Search results for "amazon"

I’m glad someone is finally reporting on the phenomenon. Amazon’s liberal no-questions-asked return policy is, at best, prone to mistakes, and at worst, prone to abuse. It works like this: someone orders and expensive item from Amazon and then returns it, but substitutes something cheaper in the return box, and claims they returned the part as they should have.  The buyer then keeps the expensive item, or, in the case of organized theft rings, they sell it on another marketplace, or even Amazon.com itself, to turn it into cash. The biggest part of this problem is that Amazon will often … Continue reading →

The latest threat to this business is unsavory Amazon sellers hijacking our product listings.  Here is what a normal listing on Amazon looks like.  Notice that we are listed a the brand. Here is one of the (so far) six hijacked product listings. The product listings haven’t been altered yet, but I have no doubt this game is about replacing the product I sell with another one on the same listing, and tricking people into believing the ratings and reviews are for the new product. With the items now associated with another brand, we have to “ask for permission” to … Continue reading →

Reviewing returns on Amazon today, I just had to laugh. In short, customer returns product and blames us because our website description was not accurate; the product wasn’t compatible with Rena Ware and we should have said so.  Here is our listing on Amazon. Yes, we clearly need to fix that listing. 🙂 Here is another one. Hmm.  What does the listing say about no screws: Ah, it says there are no screws. The sad thing is that every time a customer doesn’t bother reading the listing and ends up returning an item, it gets us one step closer to … Continue reading →

You might think I am obsesses about Amazon given how much I write about them.  Consider though what a big part of everyone’s lives they have become in the last decade.  If you buy stuff, it is far more likely than not you buy at least some stuff from Amazon.  My household has done a lot of shopping on Amazon and I can trace my first purchase back to 1997. Buying on Amazon is not without its challenges, and we all know that the reviews are almost always gamed and can not be trusted.  (I religiously use Fakespot for new … Continue reading →

If you’ve read our blog at all, you know we’ve got a lot to say about the deficiencies of Amazon’s seller marketplace, from the sellers perspective. Oh Amazon Shenamazonigans Selling on Amazon; can this be fixed? Whoops, Amazon did it again Amazon.com and suspended listings Amazon feedback – don’t believe what you read That’s just a select few. Well they did it again, with our replacement gasket for vintage pressure cookers.  The listing has been suspended and can not be reactivated. By my calculations, over the last 12 months, 34 of 172 gaskets we’ve sold on Amazon.com have been returned; … Continue reading →

Have you noticed your Amazon orders taking longer than expected lately?  You order a 1-day or 2-day item and it comes several days late?  Amazon’s forced enrollment in Amazon Day might be the reason. Amazon Day allows you to bunch up your ordered items to be delivered on a single day, in fewer boxes.  It’s a nice option for people that want it, but, beware; if you enroll it it, there appears to be no going back.  In some cases, like with our Amazon account, it can get turned on by itself, and is enabled even when settings say it … Continue reading →

I think these two returns from Amazon customers do a great job showing how ridiculous they can be sometimes. This has been an ongoing problem with Amazon.  They periodically remove listings claiming high return rates, but are returning clearly defective items back to inventory to be resold again and again.  Sigh.

When a customer returns an item to Amazon, warehouse staff evaluates the item to see if it is OK for resale or not (fulfillable), or they are supposed to. Since we started getting our unfulfillable Amazon returns send back to us, we’ve seen some strange things come back that were supposedly our parts.  Either customers get mixed up and return the wrong item with the wrong label, or people are intentionally returning something different than what they got so they can keep the item.  Probably some of both. What is troubling though is when the Amazon staff returns things to … Continue reading →

The last year has been plagued by issues selling our replacement parts on Amazon.com.  First there was some abuse by a single customer who ordered about 100 parts just so she could go through them and pick the few she wanted with the smallest molding defects, and then returned almost all of them.  We stopped selling on Amazon.com for about a month while we worked to tighten down our sales policies to avoid that type of thing in the future, and while Amazon investigated, and possibly banned her from continuing to purchase there. Then Amazon started suspending some of our … Continue reading →