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Amazon Slammed for Destroying As-New and Returned Goods (fortune.com)
Amazon is destroying "massive amounts" of as-new and returned items, raising the ire of the German government and environmental campaigners, local media reported. Fortune: The types of items being destroyed here go way beyond the "health and personal care" products that Amazon has long been destroying when people return them, for sanitary reasons. We're talking things like washing machines, smartphones and furniture. The revelation drew an angry response from the German government and environmental campaigners. "This is a huge scandal," Jochen Flasbarth from the German environment ministry told WirtschaftsWoche. "We are consuming these resources despite all the problems in the world. This approach is not in step with our times." Greenpeace's Kirsten Brodde said there was a need for a new "law on banning the waste and destruction of first-hand and usable goods."
I sell some products on Amazon. In many cases (especially electronics) Amazon will not/can not determine if the product is actually good or bad (ex: a consumer firewall that customer claims is not stable or reboots). It's most likely cheaper to have Amazon destroy it than to pay to ship it back, pay an employee to test it and repackage it, list it on feeBay as used/open box to resell it, and pay to ship it yet again (if its even good).
Mike
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Amazon for years has done what it can to clean goods and resell them if they have been returned. There are videos of former employees speaking about what Amazon does. If there are some shoes that have been obviously worn but still look new, they might throw an air freshener or ionizer at it. If a woman's bikini bottom looks new enough, they might repack it without putting a protective strip in it. The list goes on and on.
You can't have it both ways, Miss Mash. Either this kind of stuff is thrown out, or they try to make a recovery. And if they try to recover the goods, in reality, nasty things are going to happen.
This is not new, companies have been doing this for a long time. Companies now are probably destroying items daily. Amazon just happens to be big enough to get caught. Not that we should be defending Amazon or this practice but it's always easier to blame large companies.
Sent from my TARDIS
Its explains why Ive seen some sellers offering their stuff for free on http://reddit.com/ and http://www.opusdeals.com/ etc
It will be limited to those "engaged in economic activity" — like GDPR and the entire "right to be forgotten" concept. There will be people welcome this intervention and lamenting, once again, "why the US can't be more like Europe".
Insert the cautionary tale beginning with the "when they came for corporations I did not object, because I do not have a corporation" here...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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Mandatory recycling for everything. I'm not talking, you recycle 80% of stuff and the rest gets shoved in a hole in the ground, I'm talking 100% is transformed into material for a product or becomes fertilizer.
This isn't some absurd idea either because it's either this or we destroy the ecosystem and hope we engineer a way to survive.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I ordered an external battery pack for a UPS from Amazon several months back. When it arrived and I unpacked it, the case was visibly bulging on the top. Not wanting to risk plugging it in, I contacted Amazon for a return. Instead, they refunded my money on the spot and told me to take it to the nearest recycling center.
I could understand Amazon's reasoning. Why risk shipping a possibly defective battery that might pose a fire hazard? And for what I paid for it, it was hardly worth trying to repair or refurbish.
From Amazon's point of view, if it's cheaper to dispose of the goods rather than repair or refurbish them, then that's the smart move. They can't even donate them, because what happens if a lawyer sues because someone was injured by a donated item that Amazon knew was defective? The much safer route, economically and legally, is simply to destroy the returned items. It's part of the cost of doing business at their scale.
I bought a refurbished Toshiba laptop from Newegg. Right out of the box, the wifi would constantly disconnect. The device appeared in the device list, it saw area wifi, but it looked like the card shorted out every 3 minutes or so and reset itself. It couldn't maintain a connection. It took me about 15 minutes of testing to determine that was it and I was only 100% sure that was the problem and not the driver's fault after replacing the wireless card with another one. Thanks, person who checked it out and said the previous buyer was incorrect and the wifi did in fact work. Although I'm being massively sarcastic. There's no way a reasonable person could put in enough effort and have enough skill to test that specific issue and who knows if "wireless problem" was even reported in the RMA. The previous customer may have simply said "something" was wrong and returned it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Love that sig!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...that guy is the richest man on the planet for a reason, if there was a way to sell that junk _for a profit_, without getting sued to hell and/or get bad press, he would do it.
Trust me.
A few years back I ordered something small that cost $12 or so. I think it was some kind of Park bicycle wrench.
What they sent me was this:
https://www.amazon.com/YELLOW-...
An air-conditioning test and charging manifold, that was priced $175 at the time.
I got on the website and requested a return and explained what happened, and then for the next few days started getting two different sets of messages.
One set was the usual automated set that said I had to return the item by a certain number of days or I would get charged for it.
The other set was real people responding, telling me that I wouldn't get charged for it and that I didn't need to return the item and that I could dispose of it as I pleased.
When I asked why they didn't want it returned, the real person said that some items are hazardous enough that if they make a mistake and send one out, they will not accept if back for any reason. I said that I had only opened the shipping box and not the sealed item box itself, and he said that didn't matter. I could keep it since they would just destroy it if it was returned, and the company didn't want to pay the return shipping cost just to destroy it. I never got charged for it either.
I gave it to my AC repair guy, since AC maintenance is not a hobby of mine and it's not good for much else.
Ever since then I have wondered however,,,, what is the most-expensive thing that Amazon has given away just because they shipped the totally-wrong item? I don't know how happy they'd be to talk about that, but it would be an interesting read...
Too bad the Germans didn't get so incensed when - every single one - of their automotive companies lied about diesel emissions and wrote software specifically to fool testing....
You're a liar. "The Germans" certainly did "get so incensed". They sent people to prison over it.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's not good for the planet to artificially inflate the cost of doing business. It might sound good on the surface, but doesn't survive careful analysis. Price is almost always the best proxy available (in a woefully complex world) for planetary resources consumed, when one includes resources consumed directly, as well as those consumed via opportunity-cost displacement.
Nor is it good to offer libertarian fundamentalists a convenient platform from which to save the world (correctly), because they also tend to mix in canards like trickle down (ideologically).
to destroy items responsibly instead of burning yet more fossil fuel to ship them only to be determined to be scrap anyway.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Amazon does sell off some of their returned items, at least here in the states. The sell them by the truckload to auction houses, who auction off all the goods as is, with no warranty. There are multiple warehouses across several states that bring in these items, take pictures, and post them up for sale. Local pickup only, and they have viewing hours for the items up for sale. I have gotten many good deals on items that were brand new at a fraction of the cost. Not just Amazon, but also some other big stores like Home Depot and Sams Club.
Pinky, Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering? I think so Brain, but "instant karma" always gets so lumpy.
It's not the liability, or at least not just the liability, for most items.
It's customer focus. The primary focus of Amazon is customer obsession. The whole business orients towards that. A product returned by one customer is more likely to be a problem for another--it's more likely to be in, say, the bottom 10% of product quality for that item. Asking a customer to return a product is also a hassle for the customer.
Real lawyers write in C++
if you live in a cancer village.
Your freedom ends when it starts to hurt someone else. At that point regulation begins; with all it's complex trade offs. The GP was being provocative, but everything he said is reasonable. The goods Amazon is destroying were likely made by factories in China that pollute heavily and the destroyed goods will likely wind up in a landfill somewhere in Asia (probably Vietnam or India, China's cut the US off). People are going to die from that pollution. That's not idle speculation or me being a libtard jerk, it's just a fact.
Europe seems to be the only one trying to do anything about it. The Libertarians like you say you want to help but your polices never do. For all the effectiveness of the free market you'd might as well pray.
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Our washing machine was an open box that we got from a regular retailer. I'm pretty sure it had been used before, but was effectively new, warrantied and a bit cheaper than it would have been.
Was it tested? I have no idea. But i'll bet a manufacturer service center could run a self diagnostic on it and have a pretty good idea if it's working or not. Same for smartphones - they are small and light, they could go back to samsung, be inspected, factory reset and tested before going out to consumers who are happy to take the savings.
Now I don't doubt that paying someone to hook up a washing machine, run it through a test cycle, the drain it and repackage it for sale costs a significant amount of money and that it's more cost effective to drop it in a landfill. However I think the EU's point is that this is unnecessarily wasteful and that we (as a global society) would be better off if that stuff did get reconditioned for sale.
In a somewhat unrelated note, I do believe that Amazon make this worse by offering free returns for anything that's defective. This creates an incentive for the customer to say a phone is defective because "the battery life isn't as long as advertised". Then they have painted themselves into a corner where the consumers fabricated defect means they can't resell that product as new.
Sorry - COWARD - not 1 German, or anyone, went to jail....
Post proof or go away.
actually, I lied - so the the US has sentenced 2 Germans to prison... that's for violating US laws in the US... Germans have sentenced no one as of yet.
they could go back to samsung, be inspected, factory reset and tested before going out to consumers who are happy to take the savings.
What "savings"?
That phone has already been through the manufacturing/distribution/retail system. It was tested before it left the factory. It was shipped to a distributor who sold and shipped it to a retailer. The retailer sold the product. At each step, the costs were added into the price of the product.
So, the product is returned for some reason. The retailer returns the money to the customer. That means they've already lost all the costs involved in the first sale.
In addition to all the costs involved in making a second sale of the same thing, they are expected to send the device back to the factory for a factory reset/flashing just to be sure nothing malicious was done to the phone while in the hands of the customer. That costs money. Shipping it around costs money.
And YOU expect the retailer (or someone) to sell the product for less than the first time. After adding on a bunch of costs. What "savings" do you imagine exist that would justify a lower selling price?
However I think the EU's point is that this is unnecessarily wasteful and that we (as a global society) would be better off if that stuff did get reconditioned for sale.
The EU's point is that this stuff belongs to Amazon until it is sold to a consumer and Amazon should not have the right to with with something it owns as it sees fit. Amazon has something that it could be forced to give or sell below cost to an EU resident, and the EU thinks it has the authority to order Amazon to do that.
In a somewhat unrelated note, I do believe that Amazon make this worse by offering free returns for anything that's defective.
Now I know you are ... well, if something is defective from the seller then it is OBVIOUS that the seller should not only refund the purchase price but pay for getting it back. Forcing a customer to pay for shipping a defective product back just to get the refund on the purchase is absurd. "Free returns" is so obvious as to need no justification, except to some people.
Then they have painted themselves into a corner where the consumers fabricated defect means they can't resell that product as new.
You've fabricated the corner, because the fact that the product was SOLD means it cannot be sold as new again, defective or not.
And even if he was anti-semitic, racist, xenophobic and homophobic those are not an impeachable offenses.
That might even get him on the $20 bill to replace Andrew Jackson.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
> And YOU expect the retailer (or someone) to sell the product for less than the first time. After adding on a bunch of costs. What "savings" do you imagine exist that would justify a lower selling price?
The sales price of any item is determined by what the market will bear and not the cost to make it. In reality it costs our factory more to produce a factory second (because of the extra QC, repackaging and maintaining a separate sales channel, yet we sell them for less than our first quality items because the value of the item has nothing to do with the cost.
> Now I know you are ... well, if something is defective from the seller then it is OBVIOUS that the seller should not only refund the purchase price but pay for getting it back.
I perhaps worded that wrongly. My point was that Amazon encourages consumers to use the defective label to get free return shipping. In reality I think they should probably offer free returns for any reason. Then "I didn't like the color" wouldn't be an "item not as described".
> You've fabricated the corner, because the fact that the product was SOLD means it cannot be sold as new again, defective or not.
Is that true? I'm pretty sure if i return a shirt to the store with the tags on it then it'll go right out and be sold as new in most situations.
The mod down came because the comment has absolutely nothing to do with the original post. Not everything is about Trump.
The sales price of any item is determined by what the market will bear and not the cost to make it.
How remarkably naive. It is a combination of both. If it costs $100 to make something, but the market will only pay $50, then NO company is going to go into business selling that item for just $50. You claim that the price is based on what "the market will bear", and yet it seems not to be true. Just a simple example is all it took to shatter your myth.
You are misapplying the economic principles that would maximize profits by thinking they determine when ANY profit will be made. When we say that the "market will not bear" a $100+ price for a thing that costs $100 to make, we aren't saying nobody will buy them. We're saying that the maximum profit won't occur at that price. Fewer people will buy them. Fewer will be made, and economies of scale will not help drive the cost down. But don't ever forget -- that company is still going to make a profit. It CANNOT make a profit, and cannot stay in business, if it sells its product for "what the market will bear" if the costs are higher than that.
As for selling "seconds", many companies realize that the costs can easily overcome any lower sales price, in either loss of sales of new equipment, continuing support for the second, or loss of market share when uninformed consumers believe that the "second" is a first run product and decide to buy from someone else for better quality.
This is the problem Amazon is in, and even they do try to move the "seconds" out through surplus or other channels. It's only the things that will not sell that way that they are destroying. And MY point is that these items belong to Amazon until they are sold, and the EU has no business telling them that they have to provide them to anyone for any purpose.
My point was that Amazon encourages consumers to use the defective label to get free return shipping.
Amazon does what Amazon has to do when it ships a defective product to someone. Don't blame Amazon for this problem. They're not forcing people to lie.
Then "I didn't like the color" wouldn't be an "item not as described".
"An item not as described" is not "a defective item", either. I've gotten "item not as described" before. In just one example, the item was not as described (a 50 Ohm 50 Watt resistor), but it was a perfectly functioning hot melt glue stick.
I'm certainly simplifying economic theory some, and I can see why it's not often cost effective to sell a factory second or reconditioned item. Also recognize the arguments for why fashion houses don't want seconds on the market at all.
However I think the EU is well within their purview if they want to regulate that. They are working towards setting up binding rules on food waste that will (I presume) create a legal requirement that supermarkets don't throw salable food in the trash and presumably motivate customers to buy it. I get that very notion offends some people's sensibilities, but the EU is very much in the business of telling you what you can and can't do with something you own.
The EU can absolutely set up a tax structure that makes it unattractive to for businesses to throw stuff that has residual value into the trash. Then that simply tilts the whole economic structure in favor of reuse.