Amazon's New Refunds Policy Will 'Crush' Small Businesses, Outraged Sellers Say (cnbc.com)

Amazon sellers are up in arms over a new returns policy that will make it easier for consumers to send back items at the merchant's expense. From a report: Marketplace sellers who ship products from their home, garage or warehouse -- rather than using Amazon's facilities -- were told this week by email that starting Oct. 2, items they sell will be "automatically authorized" for return. That means a buyer will no longer need to contact the seller before sending an item back, and the merchant won't have the opportunity to communicate with the customer. If a consumer is returning an electronic device because it's difficult to use, for example, the seller won't be able to offer help before being forced to pay a refund. "Customers will be able to print a prepaid return shipping label via the Online Return Center instantly," the email said. Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell.

Comments

SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME BOB

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon isn't in the retail business. Amazon isn't in the cloud computing business. Amazon isn't in the logistics business. Amazon is in the business business. It is no longer The Everything Store; it is now the Everything Everything. It wants to be the platform around which all of the world's businesses depend.

This is about as ambitious a mission as a company has ever launched, in my opinion -- and Amazon may be the first company with a justifiable claim to such ambition. Its only business constraints at this point are geopolitical, really. I believe it aims even higher in the long run: it is aiming to become the macroeconomic backbone of at least the Western world.

When viewed in that context, traditional definitions of monopoly -- especially the most widely known definition of the state, which is based on market share within a specific industry -- almost feel antiquated. Jeff Bezos isn't JP Morgan; he's freaking Cohaagen from Total Recall.

(To be very clear, I say all of this in admiration of Jeff Bezos, not in fear or criticism of him.)

Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[MikeDataLink]

After my return experience with NewEgg where I bought a defective gaming motherboard and took three days of back and forth emails with tech support before finally having to pay for my own return shipping I switched to Amazon. Yes, I'll pay $5 more for that motherboard, but it takes 30 seconds to return it and the replacement will arrive in 24 hours.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad to see this too. I had issues with third parties on Amazon before and defective thumb drives. yeah I had an issue with NewEgg as well. I purchased a Dell computer and after I received it the specs where not what was on the website spec page. After three days of back and forth emails and phone calls they refused to just simply replace the ram that was not per their specs. I had to return the damn computer and then purchase another. Not a pleasant experience. I will only purchase computers directly unless I want to build one.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[mishehu]

When it comes to computer equipment, I find it much easier to use Newegg to search. And also Newegg gets points from me for taking on patent trolls, while Amazon itself is a patent troll.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[ganjadude]

i havent gotten anything from them in a while but its always been painless for me. I call them up tell them something is defective (mother board) it shows up in 48 hours with a return label for the original for me to ship back. I admit its been a few years however

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to always go NewEgg for electronics, and never had any problems with returns (but I never bought mobos or processors that needed returning), until they decided that it was a good idea to start sending me advertisements in email. I stopped buying from them right then.

What I get from Amazon is bs requests for reviews from vendors. I oblige by leaving them bad reviews, explaining why.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never once had to pay any shipping fees for returns/replacements through Newegg for anything DOA or return/replace within return time frame(30days or whatever).

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Rockoon]

I agree that mail-order returns are difficult, which is why I dont buy anything mail-order if I can get it locally.

Things like monitors, headphones, webcams, mice, keyboards, hard and thumb drives, .... all of them can be sourced locally from multiple locations, and all of those locations have even friendlier return policies than this change gives Amazon.

On top of that, it is a fact that some retailers make sure higher quality items are on the shelves precisely because of their return policy. A business like Staples for instance, an office supply company, doesn't typically get that sketchy batch of hard drives to begin with because companies like Walmart and Amazon resellers actively encourages getting the sketchy batch themselves because they insisted on such low wholesale prices.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That is why I am thankful that I have a Micro Center near by. They may be marginally more expensive (I think I paid like $5 to $10 more the last time I built a computer) than amazon or new egg but the fact that if something is DOA I can bring it back and get a new one without any hassle is worth it. It doesn't seem to happen often but when it does stopping by on my way home from work is super easy (the back entrance is right at the top of the ramp to get on/off the freeway), or I can drive there if I need it now. Then add in the order online pickup in 18 minutes and it is worth shopping there as by the time I get there my order is ready.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[nospam007]

"i havent gotten anything from them in a while but its always been painless for me. "

For me too. I'm living in the EU and we can return _anything_ for any reason or no reason at all, if bought online.
It's the law.
The return label is included and I can put it in any delivery box nearest to me and the post-office will pick it up there.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[green1]

Your local stores may have good return policies, but I'd argue that they are "friendlier" than this Amazon policy. You quite literally don't have to talk to anyone to do the return, depending on the postal situation in your neighbourhood you might not even have to put on pants.

I'm not saying your local stores aren't doing things well, but I don't think you can claim that they are necessarily superior to this

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Solandri]

Yes, I'll pay $5 more for that motherboard

So basically you're ok with paying $5 more per item for hassle-free returns.

Newegg Premier is just $50/yr. It gives you expedited shipping, free returns for any reason (Amazon charges you return shipping if there's nothing wrong with the item), no restocking fee, and your friends and family can use your membership as well. By your metric, if you and your friends/family could potentially buy more than 10 items per year from Newegg, this is a better deal than Amazon.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[MikeDataLink]

I suspect it was a third party seller. A-Z Returns apply to any items fulfilled by Amazon, but not to 3rd party sellers. That is what is changing.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[DogDude]

You should also be happy that you're supporting your neighbors and your community.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[JaredOfEuropa]

What I like about buying from our local computer store is that my purchase is DOA or doesn't meet expecation, I can get a replacement right away. The only downside is that I do have to put on pants when I go there, but that's a small price to pay.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Zenin]

Much agreed, I too go to NewEgg's search first and salute their anti patent troll actions.

And then after I find what I want to go buy it on Amazon.com.

Sure, some see that as a dick move. But I look at places like BestBuy who have not only acknowledged that people do that, but embraced it: BestBuy is now more of a "show room" where they make a large chunk of their money simply renting the demo space to products, knowing full well most folks will actually buy online. They don't care, they don't need to, they've already paid the rent with just demoing the products. Want to check out the newest carpet cleaning robots hands on? BestBuy has a half dozen of the latest models, some including little carpet areas to run around in, it's great. Figure which one you want (Samsung, trust me) and then scan the barcode and buy it on Amazon. It's a win, win, win!

NewEgg will die sooner rather than later if it can't figure out a similar model. So far they've just tried to copy the "market place" of Amazon, which has only made their acclaimed search feature suck by filling it with white noise. :/

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[green1]

You also have to go there, shop during their specified business hours, deal with their significantly smaller selection, wait in lines, transport your purchase home afterwards, etc. All told, what took 5 minutes of your time to do online, takes over an hour of your time to do at a physical store.
Online shopping is far more convenient than brick and mortar, offers a larger selection, and generally at lower prices.

Of course, if you're an "instant gratification" type who can't wait 2 days for shipping, then I guess you can keep shopping at the local mall until it finally goes out of business, but keep in mind that the fewer people like you who are willing to do it, the higher their prices are going to have to rise to compensate for it.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[swillden]

You should also be happy that you're supporting your neighbors and your community.

Why shouldn't you be happy that you're supporting the community of wherever the Amazon shipping warehouse is? What is it about the place you live that makes it more deserving of support than somewhere else?

The obvious answer is "because I live there", but, is that really an answer? Is this just the modern form of tribalism, or is there really some actual value in supporting people who live near you rather than people who live far away.

Re: Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Reaper9889]

Well, a simple to understand but not nice reason is that by giving money to businesses close to you, they will get more employees, which means more people around you are employed which in turn makes them less likely to do some kinds of crimes like robberies. (Naturally in reality, it is more threshold based and there are certain other effects like people moving to areas with more jobs, but in general, I think it sounds like a reasonable belief that more money spend in an area leads to a larger fraction of people with jobs in that area).

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[rajafarian]

"Amazon's search is complete dogshit."

It's even worse than that! I'm willing to be they play around with search results, for example if I search for certain products sometimes the brand is not available as a filter even though I see there is such a product RIGHT THERE on the page.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[bluefoxlucid]

That's a known economic fallacy. Localism generally makes an economy weaker and poorer, save for when the local economy is at a trade advantage.

For example: it's expensive to ship meat and produce around the country; as a result, people who live in Wisconsin or various big farm states have access to meat, cheese, and so forth at low prices. At one point, farmers used to get $8/crate (90 pounds) for oranges, which showed up at my local market for $8/5lb (literally 18 times as expensive), with nobody along the way profiting more than 10%!

In such a case, buying local reduces the cost of goods, leaving you with more money to buy more stuff. Buying as direct as viable will shift your income away from middle-men and to other producers and middle-men. Buying things locally-made in local stores, for example, avoids the enormous cost of overland nationwide distribution (a pair of pants costs like 6.5 cents to get here from China, and about $7 overall to get from the port to the Wal-Mart where you buy them). That, then, means you can buy more goods, and so there are more cashiers and local distribution drivers to carry pumpkins from the farm to the super market 2 miles away.

On the other hand, pants cost about $6 import ($6.12 per pair from China, 6.5 cents is shipping oversea). With American minimum-wage labor, this goes up, and so Americans have to work longer hours to afford them. The minimum-wage labor isn't just $8.25/hr; there's a massive amount of payroll going to social insurances (OASDI, medicare, unemployment on the first $7,000 of income) and benefits.

That triples the price of pants and cuts back the amount of labor you might expect to make all the pants we import from China (~178,000 factory jobs) dramatically. It also reduces the number of objects shipped and sold, meaning fewer truck drivers, fewer cashiers, and fewer retail inventory management crew members. In total, you end up losing nearly a net 9,000 American jobs.

The average American factory worker makes something like $21/hr and costs the employer $78/hr, versus around $3.20/hr in China. Buying local would be a disaster for jobs and the economy at large.

We have a lot of cities that are blown-out rust holes because they now lack any notable productive capacity. Folks there don't make anything anyone wants; if they did, they'd make it at a cost greater than anyone else who makes it anywhere else, and anyone who buys it from them would be poorer. Money wouldn't flow into their local economy, and people in their local would work harder and longer to use the same labor-hours and attached money to buy a lot less stuff and be a lot poorer in a desperate and misguided attempt at self-sufficiency and support of their local economy.

That's actually one reason I want a Universal Social Security. One of its side-effects is an inflow of money to such communities, giving them consumer purchasing power. They might import goods, sure; and someone needs to sell them. Fast food, retail, local entertainment... the last-mile service economy will grow. People will find jobs and grow wealth. With a stronger economy, they can then begin building a basis from which to supply something to the rest of the world. They might not all find it, but they'll be more-adaptable, more-ready, and more-supported while they wait as labor reserve for the rest of us.

It's been surprisingly-hard to pitch a universal social security because of class warfare. Since we're not in a recession now, people aren't hurt and scared; they're still angry. Thing is, it doesn't cost any more money to supply a universal social security--that is to say: after all is done and said, on a half-month cycle, people are perpetually ahead in after-tax spendable money under that system compared to today's. I mean all people.

You'd be surprised how many folks

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Khyber]

You shouldn't have been using NewEgg in the first place. Go looking on pricewatch.com - NewEgg quit advertising there because the competition kept (and still does for the most part) beating their prices.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Khyber]

"Of course, if you're an "instant gratification" type who can't wait 2 days for shipping"

I'd much rather not take the chance of my shit being damaged in transport and then I'm stuck waiting a week or more on a replacement. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll spend the hour of time to ensure I get my product to my house in working order.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[omnichad]

I live 3 miles from an Amazon Distribution Center, you insensitive clod!

Re: Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[swillden]

I'd say that depends heavily on what the area is like now.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[BronsCon]

Often times, especially with stores that are more than a handful of minutes from me, it's two or more days from the time I decide I need something until I can find time to get there to buy it. Once I get the item home, it's another two or more days before I'll find time to get back there if I need to return or exchange an item.

Suddenly, when viewed from that perspective, waiting two days for shipping isn't a big deal. When viewed from the perspective of not having to deal with traffic, burn gas (or use electricity), wait in line, load/unload the item into and out of my car, hell I'm on the 3rd floor with no elevator and a bad back, I'd much rather have UPS bring it up the stairs and, if necessary, carry it down... Well, since I won't be able to get to Best Buy until Saturday and have to carry that 28lb printer in its huge box up the stais myself if I buy from them, I'll order it from Amazon, have it Friday, and let the UPS guy bring it up the stairs.

And if it arrives damaged, he can bring the replacement up for me and carry the return right down the stairs.

I've even paid a couple bucks more on Amazon to cover the savings in time, effort, and gas. Not to mention pain and suffering (re: bad back).

You can spent that hour of your time ensuring that no harm comes to your new purchase between the store and your home, but that's no guarantee that the contents of the undamaged package are functional. You'll still have returns for defective products.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[GoRK]

NewEgg is the fucking worst. I stopped using them completely over one such incident, and I had been spending probably 50K+/yr with them previously. Our spend is easily 4x that today, and they get zero of it.

They sent the wrong CPU -- I had ordered an 8 core Xeon to go in a supermicro barebones, and they sent a slower 4 core. I did not actually notice until it was in the box. Although it was not ideal, it was barely adequate for our application, and we didn't have a lot of time to change out. So I did the reasonable thing in light of their asinine "no cpu returns" policy by requesting a refund of the amount of the difference between the product I ordered and the product I was sent.

They responded by closing my account. I filed a dispute with the credit card company which rejected it after NewEgg made false statements to them. NewEgg did reopen my account as a "courtesy" and I return that courtesy by doing everything possible to convince people never to shop with them. After relating my experience, the owner of a small regional chain ended their affiliate relationship with NewEgg -- they had in the prior year done approximately $2mm in referrals.

Honestly this is the business equivalent of getting a door ding in your car. But I can't be the only one -- poor customer service is shitty for business.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[JaredOfEuropa]

Of course you have to be able to take delivery of said item. My wife and I both work, so unless the stuff comes by UPS (who deliver in the evenings), the package may be left with the neighbours (if they happen to be home) or it'll be brought to a depot or a nearby participating store where I can go pick it up. In that case I might as well go to the damn store that sells the item.

We still buy pretty much all our stuff in brick & mortar stores, unless an item is significantly cheaper or the store is too far away.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[BronsCon]

You mean UPS doesn't leave stuff at your door? Huh, well that sucks, they've done that for me everywhere I've ever lived, and I've lived all around the country and in urban, suburban, and rural areas.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[DogDude]

I spend money in their business, they spend money in mine. That's not tribalism. That's just common sense.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[MDMurphy]

I haven't had a return problem with Newegg, but I judge more about not needing to return than the return process. For both Amazon and Newegg, I try to avoid 3rd party sellers. If they have something that is otherwise unobtainable, then fine, but to save a couple bucks? No thanks.
What this issue sounds like is that Amazon is making 3rd party sellers rise to the same standard as Amazon. They probably got tired of having customers pissed off at Amazon as a store when Amazon really just was the payment processor in the transaction. Many people don't know the difference.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[swillden]

I spend money in their business, they spend money in mine. That's not tribalism. That's just common sense.

People all over the world pay my salary, so I guess I should spread my spending as well.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[swillden]

Tribalism isn't a four-letter word.

Not unless you can't count. However, it is a dirty word, because it means discrimination against people who are not like yourself.

Like it or not, it's still practiced, because it's beneficial to your self interests.

So are lots of other terrible and immoral things.

Support, trust, assistance, and focus should always follow a locality principal. Yourself/family->friends->extended family->neighbours->neighbourhood->city->state->country->world.

Nice assertion. Care to provide moral justification for it?

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Khyber]

You have no clue how many UPS/FedEx/USPS trucks get followed so deliveries get swiped if they're left at the door and nobody answers immediately.

It's gotten so bad that the county sheriff had to issue a public notice (via the USPS to our postal boxes) to start watching after deliverymen and postmen.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[BronsCon]

I'm sure it happens in some places. Guess I've just never lived anywhere that sucks that bad. I average two deliveries a day (hey, I'm running a business from my home) and I'm only home for less than half of them because they tend to come after 5; can't say I've ever had one walk away.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[JaredOfEuropa]

Unfortunately not the case in the Netherlands. Packages visibly left outside would get stolen in short order. I was surprised to see delivery guys leave stuff outside people's doors when I visited the US; we may have less crime overall but people here have very little respect for other people's property, lots of petty theft and vandalism.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[pnutjam]

I live in an apartment complex and I've seen packages sit on doorsteps for afew days without anyone bothering them. Despite the fact that they could be dropped off at the main office.
However, I'm in a relatively affluent area. I think the density of the complex discourages that sort of theft because there are always at least two or three different apartments (at a minimum) that could see you.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[sabt-pestnu]

> You also have to go there, shop during their specified business hours...
People have been doing this literally for millennia. Some people use an agent (eg spouse).

> deal with their significantly smaller selection
Yet often, they can make more informed decisions about their proposed purchase. The store often has agents (salespeople) who (often) know something about the items. Also, they may know about how often that item gets returned. (I recently had an unpleasant experience with a Proscan DVD player, for instance...) Some stores even allow you to order an item they don't have in stock. (qv Sears, Roebuck and co...)

>wait in lines
And you wait for your item to be delivered, yes? Or you pay for the privilege of getting it faster, yes? It's a wash.

> transport your purchase home afterwards
And transport yourself home afterwards, what a pain.

Some of the other advantages of dealing in person are: actual personal interaction with store personnel, as mentioned above (though this may not be something you desire); ability to purchase anonymously; guarantee that the company will still be in business if the item is defective and needs to be replaced/returned in 3 weeks (common sense and purchase receipt do apply).

For large appliances (since transportation seems to be an issue you consider), the store will usually have a means to have it delivered ... and arrange to have the old appliance taken away, unlikely to happen from an online purchase.

Good luck suing the online vendor for fraud or identity theft.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[plague911]

Amazon has its uses.

By design they do not care about specialty products with highly specific specifications.

That is actually their stated policy

What they are great for is generic items with very similar drop in replacements.

As an example I just bought a bunch of coasters, shampoo, a crockpot and a DVD case. I checked to make sure they had good build quality by the # of 5 star reviews, picked the one that matched my price point and just comparison shopped elsewhere. Turns out Amazon is cheaper.

If you need to figure out what component you want, you are doing it wrong if you are doing your research of Amazon

Amazon would not even tell you to do that

Do your research then price check on amazon, newegg, tiger direct, and wherever else.

Re: Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[swillden]

Care to provide a moral justification of why it's more important to send my money off to some other part of the world?

That's trivial. Those people in the other part of the world are just as human and just as deserving of my business as someone nearby. There is no moral reason to prefer local over distant; we're all people.

Fascist.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[swillden]

You should also be happy that you're supporting your neighbors and your community.

Why shouldn't you be happy that you're supporting the community of wherever the Amazon shipping warehouse is? What is it about the place you live that makes it more deserving of support than somewhere else?

Because if one day you decide to start a small business like a restaurant (or even a carpenter shop), you'll sell to your neighbors, not to the Chinese guy who made your iPhone.

True, but I fail to see how that's relevant. Some businesses are inherently local, and locals buy from them. Others are globalizable, and local people are just as capable of offering services to the world as I am of buying from around the world.

Because locally produced stuff not only has a smaller carbon footprint

That's a potentially-valid point. We should implement carbon taxes so carbon footprint gets factored into the economics.

but also develops your local community (more expertise, and even more money to buy stuff at your carpenter shop)

Specialization is how we progress.

Because if everyone buys everything on Amazon, eventually no one around you will have a job.

Implicit in this statement is the assumption that only people far away can make stuff that gets sold on Amazon. Why do you believe that?

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[UsuallyReasonable]

Wrong.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[swillden]

You're assuming that people in your area can only sell local. Why do you assume that? Some businesses are inherently local, sure, but you don't need to make a choice to support them, because you can't buy remotely anyway. But many businesses are globalizable, and that applies to both buyers and sellers.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[thegreatbob]

Story is anecdotal from someone I worked with.. but they bought a protection plan on a cheap keyboard, smashed it in the parking lot, went back in and got another one. In general, I've found MicroCenter is very good about not being excessively averse to accepting returns, especially if you buy one of their replacement plans.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Bob the Super Hamste]

On the few DoA items I have gotten from them, hey it happens, it has always been super easy to get it exchanged. Just bring it up to the returns/service counter the look up to see that I purchased it the day before or a few hours ago and they go and get me a new one. But like I said before that is what I like is that there isn't a hassle with doing the exchange. I never have gotten a replacement plan as my experience with electronics seems to be they are DoA, die in a couple of week, or die after like 7+ years of use. The in store returns/exchanges take care of the first 2 cases and for the 3rd by then most consumer electronics are so horribly out of date and the warranty never lasts that long that it wouldn't have mattered any way.

Re: Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[Corbets]

Iâve often had this thought too; however, in reading your post an answer came to me: thereâs a self-interest in supporting people locally. It keeps your economy running and your neighbors from turning to crime, for example. It keeps your neighborhood feeling âzaliveâoe rather than abandoned. So on and so forth.

Iâm not arguing itâs right, but I think I can see a justification for the view.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[houghi]

To be more specific, every contract/sale that has been done not at the official address of the seller will grand a cool down period of 2 weeks. That is online stuff and telemarketing things, but also when e.g. the bank comes to your home for your mortage and you sign the contract at your home and not at their office.

And even then there still might be a cool down period.

It is as if these laws where made by the people for the people. Weird.

Re:Easy Guaranteed Returns are why I Use Amazon

[nanoflower]

I haven't had a return problem with either company but then returns are very rare.

My problem with Amazon is their sorting algorithm is poor. If I go looking for hard drives (as an example) and then sort by price (low-high) I'll get a ton of cables and other devices that aren't hard drives. Then there's the one time I did something similar in the clothes department. Page after page after page of cheap Chinese products ($1 for a shirt so it shows up first but has a $9 shipping charge and takes weeks to ship) that are just noise for the information I actually wanted.

It's something they need to work on. If I know exactly what I'm looking for then Amazon is great.

GTFO

[qbast]

'Outraged sellers' are welcome to get the hell out of Amazon and sell somewhere else, on their own terms.

Re:GTFO

[Tablizer]

Go where? Amazon nuked the competition. It's the same reason most orgs still have Microsoft desktops despite MS sucking rotting eggs forward and backward. Your poop has to be crevice-for-crevice compatible with the shape of everyone else's MS-Anus if you want to pass goods and services instead of be constipated.

Competition is good, now lets get some.

Re:GTFO

[jfdavis668]

ebay is still a big place to sell your products.

Re:GTFO

[drinkypoo]

Go where? Amazon nuked the competition.

Nonsense. Besides eBay, anyone is free to spin up their own storefront, and handle their own advertising. If their business is small enough to where advertising is arduous they'd probably be better off working niche markets anyway.

Re:GTFO

[PhrostyMcByte]

Yes, ideally these businesses could just go elsewhere and thrive... but if we're pragmatic this is a very difficult thing to succeed at. This will decimate the amount of competition because many of them will fail on their own.

The problem is that Amazon has more or less locked in a large market of people who don't shop around, enjoy their Prime shipping, and are afraid of putting their credit card into a random business's site.

The idealist in me agrees with you, but I don't feel idealism is the correct approach here. We should also acknowledge that business is a two-way street (or at least should be) and it's not exactly whining for these small businesses to be voicing an opinion on the new terms.

Re:GTFO

[JenovaSynthesis]

Amazon's competition nuked themselves with their inadequacy. All Amazon did was spot the weaknesses (which were pretty obvious) and exploit them.

Re:GTFO

[ShanghaiBill]

Go where?

Are you serious? There are a zillion alternatives. That most of them are crap isn't Amazon's fault. For starters, there is eBay. There is also plenty of niche vendors for particular products. You can also set up your own website.

So why is it hard to sell through these other sites? Because they have a reputation for slow shipping and crappy return policies ... so it is hypocritical to want to use Amazon's reputation while complaining about their easy returns.

Re:GTFO

[Oswald McWeany]

ebay is still a big place to sell your products.

As a consumer, I, and many other people, won't touch e-bay with a 10ft pole. Jet on the otherhand, if it had better variety, like maybe even 1/3 of what Amazon has, would be an excellent place to shop.

Re:GTFO

[mrfaithful]

Amazon's competition nuked themselves with their inadequacy. All Amazon did was spot the weaknesses (which were pretty obvious) and exploit them.

No, what Amazon did was figure out that they didn't need to make profit so long as they kept investing in new technology that they could maybe sell eventually. They now make so much money on cloud computing and related services that they don't give a crap about profit in their retail side. They are walmarting the entire retail business model safe in the knowledge that everyone else is going to go broke long before they do trying to compete.

People who have never worked in a small retail business don't understand the business model. You don't "compete" with lower prices, that's just a race to the bottom with everyone dying a slow death. Including the manufacturers who now have a thoroughly devalued product that they can't wholesale.

Re:GTFO

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah if I want cheap but risky I go to ebay or craigslist.

On amazon I don't click buy unless it's prime and is from amazon or is fulfilled by amazon.

Amazon needs to get a handle on their 3rd party vendors or their reputation will be diminished. This is a necessary move.

Re:GTFO

[DogDude]

You nailed it.

Re:GTFO

[green1]

yes, and you know why we, as consumers, won't touch e-bay? precisely because it's a haven for these exact sellers who don't care about their customers.

If you won't stand behind your product, e-bay is the perfect place to sell, as the buyers there expect that level (or lack of) support.

If you DO stand behind your product, than continue to sell on Amazon, this change won't affect you.

Re:GTFO

[EvilSS]

Go where? Amazon nuked the competition. It's the same reason most orgs still have Microsoft desktops despite MS sucking rotting eggs forward and backward. Your poop has to be crevice-for-crevice compatible with the shape of everyone else's MS-Anus if you want to pass goods and services instead of be constipated.

Competition is good, now lets get some.

Walmart or eBay for starters. Yes, Walmart also has 3rd party sellers. Or Sears (also has 3rd party sellers).

Re:GTFO

[green1]

Ideally these businesses would not "thrive" elsewhere, ideally they'd go out of business altogether.
Keep in mind that the businesses are complaining because Amazon is mandating that they stand behind their product. If you aren't willing to stand behind what you sell, and Amazon won't do business with you because of that, I have no sympathy.

Re:GTFO

[Anonymous Coward]

This, too:

Visual Studio is hands-down the best IDE out there, period.

Re:GTFO

[DogDude]

"Standing behind your product" is not anything like "accepting all returns for no reason". There are a large percentage of people who will return something out of stupidity, ignorance, malevolence, spite, or even just for shits and giggles.

Re:GTFO

[slew]

ebay is still a big place to sell your products.

As a consumer, I, and many other people, won't touch e-bay with a 10ft pole. Jet on the otherhand, if it had better variety, like maybe even 1/3 of what Amazon has, would be an excellent place to shop.

Don't "worry", pretty soon Jet will be just like Walmart (since they bought Jet)... They are phasing out Kirkland brands for Sam's products and are adding some Walmart to boost their variety, but I suspect the end goal is to close Jet (kind of like Amazon killed Quidsi).

Re:GTFO

[GLMDesigns]

There are clothing stores where people returned dresses or suits after wearing them. How do you as a store owner deal with that? On the retail level it's you buy it - it's yours.

When people try to return it you examine it. Some don't even have the decency to dry clean the clothes which smell like perfume, smoke and body odor; others don't empty their pockets (condoms, receipts). And then some of these guys start screaming that the clothes aren't returnable. Police are called. They look at the clothes and tell the people they have to leave. Meanwhile other customers shopping experience are ruined and you've lost sales.

My wife and some of her friends opened up clothing stores (now long closed). I've witnessed more than one of these exchanges.

Re: GTFO

[bistromath007]

Lots of people still sell things from their own website. Depending on what you're looking for, it's often better to search for sites specifically about that product, as you'll have more access to information for comparison.

Re:GTFO

[green1]

And in physical stores this has been the case for eons. They just deal with it. Sure, it sucks, but the alternative is blocking legitimate refunds and not standing behind your product. I'm happy Amazon is standing up for their customers here.

Re:GTFO

[green1]

Meanwhile, ALL the major stores that are left just accept everything back. Sure it sucks, but the alternative is blocking legitimate returns. I'm glad Amazon is standing up for their customers here.

Re:GTFO

[JaredOfEuropa]

Why the hell would I need variety? Amazon doesn't really need to be a one stop shop (and over here it certainly isn't: Amazon.nl only offers books, though they finally did get around to add Dutch language to the German Amazon store). If I need a rubber washer for the pump in my heater, I can go to rubberwashersforheaters.nl and find what I need. In fact a lot of the big online retailers have different filtered views on their stores, giving the impression that there are many stores, each selling only one type of thing. When online, there's little advantage in having a one stop shop.

Apart from that, Amazon does have some small advantages. They have my credit card on file which makes buying slightly easier, but with most Dutch web sites I don't even have to bother with a credit card, I use Paypal or pay directly via my bank. And I don't really need to look for retailers with a good return policy, the one mandated by law is good enough (IIRC: 14 days no questions asked, money back).

Re:GTFO

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, believe me, we are. Amazon is a shit show all around for 3rd party sellers. It just takes awhile to sink in.

Upfront, you see them steal 15%-20% of every sale.

Then your first order comes in. They've reset the weight of everything you sell. Feathers or bowling balls, doesn't matter, catalog says 1lb. Shipping is a flat $4.49 so they helpfully select a customer in the state farthest from you. As if that's not enough, then they dip their snouts into that too so you only get $4.

Then, if you signed up for FBA, you start seeing higher rent bills come in at different times of the year. You pull your stuff back, only to find they've co-mingled it with fakes, even though you unchecked that box and confirmed with them. Amazon, of course, takes no responsibility and tells you to pound sand. You're lucky you got anything back.

Then your first liar buyer files an A-Z claim. They tell you to talk to the buyer and when he doesn't respond at all they side in his favor. Your appeal, showing delivery confirmation, an unresponsive customer, and an open postal investigation is instantly denied. That's when you find out you're supposed to pay even more out of pocket for signature confirmation. And even then there's no guarantee. Best case, a liar buyer whose bluff has been called gets free return shipping on you.

Meanwhile, Amazon is held to none of these standards. They can drag their feet for weeks on office supplies, refuse to answer inquiries, and deliver damaged goods without recourse.

Like I said, a shit show all around. Amazon shills can fuck right off.

Re:GTFO

[mobby_6kl]

As a consumer, ebay is great though? The sellers are scared shitless of getting anything other than 5-star reviews and will bend over backwards to secure a good rating.

Re:GTFO

[barc0001]

Have you ever sold items online? Most customers are fine but there is small percentage that are idiots, scammers, assholes or all three rolled into one. None of these proposed changes are going to make selling items online any easier or more profitable. No, they'll just make sure some sellers decide that the scales have now tipped to the point where it's not worth the bullshit with Amazon reaching into their pockets on behalf of that small subset and making the whole enterprise unprofitable.

And their "returnless refunds" policy was highly requested by sellers? My ass. But the people who already email and say "X was damaged during shipping" or "X was broken" and then ask to have another one shipped out and they'll "keep the other one for their trouble" will be delighted. Sounds like the policy was written by those buyers.

Re:GTFO

[thomst]

green1 expostulated

yes, and you know why we, as consumers, won't touch e-bay? precisely because it's a haven for these exact sellers who don't care about their customers.

If you won't stand behind your product, e-bay is the perfect place to sell, as the buyers there expect that level (or lack of) support.

If you DO stand behind your product, than continue to sell on Amazon, this change won't affect you.

You are 100% incorrect.

I buy a great many things from eBay. (In fact, last week I bought my 350th item.) While I have had bad experiences with some sellers, including recently, eBay has always responded to my complaints, and every dispute I've filed has been resolved in my favor. Moreover, some months ago, eBay contacted me via email to inform me that a seller from whom I'd just purchased a Jeggs screwdriver set had been hacked, and the listing I'd bought was bogus. I was advised to request a refund, which I did. Paypal sent me email telling me I had received my refund less than an hour later.

Beyond outright hacking, I've won disputes that were more subtle. For instance, I bought a Behringer USB500 microphone preamp from a New York seller, then discovered that I could get the same unit from Musician's Friend for a better price, plus 8% back in loyalty points. So, less than an hour after I bought the item, I requested the sale be cancelled. That cancellation request was made at 1:00 am EDT, long before the seller could have generated a shipping label. When I received notice at 10:31 am that I couldn't cancel the sale, because the item had been shipped, I immediately contacted eBay customer service to complain. They referred my complaint to their risk management team (who deal with rogue sellers), and urged me to file a request for a refund with Paypal. I did that, and Paypal's rep instructed me to refuse delivery of the item, and wait for the USPS to report it as having been returned to the sender. I did as they suggested, and three days later I got email telling me I'd received a full refund.

Oh, and because the idiot seller had refused to cancel the order, I was able to leave strongly negative feedback about the transaction - so she only screwed herself. I was merely somewhat inconvenienced.

Now this may seem to support your centention that eBay is a hive of bad-faith sellers, but my own experience has been that exactly the opposite is true. Yes, there are some bad eggs, but by paying attention to their ratings, and buying only from sellers that have sold at least 100 items, I've had bad experiences with fewer than half-a-dozen purchases, in more than 350 transactions thus far - and, again, all of those problems have been resolved in my favor.

For the record, I have no relationship with eBay other than as a customer. I own none of their stock, I have no friends or relatives that work for them, and I have never been an eBay seller. I just buy stuff from them because it's usually significantly cheaper than buying the same stuff from Amazon. My relationship with Musician's Friend is exactly the same: I'm a highly-satisfied customer, who buys stuff from them because they offer competitive pricing, loyalty points via their Backstage Pass program (which is free to join), and outstanding customer service. That's it. That's all ...

Re:GTFO

[thebullshitpatrol]

I don't know where you guys get this shit from.

As someone who operated a small ebay business and still sells on ebay, I can assure you that the game is always configured in the buyer's favor. It is beyond easy for buyers to get away with all sorts of return scams and arbitrary complaining.

I have never and will never have an experience in my life where I receive something from eBay or Amazon that wasn't as expected and I am not able to reconcile it. On the contrary, my biggest fear as a seller is that a buyer takes advantage of this leniency.

Think about it for one second. What does a company like Amazon or eBay lose by pissing sellers off? Nothing. They have literally nothing to lose by their buyers having slightly fewer choices of who to buy from, on the off chance that seller completely gives up.

What does a company like Amazon or eBay lose by pissing buyers off? A potentially life-long customer. There are far more places to buy things than to sell things.

Re:GTFO

[Tablizer]

what Amazon did was figure out that they didn't need to make profit so long as they kept investing in new technology that they could maybe sell eventually.

Use wealth to get more wealth: that's how the rich get richer and the rest fight for scraps. It's how MS killed smaller competitors: subsidize competing product until competitor dies or has to turn niche. Becoming a de-facto standard is another way to get bigger by being big. And Warren Buffett admitted part the reason for his success is that his portfolio is so large he can afford riskier investments than smaller investment co's because the shear quantity of investments smooths out dips and failures of individual holdings: law of big averages. He doesn't have to play it safe.

Re:GTFO

[Khyber]

"There are far more places to buy things than to sell things."

Your logic is rather broken. The only places to buy things are the places selling things in the first place!

Re:GTFO

[Khyber]

"Once you start selling with Amazon, you don't simply stop as they enough information about you to intuit your entire supply chain, predict how much your overhead costs are and where they'll trend often better than you can."

I really doubt Amazon is going to be violating my mining claims to get my materials for lapidary work. They'd be responsible for a LOT of dead bodies if they tried.

Re:GTFO

[omnichad]

That doesn't mean the same at all.

Re:GTFO

[omnichad]

Customers frequently buy one of each size, try them all on, and send back the ones that don't fit well. Now we have to pay for all that shipping.

Amazon shouldn't be paying for that either. While you may have great products, selling clothes online is full of landmines like this.

Re:GTFO

[thebullshitpatrol]

glad i can always rely on being intentionally misinterpreted

autism-friendly version:
there are far more online retailers than there are online marketplaces that allow independent parties to list their goods with minimal effort and investment

Re:GTFO

[thebullshitpatrol]

moreover, someone who wants to buy a product only needs one seller on amazon or ebay to provide it to them. additional sellers within a certain normal range provide very incremental downward pressure on the price.

Re:GTFO

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I don't know where you guys get this shit from.

From personal experience from the other side of the fence as buyers.

I got totally scammed on ebay at least 10 years ago - back in the dial-up days. Seller advertised product as "new in box". It was in the well-worn and faded original box alright, but it was obviously used, visibly broken and didn't work at all. I contacted the seller for a refund and was told "all sales final - read the ad". I told him he had misrepresented the product, voiding that rule and he still refused. I took pictures of the damage and sent them to ebay with my complaint and never got more than an auto-response. I left negative feedback and the seller did the same on me, calling me a "whining buyer". That was the last time I ever bought anything on ebay.

I'm thrilled with Amazon's new policy - it puts independent sellers in line with Amazon's return policy on the products they stock. I recently had to return a 12-pound product to an indie Amazon seller. After two days of waiting for an RMA (they used every one of Amazon's allowed 48 hours), UPS charged me almost $40 to send it halfway across the country. It had cost the seller less than $10 to ship it to me in the first place. A seller gets way better shipping rates than I do, so the pre-paid return label makes a lot of sense, and from a buyer's perspective not having to waste a lot of time waiting for a seller to issue an RMA does too. Come October I'll be far less reluctant to buy products that don't say "fulfilled by Amazon" on the ad. I don't see why that effect shouldn't be a net positive for responsible independent sellers.

Re:GTFO

[Richard_at_work]

In the UK, as part of the Distance Sales Act regulations, you *have* to accept returns for most things "for no reason" for up to 14 days from the date of delivery (not the date of shipping).

The customer simply says "I want to return the item under the Distance Sales Act" and you are obliged to accept the return in full.

And it hasn't caused major upheaval here, despite being law now for over a decade.

Re:GTFO

[Mitreya]

people who don't shop around, enjoy their Prime shipping, and are afraid of putting their credit card into a random business's site.

For me, it's not the speed of shipping, it's KNOWING when the product will arrive.
When will someone, anyone, offer that feature?
I can spend $50 to overnight something on a website, but I still won't know the day when the item will actually arrive.

Re:GTFO

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be wrong then

Its actually the Consumer Rights Act 2015 now, which upped the time to 14 days from the 7 in the DSR. Seller has to pay for shipping and must refund the cost of the basic shipping to the cusotmer in the first place as well - e.g. if 3 - 5 day shipping was £5 this must be refunded as well, but if you chose net day at £15 only £5 is refunded.

Re:GTFO

[Cederic]

you're competing against a company that doesn't need to be profitable

It doesn't need to be, but it is (and has been for a couple of years).
It can choose not to be, but that isn't because its retail operations aren't profitable, it'd be because they chose to invest instead.
It's not just profitable, it's generating substantial positive cash flows.

So you're competing against a company that's very commercially successful, and that's hard in itself. It doesn't mean they're loss-leading or trying to undercut you out of business, it means they're really compressed their own costs and optimised the living fuck out of their supply line. You can do that too, it's just going to take you a while.

Took Jeff Bezos 20 years, and good luck convincing me you're better at running a company than he is.

Re:GTFO

[thebullshitpatrol]

ok, good luck. may alexa ratings be with you.

Re:GTFO

[houghi]

The reason I do not use them is because of spam.
I have my own domain, so I use an alias for every company I deal with. So for them that would have been ebay.com@example.com
For me that is a double insurance. If I get a mail it is very easy to know if it from the company or not. It is also easy to see if the address has been hacked or sold.

Ebay is in all the years the only company where I started to get spam. I understand that I did not deactivated something somewhere, but that does not make it ok. So I deleted the email account and never will do anything with them, even if it means paying more elsewhere.

It shows that the sellers that are shite go to the Ebay that is shite.

Those businesses exist because of Amazon

[JoeyRox]

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Re:Those businesses exist because of Amazon

[powerlord]

and if you need, Amazon sells swords also!

Re:Those businesses exist because of Amazon

[DogDude]

... and you can return those swords for any reason (or no reason) whatsoever!

Re:Those businesses exist because of Amazon

[green1]

Sword now covered in blood, DNA, and fingerprints. Request return to overseas seller.

Re:Those businesses exist because of Amazon

[dissy]

and if you need, Amazon sells swords also!

Hello, "amazon seller not wanting returns #4227"!

Item "death by the sword brand sword" is frequently bought together with the following items:
https://www.amazon.com/Miniature-Violin-Small-4-inches/dp/B00075PSBY/

Include 1-year accident protection for $1.99!
Get this item by tomorrow with Amazon Prime!

Re:Returnless Refund?

[known_coward_69]

i'm thinking it has to be something big like a fridge or some other appliance

This is law in some places

[Anonymous Coward]

Like in the Netherlands where sellers are required to take anything sold online back in 14 days no questions asked and refunds include shipping cost (to get the product to there customer, not back to the seller)

Re:This is law in some places

[bsolar]

The 14 days cancel and return of online purchases no question asked is mandatory in the EU.

Re:This is law in some places

[Aighearach]

Oregon, and many other US States, have the same 14 day refund period for most items. There are exclusions.

The thing is, I'm not buying any of it in Oregon. I don't know if when you buy from Amazon, where you legally make the purchase. But when I buy, I'm buying stuff from Washington State, where Amazon is.

Generally, to get local protections you have to buy it from a local retailer. When people talk about Amazon being bad for local retailers, now you know one of the reasons why that matters to some people.

Re:This is law in some places

[drinkypoo]

IANAL, but it seems to me that if they have a presence in your state, then it ought to be treated as a local purchase. That's how collecting sales taxes works.

Re:This is law in some places

[Aighearach]

Right, but the actual word is "nexus," and "presence" is just how the media describes it. It means having stores or major offices in most cases.

Also, the rules isn't that you have to collect taxes for sales in a State if you have a nexus there. It is actually at the other end; the State is not allowed to demand that you collect the tax unless you have a nexus there. If there is a requirement, it is up to local State law to say so. Not all States bother, and they don't have the same rules for what is a "nexus."

That is how collecting sales tax actually works. There is no single set of rules, and how many sets of rules you have to follow depends on the laws of every State that you have enough of a presence in for that State's laws to touch you. And in many cases that will actually mean hundreds of additional sets of rules you have to follow depending on the city or county that the buyer is in.

But none of that matters to the context that you replied to; even in tax law, a nexus is defined differently for the purpose of collecting sales tax than it is for collecting income tax! And we were talking about something totally unrelated to taxation, consumer rights. So all the rules are different, and you can't crib an understanding from a completely different area of law. But states don't try as hard to enforce consumer rights as they do to collect taxes, so you'll find even less portability of protections. If you have a protection locally, and they also have it in Washington State, then you could sue them over it. But expect to have to hire lawyers in both your own State and also Washington State, and expect to fight for a year or two in court over venue before you even start negotiating over an actual case.

Re:This is law in some places

[Going_Digital]

Yes but the cost of return is the responsibility of the customer unless the product is faulty.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[jfdavis668]

Only if the seller approves. "Enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item". I would do that if it would same me the expense of having an item shipped back that I would just then throw away. If I sell you a shirt all nicely packaged, and you open it up and try it on and find it doesn't fit, I don't want it back. It would cost me shipping, and I may not have a way to repackage it for resale. Might as well just have the buyer throw it away.

So go sell somewhere else.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear there's this place called eBay.

Also, Craigslist.

Also, etsy.

Also....Oh come on, I'm not going to do all the work for you.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[jsrjsr]

Certain sellers of memory foam mattresses do returnless refunds. They don't advertise that fact, but when you want to return or get a refund, they will ask you to donate the old mattress to a charity like Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul.

"offer help before being forced to pay a refund"

[Balial]

Imagine the tragedy of a world where a seller is liable for making the products they sell actually useful out of the box rather than forcing customers to go down a "support" rabbit hole before they give up.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[silverkniveshotmail.]

There are an incredible number of fake marketplace listings, I guess they're just evening the playing field.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[Aighearach]

It already works almost the same way; current system is, buyer requests return, seller says no, buyer makes complaint to Amazon, refund approved and the customer is stuck recycling the junk item.

I'd actually rather force them to accept the returned item, but this is at least some sort of progress.

Amazon grew on the backs of these merchants...

[QuietLagoon]

... now that Amazon is huge, the small merchants are no longer needed.

Re:Amazon grew on the backs of these merchants...

[swillden]

... now that Amazon is huge, the small merchants are no longer needed.

Did they? I've been shopping on Amazon for nearly 20 years, long before there was a "marketplace" full of randoms trading on the good will that Amazon earned for itself. The "marketplace", for me, is primarily a source of clutter and confusion. It is the rare occasion that I will buy from "marketplace" seller unless it is fulfilled by Amazon. Without the predictable, reliable billing and shipping that I have come to expect from Amazon, I won't buy.

As such, adding these purchases to the Amazon return policy increases the chance that a "marketplace" seller will get my order.

From my perspective, Amazon made these "marketplace" sellers, not the other way around.

That's my experience as well. I normally click the "Prime" checkbox immediately after doing any product search on Amazon. If it's not the full Amazon experience, including extremely low-hassle return policies, I'm reluctant to do it. This change will make me much more likely to use marketplace sellers, though I'll still prefer buying from Amazon itself, with Prime shipping.

Re:Amazon grew on the backs of these merchants...

[n329619]

I normally click the "Prime" checkbox immediately

Looks like you're an Amazon main consumer. or maybe I'm too old and still browse all over the place to look for a product, including the seller's individual website. This is probably due to the nature rareness of my product selection.

The shipping, the refund, and the return are the least of my worries. On the other hand, the product is what it really matters.

Re:Amazon grew on the backs of these merchants...

[swillden]

I often comparison shop, but usually end up buying from Amazon for the smoothness, consistency and safety... and for what's usually close to the lowest price I found anyway.

Living under monopoly.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It's no secret that Jeff Bezos' first, second and third objectives are to please Amazon customers, giving them more stuff at the lowest prices and at faster speeds. But increasingly, those upgrades come at the expense of sellers, who often build their businesses on Amazon and have few other places to generate revenue.

The sellers put all their eggs in one basket. Now they are paying the price. Amazon customers too must remember this. Once the brick and mortar competition is driven to bankruptcy it will be their turn to pay the piper.

Re:Living under monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

The main attraction of Amazon is that it provides information about so many products. If merchants provided good information that could be found using search engines, they could do well selling from their own sites.

Re:Living under monopoly.

[barc0001]

> The sellers put all their eggs in one basket.

That sounds remarkably like you're blaming the sellers for joining the largest marketplace. If you were in their shoes would you a) stick up your own dinky little ecommerce site somewhere and hope that search engine traffic might route a tiny fraction of traffic your way, or b) sell through the place there a large percentage of online shoppers are already going to look for things to buy?

If you answered a) then you're probably the type to open up a 7-11 in the middle of a corn field 25 miles from town and wonder why you're going bankrupt.

Re:Living under monopoly.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If that is the case they owe their existence to Amazon. So they can't complain if they build their home on some else's property.

Re:Living under monopoly.

[barc0001]

It's more of a symbiosis, Amazon owes its growth to people like them as well. Now that Amazon's taking a dump on them, we'll see how that pans out.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stores can't sell mattresses that have been unpackaged.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[geekmux]

Amazon isn't in the retail business. Amazon isn't in the cloud computing business. Amazon isn't in the logistics business. Amazon is in the business business. It is no longer The Everything Store; it is now the Everything Everything. It wants to be the platform around which all of the world's businesses depend.

This is about as ambitious a mission as a company has ever launched, in my opinion -- and Amazon may be the first company with a justifiable claim to such ambition.

Uh, a justifiable claim? Yeah right. There is no justification to annihilate the concept of competition by becoming the global proxy for "Everything". There isn't a justifiable need for it either.

First rule of logistics; Don't become dependent on a single source provider.

Sellers will have to factor that into their costs

[mark-t]

If returns are at the seller's expense, then I would expect the seller to charge more for any products that they determine is more likely to be returned so that the extra profit on the unreturned products can subsidized the expense the seller must bear for returned products. This might make it less likely that they move the product in the first place, but there's a fine line that the seller is going to have to try and balance, and if they cannot sell an item profitably because of the number of returns, then they are reasonably left with no choice but to discontinue that product (which is actually in the best interests of the customer as well, since it does not waste the customer's time with products they are going to have to return)

They're glorified flea markets

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

eBay, Amazon Marketplace, etc. have more in common with a flea market than a big box retailer. This shows a wildly idiotic misunderstanding of what they really are:

If a consumer is returning an electronic device because it's difficult to use

I am with the sellers here. Totally inappropriate to go the marketplace route (which is often cheaper) and expect the benefits of paying more from Amazon.

Re:They're glorified flea markets

[Albanach]

I doubt your average shopper knows who they are buying from. Unless you pay attention to the "ships from and sold by" text, it can often look like just another purchase - you don't need to be clicking on the "other sellers" text to be buying from the marketplace.

Indeed Amazon will even target customers with email ads for products that are exclusively sold by third party merchants. So you get an email from Amazon advertising a product, you click the link in the email and make a purchase on Amazon.com - it's easy to see why that would look to many like you're buying from Amazon and why a bad experience would reflect poorly on Amazon.

Re:They're glorified flea markets

[Rockoon]

Exactly.

A hard drive manufacturer notices that the last 50000 drives coming off the line are having issues... either via their QC or from feedback from merchants... well then now thats a batch headed exclusively to the retailers that negotiated the lowest wholesale prices.

A retailer like Walmart doesnt care that the item is of lower quality than is typical because people returning items is part of their business model of getting people back into the store to buy more stuff. Think about it... if you are returning an item to Walmart then you are probably also going to buying some more stuff. You took the time to drive down there, and they even sell groceries... so there you are: Your return is partly subsidized by the extra profits they make on items you pick up while returning something.

A retailer like Staples on the other hand, if you are returning something to Staples it is unlikely that you will be leaving with anything other than a replacement item or money back, so Staples didnt negotiate the contract that ensured that they would get the worst products off the line. Walmart did. Some Amazon seller might have. Staples didn't.

Re:They're glorified flea markets

[Junta]

Of course, if you explicitly make the effort to look, you notice it's marketplace. People who aren't paying close attention end up not seeing the difference (well, until shipping comes up).

Re: How can I use this return less refunds to get

[Anonymous Coward]

You buy an item that is so worthless that not even the seller wants it back. You then get to keep it for free and it's on you to dispose of it.

If you do this too many times, Amazon will close your account.

In other words, you can get a couple of cheap trinkets for "free", if you decide to game the system. And afterwards you might never be able to use any one of the many different Amazon services again.

It's a calculated risk for all parties involved

Chinese sellers VS eBay and others

[phorm]

This seems to be a big issue with overseas sellers - I point to China because they're the most common - and shipping. My $5-20 item may come with free shipping, but when it arrives and is broken or turns out to be a fake piece of crap, the return cost may end up being more than the value of the item (especially if I want it tracked and within a reasonable time period).

Re:Chinese sellers VS eBay and others

[Kjella]

This seems to be a big issue with overseas sellers - I point to China because they're the most common - and shipping. My $5-20 item may come with free shipping, but when it arrives and is broken or turns out to be a fake piece of crap, the return cost may end up being more than the value of the item (especially if I want it tracked and within a reasonable time period).

If it's bought and shipped across the world for $5 my expectations are very low, like a cheap piece of plastic knock-off and not a solid or brand anything. Either the seller will send me another if it's clearly defective or I'll give a bad review and write it off. I only buy from sellers with high 99.x% rating so they care about that, the reminder I expect is mainly the factory/shipping fail rate. For the savings I just figure a few bum deals are worth it and the ratings seem to get crap products off the market. It's quite rare, unless you had the wrong expectations. If you've found a deal too good to be true it usually is.

Re:Chinese sellers VS eBay and others

[phorm]

There are a ton of things that are extremely cheap to make in decent quality, but have massive markup in local stores (or, alternately not available). $5 does tend to be the low-end but return shipping can still often equal 20-50%+ the cost of an item of higher value.

Re:Chinese sellers VS eBay and others

[sl149q]

I ordered a $3 vga cable. It simply didn't work as advertised. Asked for refund and they wanted it shipped back with tracking number at my expense. Which would have been (from Canada) about six times the expected refund.

My review of the product went into great detail on why I was giving it one star.

Re:Chinese sellers VS eBay and others

[thomst]

phorm observed:

This seems to be a big issue with overseas sellers - I point to China because they're the most common - and shipping. My $5-20 item may come with free shipping, but when it arrives and is broken or turns out to be a fake piece of crap, the return cost may end up being more than the value of the item (especially if I want it tracked and within a reasonable time period).

I buy quite a bit of stuff from Chinese sellers on eBay - mostly cables and adapters, because "American" versions of those things are pretty much all manufactered there, anyway. Occasionally an item I purchase is defective, or unsuited for my purpose. (Most recently, it was a $5 cloth dust cover for an 88-key digital workstation.) I've never had any trouble obtaining a refund, and the sellers have never demanded I physically return the items.

The language barrier is sometimes an issue, of course, but patience and persistence are key virtues for such interactions ...

Re:Chinese sellers VS eBay and others

[n329619]

My $5-20 item may come with free shipping...

Where are you from? from space? This is slashdot. At the very least, do some damn calculation. Even basic calculation on shipping cost and product manufacture tells you that it is not feasible and they aren't earning.

When they aren't earning, they aren't going to give you any *** damn service. There's no free lunch, in which someone is still paying for it.

You are already damn lucky not to get poisoned by their product.

Next time, do the damn calculation. If it's dirt cheap, you shouldn't be expecting anything. If you want some good service, pay for a higher price.

/rant

Re:Chinese sellers VS eBay and others

[phorm]

I'm not asking for "good service", just a product that is actually functional.
In that regard, one reason for low shipping cost is because the domestic ground shipping services in China (to N America) are ridiculously cheap compared to the reverse. Yeah you may have to wait a month or two for the product to arrive (literally by ship), but you should get it eventually.

Now in cases where it's simply a cheap product and that's more or less what I expect, that's fine. When it's supposedly a *new* product and shows up obviously used, is supposedly legit but is obviously counterfeit, or simply isn't even the product I ordered then yes, I do expect that I shouldn't be out-of-pocket for it. If they want it back then they can pay me the cost of shipping. In some cases it's not even that the shipping to me was free, but that I'm not willing to pay again 20% of the item value to return it

Anything else is supporting a fraudulent business model. I don't entirely agree with Amazon is doing, as basically you're trading potential unscrupulous sellers for unscrupulous buyers, but there needs to be a balance here.

A good example of this is eBay's supposed anti-counterfeit program. I ordered a box set of DVD's that weren't even available locally except through very pricey specialty stores in a different city. They arrived and despite a nice box and decent silkscreening, were obviously bootleg (scanlines where they were recorded from a TV/VCR, horrible fansubs). Now the item still cost nearly $100, shipping it back in any meaningful way was about $20, and eBay wanted me to somehow find a "expert" who would write a written attestation that the item was fake (apparently sending a video or screenshot wasn't enough). I should have just been able to straight get my cash back on that, but instead the seller got my cash and all I got for my $$$ was something I could have downloaded online and burned myself.

It will crush them

[DogDude]

Amazon is already taking 30% of the sales price PLUS 30% OF SHIPPING. There are very few things that can be sold for enough of a margin to make a profit with costs like that. Unlimited returns will remove any remaining profit from most merchants selling through Amazon.

But hey, who needs profit, right? Just keep selling things below cost, and eventually, you'll make a profit, right?

Re:It will crush them

[Serge_Tomiko]

I've stopped buying a lot of things from Amazon because the quality has just gone downhill. I've gotten obviously counterfeit vitamins, which was the last straw. This will hopefully put the shysters out of business.

Re:It will crush them

[dabadab]

Amazon is already taking 30% of the sales price PLUS 30% OF SHIPPING.

Taking the same percentage of the shipping is standard business practice, eBay also does it and import duty works the same way too - else everybody would sell everything for $1 and charge the rest as "shipping fee".

Re:It will crush them

[fluffernutter]

I would never buy anything ingest-able from a website. Potential for catastrophe is very large.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[ShanghaiBill]

becoming the global proxy for "Everything".

Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?

It is silly to label them a monopoly when they aren't even the market leader.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[c6gunner]

i'm thinking it has to be something big like a fridge or some other appliance.

I got it for a defective tea kettle, so it doesn't have to be that big.

This is exactly how eBay died.

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as eBay started forcing returns without reasonable excuses is the day it died for sellers. Now it's just a massive fraud market being used by stolen paypal accounts and forced refunds w/o having to even return the items. I had this happen 3 times a few years back. I purposely put tiny markings on any electronics sold so if they were returned, I would know it was the same part. I had a HDD, a mobo, and a cpu all returned to me (except they weren't the same items I sold them). They were broken same models but diff serials and no personal markings. Even after proving the scams via screenshots and pics of the items. eBay and PayPal ignored all evidence and forced the refunds. Before they could charge me, I closed the bank accounts linked to their sites and never looked back. F&#K eBay....and now Amazon...

Re:Returnless Refund?

[v1]

I've seen this happen a lot. I know people that have DONE it (for somewhat justifiable reason) and also those that have had it done TO them. It's the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction is all.

One friend of mine bought a coin listed as authentic. When it arrived, it was a reproduction. It was a fairly good looking repo, but an obvious copy none the less. The seller immediately agreed to a refund, it was obvious he knew he was listing fakes as genuine. Buyer was going to have to pay return shipping though. Miffed by that, he shipped back a large bolt of the same weight. Once ebay saw the return shipping confirmation, he got a full refund. Slightly unfair to the seller, but would have been more unfair to the buyer having to pay return shipping and being left with nothing. Even under the current rules, when a seller commits listing fraud, someone is going to get cheated. Previously, it was always the buyer. Now sometimes it's the seller instead. Is this fair? CAN it be fair? Probably not. This is pretty much unavoidable unless you're doing escrow, but nobody's going to do that on anything other than high-dollar items. So the inexpensive stuff is just going to have to be risky for someone.

I know another guy that sells car parts on ebay. One time he sold a set of good-but-used brake disks. When it came time to ship them he found his shop had already sold them locally. So he just accepted a bit of a loss by shipping a set of brand new discs instead of the used ones. Buyer got them and complained, "item not as listed!" Well duh, you got new instead of used, why are you complaining? Buyer demanded a return. Okay whatever. Guess what he returned? His worn out discs! And of course ebay released a full refund, and left him with no recourse. Buyer gets brand new set of discs for the price of return shipping. Seller is out the cost of new discs plus shipping, minus anything he can get for the seller's old discs. (which was nothing, they were shot)

So yeah, these online places have shifted over the years from being "seller-safe / buyer-risky" to "seller-risky / buyer-safe". If you don't like the risks, don't do your selling there. If you can't be competitive elsewhere, well that's too bad, nobody promised you life was fair and full of easy opportunities. If you can't be competitive given the options you'd like to use, go find some other options or go do something else. Honestly, I've sold stuff on ebay years ago and I felt okay at the time. NOW, I'm not nearly as warm-and-fuzzy about the idea because so many buyers cheat the sellers and places like eBay won't help the seller if they get cheated. You really have to bet on the honesty of the buyer, and from time to time, get burned. There's no point in my complaining about it, I just don't list much anymore because I don't like the increased risks. It's my choice, I really have no grounds to complain on. Even if there are "no better options available for me", I still have a choice -- don't sell it online. Sellers need to understand that they still have that choice, nobody's forcing them to play a game where they don't like the rules.

Re:Sellers will have to factor that into their cos

[Anonymous Coward]

They already do this. Many sellers on Amazon have their own online storefront where the exact same products are being sold for lower prices. Higher prices on Amazon account for the cut Amazon takes and the administration costs.

Re: How can I use this return less refunds to get

[taustin]

And eventually, your family gets their Amazon accounts closed, too, for using the same IP address.

(They also track credit card numbers. How many credit cards do you have?)

Re:"offer help before being forced to pay a refund

[DogDude]

"Making a seller liable" is not anything like "Making the seller accept any and all returns".

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[Ksevio]

I would say Amazon is in all those businesses.

Re:"offer help before being forced to pay a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

On one hand, your idea has merit.

On the other hand, my wife quit half.com after multiple "upstanding" buyers decided to abuse the return system and got her double-dinged for shipping after having received their books. Maybe they did a book report? Maybe it was an amazon arbitrage bot? Whatever it was, the refund reasons were bogus ("ripped cover" when in fact upon return the cover is not ripped), half.com didn't give a shit, didn't actually investigate, and didn't even contact my wife other than to reverse the payment.

It won't take long for the latter to drive any independent/non-full-time business off Amazon, and much like credit card fees, everyone is going to pay the price in terms of inflated prices (vs a baseline without this policy) to cover that sort of low-life behavior.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[green1]

Justifiable in this context doesn't speak to the morality of the ambition, only that the ambition is believable. It may be a bad idea, but Amazon can justifiably be claimed to be trying to do it.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[green1]

I think the claim is that Amazon is trying to get in to many more spaces that e-commerce. They are a major e-commerce player, but they are also trying to get in to many other areas as well.

This is okay.

[Bright Apollo]

This opens the door for a small-business-friendly competitor. Amazon is really not the end-all be-all of online shopping. Sure, you won't have access to the customer base it has developed, but that isn't a right guaranteed by law now is it?

--#

Re:This is okay.

[Bright Apollo]

You'll need to prove your assertions. In the meantime, I'm ready to counter.

Size doesn't matter for niche items, or items that have prohibitive shipping expenses.

And, for-profit can compete with non-profit by offering a differentiator other than price. Superior customer service, tactile experience, customization, faster delivery, greater variety of options, and so forth.

--#

Re:"offer help before being forced to pay a refund

[SeaFox]

Imagine the tragedy of a world where a seller is liable for making the products they sell actually useful out of the box rather than forcing customers to go down a "support" rabbit hole before they give up.

The seller is a middle-man. Generally they are neither the manufacturer, nor trained in how to support the products they sell. They also do not necessarily have the expertise to evaluate every product before deciding to sell it to see if it is going to be "easy enough" for the customer to make them happy. The ones that do will have to recoup that cost in some way, normally through a after-sale paid support service or higher initial prices.

People need to stop being babies and make up their minds what they want:
  - High-Quality Products
  - Great Service
  - Cheap Prices

They only get to pick two.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[geekmux]

Justifiable in this context doesn't speak to the morality of the ambition, only that the ambition is believable. It may be a bad idea, but Amazon can justifiably be claimed to be trying to do it.

I think I'm rather justified in saying that corporate training related to morals and ethics shouldn't be mandated anymore when it clearly has fuck-all to do with business anymore.

Re:How can I use this return less refunds to get f

[denzacar]

Live in a place from which return shipping would be prohibitively expensive.
Do note that no place is prohibitively expensive to be flagged in a database, though.

I had a bunch of cases where I'd end up with "doubles" of banged up books or DVDs cause someone forgot to put an extra air-pack in the box.
Basically, if you're ordering a birthday present, pay to have it gift-wrapped.

Hell... one time I got free cash cause I rushed to return the things I ordered.
Some hours after I've already sent the banged-up items back, and informed Amazon of the cost of return shipping (which they are obliged to repay you if it's an issue due to packaging), I get the "Due to the prohibitively expensive costs of return shipping - just keep it" email.
So... I re-email them telling them, again, that I've already sent the items back. They refund me - but for the wrong order. And more than they should.
Then, after days of trying to explain that they've refunded me too much, them refunding me AGAIN, me trying to explain that I don't need another refund but that they've refunded me a wrong amount at their own expense... I get the "Aaah... just keep both refunds and thank you" email.

Well... Thank you India, I guess.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[Obfuscant]

Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?

Different market. I don't want to have to deal with getting a quote or contacting a vendor to tell him what I want, I want to click on the "buy" button and buy it. Amazon does the latter. Alibaba, from every experience I've had with them, is the former.

Yes, if I want to buy 10,000 widgets and need to find a Chinese manufacturer, Alibaba is where I'd go. If I want to buy one I'll go to Amazon. As soon as I see the "price" listed as "Get Quote", I know I'm spending too much time. And then there's the "price" that is "$300-$500". Quite a range for one thing. Only the supplier can tell me the true price, and I'm not wasting time asking him.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[green1]

I've already done returnless refunds on many items, I'm in the middle of one right now in fact.

I ordered a watch strap on Amazon, when I got it the clasp was broken, I contacted the seller, sent them a picture, and they gave me the choice of a refund or a new strap (in this case I took the new strap) At no point did they ask for the old one back because it's cheaper not to bother.

In several other cases my item never arrived, I notified the seller, and they refunded my money with no questions asked (If I was dishonest I could have claimed they never arrived when they did in fact, but in these cases they did not, and as these were untracked items the seller had no way to know either way)

Returnless refunds aren't anything new, all they've done it put in a proper process for it.

That said, if I bought something worth a few hundred dollars, and where shipping was likely to cost only $10-20, I would fully expect that it would arrive via a tracked method, and that they would request I return it before processing a refund. For any item that is worth less than the shipping cost though, why would they want it back?

I'm assuming that Amazon tracks such things to some extent though, and I'm sure if you abuse it all the time your account will get flagged and removed, and if you did it on high enough dollar items the seller could get the police involved as it would be illegal to make those bogus claims.

This could go wrong

[shambalagoon]

This sounds great to me as a buyer. But consider:

1) Company A buys tons of products from a competitor
2) Company A returns them all at competitor's expense
3) Bye-bye competitor

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[geekmux]

becoming the global proxy for "Everything".

Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?

It is silly to label them a monopoly when they aren't even the market leader.

FFS, first or second place hardly matters when there are only two fucking players left. This isn't about "leaders". This is about destroying the market altogether. You can't point at the other monopoly to dismiss or justify the existence of the arrogant and soul-crushing behavior of market domination. It's become a pathetic joke to even have anti-monopoly laws on the books anymore. At this rate, the world will be reduced to a dozen mega-corps within the next decade or two, with Amazon being the "Everything Everything" proxy. The middle class will dissolve away just as the concept of competition will. In the end, there will only be the 0.0001%, and the rest of the enslaved planet.

There are many dangerous addictions, but Greed is the one that will ultimately lead to our demise.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[thegreatbob]

I am bob. The greatest and biggliest

Re:"offer help before being forced to pay a refund

[DogDude]

And you, AC, is why doing business online is so awful. People tend to be real shitheads online.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[Anonymous Coward]

While technically correct, well outside the scope of TFA, the reason for Amazon's policy change is that... if you've ever dealt with one of these garage shops, returning something may not be very easy even if the return is justified. The one time I had to do it, I had to talk to the seller on the phone for some reason, submit my refund request, had it closed by the seller with.... no refund and then finally amazon wound up eating the cost of the refund. Easily the worst return experience I've ever had, this is a case of the chickens coming home to roost for the shady small businesses that give unsuspecting customers a hard time outside of the amazon experience.

Re:"offer help before being forced to pay a refund

[Pascoea]

making the products they sell actually useful out of the box

Have you ever actually worked with the public before? People are idiots. I've worked in a retail environment for a number of years, and a consumer electronics repair shop for a couple years. The level of stupidity achieved by the general population would make your head spin. When I sold and serviced remote car starters it would be at least a weekly experience explaining to a customer that there was a battery in the remote that needed to be replaced. Not to mention the call where we had to instruct the customer on how to unlock their door with a key because their remote died.

I'm not in the market of selling shit to the public (thank god) but if I was forced to accept returns without the opportunity to communicate with my customer I would be strongly considering a different platform.

On the other hand, you do have a valid point. I've bought some stuff off Amazon where the instructions looked like they were translated by a drunken ape... So I do see your point there.

"Returnless Refunds"

[bistromath007]

Could somebody please explain to me how this is not equivalent to Amazon enabling theft?

Re:"Returnless Refunds"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the seller is the one that gets to decide it's not worth paying the shipping to have it returned. It could probably be scammed (like pretty much anything), but it's a seller's choice, not the buyers.

I bought headlights for my car which Amazon said would fit. I received them and they did not fit. I contacted Amazon and they refunded me and said they didn't want me to ship them back. Ok...so now I have headlights that don't do me any good and I'm out $0, so I sold them on craigslist because they were perfectly good for someone else. Works for me I guess. While selling them, I came across someone doing the exact same thing with a description saying that some online website said they would work and they didn't, and they didn't want them back. Maybe Amazon should fix the description of their item. Either way, it's their choice.

Re:"Returnless Refunds"

[Khyber]

The correct legal term is 'aiding and abetting' just FYI.

China Junk

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how you get 100% china junk your site. Drive out the small sellers and used items; only mass produced China stuff remains. It happened on eBay and it will happen here. The high volume importers eat the tiny loss, the small guys stop selling and leave. You know all of the retail stories, now imagine those people shopping online.

If you're expecting them to just up and move to their own site or somewhere else: there is nowhere else. I'm not about to set up and advertise my own platform just to sell 5 things and neither will anyone else. You know what happens after a few years of this? They raise the prices. Amazon is already more expensive than most places because of the shipping and sales tax.

Re: Returnless Refund?

[bistromath007]

No, they can't. Health codes, I think.

Re:"offer help before being forced to pay a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

eBay doesn't even store or ship anything for you and they still dictate your return policy. Sure, they'll let you say that you don't accept returns, but good luck actually denying a return. Can't be done. The buyer will always be granted a return because eBay has no reason not to believe the buyer, even when the buyer admits that the return request is fraudulent. At least Amazon is being up front about how they intend to screw you.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[trg83]

Yes! I once received a product that was fraudulently represented as a hardcover U.S. textbook to find out it was a paperback international edition. Crickets from the seller.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[Kjella]

Yup, though I don't mind if the seller asks for proof it's been destroyed. Happened to me with a defective cable - not on Amazon though, cut it in two and they had no problem sending a replacement.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME

[GameboyRMH]

It's not automation in general you need to worry about, it's killbots specifically. All is not lost until a practical autonomous killbot is developed. Then we enter the Oppression Singularity, leading quickly to widespread killbot-powered genocide. This is much closer to completion and more immediately dangerous than the disembodied AI with superhuman intelligence that some people keep harping on about.

Idiot Protection

[Murdoch5]

They should have to reach out for customer support first before allowing a blind refund. Customers are stupid and don't read directions, which shouldn't be the fault of the seller, it should be the fault of the customer. This is a major negative score.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[sexconker]

Do you realize that Amazon is the world's second biggest e-commerce company?

Different market. I don't want to have to deal with getting a quote or contacting a vendor to tell him what I want, I want to click on the "buy" button and buy it. Amazon does the latter. Alibaba, from every experience I've had with them, is the former.

www.aliexpress.com

In fact, Amazon's new policy is a direct result of Alibaba. People buy a bunch of shit wholesale from Alibaba and relist it on Amazon with huge markups. They "seller" on Amazon often never sees the product. They drop ship it straight to the customer who buys it off of Amazon.

Amazon's new policy is a FUCK YOU to those "sellers". If Amazon doesn't touch the inventory then they assume it's drop shipped, and will let customers get instant refunds, no questions asked. This will quickly be abused.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[barc0001]

> (To be very clear, I say all of this in admiration of Jeff Bezos, not in fear or criticism of him.)

His goons are standing right behind you with a knife, aren't they?

Re:Returnless Refund?

[Alypius]

Or special handling required by the shipping companies. I tried to return a pair of bookshelf speakers that were plastered with "Danger: Magnetic Fields" stickers and Amazon just refunded me. For some reason, the handling codes work for delivery to the customer but not the reverse.

YAY! Finally, a way to abuse my competitors...

[Zurkeyon3733]

That is Amazon Approved! Just buy all your competitors products, and then return them all... Should Zero out all their operating capitol, no problem! Not to mention, this behavior is now SANCTIONED by Amazon! But no, this won't be abused by anyone... LoL

Re:YAY! Finally, a way to abuse my competitors...

[Zurkeyon3733]

You realize that you can make unlimited dummy accounts for basically anything right? Even generating new banking accounts and credit card numbers can be done now without leaving your armchair... This WILL be abused. Why? Because shit people and scammers will ALWAYS exist. Unfortunately.

Re:YAY! Finally, a way to abuse my competitors...

[ichimunki]

You must have a huge credit line or extremely small competitors or both. And surely sellers have some right to cancel an order before fulfillment, no? Only a fool would let an inventory-clearing sale to a single address go through on credit like that.

Re:YAY! Finally, a way to abuse my competitors...

[Zurkeyon3733]

Interestingly enough, you mention none of the hundreds of scams we see on Ebay and Amazon at any one time. (As A tech for 25+ years, I've seen them ALL) Surprisingly enough, All are becoming increasingly complex. Throw up a roadblock, and the scammers build a NEW ROAD. There are ways around EVERYTHING. And I NEVER said before fulfillment... You did. No words in mouth thanks. :-)

Re:YAY! Finally, a way to abuse my competitors...

[Dutch Gun]

It's a little harder to create disposable shipping addresses. I'm not disputing your assertion on scammers in general (because, yes, shit people), but I'm not so sure this is quite so easy to abuse as you claim.

Re:YAY! Finally, a way to abuse my competitors...

[Zurkeyon3733]

You can RENT physical addresses through mailboxes.com and many others, and have the mail routed by them to ANYWHERE in the world. Cheap too... I wish it were harder to scam. But dastardly people come up with some interesting ways to get over on us... We tried to intervene in a Fake Soldier Scam, bilking TENS OF THOUSANDS from one of our residential customers. 88 Years old, totally alone, fixed income, living in a rent controlled condo and being looked after basically by her church. This fake Nigerian scammer had convinced her he was a US soldier, and was coming home to marry her, if only she would help him ship his CAR and Possessions home... By the time we caught it, via him IM'ing her iPad while it was on our bench for service (Like 50x in an hour...), it was too late. He had taken her for over $11,000 dollars. Anything like this Amazon Policy, scammers will find a way to abuse it. Probably doing it using stolen credit cards of the people they have previously hacked or scammed. Eventually this will be reigned in, but with it being new, the Zero Day stuff is gonna hurt in the beginning.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME

[bluefoxlucid]

People can't understand that wooden shipping pallets are equivalent to automation because they're trying to imagine a block of wood versus Bender, instead of looking at what exactly happened with literally every step of technical progress in history.

You don't have to worry about automation or any other form of technical progress; you need to worry about when the steps of progress start to run faster than your economy can keep up. Progress replaces jobs with fewer jobs, causing changes of employment (some people are replaced with other people) and unemployment (more people are replaced than replacements). The downstream effect is an improvement in the consumer market, and so the unemployment rebounds and we get a wealthier society--unless we keep progressing at a thunderous rate with which the market cannot keep pace, and so keep growing unemployment.

Self-driving taxis and freight trucks phased in over as little as five years might not even draw any notice from the economy at large, although it'll mean a lot of trucker put out of work and few of them absorbed into other parallel economies (including the new ones). Self-driving taxis and freight trucks phased in over six months? We're looking at a new recession with the magnitude and the terrible poverty of the 2008 Great Recession from which we just escaped.

As for "General AI", that's largely more of the fantasy people have about a machine that does everything--which is what the overstated scale of automation is really about. We can't make machines that do everything in general unless we can make one machine that can, on its own, analyze a problem, redesign itself, obtain resources, retool itself, and place itself into work.

That kind of intelligence would also be able to solve the problem of imitation of human intelligence. It would then become self-aware and, at a minimum, would demand wages. Congratulation: you've made the most-metal people in history. Rock on, dude.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[SirCowMan]

Amazon does indeed have such limitations; i.e., Amazon.ca allows for a lifetime 50 claims of non-delivery with a maximum value of $2,500.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[war4peace]

Yo! Where?

Re:Returnless Refund?

[Bert64]

In some countries there is legislation requiring that the seller cover the cost of any returns if the goods were defective or failed to meet the advertised description in any way.
Of course a lot of retailers won't tell you this, and people will still end up shipping things back at their own cost.

Re: How can I use this return less refunds to get

[Khyber]

"They also track credit card numbers. How many credit cards do you have"

Thousands of temporary ones, thanks to my banks services for online purchases.

Startup Idea [Re:GTFO]

[Tablizer]

There's a potential idea for a startup: aggregate basic listings and links from many smaller sites using a combination of site scraping and registered vendors who key in or supply clean data. The revenue would be generated by product-specific ads and/or listing placement. It's kind of a commerce-oriented Google, but with structured elements to make shopping-centric searching easier (thumbnail, title, model# , price, shipping price range, synopsis, color/sizes, and a link to vendor's detail). If it gets good enough, Google may even buy your site for jillions.

Re:ebay means accepting paypal

[omnichad]

They only do that to sellers, right? I've never had that happen as a buyer.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[tlhIngan]

FFS, first or second place hardly matters when there are only two fucking players left. This isn't about "leaders". This is about destroying the market altogether. You can't point at the other monopoly to dismiss or justify the existence of the arrogant and soul-crushing behavior of market domination. It's become a pathetic joke to even have anti-monopoly laws on the books anymore. At this rate, the world will be reduced to a dozen mega-corps within the next decade or two, with Amazon being the "Everything Everything" proxy. The middle class will dissolve away just as the concept of competition will. In the end, there will only be the 0.0001%, and the rest of the enslaved planet.

Except, e-commerce is easy to do. Without spending more than a few minutes of time, you can be set up and ready to accept credit card payments - Paypal makes it easy. Yes, it involves dealing with Paypal, but it's super-easy to accept credit cards without all the PCI crap. And you can quickly make up product pages on a web site and have Paypal manage a cart, too.

If you want to go fancy, there are online store sites as well like Shopify and Yahoo Shops - here these are more full service arrangements where you create product pages and they handle everything but shipping the product. You pay a monthly fee and they take a percentage of the payment, but you don't have to deal with Paypal, and they host and take all the payment and you just sit back. And yes, security issues are their problem, too.

Then there's also eBay if you really must.

There are many sellers who do all of them - they do Amazon, eBay and have their own e-commerce site. Sometimes it pays to check it out since their own site might actually be cheaper as they're not paying Amazon or eBay fees.

This part of the internet at least is amenable to the "little guy". Even big established companies may not run their own e-commerce site, but use Shopify as well - eliminates a lot of hassle but provides people a way to quickly order stuff. Nothing's more discouraging that trying to buy a product and ending up at "please call to talk to a distributor".

Re:How can I use this return less refunds to get f

[omnichad]

They refund me - but for the wrong order. And more than they should.

Their system doesn't allow a negative balance on an order, I don't think. I end up with customer service credits on random orders from months back. It sure looks amateurish from the customer side, though.

Re:Returnless Refund?

[omnichad]

Which they can exploit if they actually fail to deliver that many times.

Re: How can I use this return less refunds to get

[taustin]

It would greatly surprise me if they did not do so.

Re: How can I use this return less refunds to get

[taustin]

Just keep telling yourself that. If they contact your bank and say "We believe all these one use number are the same person, and they're committing fraud against us," that, too, will go away.

If you think that your penny ante account matters more to the credit card companies than their 1.9% of Amazon's billions, you're in for a very unpleasant surprise.

A police change I'd like ...

[Tjp($)pjT]

Amazon is definitely on the sellers side in disputes. I ordered some motorcycle gear that didn't fit. In addition to finding out there was a restocking fee, I printed out the sellers USPS return label and sent the item back. There is no tracking info. But there's Amazon's guarantee right, so no problem. The seller didn't acknowledge receipt ... I disputed the purchase and Amazon opened a ticket. Then the seller said the merchandise wasn't received. I asked Amazon to honor their guarantee. They said since there was no proof it had been returned they weren't going to honor it. And the seller didn't honor their own returns policy. The guy at the UPS store can only vouch for the fact I emailed a package, not contents or destination since it was USPS and pre-packed and postage paid up front.

So Amazon's guarantee is worthless.

Re:A police change I'd like ...

[nasch]

I hope you gave that seller a one star review.

Re:How can I use this return less refunds to get f

[denzacar]

It wasn't an order refund. It was a reimbursement of shipping costs, for the items I sent back.
I asked them to cancel it if they have to and issue another one.
To which they issued me another amount without first canceling the original reimbursement.

The issue was basically of a PEBKAC somewhere in their customer support.

I've stopped buying counterfeit vitamins

[n329619]

counterfeit vitamins

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Amazon already does returnless refunds

[ayesnymous]

for some of their own products. I once tried to return an inflatable travel pillow but they let me keep it (presumably since you have to use your mouth to inflate it). I also tried to return a surge protector that was marked hazardous for some reason (it was just a regular surge protector) and had a plug cover on the wrong way - they let me keep it and also sent me a free replacement.

Re:How can I use this return less refunds to get f

[omnichad]

I know what you meant. That's the only way they have to put money back on your card in the system (at least from the customer service side). I forgot to include that part. So the reimbursement would make the order go into negative, which apparently doesn't work.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME

[Wootery]

Ah, the old vote for the worst guy because things will have to get worse before they get better.

Always been wrong in the past, and still wrong now.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[LordWabbit2]

That's what revolutions are for, I think we are somewhat overdue. The worst part (for me) is that a lot of the middle class are going to be dragged to the wall and shot as well.

Re: Sounds Like a Customer Friendly Policy To Me B

[sudon't]

your a doosh

At least you spelled “a” correctly. Allow me to give you a little tip: If you’re going to insult someone in print, you always want to have your spelling and grammar correct. Otherwise, you just end up looking stupid yourself. For instance, if I were to call you a sub-literate moron, but spelled something incorrectly, you can see how it’d take all the sting out of it. Of course, a sub-literate moron probably wouldn’t notice the difference.

This isn't new

[guruevi]

It's made it easier but as a buyer you were guaranteed to always get a refund, if you didn't want to wait on the seller to answer, you could actually call Amazon for an instant refund.

If sellers don't like it, they can go back to eBay and compete worldwide with Chinese manufacturers, Amazon articles almost always have a much higher markup compared to other markets, partly to cover their refund and shipping policies.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[plague911]

You can be a monopoly within a geographic location. This is a well documented concept.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME

[Cederic]

What if the .co.uk one doesn't have the item I want?
The .com version sells it for half the price?
The .de version can get it to me three weeks sooner?

Amazon competes with itself as well as the other online retailers.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO ME B

[Cederic]

The thing is, this is also how Amazon behaves. I've seldom needed to request a refund from Amazon (maybe one in thirty items?) but every time I have, it's been instant and unchallenged. They even cover the postage on the return.

They're not the only retailer offering a sensible online experience. I had a minor issue with a year old keyboard, raised a ticket with the manufacturer, they told me to destroy the old keyboard (and send them photographic evidence) then sent me a shiny new one. It was cheaper for them than return/repair/resend.

This is far easier for large retailers than small ones, as a single return of a high value item wont break Amazon but could put a small retailer under. Under UK law though the return must be honoured anyway, so it's not Amazon causing the problem, it's the operating environment and a business risk small sellers should be managing.

Re:ebay means accepting paypal

[Cederic]

I have. It went on for so long that I had to threaten legal action.

Re: SOUNDS LIKE A CUSTOMER FRIENDLY POLICY TO M

[kenh]

You act like police haven't used a robot to hand deliver bomb to kill a civilian causing then grief (Dallas).

I'm sorry, calling a sniper attack 'grief' is just a tiny bit dis-honest.

The Dallas sniper that was 'blowed-up' by a robot killed five officers - that's a bit worse than 'grief'.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/...

EU return policy

[YoungManKlaus]

small vendors live.