Oh come now, you make it sound so distant like Amazon would somehow be surprised if you pointed out that you could find shady third party vendors on www.amazon.com.
But it’s their platform, and they are taking a cut and profiting off these third parties. They are associating the name of their online selling platform with crap merchants of questionable provenance. And diluting their own brand to boot when people get burned from shopping on amazon.com. If consumers really wanted to do exhaustive research and take their chances on rando fly-by-night vendors every time they made a purchase online they could just use ebay or google to find them.
I think it is extremely reasonable to think that Amazon listing products as “fulfilled by Amazon” is quasi deceptive. I got burned by this recently (peek upthread a bit) and I know I won’t be buying any more stuff from anyone but Amazon proper in the future. It’s a pain that I had to get burned to figure this out, but there you go.
Is the issue that Amazon doesn’t respond to quality issues in stuff not sold or by Fullfilled by Amazon? Is the issue that Amazon is selling shoddy stuff and not standing buy it even when it’s Fullfilled by Amazon?
For what it’s worth i can see an argument to be made that they should make it more explicit that an item is sold by a third party, though I don’t think I’ve ever been tricked on that (though most items I buy are prime available, even if it’s cheaper without prime). I have specifically bought items that were not fulfilled by Amazon and were by a third party, but like ebay I made sure those sellers had a good number of positive reviews and have yet to be burned.
It’s impossible for Amazon to do quality control for every 3rd party seller, and I have several friends who run businesses selling their own products through Amazon. They are too small to gain real retail space and if Amazon was forced to vet everything sold through their website it would knock a lot of legitimate small businesses off.
From what I have heard Amazon has been very heavy handed in dealing with customer complaints on products that 3rd parties have sold.
Amazon did not sell the cable Chris is talking about. Amazon didn’t falsely represent it. It is not Amazon’s responsibility (and it sounds like they might make good on it if asked even so). Chris is refusing to make that very real, meaningful distinction.
If you want to argue that Amazon shouldn’t allow third parties to do business through their site or that they should invest in vetting them and their inventory, feel free, but that’s a different discussion.
Um no, that is the discussion. “Fulfilled by Amazon”, like it or not, implies that there is some sort of more meaningful relationship than the one Amazon has with folks that they just let show up and sell through their website. If they want no quality control, then just say that these are third party vendors that we (Amazon) will allow to ship via Prime. But they do not do this.
The issue, from my perspective, is that Amazon is a name I’ve come to trust as a reputable online merchant for all manner of things. Of late that trust has been abused because Amazon is hosting a lot of stuff by third party seller that they imply, with phrases like “fulfilled by Amazon”, are just as good as doing business with Amazon. This is very obviously not the case. That’s aggravating, even though Amazon can be cajoled into providing support it took a lot more effort than it ought to have. More on that below.
Amazon is tarnishing their good name, and abusing the trust their customers have built up, in a very shortsighted move to make a few $$$ by getting a cut on the marketplace transactions. I feel it’s quasi deceptive, aggravating as heck, and I certainly will be steering clear of any purchases beyond the trivial from third party resellers on Amazon Marketplace.
They did issue me a refund, but not for the full amount. Just the one item in the package that was completely missing, but I’d returned some other accessories in the same package since they’d originally authorized my refund request for the whole shipment. The other items show on Amazon.com that they are in status “refund issued” but my card hasn’t received the funds for anything but the one item. I’m guessing that because they issued a one-off “make this guy happy” refund for the cost of that one item, that it closed out the whole refund/return in their system. So I’m going to have to contact them for a third time on this botched order to get my proper refund.
I can see how you could interpret it as implying some sort of meaningful relationship with Amazon, but that’s not what it means, nor do they ever actively imply or state that. So I’m not sure why either of you are persisting in blaming Amazon for your misinterpretation now that it’s been explained.
Edit: FWIW, you can click on the “Fulfilled by Amazon” tag and it will show what it means. Which is apparently a bit more than I was aware of - namely, that they also handle all customer service for those items. So my mistake.
As I mentioned before, Amazon co-mingles at their warehouse. Amazon stock and third party stock for those with fulfilled by status. This means you might order from Shop A and get something used or counterfeit, but it’s shop B that actually sent it to the warehouse. And yes, they handle pretty much everything. In fact if you reach out to one of these shops, like I did around Christmas they’ll tell you you have to work with Amazon not them which is weird because you wind up rating them as a seller.
Every time I order something from Alexa, I check my order online. She will use a third-party and it does’t even tell you.
Target (used to?) uses Amazon’s warehouses and shipping services, since Target’s distribution chain is setup for retail store distribution (which is massively different than direct to consumer distribution).
I was really annoyed (well, that’s been increasing year over year, but this year in particular) about how awful the Black Friday sales were this year. Almost all of it was junk from manufacturers I’d never heard of, and now I have a better understanding of what’s happening.
More importantly, this explains some of the confusion I’ve had at times when looking at product listings. I’m going to be more careful from now on.
As a frequent Amazon user myself, there are certain products I just don’t buy from them anymore because they’re prone to the counterfeiting problems. For example the Samsung microSD and like cards. There are entire guides online on how to spot a counterfeit, including in the review sections of Amazon. I simply choose to buy them from other retailers than deal with that. I’ve shifted some of my cord buying to other sites, ethernet, etc. too. Board games I tend to buy from Amazon or Third Party. There doesn’t seem to be a huge market for that as counterfeit and I’ve not had a problem yet.
I feel for Chris. I think it’s still important to know when you’re buying from a Third Party Seller or not. Amazon can do a lot better even though they do way better than Walmart, Sears and NewEgg already, but they can still do better. I do blame Amazon for some of these issues, but I still use them and guide others to them because I’ve not heard of an issue where a buyer wasn’t made whole from a screw-up. I think Chris would get his money back if he asked for it… but I only sold a few things there years ago and am not willing to sell again. It’s just not worth it.
On the other hand of this, one of the major reasons I use Amazon still is because I can return anything no questions asked.
For example, I bought a hard drive from Newegg because it was $20 cheaper than on Amazon. Ordered it, waited 5 days for it to arrive, installed windows and turns out the drive was bad. Submitted an RMA, waited a day for confirmation, then it was like a week for the return before I got my refund back. I also had to have an online conversation in order to cancel orders from them, or to get a refund issued for broken hardware. There are also a lot of items (like graphics cards) where they don’t even offer refunds at all, even if it’s broken they will only give you an exchange.
Compare that to Amazon where I get the item in 0-2 days (same day prime ftw) and they give refunds instantly once the shipper has confirmation that they have the package. Not to mention Amazon will take any item back no questions ask, even if it’s a matter of you not liking the item. I’ve done this quite a lot of times because I took a risk on an item, and sometimes the risk panned out and sometimes it didn’t (like a home security camera system where I was not happy with the NVR interface nor the camera quality). The few times I have talked with support (mostly over the phone) it was easy to deal with and I’ve usually come out ahead (monetarily wise), but most of the time refunds are just a couple clicks away without any hassles.
In this particular case the point is that all of the information he needed to make an informed decision is right on the very page he ordered from. The very first review I saw said that they received a used product. You can blame Amazon all you want for their business model but the bottom line is they are not duping anyone. If a person does just a little bit of due diligence, on the very page they order from, they can avoid issues like this. 3rd party vending is part of why Amazon manages to keep prices low and they have always handled complaints and returns at a level far better than any other online retailer I know. Once again, if you do not like how they do business, dont do business with them. This is how they do business, where 3rd party vendors are involved, and you are fully aware of that. In the end, the purchase is your choice, they do not force you into it. And since they can and will make it right if there is an issue and people are clearly aware that there are on occasion issues with 3rd party vendors, Im not sure why all of the righteous indignation. You are far more responsible because you made the purchase, with full knowledge of these issues and then get pissed at Amazon for it. Your anger seems a bit displaced to me.
Our anger is at the business model, not this particular transaction (I already said that I knew that I had a 50% chance of actually getting a new item). The counter argument of “well that’s just the way they do business” may work for many in this thread, but others want them to change this business practice. If it is advertised as “new” it should be new, I don’t care who is doing the selling.
If Amazon did not have its very liberal return policies I wouldn’t order anything from them, so I do appreciate that part of the Amazon experience. Just stop sending used items as new through your website!
Be interesting to see what impact a trade war with China would have on this. If money has to be collected from retailers on products produced in China at time of sale, then they’d have to be able to distinguish between items based on country of origin.
If they do it by barcode, it won’t address the counterfeit problem. For example, if they have a Gucci purse on there and a company from China just says hey here are some Gucci purses, at the point of sale it’s going to look like Italy. Clearly those are counterfeit and when they entered the country, assuming they aren’t shipping direct to customer, it’s China.
