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(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. Cu

(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.
cronix 3y ago
This isn't like the customers mentioned in the article ordered an expensive 4090 graphics card and got a cheaper 3060 graphics card. This is buying a graphics card and receiving a box of condoms, a totally different product. I don't see how either of your scenarios fit into that. > Nick: Computer monitor, got handbag > Heather: Graphics card, got face masks > Phil: iPhone, got cat repellent > Alex: Earphones, got toilet cleaner > Leo: Laptop, got Ikea lamp
- toasterlovin 3y ago
  They just have humans accepting the returns from customers. Humans make mistakes. Simple as.
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  I've figured that what happened generally was an error in shipping--two boxes got swapped. When it's low value they just replace, but when it's dramatic they resist and we see these issues. I've gotten salsa rather than batteries, they simply refunded the batteries and told me to keep the salsa.
krisoft 3y ago
> The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. The way to avoid this is that Amazon steps up their game and verifies the high ticket items before shipping them. It simply has to fit into the profit margin of selling things with upwards of 500 dollar sticker price. And the other way to avoid this is simply dropping the “you have signed for the package so it is your fault if we scammed you” bullshit. > They make mistakes, but imo actually do a pretty good job. Yeah. No. They don’t do a pretty good job handling the non-happy path. I ordered a second hand book from them. It did not arrive even two months later than it was promised. Their database and interfaces correctly reflected of this fact. What should have happened? They should have noticed that they dropped the ball all the way to china and sent me a refund automatically with an email where they apologise about it. What would have been also acceptable, but shitty? A big button on the order where they were saying that it is two months late which refunds me instantly. Because of course. What happened instead? Super hard to get an agent to talk with. I’m quite handy with computers, and I had to use all my web-fu to figure out how to do it. Then after much waiting, the agent scolded me that my order is with a third party. As if I care. I ordered something from amazon’s website, amazon shows up in my bank statement, I clearly have a business relationship here with Amazon. And only after that did they refund me. None of this is a mistake. It is intentionally designed like this in the hopes that you forgot about your order, or find it too hard to jump through hoops.
- donalhunt 3y ago
  Good point on companies needing to focus on the happy path and non-happy path. Thanks for the reminder of the terminology. Doesn't Amazon make it easy to cancel items that have not been dispatched? I've noticed language highlighting this ability in the past.
- toasterlovin 3y ago
  You’re thinking about their processes from the point of view of how you, a unified being in complete control of its central nervous system, would handle things. But that is not what Amazon is. They are operating at the extremes of scale and have to build systems that work even though there are adversarial actors at all levels (customers, sellers, employees). Literally no one has done what they are doing before. Not excusing it, but we don’t actually have a benchmark to compare to. Having better visibility into it than your typical consumer, I actually think they do a decent job. They need to be better, but I can assure you that they are constantly iterating and improving. I would encourage you to consider that this is realistically the best that any company could be at building the type of system that Amazon is building.
govolckurself 3y ago
The way to avoid this is for Amazon to hold itself accountable, or, if it is unable to do so, a government. You're telling me the trillion-dollar logistics company can't figure out how to make sure people get the correct items?
semicolon_storm 3y ago
> 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. Shouldn't any returned items go into the "used" stock and not be intermingled with new items?
dragonwriter 3y ago
> The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Unless Amazon has given up the logistical economy of commingling “shipped and sold by Amazon” products with “fulfilled by Amazon”, and FBA products across sellers, this doesn't actually help.
- toasterlovin 3y ago
  They don't commingle. See my response to someone else.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Your explanation explains exactly how what they do does not differ from commingling in its effect on the provenance of what customers receive, only on after-the-fact traceability (and thus how ordering from a perceived-reliable seller does not protect against getting stuff from bad sellers.) (And, of course, choosing a reliable seller doesn’t protect you from “customer returned a different product and Amazon warehouse workers didn’t identify the problem when handling the return”, either.) So, in regard to the suggestion of using the right seller on Amazon’s platform to avoid the bad experience of getting the wrong thing delivered, for either of the suggested sources of the problem, (1) there is no meaningful difference from commingling in what they actually do, and (2) the solution doesn’t solve anything.
BeetleB 3y ago
> The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Former Amazon seller here. Comingling happens, so this is not much of a guarantee. Yes, Amazon will track which seller sent the item that you got, and can penalize them, but I still have to put up with a return process. Simply not an issue with places like Target and Walmart. Ever. If I order something new and Walmart is the seller, I will get a new, unadulterated item. And while we're at it, I've never had a problem with eBay either. You'd expect this to be a bigger problem there.
fmajid 3y ago
No, buying from Amazon first-party is insufficient to protect you because of stickerless commingled inventory, whereby that inventory may actually originate from a third-party merchant selling fakes or worse.

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.

cronix 3y ago

This isn't like the customers mentioned in the article ordered an expensive 4090 graphics card and got a cheaper 3060 graphics card. This is buying a graphics card and receiving a box of condoms, a totally different product. I don't see how either of your scenarios fit into that. > Nick: Computer monitor, got handbag > Heather: Graphics card, got face masks > Phil: iPhone, got cat repellent > Alex: Earphones, got toilet cleaner > Leo: Laptop, got Ikea lamp

toasterlovin 3y ago
They just have humans accepting the returns from customers. Humans make mistakes. Simple as.
LorenPechtel 3y ago
I've figured that what happened generally was an error in shipping--two boxes got swapped. When it's low value they just replace, but when it's dramatic they resist and we see these issues. I've gotten salsa rather than batteries, they simply refunded the batteries and told me to keep the salsa.

krisoft 3y ago

> The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. The way to avoid this is that Amazon steps up their game and verifies the high ticket items before shipping them. It simply has to fit into the profit margin of selling things with upwards of 500 dollar sticker price. And the other way to avoid this is simply dropping the “you have signed for the package so it is your fault if we scammed you” bullshit. > They make mistakes, but imo actually do a pretty good job. Yeah. No. They don’t do a pretty good job handling the non-happy path. I ordered a second hand book from them. It did not arrive even two months later than it was promised. Their database and interfaces correctly reflected of this fact. What should have happened? They should have noticed that they dropped the ball all the way to china and sent me a refund automatically with an email where they apologise about it. What would have been also acceptable, but shitty? A big button on the order where they were saying that it is two months late which refunds me instantly. Because of course. What happened instead? Super hard to get an agent to talk with. I’m quite handy with computers, and I had to use all my web-fu to figure out how to do it. Then after much waiting, the agent scolded me that my order is with a third party. As if I care. I ordered something from amazon’s website, amazon shows up in my bank statement, I clearly have a business relationship here with Amazon. And only after that did they refund me. None of this is a mistake. It is intentionally designed like this in the hopes that you forgot about your order, or find it too hard to jump through hoops.

donalhunt 3y ago
Good point on companies needing to focus on the happy path and non-happy path. Thanks for the reminder of the terminology. Doesn't Amazon make it easy to cancel items that have not been dispatched? I've noticed language highlighting this ability in the past.
toasterlovin 3y ago
You’re thinking about their processes from the point of view of how you, a unified being in complete control of its central nervous system, would handle things. But that is not what Amazon is. They are operating at the extremes of scale and have to build systems that work even though there are adversarial actors at all levels (customers, sellers, employees). Literally no one has done what they are doing before. Not excusing it, but we don’t actually have a benchmark to compare to. Having better visibility into it than your typical consumer, I actually think they do a decent job. They need to be better, but I can assure you that they are constantly iterating and improving. I would encourage you to consider that this is realistically the best that any company could be at building the type of system that Amazon is building.

govolckurself 3y ago

The way to avoid this is for Amazon to hold itself accountable, or, if it is unable to do so, a government. You're telling me the trillion-dollar logistics company can't figure out how to make sure people get the correct items?

semicolon_storm 3y ago

> 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. Shouldn't any returned items go into the "used" stock and not be intermingled with new items?

dragonwriter 3y ago

> The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Unless Amazon has given up the logistical economy of commingling “shipped and sold by Amazon” products with “fulfilled by Amazon”, and FBA products across sellers, this doesn't actually help.

toasterlovin 3y ago
They don't commingle. See my response to someone else.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Your explanation explains exactly how what they do does not differ from commingling in its effect on the provenance of what customers receive, only on after-the-fact traceability (and thus how ordering from a perceived-reliable seller does not protect against getting stuff from bad sellers.) (And, of course, choosing a reliable seller doesn’t protect you from “customer returned a different product and Amazon warehouse workers didn’t identify the problem when handling the return”, either.) So, in regard to the suggestion of using the right seller on Amazon’s platform to avoid the bad experience of getting the wrong thing delivered, for either of the suggested sources of the problem, (1) there is no meaningful difference from commingling in what they actually do, and (2) the solution doesn’t solve anything.

BeetleB 3y ago

> The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer. Former Amazon seller here. Comingling happens, so this is not much of a guarantee. Yes, Amazon will track which seller sent the item that you got, and can penalize them, but I still have to put up with a return process. Simply not an issue with places like Target and Walmart. Ever. If I order something new and Walmart is the seller, I will get a new, unadulterated item. And while we're at it, I've never had a problem with eBay either. You'd expect this to be a bigger problem there.

fmajid 3y ago

No, buying from Amazon first-party is insufficient to protect you because of stickerless commingled inventory, whereby that inventory may actually originate from a third-party merchant selling fakes or worse.