Author Topic: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth  (Read 10447 times)

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Offline tooki

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #25 on: June 29, 2021, 07:45:13 am »
The first of the Macs to have built a in dac for actually plying audio as opposed to beeps, had a start up chime the filename for which was sosume, SoSueMe.

Yea there was a lawsuit back in the day.
FYI, all Macs ever made have a DAC — Macs don’t have, and never have had, a beeper. The sound named “sosumi” was added, IIRC, when they added an audio input.

Same era that had one machine with the internal code name “Carl Sagan”, and when he found out and threatened to sue, they changed it to “BHA”, which Sagan later found out was short for “buttheaded astronomer” 🤣
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #26 on: June 29, 2021, 07:48:31 am »
Industrial scale manufacturing has always been bad news for the environment, because all products are put there at the end of their useful life. In more or less damaging ways. My mind boggles just at the volume of cleaning chemicals that go down the drain and straight out to local water courses or rivers. Every supermarket on the planet has shelves full of chemicals labelled damaging to aquatic life, and that's exactly where it ends up!

Anyway, I digress.

Amazon is simply another player, helping us along our fast track to environmental destruction.
On the plus side, at least some folks are getting rich along the way :-\
Reminds me of a tv show, with a person yelling something along the lines of, "these chemicals are messing up with frog's brains"   :-DD;)
You mean Alex Jones frothing at the mouth that chemicals are turning the frogs gay?
 
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Offline Raj

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #27 on: June 29, 2021, 08:04:56 am »
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

As they say, Amazon is playing the long game. Making stuff cheaper until competitor dies out.
They've already defeated all book sellers out there.
But I don't understand the appeal of apple at all.
How come people are paying so much for a mediocre devices that are expensive to buy and repair. And they also go obsolete quickly.

I've never seen an Iphone or android that can even play a YouTube video without bugging out after 5 years of use.

You mean @lex J0nes frothing at the mouth that chemicals are turning the frogs g@y?
Yup, the one who shouldn't be named.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2021, 08:07:46 am by Raj »
 

Online T3sl4co1l

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #28 on: June 29, 2021, 08:47:32 am »
You mean Alex Jones frothing at the mouth that chemicals are turning the frogs gay?

It's an interesting phrase, there's some nuance behind it actually:



The reaction clip, of course, is just mimetic gold; but it's based on a true story, of suppressed science, distilled over the years through a conspiracy-theoretic lens, down to the simplest possible description.  They're not "gay" of course, that's an abuse of language, but hermaphroditic deformities -- intersex is the proper term(?) -- were found; the effects were causally proven; and the science was discredited by big agro as well as they could muster, because obviously, they have a financial stake in this.

So it's interesting to see the phrase used here, understanding how it came to be.  It's the perfect case of a phrase that sounds like a joke, while hinting at a dark, disturbing situation.


Another, albeit less extreme, statement comes to mind: "the solution to pollution is dilution".  Now, it's perfectly true -- see, it's easy to laugh at this statement, or question it morally -- and rightly so; but it works because it works.  The problem is not that a company is releasing toxic chemicals per se, it's that enough of them are doing it, in great enough quantities, that, over anything from local areas to entire ecosystems, concentrations rise to dangerous levels.  And often those levels are unimaginably small (~ppb, even ppt for PFAS, dioxins, etc.), and the effects on various species are unpredictable.

It's not that a resource is being exploited, it's that it's being exploited too aggressively for the number of users of that resource -- it's the tragedy of the commons, and the only solution is through cooperation, whether as a self-regulating industry, or by government action.

So, even outside of pesticides (and their production byproducts, or of myriad other chemical products), just say, the sheer disposal of plastic waste is troubling (e.g. microplastics entering food chains).  Never mind the sheer amount of greenhouse and other gasses fed into the atmosphere.  It's not about whether we are making an impact, it's absolutely the case that we do; the question is, are we using up the resource faster than it cleans itself, or than we can clean it?  And wasteful practices such as highlighted in this thread, clearly aren't helping in that regard.  It's a problem consisting of myriad actors, subject to diverse externalities; it's not a problem that can be solved by the individual, or a company necessarily, or even a country; it requires massive and effective cooperation by all stakeholders of the respective resource, of whatever size that resource is.


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.

I mean, it's not like Bezos is exactly strapped for cash or anything.  He could float them personally for years with his war chest.

Anyway, that doesn't matter -- they can raise prices to compensate.  Note this is only possible when regulations are applied uniformly across the market, where everyone is required to incur the same added cost.  Making adjustments for barriers-to-entry or weighting judiciously by company size, or impact or overhead or whatever.

It would be ludicrous of course to single out just one company.  Again, it's not just one, there are many actors to blame!

Heh, a possible consequence might be making brick-and-mortar stores relatively more profitable; that would seem to hint at the tradeoff of local supply versus delivery, under such a [environmentally responsible regulatory] regime.  I mean, if it worked out that way, I can't say I'd be disappointed!  But it may well be the case that delivery is better, I don't know.

But anyway, I'm not a policy wonk, I don't know what's being discussed, if anything like this, right now.  There's probably something.  I'd suggest go reading about that directly, to see some better circumscribed, actually studied, proposals.


Quote
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

I agree wholeheartedly, they need to be regulated as well!  They're aggressively anti-repair, as are many other manufacturers that are dependent on a captive-service or recurring-sales model.

Tim
« Last Edit: June 29, 2021, 08:49:07 am by T3sl4co1l »
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Online Gyro

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #29 on: June 29, 2021, 08:56:14 am »
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?

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.

The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.
Best Regards, Chris
 
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Online T3sl4co1l

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #30 on: June 29, 2021, 09:11:03 am »
The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.

You say that like it's not already SOP for a lot of sellers/products. :)

Tim
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Online Gyro

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #31 on: June 29, 2021, 12:22:26 pm »
Actually that's true, it certainly seems to be the way that most international sellers on ebay work.  :)
Best Regards, Chris
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #32 on: June 29, 2021, 01:00:39 pm »
FYI, all Macs ever made have a DAC — Macs don’t have, and never have had, a beeper. The sound named “sosumi” was added, IIRC, when they added an audio input.
The G4 Cube doesn't - audio output is via an external USB DAC instead.
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #33 on: June 29, 2021, 01:38:53 pm »
The reaction clip, of course, is just mimetic gold; but it's based on a true story, of suppressed science, distilled over the years through a conspiracy-theoretic lens, down to the simplest possible description.  They're not "gay" of course, that's an abuse of language, but hermaphroditic deformities -- intersex is the proper term(?) -- were found; the effects were causally proven; and the science was discredited by big agro as well as they could muster, because obviously, they have a financial stake in this.

A biochemistry lecturer I used to know (Dr. John P. Sumpter, Brunel University) was researching this in the late 70s/early 80s and by the time I first knew him circa 81/82 the effect was established science. His research had moved on from "does this happen" to "what other agents can cause this to happen". (BTW as far as terminology used goes, the effect most often observed, and described as such, is feminisation in males of aquatic species.)

Quote
Another, albeit less extreme, statement comes to mind: "the solution to pollution is dilution".  Now, it's perfectly true -- see, it's easy to laugh at this statement, or question it morally -- and rightly so; but it works because it works.  The problem is not that a company is releasing toxic chemicals per se, it's that enough of them are doing it, in great enough quantities, that, over anything from local areas to entire ecosystems, concentrations rise to dangerous levels.  And often those levels are unimaginably small (~ppb, even ppt for PFAS, dioxins, etc.), and the effects on various species are unpredictable.

Some agents still have an effect even when diluted beyond homeopathic levels. One of first agents identified as troublesome was synthetic human oestrogens, which have a feminizing effect on male brown trout after they have been consumed as birth control pills by human women (whole body dose 20-100 micrograms/day), excreted, passed through waste treatment facilities and passed back into watercourses - a dilution ratio of billions or trillions to one. One of the things Sumpter discovered was that there was a synergistic effect between oestrogenic pollutants and detergents that were present in treated waste water. So the problem isn't just single compounds, but the whole chemical soup of many compounds present as pollutants.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline TimNJ

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #34 on: June 29, 2021, 07:00:40 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

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.

For the last 20 years, once a week, my parents (and I, when I was younger) pick up the *just* expired bakery items from Costco and bring them to a local pantry. (The bakery items are put in freezers to preserve them.) Costco basically assumes no liability if the food items go bad, covered by some sort of Good Samaritan law. I think they probably get some sort of tax write-off too. I don't know how this could be applied to other (non-food) items, but it would be better than trashing them.
 

Offline Bassman59

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #35 on: June 29, 2021, 08:39:29 pm »
But I don't understand the appeal of apple at all.
How come people are paying so much for a mediocre devices that are expensive to buy and repair. And they also go obsolete quickly.

You're wrong on both accounts. I'm writing this on a 2017 MacBook Pro that is still supported by OS updates. When I bought it, its price was about the same as a similarly-equipped business class Dell laptop.

Since you obviously don't like the products (for whatever reasons), you feel compelled to piss on them. I don't understand that.

Oh, and Apple just replaced the keyboard/trackpad/battery assembly for free.

Quote
I've never seen an Iphone or android that can even play a YouTube video without bugging out after 5 years of use.

What does that even mean?

 

Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #36 on: June 29, 2021, 08:43:01 pm »
Greed. Is. Good.

Full stop.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2021, 08:44:44 pm by schmitt trigger »
 

Offline bson

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #37 on: June 29, 2021, 10:45:48 pm »
One of first agents identified as troublesome was synthetic human oestrogens, which have a feminizing effect on male brown trout after they have been consumed as birth control pills by human women (whole body dose 20-100 micrograms/day), excreted, passed through waste treatment facilities and passed back into watercourses -
Natural estrogen has the same effect and is also excreted in urine.  And there's a whole lot more of that than synthetics.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #38 on: June 30, 2021, 12:12:11 am »
One of first agents identified as troublesome was synthetic human oestrogens, which have a feminizing effect on male brown trout after they have been consumed as birth control pills by human women (whole body dose 20-100 micrograms/day), excreted, passed through waste treatment facilities and passed back into watercourses -
Natural estrogen has the same effect and is also excreted in urine.  And there's a whole lot more of that than synthetics.

Natural oestrogen  biodegrades much faster than synthetics, the synthetics having been explicitly engineered for stability to enable them to be packed up as pills. Synthetic oestrogen was the first (and rather obvious) candidate to be explored in the face of observed feminisation of fish, the real issue is the whole panoply of other man made oestrogenic compounds that get dumped into the environment. Subsequent to fingering synthetic oestrogens it has turned out that there are a huge range of man made compounds and their breakdown products that act as endocrine disruptors or have reproductive toxicity. (My ex-wife was a student of Sumpter's and also worked for a while in the reproductive toxicity research lab for a very large chemical company that actually took a surprisingly forward thinking and responsible attitude to knowing what they were doing instead of just dumping the stuff they were making into the environment, which is I know way more about this than I've any right to.)

The point is that we've known about this stuff for a long time - I'm blathering on from stuff I learned 40+ years ago - and we collectively still haven't got around to taking adequate measures to prevent these assorted compounds getting into the environment in biologically significant quantities, coincidentally over exactly the same period that computers have gone from "that big thing in the air conditioned room over there" to the ubiquitous, always-on, always-connected, thing in everybody's pockets, so it isn't from a lack of technological development capability over the same period. As with dealing with rapacious companies destroying perfectly good products for reasons of, basically, greed, there has been a lack of political will to tackle the problem.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline GlennSprigg

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #39 on: July 02, 2021, 12:07:56 pm »
The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.

You say that like it's not already SOP for a lot of sellers/products. :)

Tim

I'm reminded of years ago, looking after security systems in Prisons.  They had massive productions of vegetables in one country
prison, that served them, and certain other prisons.  After that, they monthly Bull-Dozed literally TONS of food back into the ground!
They said they are not allowed to sell it, as they are not allowed to 'compete' with other local businesses...  So I asked about 'giving'
it away to the many homeless shelter managers/organizers, for example, the 'Salvation Army' here in Australia...
They said they can't even do that!, as they often buy (at a very reduced rate) such produce from people & organizations, and so are
cutting them out of their business!!   So just constantly bulldozed into the ground. (And I mean a LOT!). That's politics...   :palm:
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Offline sokoloff

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #40 on: July 02, 2021, 02:08:15 pm »
The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.
This is already Amazon policy for occasional, low value items.
They call it "returnless refund".

I bought a DIN rail 20A contactor from Amazon a few weeks ago for around $16. Happened to notice a few days later that it was now being sold for $5.19. A2Z (support) says they can't do a price adjustment, but I can order another one and return the one I got.
OK, sounds wasteful, but it's your dime, not mine. Order a new one (two, in fact, to have a spare). Started the return process for the old one. "Here's your money back; no need to return the original one."

Um, okay. Works for me, I guess...
 

Offline Bassman59

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #41 on: July 02, 2021, 05:04:08 pm »
The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.
This is already Amazon policy for occasional, low value items.
They call it "returnless refund".

I bought a DIN rail 20A contactor from Amazon a few weeks ago for around $16. Happened to notice a few days later that it was now being sold for $5.19. A2Z (support) says they can't do a price adjustment, but I can order another one and return the one I got.
OK, sounds wasteful, but it's your dime, not mine. Order a new one (two, in fact, to have a spare). Started the return process for the old one. "Here's your money back; no need to return the original one."

Um, okay. Works for me, I guess...

Two examples of how AMZN's customer service is random:

1. A friend ordered a copy of the Can "Live in Stuttgart 1975" triple LP, for $50. (I see it's on Bandcamp for that price!) AMZN mistakenly sent him TEN copies. He contact AMZN and said, "uh, you should probably know about this mistake." AMZN said to not bother returning the extra copies. He put out the word on Book of Faces that he had nine copies he'd sell for $40 each incl. shipping and he'd donate the proceeds to the local food bank. Naturally I took him up on this!

2. I ordered some stupid 3D printer bits ... some nozzles and a test tube full of the acupuncture needles those idiots call "drill bits" that you use to clear nozzle clogs. Well, the order arrived in a thin envelope and the test tube was smashed and the needles were mangled. I contacted Amazon to say the package was damaged, and they immediately ordered a replacement BUT they demanded the original package be returned. Six bucks worth of crap, and they want it back.

My takeaway from this is that the books/music division is different from the department that manages all of the third-party sellers (like the vast network of anonymous Chinese 3D-printer-parts sellers).
 

Online T3sl4co1l

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #42 on: July 02, 2021, 11:08:48 pm »
Need not be market segmented, it might be a supplier preference.  Or some products/markets/suppliers/other criteria might be more prone to return abuse.  Who knows.

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Offline Raj

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #43 on: July 05, 2021, 09:29:56 am »
But I don't understand the appeal of apple at all.
How come people are paying so much for a mediocre devices that are expensive to buy and repair. And they also go obsolete quickly.

You're wrong on both accounts. I'm writing this on a 2017 MacBook Pro that is still supported by OS updates. When I bought it, its price was about the same as a similarly-equipped business class Dell laptop.
Not anymore

latest Imac can't even have their screens at a leveled angle and backlight bleed  (they literally shoved an experimental display technology into final product)
search #Bendgate
The fact they are also still manufacturing and selling butterfly keyboards which are flawed.
The fact that prices of brand new mac books never fall, regardless of the model

apple products are just tools mainly for artists and fashion accessories. (sure others can use it too, but it's not ideal
(dell is no good either BTW)

Since you obviously don't like the products (for whatever reasons), you feel compelled to piss on them. I don't understand that.

Oh, and Apple just replaced the keyboard/trackpad/battery assembly for free.

Quote
I've never seen an Iphone or android that can even play a YouTube video without bugging out after 5 years of use.

What does that even mean?
I don't know how exactly they do this, but if you use a phone for 5 years, they become so slow, that they can't even play a video stream correctly. (since it's a stream flash degradation shouldn't play a role here.) (apple and only apple was sued for this)

And actually I hate HP more. Specially their bloated drivers.



The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.

You say that like it's not already SOP for a lot of sellers/products. :)

Tim

I'm reminded of years ago, looking after security systems in Prisons.  They had massive productions of vegetables in one country
prison, that served them, and certain other prisons.  After that, they monthly Bull-Dozed literally TONS of food back into the ground!
They said they are not allowed to sell it, as they are not allowed to 'compete' with other local businesses...  So I asked about 'giving'
it away to the many homeless shelter managers/organizers, for example, the 'Salvation Army' here in Australia...
They said they can't even do that!, as they often buy (at a very reduced rate) such produce from people & organizations, and so are
cutting them out of their business!!   So just constantly bulldozed into the ground. (And I mean a LOT!). That's politics...   :palm:
Give an inch, they take a mile. do that ones, and they'll camp there for food. better to just sell it in time.


The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.
This is already Amazon policy for occasional, low value items.
They call it "returnless refund".

I bought a DIN rail 20A contactor from Amazon a few weeks ago for around $16. Happened to notice a few days later that it was now being sold for $5.19. A2Z (support) says they can't do a price adjustment, but I can order another one and return the one I got.
OK, sounds wasteful, but it's your dime, not mine. Order a new one (two, in fact, to have a spare). Started the return process for the old one. "Here's your money back; no need to return the original one."

Um, okay. Works for me, I guess...

maybe because the same category of product is something they didn't want to risk liability from reselling it untested...imagine if you were to sabotage an MCB and they resold it. or if it was to get some scratches.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2021, 09:32:12 am by Raj »
 

Offline sokoloff

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #44 on: July 05, 2021, 01:37:10 pm »
The logical (and ridiculous) extension of this is telling Amazon 'I don't want this item, but give me a refund and I'm prepared to dispose of it at no further cost to you'.
This is already Amazon policy for occasional, low value items.
They call it "returnless refund".

I bought a DIN rail 20A contactor from Amazon a few weeks ago for around $16. Happened to notice a few days later that it was now being sold for $5.19. A2Z (support) says they can't do a price adjustment, but I can order another one and return the one I got.
OK, sounds wasteful, but it's your dime, not mine. Order a new one (two, in fact, to have a spare). Started the return process for the old one. "Here's your money back; no need to return the original one."

Um, okay. Works for me, I guess...
maybe because the same category of product is something they didn't want to risk liability from reselling it untested...imagine if you were to sabotage an MCB and they resold it. or if it was to get some scratches.
Doubtful. In that case, I'd expect they'd sell the item as non-returnable.
In this specific case, I had a second, same exact contactor that I returned and that one is sitting on my counter with a QR code on my phone to drop off at a Whole Foods. (They apparently were happy to give me one for free via returnless refund, but not two.)
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #45 on: July 05, 2021, 02:54:19 pm »
Several on here have mentioned doing proper market research to prevent overbuilding of product.  If that worked you wouldn't have such things as TP shortages or bouncing prices of petroleum products.  Even if you could correctly understand market demand you would also have to have a complete understanding of all suppliers so you would know how much product your competitors were planning to make.  It is really easy when you only buy things to oversimplify the problems of those who produce them.

One of the big drivers of these problems is Amazon's instant delivery model.  When you promise people extremely fast delivery you must have stock to support all potential customers.  If everyone would accept delivery in one year or more, manufacturers could build on purchase and there would be little waste.  People don't seem to be lining up for longer delivery times, at least partly because we have trouble predicting our needs that far out.

Here in the US product liability laws are one of the reasons product is dumped rather than given away.  If someone runs with a free pair of scissors and injures themselves there are legions of lawyers ready to sue the vendor and/or manufacturer because the points weren't rounded or the handles weren't padded or the danger wasn't clearly explained on the package or any number of other potential defects.  The extra exposure with no revenue to compensate just isn't an attractive proposition.

Similar issues have occurred with food products.  Grocers don't discard them until they are unfit for sale.  Which some homeless advocates have interpreted as demeaning or unfit for distribution to homeless (other homeless advocates disagree vehemently).  Trashing the items avoids getting in the middle of the argument.

Bottom line, this waste is the lubricant that allows our society to perform at the level it does.  While some tweaking of the process can and should occur there are only two solutions - accept waste or dramatically reduce the material standards we have become accustomed to.  Well, there is a third, dramatically reducing world population, but there is no way for that to happen in a comfortable, equable way.
 

Offline Raj

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #46 on: July 05, 2021, 03:02:53 pm »
Several on here have mentioned doing proper market research to prevent overbuilding of product.  If that worked you wouldn't have such things as TP shortages or bouncing prices of petroleum products.  Even if you could correctly understand market demand you would also have to have a complete understanding of all suppliers so you would know how much product your competitors were planning to make.  It is really easy when you only buy things to oversimplify the problems of those who produce them.

One of the big drivers of these problems is Amazon's instant delivery model.  When you promise people extremely fast delivery you must have stock to support all potential customers.  If everyone would accept delivery in one year or more, manufacturers could build on purchase and there would be little waste.  People don't seem to be lining up for longer delivery times, at least partly because we have trouble predicting our needs that far out.

Here in the US product liability laws are one of the reasons product is dumped rather than given away.  If someone runs with a free pair of scissors and injures themselves there are legions of lawyers ready to sue the vendor and/or manufacturer because the points weren't rounded or the handles weren't padded or the danger wasn't clearly explained on the package or any number of other potential defects.  The extra exposure with no revenue to compensate just isn't an attractive proposition.

Similar issues have occurred with food products.  Grocers don't discard them until they are unfit for sale.  Which some homeless advocates have interpreted as demeaning or unfit for distribution to homeless (other homeless advocates disagree vehemently).  Trashing the items avoids getting in the middle of the argument.

Bottom line, this waste is the lubricant that allows our society to perform at the level it does.  While some tweaking of the process can and should occur there are only two solutions - accept waste or dramatically reduce the material standards we have become accustomed to.  Well, there is a third, dramatically reducing world population, but there is no way for that to happen in a comfortable, equable way.
Yeah, people are being made too comfortable on the expense of environment.
Like little kids, people want useless stuff and they want it now.
Some product categories simply exist to serve no meaningful purpose at all like make up.
What's funny is, make up products always seem to show up in the list of chemicals harming the body and environment (since they are full of stuff like "forever chemicals, hormones and what not").
There's also still no end to endless usage of single use plastic packaging. If someone could find a way to use those for something profitable, he might become richer than Apple.
 

Offline sokoloff

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #47 on: July 05, 2021, 04:00:45 pm »
Some product categories simply exist to serve no meaningful purpose at all like make up.
What's funny is, make up products always seem to show up in the list of chemicals harming the body and environment (since they are full of stuff like "forever chemicals, hormones and what not").
There's also still no end to endless usage of single use plastic packaging. If someone could find a way to use those for something profitable, he might become richer than Apple.
Numbers 2 and 10 (right now) on the list of richest people in the world have made a fortune (in part) after finding a way to monetize single use packaging and makeup (Sephora among others, and L'Oreal, respectively)
 

Offline nigelwright7557

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #48 on: July 05, 2021, 04:56:40 pm »
I sell quite a bit on ebay.
So I tried Amazon too.
I found my items were coming way down in listings despite being cheapest.
I also found even when you got to my items there was no buy button !
Amazon said you have earn a buy button by selling lots.
How do you sell lots if people cant buy the item ?
So I cant sell on Amazon, then I dont buy either.

 

Offline Raj

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Re: Amazon: the shittiest, most ghastly company on earth
« Reply #49 on: July 05, 2021, 05:05:30 pm »
Some product categories simply exist to serve no meaningful purpose at all like make up.
What's funny is, make up products always seem to show up in the list of chemicals harming the body and environment (since they are full of stuff like "forever chemicals, hormones and what not").
There's also still no end to endless usage of single use plastic packaging. If someone could find a way to use those for something profitable, he might become richer than Apple.
Numbers 2 and 10 (right now) on the list of richest people in the world have made a fortune (in part) after finding a way to monetize single use packaging and makeup (Sephora among others, and L'Oreal, respectively)
If people buy em while ignoring the negatives it, there's a demand for it,hence it will sell.
I sell quite a bit on ebay.
So I tried Amazon too.
I found my items were coming way down in listings despite being cheapest.
I also found even when you got to my items there was no buy button !
Amazon said you have earn a buy button by selling lots.
How do you sell lots if people cant buy the item ?
So I cant sell on Amazon, then I dont buy either.


I'm guessing that those were electronics...Yeah the Chinese people have ways to mess with the algorithm. (I don't remember the name of the documentary buy it was about a guy selling amber colored  anti glare glasses and complaining about fake reviewers)
 


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