24 ms·

Amazon allegedly resells damaged books

191 points by lepus 3y ago

lepus 3y ago
> Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed.
- gumby 3y ago
  That statement jumped out at me too, but I'm not sure what to think about it. I also hate to say anything that might seem sympathetic to Amazon, a company I consider somewhat unethical. These two statements below should be uncontroversial: 1. If Amazon prints a defective book and rejects it in QC then Amazon should get no revenue nor should the author. It should be recycled. Another copy should be printed and shipped and the revenue distributed as normal. 2. If Amazon prints a defective book and it is shipped returned due to defect then amazon should get no revenue nor should the author. It should be recycled. A new book should be printed and sent to the customer (assuming they didn't ask for a refund) and no payment to author / no extra revenue recognition to Amazon. But then: 3. It's better that Amazon resells products that are returned in perfectly good condition rather than trashing them (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/amazon-returns-what-really-happens-to-them.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/amazon-returns-what-really-h... https://www.howtogeek.com/what-happens-to-amazon-returns/ https://www.howtogeek.com/what-happens-to-amazon-returns/ and a ton of other easy to find links) 4. Amazon should not resell products returned that are defective. The problem is: how should it know? They can't take the word of the customer returning the product. Amazon does resell high value returned items like TVs and monitors after checking them. But the cost of looking for the defect in the book is quite high -- I'd be surprised if it gets more than a casual glance/flip through. I'm not sure what they should be doing in this case, but I do think the comment "This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed" is a side distraction.
  - washadjeffmad 3y ago
    The contention, to me, is if returned or refurbished items are being labeled and sold as 'new', then Amazon may be running afoul of FTC truth-in-advertising laws.
    - sparky_z 3y ago
      If I go into a physical bookstore, buy a book, walk out with it, walk back in and return it still in good condition, should they not just put it back on the shelf? Would that be fraud? It's technically no longer "new" at that point. True this was returned as "damaged" but how damaged was it? We aren't told and there are no photos.
      - JCharante 3y ago
        Well does the bookstore label it as new? If it's on the shelf with just a barcode I imagine it's sold as is without promising that it's new
      - washadjeffmad 3y ago
        The condition doesn't matter, either because of one of two scenarios. 1) This is the author, and these are rejected proofs or author copies. In which case, Amazon does not have the rights to sell them because they were not "returns". 2) This book has been sold once, and royalties have been paid, but it was returned, relabeled as "new" and sold again without a royalty being paid on that sale. The author and the customer have been cheated. The thread has likely developed, but this is just going by my limited familiarity with publishing.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Amazon "checks" them hardly at all. I ordered a warehouse item (and I recognize this risk) for a Chicco stroller holder and received a Chicco box with a broken Gracco stroller in it. That's not very checked. And there's not much I can do but return it (they don't even have a "you got scammed, idiots" option to tell them to check again).
OnAironaut 3y ago
Amazon does this with everything damaged that is returned.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Yes, the title's not really capturing that the complaint is about royalties.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  Except for clothing, which apparently is fired directly into the landfill. Both cases are not cool.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
Who returns books?
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Well, definitely people who get damaged books.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- OJFord 3y ago
  If I receive a damaged item I will return it whether it's a book or not?
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  I received 2 extremely bad books, same press, illegible. Maybe print-on-demand, not sure. Complained, got a refund. Was told not to bother returning the books.
- kristianp 3y ago
  I have returned a book to Amazon. Poorly printed, blurry text, unreadable. Low quality cover print. What other choice is there but to return it? You can't let them get away with sending out rubbish.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    If the book was print-on-demand, nobody at Amazon ever saw or touched the book. And Amazon is not running recurring audits, not even for initial shipments, on those small external partners. What happens, is that as soon as too many concessions are triggered (refubds or replacements), the partner gets warned or shut down (depending on the clout the partners Amazon contacts have, well, politics do happen...). Or, if the partner is big and important enough, people like me at the time, whom are operationally responsible for that partner, get the assigent to straighten things out togwther with retail. With millions of customers every day so, the number of fuck ups is high in absolute numbers. It is, at least as far as I ever saw, minuscule in relation to the overall volume handled. Much lower, I might add, than anything I ahve ever seen in aerospace manufacturing for example.
OJFord 3y ago
The way this is said makes it seem like they're expecting to be paid twice for two orders, one returned. I assume what's being left implicit is that they're actually not paid for the 'KDP printing order' if it ends up returned? So then when someone else orders and receives that one and doesn't return it, there's a printed copy that was never paid out for?
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  > The way this is said makes it seem like they're expecting to be paid twice for two orders, one returned. Are you referring to the Dec 30 tweet text, the Dec 28 tweet text, or the paper note in the Dec 28 tweet's photo?
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Yes. The four tweets (not counting one from someone else) and photo of the note that I can see without clicking 'show more replies' and logging in.
    - hunter2_ 3y ago
      Hm. I'm not logged in, and I only see 2 tweets, neither of which discuss royalties. What I'm seeing is only concerned with the poor customer experience of receiving damaged goods.
sparky_z 3y ago
Before getting pitchforks out, I'd like to see what this person considered "damaged". If - and I know this is a big if - but if it's something extremely minor, such that almost anyone would consider it to be in "like new" condition, then frankly that would be a case of Amazon doing the right thing, rather than pulping a perfectly good book and printing a new one. The fact that this person is apparently not providing any photos of said damage makes this hard to judge (and honestly raises my suspicions a bit). > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed. Why wouldn't this be true? Why would a return that is then resold result in a double royalty payment? Is that something that happens for traditionally-published books that are returned and resold? It might have to do with the fact that these particular books were "author's copies" but I don't have enough information about how those work in a print-on-demand context to know whether this actually results in a loss of royalties in this case. Did they pay for them to be printed as a self publisher or were they provided for free as part of a contract with an external publisher? Does Amazon's internal system distinguish between "author" copies" and other orders, or do you just order some copies of your own book via the standard interface? Would the author's replacement copies go through that same system or would they be printed like normal and incur royalties? No idea.
- lepus 3y ago
  It's implied that he gets paid 0 times for either the return or the resold book. There's more discussion on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com/post/3khrp64a5pw22 https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com/post/3khrp64a5pw22
  - sparky_z 3y ago
    But is that any time a book is returned and resold, or is it just for a few "author's copies" that (I would guess) weren't eligible to receive a royalty in the first place?
    - jxf 3y ago
pbnjeh 3y ago
They also ship books in oversized boxes with no padding. If you're "lucky", they combined your book order with your order for something hard and heavy that can help beat the book up while the box tumbles. Not always, but often enough that if I order a book from them, I try to remind myself to to wait to order until nothing else I've ordered has yet to ship. Then wait after I've ordered the book, until the book has shipped, before I order anything else. I don't order that much from Amazon, but my orders often "cluster". For a recent example, the Christmas holidays. I got a beat up book cover because they upped the delivery date of the book by about a week (newish best seller), while in the meantime I'd ordered a heavy object that always ships the next day and that I didn't want to wait a week plus for. So, jacketed hardcover arrives loose in the oversized space next to big, heavy, sharp edged object, with no padding whatsoever inside the box. I guess if I'd returned that book, it simply would have gone -- damaged -- to someone else.
- Pathogen-David 3y ago
  Unfortunately even ordering the book on its own isn't a sure-fire way to get it well-packaged. The last several books I've bought were shipped in a thin paper bag (or a bubble mailer if I was lucky.) As someone who takes care of their stuff, it's pretty annoying to get my books pre-worn.
- anonimo37 3y ago
  They do this with hard drives as well. The first and last time I ever purchased hard drives from Amazon, the two drives arrived in an oversized box with no protection other than the antistatic bags they were in. I sent them back but I'm sure they'll just sell them to someone else. Most of the time my Amazon books have arrived in good condition mostly due to sheer luck given the way they were packed. Sometimes a hardcover had a dented corner or a paperback had a bent spine. Not worth the hassle of returning and reordering (especially if the price went up since ordering as Amazon refuses to honor the original price). I do miss Book Depository as they would ship each book individually even when I ordered multiple items. These days I try to avoid Amazon but keep getting sucked in when the price + shipping is cheaper or I can't be bothered creating an account on a website I have not used before.
- 3y ago
pcurve 3y ago
Recently Amazon has been sending me items that were clearly returned and poorly repackaged or damaged in the last year. This isn’t something I encountered or noticed prior to 2023. Their screening policy for returned items may have changed.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  It may be more common now, but I've had this problem with them before in the past. In one notable case I bought a new game console from Amazon.com and received a box that was so obviously used (seals broken, shrinkwrap missing, etc) that I didn't even bother opening it, I just returned it. Despite the price of the item they raised no objections, so they're probably used to this happening and just assume that most customers won't notice.
- Astronaut3315 3y ago
  I purchased four used, like new smart plugs from Amazon Warehouse Deals a few days ago. Two were the wrong model in the right box and were very clearly used. One even had a scorch mark on it. I’ve had similar experiences with other Amazon purchases in the last few years.
- Theodores 3y ago
  I work in ecommerce, sometimes for a client where I get to work closely with the customer service people. I am familiar with what you get in returns from customers across a few different brands/verticals. What amazes me is how good the returns can be. At one place, anything returned by the customer was as good as new. Out of a hundred returns, ninety nine of them were as good as what we sent out from the warehouse, absolutely mint. The correct product was in the box, pretty much guaranteed. We had a local stock room that was just from the returns and could get product for people from this stock of returned items. Sometimes there could be a problem but we would catch this by just a quick check of the box. There was a team of a dozen of us in the customer service. Had the business been bigger then I am sure that the one percent of actually defective stuff would get resold for people to get very vocal about it on social media. Then other people would grumble too, to reminisce about the time their order was 'thrown over the hedge' by the delivery company driver. Before you know it, the whole thing could snowball out of control. Also, at a larger scale, we would attract 'American' customers that don't respect the product in quite the same way as in the rest of the world where consumer culture and education is different. I am no fan of Amazon but I do respect the efforts of the people they have doing the work there. For the consumer that has never worked a day in retail, it is not all about you! Furthermore, we see what we expect to see. Getting back to working in retail, I was never shouted at or abused by customers. I set off in the morning looking forward to a fast paced day with lots of happy customers. That is what I expected and that is what I got. I have met others that worked in retail to be perpetually abused. They expected a day of abuse and they got it. I think the same applies with Amazon orders. If you expect to be delighted with your orders then you will be amazed at how excessively well packaged everything is and how miraculous the timely delivery is. However, if you expect everything to be dinged, counterfeit and a repackaged return, then this is what you will get.
jarjar2_ 3y ago
I rarely buy new books anymore. I just use ThriftBooks. Haven’t had a problem with any of the books they’ve sent me.
- takoid 3y ago
  ThriftBooks is great most of the time but the quality can be quite hit-or-miss.
  - pbnjeh 3y ago
    I've had a few outright duds with them, but mostly their product has been as expected. EXCEPT, they ship mostly in plastic envelopes. And the items not infrequently get damaged during transit. I have a set of "very good" Magnum PI DVD's that I expect shipped that way. But the DVD's weren't secured in their box. The season 4 plastic case slid far enough out of the boxed set to get dinged and broken. The internal DVD holder's mount is destroyed and the DVD's are just floating around in there. I was stocking up on some older, "classic" CS titles, and I ordered several together (free shipping on orders over X dollars...). They arrived all crammed into one plastic envelope that looked like it had been dragged along for a while behind the delivery truck. (In reality, this is what the distribution center belts can do to an object, and a heavy package in a thin plastic envelope does not fare well.) With just a thin, flexible plastic layer for protection, a number of corners on these "very good" books were bent and beat up. I've had covers arrive abraded. One title had one end of the binding crushed. I still appreciate getting several titles I've wanted for way off cover price. But I wish they'd take a bit more care when shipping. And, you never know what you're going to get. With them, I've taken to trying to order such that DVD's and Blu rays won't ship together with books (you can imagine what happens). But, when an item may not effectively ship for up to a week, this takes some schedule juggling and follow up. Plus, that used item may sell out in the meantime. And it also means sometimes foregoing the free shipping you get by clustering items. I guess these are all first world problems, but it's frustrating. Plus, good condition items get trashed for the sake of lack of care / expediency in one step. Wasteful.
    - jarjar2_ 3y ago
nikolay 3y ago
Yes. I purchased The Capital by Karl Marx for my son; at least 5% of the pages were blank.
- nonrepeating 3y ago
  Ironically, that ended up teaching him an important lesson about capitalism.
  - MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
    It taught him not to waste ink, and to use his imagination.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. And the consequences of not paying workers enough and not letting them relieve themselves in anything but Coke bottles. Shoddy, on-demand print operators of the world unite!
optshun 3y ago
My favorite, or I suppose least favorite…, was when I received a “new” book that came with a bookmark of a single square of toilet paper. Unsure about you all but there’s only one reason I might use a square of toilet paper as a bookmark.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  This exact thing happened to me and for weeks it would spontaneously cross my mind. I thought one of my kids did it yet I couldn't guess why, until one day it hit me: they were on vacation with their aunt when I received the books and found the toilet paper, and the book was slightly damaged when I got it. Then it dawned on me that someone had read this book before, likely while on their toilet. For that and a few other reasons, I don't get books from Amazon anymore.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    I used to work in a Brentano's. Typical retailers will flag any books that have been in the restroom to prevent this.
    - wil421 3y ago
      Brentano’s sells coffee, bran muffins, you’re surrounding by reading material, its entrapment I tell you!
joabaldwin 3y ago
Author from original post here! For clarification, this is not a new thing, but something I learned to do from this post: https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbixaux2x https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbix... In her case, she ordered author copies (that gives you no royalties, of course) and got the same copies sold again to herself as author copies. In my case, I also ordered author copies, but they were resold to a normal customer after I returned them. From an order of 50 author copies, I returned 14. Packaging was fine, so it wasn’t a problem with how they bumped up during shipping. They were misprinted, or had folded covers (they tear easily after a fold, really bad), some were printed beyond the bleed area (that’s what bleed is for, you can’t be printing beyond it), and a few were printed slightly off angle. One particularly bad copy was even cut an inch smaller than it should’ve been, trimming every single page and cover, text and all. So yeah, that’s why I returned them. But I do give you that some of those defects would go completely unseen by someone at a warehouse. You flip through the book, all pages seem to be there, but how is a person there supposed to know what the margins of the book look like? But most errors would not pass a regular printing press QC, particularly the damaged covers. Also, Amazon both prints and distributes these books, so QC is in their hands from the start.
- sparky_z 3y ago
  Thanks for chiming in! If you don't mind, I'm trying to understand the exact accounting implications of this for you. In the context of self-publishing, what does it mean to order "author's copies"? Are they: A) offered for free, like they would be as part of a traditional publishing contract? B) Sold to you "at cost" of printing and shipping without any markup? C) Sold above cost but with a discount greater than or equal to size of the royalty? D) Sold above cost but with a discount smaller than the size of the royalty? E) Sold at full retail price but without any royalty? I very much doubt A because then Amazon would basically be operating what amounts to a free vanity press. But maybe they'd throw in a couple as a perk. I also doubt B because then they would be operating a revenue-neutral vanity press, but maybe it would still be worth it to them if they counted on gettong enough non-author sales to make enough margin to fund the operation. I also doubt D or E, because if so, then why would anybody order "author's copies" of their book?. Just get your friend to order them for you and reimburse them and you'll come out ahead. I would guess the answer is C. But in that case, it seems to me that you are getting implicit royalty on those "author's copies", but those royalties are baked into the discounted price rather than being distributed to you later. (I suppose this might also have advantageous tax implications for you on those implicit royalties, compared to the alternative where you just order normal copies and get your royalties later.) Am I wrong about this?
manicennui 3y ago
If you care about the condition of books you buy, don't buy from Amazon. They'll throw a $100+ hardcover in a lightly padded envelope and chuck it around. Or they'll put it in a box with some other random item and a few inflatable shipping bags, but not enough to keep things from shifting around freely.
- bmitc 3y ago
  Their packing has gotten comically bad, particularly for sensitively items like books and such. I've greatly reduced my Amazon buying over the years due to issues with damaged items, and lately, Amazon is getting more aggressive about discouraging returns. But I'm not going to pay $30+ for a new hardcover that comes damaged and covered with dirt and grime.
  - hedgehog 3y ago
    I ordered a gallon of urethane and they just stuck it in a comically large box with no padding. Miracle it didn't break all the way open in shipping. Edit: They also tried to send a replacement, marked it as undeliverable, and charged me for it. I don't think Amazon was always this bad.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - aowiejtriawj 3y ago
    It seems like all shipping companies have gotten comically bad in the past year or two. This past summer I mailed boxes to seven family members via USPS. Only 3 of 7 boxes made it to their destinations intact. Three were delivered but destroyed, crushed, like either someone drove over them with a truck or literally jumped up and down on them several times, and one just disappeared. UPS has also delivered to me several completely destroyed packages in the past few months, also looked like they were driven over by trucks.
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
jazzyjackson 3y ago
Ironically books are the one thing I don't buy on Amazon. eBay has a much better experience, easily 9 times out of 10 I'm confident I'm buying the book in the picture, and usually there are several pictures of the exact condition.
karaterobot 3y ago
I guess I believe it's possible, but I've ordered hundreds of books off Amazon for going on 25 years now, and I've never not gotten books in the condition I paid for. It feels like it would be a weird and ineffective scam for them to pull, not exactly lucrative and pretty easy to get caught on. As I say, possible, but weird if true.
- iamacyborg 3y ago
  These appear to be books printed by Amazon directly, so not all book sales would be affected.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  I just ordered books from Amazon for the first time and one of the new books had a tear.
- resoluteteeth 3y ago
  Based on the author's comment, I'm guessing these are print-on-demand books that were damaged during or right after the printing process, so if you are ordering non print-on-demand books your experience might not be as relevant
Judson 3y ago
The realities of a warehouse operation make this inevitable (I’ve run an 8-figure/yr online distributor). Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Folks just click “damaged” to get a refund and Amazon has to have warehouse workers, not professional book inspectors, receive the returns and note their condition. This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree.
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  >Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. I'm curious if you think this is appropriate in other circumstances too: a customer at the grocery store returns a bag of candy. Do you want the cashier to check it and decide to put it back on the shelf for you to buy? >This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree. But not good enough for the author, who loses a royalty payment.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    > Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. And creates other scenarios.
    - cool_dude85 3y ago
      Well, like what? The book gets thrown away?
      - Judson 3y ago
        Maybe it’s more apparent in the opposite case. Customers who say the item is totally fine, but have shipped back a box of rocks.
  - Judson 3y ago
    This is almost exactly how it _does_ work in big box grocery except there are blanket policies re: disposal for food items. Fwiw, Amazon also has near identical policies for food items.
gurchik 3y ago
From the author's perspective, this is not expected according to their agreement with Amazon. Unfortunately from the consumer's perspective, this is not surprising at all. Everyone I know has received a "used" item sold as "new, sold by Amazon.com." Whether it's due to commingling, or an attempt to reduce waste, or plain corporate greed, I have no idea. Just saying that if I returned a book on Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised if it was soon sold to someone else, even if I was the author of the book.
- jdsully 3y ago
  Frys did this a lot during their last 5 years of existence.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  It's blatantly illegal under federal law to sell used items as new, full stop, end of story. But Bezos gets invites to the white house pretty regularly so it seems federal regulators get the message that enforcement against Amazon is a no-go.
  - donor20 3y ago
    A returned unopened item can be sold as new
RecycledEle 3y ago
I found this quote enlightening: > From: Joaquín Baldwin, @joabaldwin > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book > is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I > don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed. They > stole my money while scamming a customer. So the author wants to be paid royalties on books he says are "damaged" that are brand new but that he says can not be sold to customers? We recently discussed abuses of copyright law. This qualifies as an abuse of copyright law IMHO.
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  That depends on whether he got paid for the first printing of the damaged, returned book, which I don’t think he was. He mentioned in a comment that he got 50 author copies, checked them, and returned the damaged ones. I assume he was not paid for the free author copies..? So if they sold a returned author copy that is known to be damaged then Amazon 1) failed to pay him for a sold book, and 2) broke some kind of rule in their contract where it promises to sell high-quality prints of his book to his readers. Sure, QA is not perfect and problems will happen, but selling a book that is known to be damaged does not count as an honest mistake.
- aifooh7Keew6xoo 3y ago
  My understanding is that Amazon is not accounting for the royalties after they are returned from an author purchase and resold under terms other than the royalty free terms. It's not that he wants to get paid for the unsold inventory, it's that he believes he doesn't get paid at all when they resell as new the used inventory he rejected and returned in quality control of his royalty free author purchase.
mantra2 3y ago
I’ve never personally bought a book from Amazon but my wife has a few times and each time she’s returned it saying it looked beat up. I figured she was just being picky (very on brand) but perhaps she was onto something.
Keverw 3y ago
I feel like Amazon is so shady nowadays. I ordered a CD drive a while back just incase I needed it, and the brand/seller included a thing to get a gift card if leaving a review. I thought that was a little unethical, like a bribe so I mentioned in the review giving them like a 3 star if I remember. The next day Amazon disables my ability to leave reviews on that seller, and anytime I go review other sellers my reviews are held for review when they used to be instant from what I remembered, unless they changed it for everyone.

191 points by lepus 3y ago

> Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed.

gumby 3y ago
That statement jumped out at me too, but I'm not sure what to think about it. I also hate to say anything that might seem sympathetic to Amazon, a company I consider somewhat unethical. These two statements below should be uncontroversial: 1. If Amazon prints a defective book and rejects it in QC then Amazon should get no revenue nor should the author. It should be recycled. Another copy should be printed and shipped and the revenue distributed as normal. 2. If Amazon prints a defective book and it is shipped returned due to defect then amazon should get no revenue nor should the author. It should be recycled. A new book should be printed and sent to the customer (assuming they didn't ask for a refund) and no payment to author / no extra revenue recognition to Amazon. But then: 3. It's better that Amazon resells products that are returned in perfectly good condition rather than trashing them (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/amazon-returns-what-really-happens-to-them.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/amazon-returns-what-really-h... https://www.howtogeek.com/what-happens-to-amazon-returns/ https://www.howtogeek.com/what-happens-to-amazon-returns/ and a ton of other easy to find links) 4. Amazon should not resell products returned that are defective. The problem is: how should it know? They can't take the word of the customer returning the product. Amazon does resell high value returned items like TVs and monitors after checking them. But the cost of looking for the defect in the book is quite high -- I'd be surprised if it gets more than a casual glance/flip through. I'm not sure what they should be doing in this case, but I do think the comment "This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed" is a side distraction.
- washadjeffmad 3y ago
  The contention, to me, is if returned or refurbished items are being labeled and sold as 'new', then Amazon may be running afoul of FTC truth-in-advertising laws.
  - sparky_z 3y ago
    If I go into a physical bookstore, buy a book, walk out with it, walk back in and return it still in good condition, should they not just put it back on the shelf? Would that be fraud? It's technically no longer "new" at that point. True this was returned as "damaged" but how damaged was it? We aren't told and there are no photos.
    - JCharante 3y ago
      Well does the bookstore label it as new? If it's on the shelf with just a barcode I imagine it's sold as is without promising that it's new
    - washadjeffmad 3y ago
      The condition doesn't matter, either because of one of two scenarios. 1) This is the author, and these are rejected proofs or author copies. In which case, Amazon does not have the rights to sell them because they were not "returns". 2) This book has been sold once, and royalties have been paid, but it was returned, relabeled as "new" and sold again without a royalty being paid on that sale. The author and the customer have been cheated. The thread has likely developed, but this is just going by my limited familiarity with publishing.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Amazon "checks" them hardly at all. I ordered a warehouse item (and I recognize this risk) for a Chicco stroller holder and received a Chicco box with a broken Gracco stroller in it. That's not very checked. And there's not much I can do but return it (they don't even have a "you got scammed, idiots" option to tell them to check again).

OnAironaut 3y ago

Amazon does this with everything damaged that is returned.

OJFord 3y ago
Yes, the title's not really capturing that the complaint is about royalties.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
Except for clothing, which apparently is fired directly into the landfill. Both cases are not cool.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

Who returns books?

andrewflnr 3y ago
Well, definitely people who get damaged books.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
OJFord 3y ago
If I receive a damaged item I will return it whether it's a book or not?
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
I received 2 extremely bad books, same press, illegible. Maybe print-on-demand, not sure. Complained, got a refund. Was told not to bother returning the books.
kristianp 3y ago
I have returned a book to Amazon. Poorly printed, blurry text, unreadable. Low quality cover print. What other choice is there but to return it? You can't let them get away with sending out rubbish.
- hef19898 3y ago
  If the book was print-on-demand, nobody at Amazon ever saw or touched the book. And Amazon is not running recurring audits, not even for initial shipments, on those small external partners. What happens, is that as soon as too many concessions are triggered (refubds or replacements), the partner gets warned or shut down (depending on the clout the partners Amazon contacts have, well, politics do happen...). Or, if the partner is big and important enough, people like me at the time, whom are operationally responsible for that partner, get the assigent to straighten things out togwther with retail. With millions of customers every day so, the number of fuck ups is high in absolute numbers. It is, at least as far as I ever saw, minuscule in relation to the overall volume handled. Much lower, I might add, than anything I ahve ever seen in aerospace manufacturing for example.

OJFord 3y ago

The way this is said makes it seem like they're expecting to be paid twice for two orders, one returned. I assume what's being left implicit is that they're actually not paid for the 'KDP printing order' if it ends up returned? So then when someone else orders and receives that one and doesn't return it, there's a printed copy that was never paid out for?

hunter2_ 3y ago
> The way this is said makes it seem like they're expecting to be paid twice for two orders, one returned. Are you referring to the Dec 30 tweet text, the Dec 28 tweet text, or the paper note in the Dec 28 tweet's photo?
- OJFord 3y ago
  Yes. The four tweets (not counting one from someone else) and photo of the note that I can see without clicking 'show more replies' and logging in.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    Hm. I'm not logged in, and I only see 2 tweets, neither of which discuss royalties. What I'm seeing is only concerned with the poor customer experience of receiving damaged goods.

sparky_z 3y ago

Before getting pitchforks out, I'd like to see what this person considered "damaged". If - and I know this is a big if - but if it's something extremely minor, such that almost anyone would consider it to be in "like new" condition, then frankly that would be a case of Amazon doing the right thing, rather than pulping a perfectly good book and printing a new one. The fact that this person is apparently not providing any photos of said damage makes this hard to judge (and honestly raises my suspicions a bit). > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed. Why wouldn't this be true? Why would a return that is then resold result in a double royalty payment? Is that something that happens for traditionally-published books that are returned and resold? It might have to do with the fact that these particular books were "author's copies" but I don't have enough information about how those work in a print-on-demand context to know whether this actually results in a loss of royalties in this case. Did they pay for them to be printed as a self publisher or were they provided for free as part of a contract with an external publisher? Does Amazon's internal system distinguish between "author" copies" and other orders, or do you just order some copies of your own book via the standard interface? Would the author's replacement copies go through that same system or would they be printed like normal and incur royalties? No idea.

lepus 3y ago
It's implied that he gets paid 0 times for either the return or the resold book. There's more discussion on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com/post/3khrp64a5pw22 https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com/post/3khrp64a5pw22
- sparky_z 3y ago
  But is that any time a book is returned and resold, or is it just for a few "author's copies" that (I would guess) weren't eligible to receive a royalty in the first place?
  - jxf 3y ago

pbnjeh 3y ago

They also ship books in oversized boxes with no padding. If you're "lucky", they combined your book order with your order for something hard and heavy that can help beat the book up while the box tumbles. Not always, but often enough that if I order a book from them, I try to remind myself to to wait to order until nothing else I've ordered has yet to ship. Then wait after I've ordered the book, until the book has shipped, before I order anything else. I don't order that much from Amazon, but my orders often "cluster". For a recent example, the Christmas holidays. I got a beat up book cover because they upped the delivery date of the book by about a week (newish best seller), while in the meantime I'd ordered a heavy object that always ships the next day and that I didn't want to wait a week plus for. So, jacketed hardcover arrives loose in the oversized space next to big, heavy, sharp edged object, with no padding whatsoever inside the box. I guess if I'd returned that book, it simply would have gone -- damaged -- to someone else.

Pathogen-David 3y ago
Unfortunately even ordering the book on its own isn't a sure-fire way to get it well-packaged. The last several books I've bought were shipped in a thin paper bag (or a bubble mailer if I was lucky.) As someone who takes care of their stuff, it's pretty annoying to get my books pre-worn.
anonimo37 3y ago
They do this with hard drives as well. The first and last time I ever purchased hard drives from Amazon, the two drives arrived in an oversized box with no protection other than the antistatic bags they were in. I sent them back but I'm sure they'll just sell them to someone else. Most of the time my Amazon books have arrived in good condition mostly due to sheer luck given the way they were packed. Sometimes a hardcover had a dented corner or a paperback had a bent spine. Not worth the hassle of returning and reordering (especially if the price went up since ordering as Amazon refuses to honor the original price). I do miss Book Depository as they would ship each book individually even when I ordered multiple items. These days I try to avoid Amazon but keep getting sucked in when the price + shipping is cheaper or I can't be bothered creating an account on a website I have not used before.
3y ago

pcurve 3y ago

Recently Amazon has been sending me items that were clearly returned and poorly repackaged or damaged in the last year. This isn’t something I encountered or noticed prior to 2023. Their screening policy for returned items may have changed.

kevingadd 3y ago
It may be more common now, but I've had this problem with them before in the past. In one notable case I bought a new game console from Amazon.com and received a box that was so obviously used (seals broken, shrinkwrap missing, etc) that I didn't even bother opening it, I just returned it. Despite the price of the item they raised no objections, so they're probably used to this happening and just assume that most customers won't notice.
Astronaut3315 3y ago
I purchased four used, like new smart plugs from Amazon Warehouse Deals a few days ago. Two were the wrong model in the right box and were very clearly used. One even had a scorch mark on it. I’ve had similar experiences with other Amazon purchases in the last few years.
Theodores 3y ago
I work in ecommerce, sometimes for a client where I get to work closely with the customer service people. I am familiar with what you get in returns from customers across a few different brands/verticals. What amazes me is how good the returns can be. At one place, anything returned by the customer was as good as new. Out of a hundred returns, ninety nine of them were as good as what we sent out from the warehouse, absolutely mint. The correct product was in the box, pretty much guaranteed. We had a local stock room that was just from the returns and could get product for people from this stock of returned items. Sometimes there could be a problem but we would catch this by just a quick check of the box. There was a team of a dozen of us in the customer service. Had the business been bigger then I am sure that the one percent of actually defective stuff would get resold for people to get very vocal about it on social media. Then other people would grumble too, to reminisce about the time their order was 'thrown over the hedge' by the delivery company driver. Before you know it, the whole thing could snowball out of control. Also, at a larger scale, we would attract 'American' customers that don't respect the product in quite the same way as in the rest of the world where consumer culture and education is different. I am no fan of Amazon but I do respect the efforts of the people they have doing the work there. For the consumer that has never worked a day in retail, it is not all about you! Furthermore, we see what we expect to see. Getting back to working in retail, I was never shouted at or abused by customers. I set off in the morning looking forward to a fast paced day with lots of happy customers. That is what I expected and that is what I got. I have met others that worked in retail to be perpetually abused. They expected a day of abuse and they got it. I think the same applies with Amazon orders. If you expect to be delighted with your orders then you will be amazed at how excessively well packaged everything is and how miraculous the timely delivery is. However, if you expect everything to be dinged, counterfeit and a repackaged return, then this is what you will get.

jarjar2_ 3y ago

I rarely buy new books anymore. I just use ThriftBooks. Haven’t had a problem with any of the books they’ve sent me.

takoid 3y ago
ThriftBooks is great most of the time but the quality can be quite hit-or-miss.
- pbnjeh 3y ago
  I've had a few outright duds with them, but mostly their product has been as expected. EXCEPT, they ship mostly in plastic envelopes. And the items not infrequently get damaged during transit. I have a set of "very good" Magnum PI DVD's that I expect shipped that way. But the DVD's weren't secured in their box. The season 4 plastic case slid far enough out of the boxed set to get dinged and broken. The internal DVD holder's mount is destroyed and the DVD's are just floating around in there. I was stocking up on some older, "classic" CS titles, and I ordered several together (free shipping on orders over X dollars...). They arrived all crammed into one plastic envelope that looked like it had been dragged along for a while behind the delivery truck. (In reality, this is what the distribution center belts can do to an object, and a heavy package in a thin plastic envelope does not fare well.) With just a thin, flexible plastic layer for protection, a number of corners on these "very good" books were bent and beat up. I've had covers arrive abraded. One title had one end of the binding crushed. I still appreciate getting several titles I've wanted for way off cover price. But I wish they'd take a bit more care when shipping. And, you never know what you're going to get. With them, I've taken to trying to order such that DVD's and Blu rays won't ship together with books (you can imagine what happens). But, when an item may not effectively ship for up to a week, this takes some schedule juggling and follow up. Plus, that used item may sell out in the meantime. And it also means sometimes foregoing the free shipping you get by clustering items. I guess these are all first world problems, but it's frustrating. Plus, good condition items get trashed for the sake of lack of care / expediency in one step. Wasteful.
  - jarjar2_ 3y ago

nikolay 3y ago

Yes. I purchased The Capital by Karl Marx for my son; at least 5% of the pages were blank.

nonrepeating 3y ago
Ironically, that ended up teaching him an important lesson about capitalism.
- MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
  It taught him not to waste ink, and to use his imagination.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. And the consequences of not paying workers enough and not letting them relieve themselves in anything but Coke bottles. Shoddy, on-demand print operators of the world unite!

optshun 3y ago

My favorite, or I suppose least favorite…, was when I received a “new” book that came with a bookmark of a single square of toilet paper. Unsure about you all but there’s only one reason I might use a square of toilet paper as a bookmark.

steve_adams_86 3y ago
This exact thing happened to me and for weeks it would spontaneously cross my mind. I thought one of my kids did it yet I couldn't guess why, until one day it hit me: they were on vacation with their aunt when I received the books and found the toilet paper, and the book was slightly damaged when I got it. Then it dawned on me that someone had read this book before, likely while on their toilet. For that and a few other reasons, I don't get books from Amazon anymore.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  I used to work in a Brentano's. Typical retailers will flag any books that have been in the restroom to prevent this.
  - wil421 3y ago
    Brentano’s sells coffee, bran muffins, you’re surrounding by reading material, its entrapment I tell you!

joabaldwin 3y ago

Author from original post here! For clarification, this is not a new thing, but something I learned to do from this post: https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbixaux2x https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbix... In her case, she ordered author copies (that gives you no royalties, of course) and got the same copies sold again to herself as author copies. In my case, I also ordered author copies, but they were resold to a normal customer after I returned them. From an order of 50 author copies, I returned 14. Packaging was fine, so it wasn’t a problem with how they bumped up during shipping. They were misprinted, or had folded covers (they tear easily after a fold, really bad), some were printed beyond the bleed area (that’s what bleed is for, you can’t be printing beyond it), and a few were printed slightly off angle. One particularly bad copy was even cut an inch smaller than it should’ve been, trimming every single page and cover, text and all. So yeah, that’s why I returned them. But I do give you that some of those defects would go completely unseen by someone at a warehouse. You flip through the book, all pages seem to be there, but how is a person there supposed to know what the margins of the book look like? But most errors would not pass a regular printing press QC, particularly the damaged covers. Also, Amazon both prints and distributes these books, so QC is in their hands from the start.

sparky_z 3y ago
Thanks for chiming in! If you don't mind, I'm trying to understand the exact accounting implications of this for you. In the context of self-publishing, what does it mean to order "author's copies"? Are they: A) offered for free, like they would be as part of a traditional publishing contract? B) Sold to you "at cost" of printing and shipping without any markup? C) Sold above cost but with a discount greater than or equal to size of the royalty? D) Sold above cost but with a discount smaller than the size of the royalty? E) Sold at full retail price but without any royalty? I very much doubt A because then Amazon would basically be operating what amounts to a free vanity press. But maybe they'd throw in a couple as a perk. I also doubt B because then they would be operating a revenue-neutral vanity press, but maybe it would still be worth it to them if they counted on gettong enough non-author sales to make enough margin to fund the operation. I also doubt D or E, because if so, then why would anybody order "author's copies" of their book?. Just get your friend to order them for you and reimburse them and you'll come out ahead. I would guess the answer is C. But in that case, it seems to me that you are getting implicit royalty on those "author's copies", but those royalties are baked into the discounted price rather than being distributed to you later. (I suppose this might also have advantageous tax implications for you on those implicit royalties, compared to the alternative where you just order normal copies and get your royalties later.) Am I wrong about this?

manicennui 3y ago

If you care about the condition of books you buy, don't buy from Amazon. They'll throw a $100+ hardcover in a lightly padded envelope and chuck it around. Or they'll put it in a box with some other random item and a few inflatable shipping bags, but not enough to keep things from shifting around freely.

bmitc 3y ago
Their packing has gotten comically bad, particularly for sensitively items like books and such. I've greatly reduced my Amazon buying over the years due to issues with damaged items, and lately, Amazon is getting more aggressive about discouraging returns. But I'm not going to pay $30+ for a new hardcover that comes damaged and covered with dirt and grime.
- hedgehog 3y ago
  I ordered a gallon of urethane and they just stuck it in a comically large box with no padding. Miracle it didn't break all the way open in shipping. Edit: They also tried to send a replacement, marked it as undeliverable, and charged me for it. I don't think Amazon was always this bad.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- aowiejtriawj 3y ago
  It seems like all shipping companies have gotten comically bad in the past year or two. This past summer I mailed boxes to seven family members via USPS. Only 3 of 7 boxes made it to their destinations intact. Three were delivered but destroyed, crushed, like either someone drove over them with a truck or literally jumped up and down on them several times, and one just disappeared. UPS has also delivered to me several completely destroyed packages in the past few months, also looked like they were driven over by trucks.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago

jazzyjackson 3y ago

Ironically books are the one thing I don't buy on Amazon. eBay has a much better experience, easily 9 times out of 10 I'm confident I'm buying the book in the picture, and usually there are several pictures of the exact condition.

karaterobot 3y ago

I guess I believe it's possible, but I've ordered hundreds of books off Amazon for going on 25 years now, and I've never not gotten books in the condition I paid for. It feels like it would be a weird and ineffective scam for them to pull, not exactly lucrative and pretty easy to get caught on. As I say, possible, but weird if true.

iamacyborg 3y ago
These appear to be books printed by Amazon directly, so not all book sales would be affected.
charcircuit 3y ago
I just ordered books from Amazon for the first time and one of the new books had a tear.
resoluteteeth 3y ago
Based on the author's comment, I'm guessing these are print-on-demand books that were damaged during or right after the printing process, so if you are ordering non print-on-demand books your experience might not be as relevant

Judson 3y ago

The realities of a warehouse operation make this inevitable (I’ve run an 8-figure/yr online distributor). Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Folks just click “damaged” to get a refund and Amazon has to have warehouse workers, not professional book inspectors, receive the returns and note their condition. This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree.

cool_dude85 3y ago
>Amazon cannot take the customer’s word on return condition. Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. I'm curious if you think this is appropriate in other circumstances too: a customer at the grocery store returns a bag of candy. Do you want the cashier to check it and decide to put it back on the shelf for you to buy? >This is good enough since someone buying the used copy can also return it if they disagree. But not good enough for the author, who loses a royalty payment.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  > Why not? Doing so prevents this exact scenario. And creates other scenarios.
  - cool_dude85 3y ago
    Well, like what? The book gets thrown away?
    - Judson 3y ago
      Maybe it’s more apparent in the opposite case. Customers who say the item is totally fine, but have shipped back a box of rocks.
- Judson 3y ago
  This is almost exactly how it _does_ work in big box grocery except there are blanket policies re: disposal for food items. Fwiw, Amazon also has near identical policies for food items.

gurchik 3y ago

From the author's perspective, this is not expected according to their agreement with Amazon. Unfortunately from the consumer's perspective, this is not surprising at all. Everyone I know has received a "used" item sold as "new, sold by Amazon.com." Whether it's due to commingling, or an attempt to reduce waste, or plain corporate greed, I have no idea. Just saying that if I returned a book on Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised if it was soon sold to someone else, even if I was the author of the book.

jdsully 3y ago
Frys did this a lot during their last 5 years of existence.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
It's blatantly illegal under federal law to sell used items as new, full stop, end of story. But Bezos gets invites to the white house pretty regularly so it seems federal regulators get the message that enforcement against Amazon is a no-go.
- donor20 3y ago
  A returned unopened item can be sold as new

RecycledEle 3y ago

I found this quote enlightening: > From: Joaquín Baldwin, @joabaldwin > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a damaged, returned book > is shipped to them instead, no new KDP printing orders kick in. This means I > don’t get paid at all, because they only pay me when a book is printed. They > stole my money while scamming a customer. So the author wants to be paid royalties on books he says are "damaged" that are brand new but that he says can not be sold to customers? We recently discussed abuses of copyright law. This qualifies as an abuse of copyright law IMHO.

low_tech_love 3y ago
That depends on whether he got paid for the first printing of the damaged, returned book, which I don’t think he was. He mentioned in a comment that he got 50 author copies, checked them, and returned the damaged ones. I assume he was not paid for the free author copies..? So if they sold a returned author copy that is known to be damaged then Amazon 1) failed to pay him for a sold book, and 2) broke some kind of rule in their contract where it promises to sell high-quality prints of his book to his readers. Sure, QA is not perfect and problems will happen, but selling a book that is known to be damaged does not count as an honest mistake.
aifooh7Keew6xoo 3y ago
My understanding is that Amazon is not accounting for the royalties after they are returned from an author purchase and resold under terms other than the royalty free terms. It's not that he wants to get paid for the unsold inventory, it's that he believes he doesn't get paid at all when they resell as new the used inventory he rejected and returned in quality control of his royalty free author purchase.

mantra2 3y ago

I’ve never personally bought a book from Amazon but my wife has a few times and each time she’s returned it saying it looked beat up. I figured she was just being picky (very on brand) but perhaps she was onto something.

Keverw 3y ago

I feel like Amazon is so shady nowadays. I ordered a CD drive a while back just incase I needed it, and the brand/seller included a thing to get a gift card if leaving a review. I thought that was a little unethical, like a bribe so I mentioned in the review giving them like a 3 star if I remember. The next day Amazon disables my ability to leave reviews on that seller, and anytime I go review other sellers my reviews are held for review when they used to be instant from what I remembered, unless they changed it for everyone.