Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Says It is Investigating Claims That Its Employees Are Taking Bribes To Sell Internal Data To Merchants To Help Them Increase Their Sales on the Website (wsj.com)
Amazon.com is investigating internal leaks as it fights to root out fake reviews and other seller scams from its website, the company told WSJ. From the report: Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries, are offering internal data and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the data, brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations. The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks. In exchange for payments ranging from roughly $80 to more than $2,000, brokers for Amazon employees in Shenzhen are offering internal sales metrics and reviewers' email addresses, as well as a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts, the people said.
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S., suspected of accepting these bribes, according to people familiar with the matter. An internal probe began in May after Eric Broussard, Amazon's vice president who oversees international marketplaces, was tipped off to the practice in China, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon has since shuffled the roles of key executives in China to try to root out the bribery, one of these people said.
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S., suspected of accepting these bribes, according to people familiar with the matter. An internal probe began in May after Eric Broussard, Amazon's vice president who oversees international marketplaces, was tipped off to the practice in China, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon has since shuffled the roles of key executives in China to try to root out the bribery, one of these people said.
That doesn't sound right.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The only thing Amazon is pissed of at here is that they're not the ones turning a profit selling the metrics. It's just a matter of employees stealing and reselling company property. That's all. The story is no different from (and no more interesting than) McDonald's employees cooking and selling fries for themselves.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Introducing Amazon Prime Analytics - This soon to be released Amazon monthly service will provide third part sellers deep insight into Amazon sales metrics and allow sellers to increase their sales for only $500/month.
Sign up for Amazon Prime Analytics today.
Amazon is mad that they aren't getting a cut of the bribes cause the sellers are bypassing them.
This is precisely the sort of thing that workers do in China. It's funny, as I read the summary I thought "Chinese culture is spreading to America?" only to find out it was indeed in China. Yeah, the workers are paid shit and view it as their obligation to make money however they can. Men in particular are viewed as pack mules whose job it is to make money for an entire family. The family ruthlessly badgers the man to make more, make more, make more. When he makes more, they spend more. It never ends.
When he can't make enough in salary, they badger him to - not exactly steal? But use whatever position he has to utilize the employer's resources to make money for his family. Selling data is right up this alley. You can't even call it theft because nobody lost anything. It's win-win: the merchants sell more, the worker makes money he turns over to his family, the family can afford to purchase status symbols that make them look good in the eyes of people they know. This is actually a "good" case because nobody got hurt. Typically in a situation like this some middle manager substitutes shoddy materials in a product and pockets the difference, which can and does result in harm to real people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A well paid workforce is more resistant to bribery. Not impervious, of course, but a least somewhat resistant.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks.
Not sure why I have to point this out, but the US employees are in the same boat. Plus, Amazon treats them like crap.
So no sympathy for Amazon in this - it's of their own doing. When you know your employer is raking in big bucks and only dropping you crumbs, you tend to want to find ways to cash in yourself. Amazon does it themselves - these guys just want in on the deal.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Latin is no longer widely used, but the ancient Romans weren't stupid.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Wall Street is rife with insider information sharing and they make some exceptionally high salaries. I suspect that it probably has to do more with relative salary and that even if you make good money, if someone else at the company is making a lot more than you, you're going to feel as though you're being shorted and might look for other ways to supplement your income. Individual personality probably factors in heavily as well. There are some people (see Wall Street) who are so immoral that it doesn't matter how much they make when there's an opportunity to make just a little bit more. Culture could play some role as well.
If you want to stop problems like this, limit access to the data and make sure that there's an ability to log access and audit usage in order to look for strange patterns of behavior. Most corporations would rather just sweep things like this under the rug, but cooperating with the government to prosecute the kind of people who engage in that behavior and seeing them land long prison sentences instead of slaps on the wrist would help curtail it as well. Of course the upper management and C-level executives would never want to set that kind of precedent.
Treat and pay them fairly and you'll see a lot less of this. They have bills to pay, gotta make ends meet.
Indeed, the big problem with a workforce who know they're entirely disposable (and are paid like that) is that they can probably pick up an equally bad job elsewhere. They essentially risk nothing when indulging in some low level corruption (since companies almost never prosecute for fear of exposing the problem) and it's quite clear there's no loyalty running either direction, so there's little emotional cost to "betraying" their employer.
But the same holds for society in general. You want to ensure that people at have at least some stake, both financially and emotionally in being "part of the team".
A well paid workforce is more resistant to bribery. Not impervious, of course, but a least somewhat resistant.
So, you think we need to pay our politicians MORE MONEY?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Say you are a French Company building quadcopters using cheap Chines labor. Before the design is finalized the plans will be in the offices of a Chinese competitor who will out class your product and build it Cheaper.
Chines are loyal to Chines. The rest of the world should follow their lead. It it cheaper in the short term to build in China. In the long run you are mortgaging your future. There is something seriously wrong if it is cheaper to build shit 12000 miles away and float it over an ocean in a barge leaking all kinds of low grade petroleum than it is to build it locally...
But I'm an cis gendered entitled communist Nazi racist who hates transgendered immigrant canadian geese so you would expect such low class offensive opinion from me.
Desperate people do desperate things.
This is a risk you run if you underpay your employees as they become easy targets.
An outside source offers any of your employees half of their yearly salary if they'll do them a tiny ' favor ' and of course they're going to find someone who will jump on it.
Especially dangerous for all of your outsourced / offshore employees where you're paying them $20 a day.
Offer one of them $10k and they'll do anything you want.
Think about that when you outsource the positions who have access to critical or sensitive parts of your network.
> This is actually a "good" case because nobody got hurt.
From the summary:
> a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts
So people now buy dangerous, shoddy goods, believing them to be high quality. And nobody got hurt?
True, but "well paid" is relative and depends on where you're talking about. A salary that would be considered good in St. Louis, Denver or Boston would probably be considered inadequate in San Francisco, Seattle or New York both because the cost of living is so badly inflated and the average salary is jumped up to match.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Yes, employee loyalty doesn't come for free or by threats. Better to rely on self-interest. We're capitalists, after all.
The chinese probably view it as business as usual, as you sure can't buy consultation from amazon themselves on what you can sell, what exact documents do you need to prove yourself and all that(photos, company registrations, proof of location, house book, hope your dynamic ip or vpn provider was never attached to any other seller and so forth).
Like, Amazon puts on a face like that they tell you enough on their website, but they really don't and they do that on purpose to battle scammers, but they also screw over legit sellers. Because they really can't be bothered to tell the two apart, it's just too much work.
SO.. legit high volume sellers will think and resort to paying someone at Amazon to make their account work like it should - REGARDLESS OF IT'S A SCAM OR LEGIT SALES.
That's why there's huge 3rd party forums and services related to selling on Amazon. Because even legit sellers from Asia have hard time listing their products.
It's easier to sell counterfeit pirate Nintendo cartridges that are _CLEARLY_ counterfeit on amazon, ebay and etsy than it is to sell shirts that you made yourself and don't infringe on anybody's IP. Same goes partially for ebay. Anyhow, due to it being hard and semi(or fully secret) how your account must look a lot of american sellers can just buy any crap from Asia and throw it on Amazon/Ebay because they're not from Asia.
Want to sell cheapo sneakers on Amazon that you commissioned from some factory in Thailand, totally not infringing on any trademarks? good fucking luck with that.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's almost like a regime of secret laws (seller regulations) leads to confusion, arbitrary & capricious judgements, and inability to conduct legitimate business without inside connections or bribery. Who knew?!
Maybe it's time for a new standard in transparency. No more allowing big companies with serious market power - the ability to make or break smaller companies - to impose secret laws on their users. These regulations need to be public - so legitimate businesses can understand & follow them, and so the people can debate whether they are acceptable.
When a company reaches a certain level of importance and market power, they are no longer "private" in the traditional sense. They have become, de facto, part of the state. "Parastatal" as the academics say. The time is long overdue for some sunlight & democracy in the parastate.
I do enjoy it when the reviews get to be tongue-in-cheek, there are plenty of examples. But I only just saw the reviews for these apple headphone adaptors which are apparently...
The best martial art training product...
An excellent popup tent
If you like your whiskey neat and your rifles wooden, this ones for you
I wonder how much you have to pay to get reviews like that
Nullius in verba