Dirty diaper resold on Amazon ruined a family business, report says ( arstechnica.com )

Summary:

Amazon's returns process is a complete dumpster fire - they'll slap a "new" sticker on your used crap and put it right back up for sale. Case in point: a small biz got screwed when Amazon resold their poopy swim diaper as brand new, tanking their company. Thankfully, Amazon took immediate action (JK). At least sellers now at least have the option to opt-out of returns being sold as new.

One comment from the article:
we_avoid_temptation ,

Legitimate companies in this space have very specific and strict policies about returns. Everywhere I've seen (if they accept returns at all) requires items be unwashed with tags still attached, sometimes only the unopened ones.

Going "Oh, Amazon should have inspected it" is a cop-out at best.

gedaliyah Mod ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

The seller sends an item to the Amazon warehouse to be sold, Amazon fulfillment sends it to the buyer. Buyer returns it, and it goes back to the amazon warehouse and back into the store's digital inventory. It gets sold again and amazon fulfillment sends it out.

You can run a store without using Amazon but it may be hard to compete. Amazon has identical products in warehouses all over the world so even if it's not the specific item the seller sent to Amazon fulfillment, the customer can get same day delivery. This system also creates an intractible counterfeit problem.

ImADifferentBird ,
@ImADifferentBird@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I think you misunderstand. This is a business that uses the "fulfilled by Amazon" program, which means they never even saw the return. Amazon received the return, processed it, deemed it worthy of resale as a new item, and shipped it back out without them being involved at all. But they're the ones that ended up with the black eye from it.

conciselyverbose ,

Because others marked the review as helpful, Amazon increased its visibility on the product page, just as the Barons "were executing a plan to triple their annual sales to $3 million in 2020"

The fact that any returned diaper is resold is fucked. "Amazon should have inspected it" isn't good enough and whoever is in charge of the policy for returns of a diaper to ever be resold can screw off.

If it's Amazon, and Amazon is responsible for that diaper being shipped back out, that review should definitely be removed.

But regardless, "we were just about to triple our sales" is best case complete nonsense, and worst case nonsense stacked with scalping essential goods during a pandemic.

pigup ,
OlinOfTheHillPeople ,
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