As with most conspiracies the facts don’t add up super well in this case for Amazon - their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven to stamp it out.

This was the exact argument put forth by defenders of Goldman Sachs when it was alleged they were screwing over their own customers in the financial crisis.

For example, look at The Verge Tech Survey 2020. 91% of those surveyed had a favorable opinion of the company, and 70% felt they had a positive impact on society. Most of the other polls have similar results.

I don’t trust Amazon to ship genuine to specification SD cards or original Apple power cables due to the commingling stock issue.

The original question here was not “does amazon provide a bad service to consumers”, but rather “does amazon abuse their data to compete unfairly”. Only companies would know that, end consumers won’t know why the amazon basics product exits, only if it arrives on time.

Realpolitik of sorts often matters far more than any trust at the company level - does going on your own or letting someone else take a cut pay off better? Would they get massively punished if they failed to carry through and burned your company?

Love the completely unfounded assertion. Based on what? "Top voted comments on HN say they've lost trust in Amazon, so everyone in the world must be the same"?

Let's look at actual data shall we? Turns out surveys indicate that "Amazon is the second most trusted institution in the United States, behind the military" (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/25/18022956/amazon-tru...). Many other surveys indicate something similar.

If you have data that indicates otherwise, please do share.

Also, I don't think as a percentage of purchases that they are as common as people think - the stories get lots of attention, but the regular shopping is ignored.

If a person keeps stealing from other people, do we just slap them with a fine each time they get caught and let them continue operating in society? No! They go to jail! We make sure they can't continue the crime! Because otherwise, the crime can become highly profitable; allowing any entity to profit from crime is simply incompatible with being a participant in a civilized society - If you let one entity get away with it repeatedly, soon enough, it becomes a viable business model and everyone will be doing it and society will implode.

If he and his shareholders are unwilling or unable to personally take responsibility for every single transgression committed by Amazon, then this company is unfit to exist within our society.

I think that corporate personhood is the biggest problem of our time and is a misnomer because not only do corporations have all the rights that people have, they actually have more rights! I don't have the right to influence politicians in Washington! I don't have the right to consistently get away with crimes with only a fine! I don't have the right to evade taxes by claiming that I live in a different country than where I actually live!

But what's the rational the other way around? When an employee resigns, they obviously know that they are resigning before actually handling in their resignation. If they wanted to leave with something, surely they would have already stolen it? Or it's just an expectation of lazyness, in case nothing has been stolen yet?

If the employee should later indeed be found to have taken IP or other assets during their last weeks at work, it would reflect poorly on whomever decided they should work during the resignation period.

Hence, you let them go immediately, so you can shrug and say 'well, we did what we could' in case of problems down the road.

Firing in this way when someone’s done nothing wrong would be constructive dismissal and prohibited by law.

The fact that Amazon treats their resigning employees in this way doesn’t increase my trust in them.

It actually just makes them look viscous and petty.

Who would want to be placed in the position of saying yes I was fired because I was suspected of being a security risk?

And if you're already on a back channel, then you don't care about playing fair.

Feels a bit silly to me.

If you go to a competitor and aren't open about it? You might find yourself terminated with no additional pay.

And it makes sense. At Amazon, most people have varying levels of customer data and/or confidential company data. Amazon has to protect itself from data exfiltration/data theft.

This might catch extraordinarily stupid people from conducting industrial espionage, but really I see it as the company encouraging people to not give any notice at all (which, remember, is just a courtesy) when they quit. It’s shortsighted on the company’s part.

That said, I would really like it if it could be a choice given to the buyer as well. Or at least make it clear when you're buying and getting something comingled.

It's amazing to me that a fraud perpetrated upon Wells Fargo by its own employees is spun as an act of malice by WF itself.

That's a rather different category of response to "Well I just can't guarantee this doesn't happen."

This is significantly different than a good faith organization having some members engage in criminal behavior.