General > General Technical Chat
Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
Circlotron:
--- Quote from: vk6zgo on June 28, 2021, 03:09:39 am ---I never worked out why Apple weren't sued by "Apple" records, whose logo predates the computer company.
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The court probably thought they were comparing apples with apples...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compare%20apples%20and%2Fto%2Fwith%20apples
Rick Law:
--- Quote from: aix on June 24, 2021, 04:50:02 pm ---I really don't get the economics of this, especially for higher-valued items. Rather than destroying the stock, would it not be advantageous for whomever owns it to sell it at a deep discount? Or is that harder to do than it sounds?
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The destruction like likely the cost of selling, fulfillment, plus book keeping exceeded the profit of the sale. So rather than throwing good money after bad, the wise choice for the seller might well be just path of minimum additional lost.
This point was raised in earlier reply, but it is good to repeat it: One should keep in mind that Amazon did not take any part in creating those "stuff" which ended up being destroyed. They merely provided a channel to sell stuff. While I don't particularly like Amazon the company, or Jeff Bezos the person; I think blaming them for such destruction is a bit unfair.
T3sl4co1l:
--- Quote from: Rick Law on June 29, 2021, 02:16:49 am ---The destruction like likely the cost of selling, fulfillment, plus book keeping exceeded the profit of the sale. So rather than throwing good money after bad, the wise choice for the seller might well be just path of minimum additional lost.
This point was raised in earlier reply, but it is good to repeat it: One should keep in mind that Amazon did not take any part in creating those "stuff" which ended up being destroyed. They merely provided a channel to sell stuff. While I don't particularly like Amazon the company, or Jeff Bezos the person; I think blaming them for such destruction is a bit unfair.
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They aren't the only one to blame, but they certainly can be blamed. For example, they could instate policies that are less wasteful, more lenient to suppliers, or incorporate carbon credits or energy cost or some other environmental factor into their policies / fee structures; something besides the purely financial motive that we can assume they are using.
Likewise, we can blame the suppliers for ordering in excess of what they were actually able to sell; they should've done better market research. This doesn't even need to be a supplier problem, as they can do everything right and still get shafted by Amazon -- how many Amazon Basics clone products have displaced their original sellers?
Or we can go higher up and blame the government for not creating and enforcing such policies -- and indeed this would be the most effective one, as Amazon is simply using an industry-standard process. This is absolutely a case where greater government regulation/oversight yields a freer market for all.
It's a big operation, with many players involved, and it makes sense to have continuous (or at least finely divided) amounts of blame, no need to pin it on one lone actor.
Tim
james_s:
--- Quote from: T3sl4co1l on June 28, 2021, 08:30:07 pm ---Guess you'll starve then. Supermarkets do the same thing... At least there's a chance they mark down or donate old items?
Tim
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When food is rotting there is not much else you can do with it unfortunately, it's perishable. They do try to distribute it though, a while back I volunteered with a bunch of my coworkers at an organization that collects all the expired and about to expire food from Costco, sorts through it and then donates some of it to food banks and sells other stuff at deeply discounted prices at market that sells low cost food to low income people. The stuff that would not survive the process was composted which turns it back into highly fertile soil. My mom has a friend who belongs to another organization that does a similar thing with supermarket foods, they end up with so much excess that I end up with all kinds of random food for free, it's far from perfect but at least they're trying. They don't destroy perfectly good stock just to keep it out of someone else's hands.
Rick Law:
--- Quote from: T3sl4co1l on June 29, 2021, 02:27:08 am ---
--- Quote from: Rick Law on June 29, 2021, 02:16:49 am ---The destruction like likely the cost of selling, fulfillment, plus book keeping exceeded the profit of the sale. So rather than throwing good money after bad, the wise choice for the seller might well be just path of minimum additional lost.
This point was raised in earlier reply, but it is good to repeat it: One should keep in mind that Amazon did not take any part in creating those "stuff" which ended up being destroyed. They merely provided a channel to sell stuff. While I don't particularly like Amazon the company, or Jeff Bezos the person; I think blaming them for such destruction is a bit unfair.
--- End quote ---
They aren't the only one to blame, but they certainly can be blamed. For example, they could instate policies that are less wasteful, more lenient to suppliers, or incorporate carbon credits or energy cost or some other environmental factor into their policies / fee structures; something besides the purely financial motive that we can assume they are using.
...
...
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Amazon often is grouped with companies like Google, Apple, and the likes. But Amazon isn't exactly a high profit company. Amazon's on-line sales and fulfilment operates on much thinner margin than say Google's ad sale and Apple's HW/SW (apps) lines. They don't have as much room to maneuver as you imagined.
This is probably shocking to many: Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has generated during its lifetime!
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/11/apple-made-more-profit-in-three-months-than-amazon-has-generated-during-its-lifetime.html
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