According to the article, one customer said the item didn't fit, and wondered if it might be a knock-off, but they didn't outright claim it was. And the other three complained about packaging. Depending on how you score it that's ZERO customers complaining, or maybe one at most.
> The evidence of authenticity was illegible. [...] And this is just what I learned from an article from HIS point of view.
That was Amazon's claim; he claimed he sent in the correct, authentic, legible invoices, and they were rejected out of hand because Amazon refused to accept invoices dated in the year the merchandise was purchased, and instead wanted invoices dated in a different incorrect year.
> If he had paid to have his stuff returned
He claimed he tried at one point and the web portal rejected it.
Obviously, I don't know who's right here, and some of his claims are a bit confusing. And he does admit to ignoring some notices. Still, if you're evaluating his story as he presents it, taking his claims at face value, then: His evidence was not illegible, no (or at most one) customer alleged fake items, and he did make an effort to retrieve the merchandise.
Why does a journalist feel the need to get involved here? This seems like a job for the lawyers.
That is plausible. It's also plausible Amazon, who famously has poor customer service and often makes mistakes when their automated system glitch, has done so yet again.
You are, of course, free to assume that in a dispute one party is telling the unvarnished truth and the other is lying.
1) He said he couldn't fill a request to have his stuff sent back because the form was broken. It's very believable if you ever used the amazon seller tool.
2) He submitted the evidence of authenticity and it was rejected for being older than 365 days. It shouldn't be a problem, clothes have a longer shelf life than one year.
3) Customers complain about products being unauthentic all the time, easy way to get a refund and to vent. It's the most generic 0 star review that can come up possibly from a competitor trying to damage your business. You can't sell a thousand items without getting a few bad reviews.
I have recent experience with paypal where they demand I confirm some information (they provide almost 0 information what they want actually in the UI, and the link I'm supposed to follow just redirects to my account overview, where there's nothing to do, no warnings, no prompts, just the regular summary of balances.) They also send a scary email that they'll block my account if I don't proceed by certain date, and the actual date is just an empty html template placeholder.
I ask them via support for what they want. And they send automated response. I almost ignored it, like usual, because these notices usually just say thank you we accepted your requests and we'll respond soon. I came back to it though, and at the end there's a note that they will not respond to me unless I ask again.
At this point, I'm like wtf? It's completely ridiculous, seeing so much stupid details and omissions in user experience in a row.
At some point I think large orgs just stop caring about customers, and just optimize some aggregate metrics, and this is the result.
I can tell you this, no one from HN can solve this mystery from their chairs. So, as much as I don't like any FAANG, this isn't clear cut against Amazon.
They will also reject invoices based on them not being in the exact format they are expecting. So a completely legitimate invoice that is missing an address/ phone number/ has a different entity could be rejected.
The whole thing is basically dangling a carrot, there is a massive customer base on offer, but in the end unless you fit a very specific profile as an authorised seller with solid local deals you are probably wasting your time.
They got insta-banned and delisted because Amazon does automatic scans of messages, and the Amazon AI determined that directing users away from Amazon was a severe ToS breach.
1 message out of the thousands that they send mentioned eBay, and suddenly that's automatic delisting with no way to appeal.
>When he tried to submit an inventory removal order through Amazon's web portal, it wouldn't let him.
Did he try to submit the removal order, like one day before, or way earlier? Did he try it only once? Did he communicate this to amazon? He was obviously in contact with them for a longer period, did he mention that he can't get the removal order submitted?
My own experience is that Amazon doesn't even bother verifying that complaints were submitted by the brand before acting on them. There's multiple documented cases of people impersonating brands to get sellers kicked off Amazon.
Amazon makes money off counterfeit products that sell on its platform.
The most profitable outcome for Amazon is for there to be a large assortment of products that are either (A) totally legitimate, (B) counterfeit/flawed but equal in quality to the genuine product, or (C) counterfeit/flawed but so inexpensive that the customer doesn't complain too much.
Clothing is the kind of product that is easy to counterfeit but draws complaints from users who discriminate between the quality/durability/appearance of the real product and the false one. A phone case, drill bit, pair of tweezers, or ball bearing is the kind of product that is easy to counterfeit but may not be noticeable.
Similarly, Benson Leung taught us that a USB-C cable is the kind of product where you can sell low-quality junk lookalikes and the average consumer will have no idea what makes it worse than a more expensive cable.
He does admit to ignoring up to 11 notices that his inventory would be destroyed if left unclaimed. He mentions conflicting dates for the notices but we’ve no way of knowing to make of that.
I don’t know what to say other that I read the piece with some interest and for all know it’s a work of fiction, but heh I clicked.