counterfeit product from AliExpress, unlike Amazon, and on the one occasion the product wasn't what was advertised, they took care of it without making excuses like what the OP article mentions.
- noncoml 3y ago
  :) fair enough! Lol

m3kw9 3y ago

ordered a lot from amazon 100s, never had a problem.

voytec 3y ago

> Some victims were denied refunds until the BBC put their complaints to Amazon. So people complained to the BBC instead of involving lawyers or reporting Amazon's fraud to the police? I get it that media coverage can help but refusal to replace fraudulent deliveries calls for law-related actions, not asking if Amazon can graciously inspect things on their end. WTF.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> So people complained to the BBC instead of involving lawyers or reporting Amazon’s fraud to the police? Lawyers aren’t free and police aren’t going to do anything (the right government consumer protection authorities might, but the timeline is likely to be longer than if you happen to attract useful media attention.)

todd8 3y ago

This has happened to me twice at brick at mortar stores. Now, I open packages before I check out where practical (like over the counter at a camera store) or as soon as I exit the store otherwise. In one case, at Best Buy, I purchased a camera and at home I discovered a less expensive camera in the box than the one I paid for. Best Buy took care of it even though I brought it back around an hour after I purchased it. My other experience was much worse. A local computer parts store sold me a tape drive and the box contained a cheaper model. They simply wouldn’t let me return or exchange it. In general, my experience has been that the big box stores like Home Depot or Best Buy will take returns for something that doesn’t function properly without question while a small local store will sometime refuse. I’ve lived in the same city for decades and there is a ceiling fan store that I will not shop at because of an experience I had there twenty five years ago —- maybe I should drop the grudge at this point.

Tempest1981 3y ago

So customers need a BBC news story to get good support. Great. How does this scale?

wolverine876 3y ago

Stop using Amazon if they treat you poorly, or if you see them treating others poorly and reasonably expect the same. Without much trouble at all, I've cut my Amazon usage ~98%. A tip to HN readers: With the Internet, a nearly free, global, wide-area network, you can connect to any business in the world and buy there. Seriously, you may be accustomed to using Amazon and so it's immediately easier. But imagine Amazon went out of business. You will quickly become accustomed to other retailers and forget all about Amazon.

mrtweetyhack 3y ago

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