Sellers Shocked at Amazon Disruption to Books, Media

by: lessthanthreerecords

No marketplace should EVER mark an item as "perfect" unless a seller specifically states it themselves.  I sell music and art, and NM (near mint) is the highest grade I ever give to any item.  If there is the smallest blemish, it's VG+.  If you take an item right out of production, chances are it's not "perfect" or "mint" even then.  Just goes to show, Amazon might have a far higher market cap than eBay, but not really any more common sense (and that's saying something!)

by: COVID-19

"Perfect". Uh, yeah. Genius move, Amazoo. What a great way to get a lot of INAD returns.

by: Snapped

Minimum requirement for competence in testing is preparation.  You don’t set up experiments on the fly.  

If Amazon (albeit stupidly) wants to try to ‘disruptively innovate’ something as marketplace entrenched, critical, and as objectively descriptive as item condition by rearranging the only - and very subjective - words available to describe it, they need to at least prepare their ‘test subjects’ - sellers AND buyers.  

If not, their ‘results’ will be corrupted by the very ‘misunderstandings’ this prematurely ejaculated attempt at homogenized standardization - by people clueless as to current practices - is attempting to overcome by arrogant hubris.

Of course, that’s only a big mistake if they care.  This kind of ‘testing’ smells of predetermined results intended for submission as a formality to support justifying an agenda.  Some of the rats may not survive it.

by: Marie

Amazon seems to be taking a few extra liberties when it come to seller's listing.  Some I would seriously question if they are even legal such as this notification to sellers that the price of their item is too high and deactivate the seller's item for sale.  

Amazon is likely too big and pours too much money into politicians to be held accountable for these moves they are making.

Clearly messing with a seller's pricing of an item is an attempt to Price Fix an item, which is illegal, yet they are allowed to do it.

IDK who we can get to listen to us on these issues that has the power to get Amazon to stop messing with seller's listing.

by: Snapped

“ IDK who we can get to listen to us on these issues…”

Your Congressional Reps.  Specifically, the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.  The ICC takes ‘reports’ for the record too.

The media is an option too.  Here is a good start.  Kind of large signal to noise ratio out there of course, so it takes a compelling story of significant impact.  Would seem like this qualifies though.

Takes more than one voice of course.  And persistence.  And patience - commerce law hasn’t caught up to the ‘E’ part of eCommerce yet.  Also, a Congress that hasn’t lost it’s mind to partisan madness and uncivilized ‘debate’ while single-mindedly being too busy trying to keep their job instead of doing their job.  

Until there are laws that compel these Venues to act ‘fairly’ though, with concerted enforcement when they don’t, (missing even now), they will continue to make their own.  

by: I_Fix_Dolls

You notice they cut two words to one word. "Very Good to "Good" so the "Good" had to go to "Fair" I have a suspicion that this has something to do with them possibly implementing some sort of AI bot. Etsy has those and it's a mess. They take down innocent listings and refund out of the seller's pocket, with a note that says decisions are final. Ways of having the business "run" without human intervention. No hourly wage for bots.

by: Queen of the Jungle

Great comments all around, especially from I fix Dolls.

We see that all the big Tech companies are firing many thousands of their "human" employees.  (it's hard to believe that some of them are human) and are replacing them with the very robots and AI creatures that they helped to create.

Karma's a b----h.

But it's true- the company execs love those robots for so many reasons.  They can't argue or be reasoned with by the peons.   The bots do exactly what they're programmed to do and that is to make money for the company, come hell or high water.

by: LDWCallsOut

Yes, "bots do exactly what they're programmed to do".  Which does not explain why the bots on Etsy do what they do.  For example, why do the bots target listings selling authentic vintage luxury brand name items, while leaving the counterfeit luxury brand name items falsely listed as vintage alone?  That's not a coding error.  It's intentional.  

In the case of Amazon's whacky new grading terms, it looks like a mistranslation between languages -- back and forth -- to me.  Like the classic mistranslation of the Bible from English to Russian and back to English again.  "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." became "The whiskey is strong, but the meat is rotten."  Which is a possible translation of the words taken out of context but does not represent the meaning of the original.

by: Snapped

Or, ‘Walker’s West is restocking, but the labor force is skint.’

by: Real Patriot?

I think "Snapped" has it about right.