Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/17/amazon-resold-a-used-diaper-and-now-the-small-business-is-600k-in-debt.html
…
6 Likes
I’m sure we can all shop more confidently on Amazon knowing that they ‘solved’ the problem by removing a true and accurate review of the buying-on-Amazon experience.
The sordid story of just how far over a barrel Amazon has the more-expendable-than-independent merchants who rely on it for visibility, payment processing, and logistics and can be left to take the fall or replaced by amazon basics at teh drop of a hat is the villain of the piece; not the fact that someone left a review that accurately documented what happened.
15 Likes
There’s a jump from one bad review to $600k in debt. Did I miss a step in between somewhere?
The article reveals that Amazon’s return inspection process is often rushed, with workers spending about a minute per item.
Based on my experience, I’m surprised they spend any time at all.
9 Likes
“Our sales projections indicate we need $600k in inventory to keep up with demand…LFG!”
…review gets posted…
“Oh shit.”
15 Likes
I’m guessing there are more issues with a small business trying to gain traction than a tanked Amazon review actually caused. If Dragon’s Den (or Shark Tank) has taught me anything, that is. But, as a comment on Amazon’s crappy business practices (literally crappy, in this case), sure, the article works.
4 Likes
Why is Amazon accepting returns on products like diapers anyway? I can see a refund without return for a faulty product, but I feel like they should never take something like that back after it’s been delivered.
14 Likes
Exactly. A lot of these start ups borrow money in order to scale up their business. If their sales projections end up being way off, it can bankrupt them.
4 Likes
yes, this is my question too: how did they go from one bad review to $600k in debt??
2 Likes
Amazon is too big to care.
7 Likes
It’s not used, it’s “vintage.”
3 Likes
Yeah, I can’t imagine it’s a high-priced item. The margin is probably less than the shipping cost.
2 Likes
Amazon may not care. If this is third party, Amazon may just charge them anyway. It’s profit for Amazon regardless.
4 Likes
2 Likes
From the article:
Rachelle Baron, who had created a successful washable swim diaper
Looks like the products is a reusable item. So it’s conceivable an unused one would be returned.
2 Likes
Things are weird with Amazon. Just last week I had an Anova food saver shipped to me stripped of all the extras in the box, and it literally had square cut outs on the box where someone removed the spots that listed what was included.
It wasn’t Anova, but Amazon. I hate that I am using them, but they’ve eaten up so many businesses, it’s hard to do all in-person shopping these days. In some of the nitch items I get, it’s impossible.
3 Likes
There’s probably some sort of esoteric loss-protection algorithm that feeds inscrutable variables about the product, the given user’s past behavior, the disposition of the entrails of the goat slaughtered each morning under the gaze of the data science group’s machine vision system, etc. into deciding whether or not to demand returns in a given case; just to keep people on their toes.
There’s probably a (comparatively) trivial cut-off below which the reverse logistics just plain isn’t worth the hassle, and it makes no sense in isolation to request a return; but the incentive to game the system if it becomes well known and predictable that Amazon just says “not worth the hassle, keep it with refund” in certain cases would likely become a problem.
What is more puzzling is why they don’t seem to be doing any classification(or at least not effective classification) of goods between “can plausibly be revalidated” and “the inspection it would need cannot be justified by potentially getting to sell it”: There are, presumably, some goods that can be given a fairly quick once-over and classified as either fine or not; but others where the risk of contamination (as with drugs or cosmetics) or the incentives to reasonably sophisticated fraud (as with high value computer components or jewelry) would absolutely require more inspection than you are going to get from random warehouse conscripts, and potentially so much inspection that it’s just not worth aiming to ever list them a new.
You certainly see a lot of that when PC OEMs are selling stuff on their own account: basically anything that was a corporate bulk order config, or where the box so much as left the warehouse, gets marked as a refurb and sold separately. This might cover for some ‘refurbs’ where the CPU and GPU have both been swapped for the cheapest lookalikes that will still boot, not sure how often people get burned in the ‘refurb’ department(I usually do fine but I also don’t buy a statistically significant number of units); but it keeps down the incidence of mysterious scratches, missing protective film, and tampered OS installs in the ‘new’ section considerably.
“We started this as a dream to make enough money for Rachelle to be able to stay home,” Paul said. The alternative was Rachelle working as a teaching assistant, which barely covered the cost of childcare, they said.
The Barons were executing a plan to triple their annual sales to $3 million in 2020, when the review landed with a thud. Even though the diaper had a four-plus-star rating from hundreds of buyers, it was hard to miss the stain photos. More than 100 shoppers upvoted the damaging review as “helpful,” which increased its visibility. The algorithm was suddenly working against the Barons. Sales plummeted.
(“archive copy”)
many assumptions. They thought that that they had gained a foothold on the amazon site, but it wasn’t generating enough income. They wanted to expand then, because otherwise competitors would soon fill the perceived demand. So, loans to cover massive manufacturing volumes (cost per item goes down, but if no item sells, it’s a massive expense), bills from Amazon et al for warehousing unsold products.
Trump lost a shit ton of money mismanaging a casino, because the high interest loans were based on an unrealistic view of the market. The cost of capital is rarely convenient.
4 Likes
aha. that makes sense. yikes.
1 Like
Meanwhile, I had a review of a Draculaura doll removed for mentioning that it was shipped to me without any extra packaging. It was just… the doll in its box, which was, as you might expect, pretty badly damaged. I don’t collect the boxes, thankfully, but that seemed relevant for other collectors. Amazon removed it “because I mentioned the seller.” This was an in production doll, with the order shipped by Amazon. Not used, not resold. Just… okay. But these people get railroaded.
If they’re the makers of the swim diapers in the photo, we used those with our kids. They were great. I recently sold them at a rummage sale, still in great condition.
2 Likes
Under Amazon’s review rules it should have been removed because it was a fulfilment issue caused by Amazon which was in charge of the logistics.
While you and I may consider the buying experience to be an indistinquishable melange, Amazon (theoretically) distinguishes product, seller and fulfilment issues. And only product issues are to be reviewed on the product page. As the issue was caused by Amazon, it is a legitimate issue to remove under their current rules.
