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."

Comments

It's about cost...

[MikeDataLink]

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

Re:It's about cost...

[Chris Mattern]

There's plenty of people out there who'd say they'd take the risk for a lower price, but would then turn around and sue you if it turned out bad. They'd probably win, too, no matter what they signed; there are consumer rights you can't sign away. So Amazon can't resell this junk.

Re:It's about cost...

[XXongo]

If you read the second of the links on the German language website (which you have to click through to get to-- should have been linked here but it wasn't), it makes exactly these points: the "Scandal" is mostly invented; Amazon doesn't destroy stuff it doesn't have to, and they go to some amount of effort to sell at lower cost, or donate, stuff that is returned but can't be resold "as new". https://www.wortfilter.de/wp/h... (translate: https://translate.google.com/t... )

Liar

[DogDude]

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.