Hire patsies. Motivate them by telling them they’re entrepreneurs. Every time somebody notices, act really shocked and offended, smack your patsy around (just the one they know about), coddle the customer (just the one who noticed). Bribe politicians to look the other way.
This is what they do with their logistics companies. Almost every Amazon delivery employee, driving an Amazon van, works for a "independent logistics contractor", and the rotate them every 2 years or so as the abuse becomes apparent.
It's far from unique to amazon, though. The Microsoft employee/contractor decision in the 90s made it socially acceptable to treat contractors like shit, and it's been downhill since then.
Probably something to do with sellers doing it through the platform, and I imagine AMAZON responds to the right amount of complaints legally required, though these are guesses.
I also imagine its a complex and fun problem to try and solve. Ive noticed they have started in some ways, for example some brands are now labeled as "premium brand sourced" which means less likely to be fake.
Becoming a B2B company fundamentally changed Amazon's business model.
Previously (B2C): incentivized to deliver great customer experience to make money on increased sales volume and higher-price purchases
Now (B2B): incentivized to deliver easy seller experience to make money on increasing number of sellers and sales volume
To be fair, Amazon still cares a surprisingly amount about its end customers, when it doesn't need to, as a legacy of its rabidly awesome B2C days...
... but over time the company will continue to errode and optimize itself to its current customers (sellers).
Why doesn't Amazon do more to strategically combat fakes / bad products? Because sellers literally don't care about that. It's not a priority for them, so it's not a priority for Amazon.
The hypocrisy is apparent when you notice that the pretty much the only brand of products that miraculously does not have third party reseller listed (and hence escapes third party inventory commingling contamination issues) is the Amazon Basics. [1]
Brand owners can apply to have their brands sold only by themselves. I think it might not stop others from selling used, but it would stop the new listings.
Last time I tried to report a fake product to Amazon it's literally impossible. It simply isn't one of the pre-determined options available through customer service, either the self service chat or to the advisers. The closest thing and what the advisers select would be "item not as described" which might be somewhat correct, but hides the problem to whatever reports get generated for management. Hard to believe that isn't intentional.
Probably the platform vs actor thing. Like hate speech on a platform that has some rudimentary reporting vs the person who actually wrote it. Most of the blame falls on the actor instead of the platform.
Amazon is an expert at toeing the line, be it monopoly laws or product liability. I thought it was their biggest mistake to join the race to the bottom when taobao started eating into their margins - I still wish they positioned themselves as the trusted alternative rather than peddle in fake goods, but in retrospect it looks like the right move for them (not consumers).
The connection between Amazon and the intelligence community may speak to that. When the federal government needs you for something, it seems you can get away with many things scott free or with wrist-slaps.
EDIT: This is not a secret, but by all means, keep downvoting me.
You’re not getting down voted because it’s a secret. You’re getting down voted because it’s a red herring. The US shut down its primary nuclear pit production plant because of criminal environmental violations [1]. That was far more impactful than AWS is to national security. No company has a blank check.
I am surprised there have been no high profile stories of people dying due to knock-off consumables from Amazon or house fires caused by knock-off electrical items. It's a matter of time, and if it makes enough headlines it could open more people's eyes to the risks of shopping there.
By that logic, cigarettes should be regulated as medical products too, since they deliver mind-altering drugs to their users' bodies. But cigarettes have absolutely no valid medical use, and the same is true for tattoos: you're much better off without them in both cases.
I’ll bet you just didn’t notice. A huge fraction of the name brand items I’ve bought on there were usable, but fake or knockoffs. You’d have to already own or be experienced with the real one to know. For example, I bought an electric shaver replacement blade on there. After 3 months it was dull and the paint flaked off. The real ones are not painted so don’t flake and last 6 months but I had to already know these facts to tell.
Same here, but presumably, I have a feeling that I have a pretty good ability for discernment. Thinking of all my non-technical and even technical coworkers that fall for the monthly corporate phishing exercises, there seems to be a non-trivial amount of folks that haven't built up that discernment muscle.
When I visit my elderly mom after several months, I can't quite understand how she's purchased all sorts of bunk from everywhere, not just Amazon. From church MLM sales, to random youtube ads that take her to a store front. While the things she has purchased isn't an absolute scam, they tend to either be low quality or far overpriced for the purchased price.
I do think that there is both a tech privilege that our cohort shares in both high compensation and a better tuned intuition as we tend to be the creators of many products and have a good smell test when it comes to how the sauce is made. The high comp allows for us to purchase the high quality, brand-name version of many products. While understanding the sauce behind a lot of stuff informs my internal heuristics of price, pictures, marketing, 1,3, and 4 star reviews.
I do get the impression that those that are scammed on Amazon tend to be the cohort that is looking for esoteric goods, bleeding edge folks, or just the generally non-privileged folks that will gamble on a $7 Amazon item rather than a $100 version of the thing.
I mean, I've never gotten any knock off items from Amazon that I'm aware of either. But I'm certainly not buying something that goes into my actual body from there.
Recently when I buy books on Amazon, they're often cheap versions printed in India. Sometimes there's even a "Only for sale in the Indian subcontinent" label on it. The quality is much worse - flimsy paper, faded ink, rough edges, and often quite dirty despite being new. Does anyone know of a more reliable place to buy new books?
We're living in the tyranny of the docile. Enough people consider "Amazon" synonymous with "shopping" and it's given them enough power to get away with whatever. Especially since covid, people have been trained to sit at home all day.
Confusingly, it appears the inks in question were knockoffs? The official manufacturer seems to be alive and well? Or maybe vice versa, hard to tell with Amazon these days.
Even if not a regulation, a formal certification could help. "This is to certify that batch NNNNN contains no bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, organic poisons from the list available at https://...".
If you're quick to judge someone's character based on their tattoos, it suggests a tendency toward superficial assessments. I find it difficult to trust critical decisions made by someone who relies on such surface-level judgments. In my experience, those with narrow, dogmatic worldviews are often less interested in finding real solutions and more preoccupied with adhering to authority and bureaucratic norms.
I used to think this way, but I no longer feel the signal to noise ratio provides meaningful data, in particular because people do rash or unreasoned things and develop odd habits (that they later grow out of) in their 20s. That part of your adult life is about learning, after all. (I also don’t believe there isn’t anything intrinsically wrong with tattoos.)
Moreover, having a tattoo isn’t necessarily a measure of low impulse control. I have friends who have ruminated for years about a certain tattoo. Plus, imputing bad decision making to having a tattoo is more a (cultural) projection on your part than anything else.
I find them a good litmus test for narrow minded, presumptuous, low empathy people who invent narratives to suit their predetermined world view and run with it.
Lots of people I know with tattoos are the exact opposite of what you decide. Elaborately planned with loads of personal details, taking multiple sessions to complete.
So the thoughtful ink memorializing fallen comrades advertises a bad decision. AWESOME! I have zero desire to associate with closeminded individuals who view diversity as something to judge.
None of my tattoos have been "impulse". Planned months or years in advanced, hell I have a large tattoo project that I commissioned the piece for back in 2020 and finally starting the discussion about actually starting the tattoo.
I have several other tattoos that I have been thinking about for years. I have mapped out at least a general guide of where the tattoos I plan on getting, likely over at least the next 10 years on my body.
Tattoos are expensive. Most are not going to impulse something that expensive.
Thankfully most people have some common sense and realize that tattoos are just another way of expressing who you are and not trying to force uniformity. There are still some weird views about "acceptable" tattoo locations but thats another story.
I won't even hide my tattoo's for an interview, if you have a problem with it thats your problem and I don't care to work with you.
I really don't mean to offend and I'm just thinking out loud here, but I really don't understand this mentality.
As for most things, there are probably infinite reasons why someone gets tattoos. It seems highly presumptuous, almost egotistical, to presume you somehow know the reasons. You yourself don't know the reasons for why you do things, because choice is complex. You make millions of subconscious choices daily and those choices feed other choices. And then a lot of it was simply fed to you, implemented into your brain and you never bothered to circle back and question it.
I mean, just ask someone why they believe what they believe. Not what their belief is, but WHY they believe it. Most of the time they don't know. They can't tell you. And it's THEIR beliefs that they, supposedly, formed. They own them. But you think you can understand other, random people's, motivation?
I think there's this widespread, I guess, "deficiency" where people can't say "I don't know". It's like the LLMs. They can't look at something, say "I don't know" or "I don't understand" and move on. And you can see this in so, so many things.
Someone the other day asked why gay voice exists and why that's a thing. Truly, I don't know and I don't know that anyone does, even gay men. But of course this other guy chimes in about how they fake it and it's for attention. How could he possibly know that? How did he even come to that conclusion? Why do people do this?
The number of comments from people who need their choices validated by a random person on the internet under posts like this invariable proves to me that even they know that this is true and it makes them upset. Classic is/ought situation.
Readit News
It's far from unique to amazon, though. The Microsoft employee/contractor decision in the 90s made it socially acceptable to treat contractors like shit, and it's been downhill since then.
I also imagine its a complex and fun problem to try and solve. Ive noticed they have started in some ways, for example some brands are now labeled as "premium brand sourced" which means less likely to be fake.
Previously (B2C): incentivized to deliver great customer experience to make money on increased sales volume and higher-price purchases
Now (B2B): incentivized to deliver easy seller experience to make money on increasing number of sellers and sales volume
To be fair, Amazon still cares a surprisingly amount about its end customers, when it doesn't need to, as a legacy of its rabidly awesome B2C days...
... but over time the company will continue to errode and optimize itself to its current customers (sellers).
Why doesn't Amazon do more to strategically combat fakes / bad products? Because sellers literally don't care about that. It's not a priority for them, so it's not a priority for Amazon.
[1] Only Amazon Resale third party resellers are shown https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Basics-Anodized-Non-stick-Stac...
EDIT: This is not a secret, but by all means, keep downvoting me.
https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Flats_Plant
If you are in the USA report unsafe products here: https://www.saferproducts.gov/
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/07/18/health/tattoo-ink-permane...
My dad is as cheap as they get, even he doesn’t buy that stuff from Amazon.
When I visit my elderly mom after several months, I can't quite understand how she's purchased all sorts of bunk from everywhere, not just Amazon. From church MLM sales, to random youtube ads that take her to a store front. While the things she has purchased isn't an absolute scam, they tend to either be low quality or far overpriced for the purchased price.
I do think that there is both a tech privilege that our cohort shares in both high compensation and a better tuned intuition as we tend to be the creators of many products and have a good smell test when it comes to how the sauce is made. The high comp allows for us to purchase the high quality, brand-name version of many products. While understanding the sauce behind a lot of stuff informs my internal heuristics of price, pictures, marketing, 1,3, and 4 star reviews.
I do get the impression that those that are scammed on Amazon tend to be the cohort that is looking for esoteric goods, bleeding edge folks, or just the generally non-privileged folks that will gamble on a $7 Amazon item rather than a $100 version of the thing.
Deleted Comment
I do, and my experience is nearly like yours - in opposite to what many people claim about the US Amazon (amazon.com).
e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Bloodline-Tattoo-Selling-Colors-Stabl...
Then you choose which to buy.
And then Amazon sends your artist the comingled counterfeit ink from Storage Tote #29924
If you're quick to judge someone's character based on their tattoos, it suggests a tendency toward superficial assessments. I find it difficult to trust critical decisions made by someone who relies on such surface-level judgments. In my experience, those with narrow, dogmatic worldviews are often less interested in finding real solutions and more preoccupied with adhering to authority and bureaucratic norms.
Moreover, having a tattoo isn’t necessarily a measure of low impulse control. I have friends who have ruminated for years about a certain tattoo. Plus, imputing bad decision making to having a tattoo is more a (cultural) projection on your part than anything else.
My tattoos have worked great so far, even online!
Heck, reputable artists boom out for months.
She has vitiligo so has little control over how she looks. Tattoos make her confident and give her back control.
You should judge people less.
In fact, many tattoos take months of consideration and require setting aside a non-trivial amount of money.
Not that you’d know that, since you make judgements based on the color of people’s skin.
I have several other tattoos that I have been thinking about for years. I have mapped out at least a general guide of where the tattoos I plan on getting, likely over at least the next 10 years on my body.
Tattoos are expensive. Most are not going to impulse something that expensive.
Thankfully most people have some common sense and realize that tattoos are just another way of expressing who you are and not trying to force uniformity. There are still some weird views about "acceptable" tattoo locations but thats another story.
I won't even hide my tattoo's for an interview, if you have a problem with it thats your problem and I don't care to work with you.
Deleted Comment
As for most things, there are probably infinite reasons why someone gets tattoos. It seems highly presumptuous, almost egotistical, to presume you somehow know the reasons. You yourself don't know the reasons for why you do things, because choice is complex. You make millions of subconscious choices daily and those choices feed other choices. And then a lot of it was simply fed to you, implemented into your brain and you never bothered to circle back and question it.
I mean, just ask someone why they believe what they believe. Not what their belief is, but WHY they believe it. Most of the time they don't know. They can't tell you. And it's THEIR beliefs that they, supposedly, formed. They own them. But you think you can understand other, random people's, motivation?
I think there's this widespread, I guess, "deficiency" where people can't say "I don't know". It's like the LLMs. They can't look at something, say "I don't know" or "I don't understand" and move on. And you can see this in so, so many things.
Someone the other day asked why gay voice exists and why that's a thing. Truly, I don't know and I don't know that anyone does, even gay men. But of course this other guy chimes in about how they fake it and it's for attention. How could he possibly know that? How did he even come to that conclusion? Why do people do this?