Summary:
Amazon’s returns process is a complete dumpster fire - they’ll slap a “new” sticker on your used crap and put it right back up for sale. Case in point: a small biz got screwed when Amazon resold their poopy swim diaper as brand new, tanking their company. Thankfully, Amazon took immediate action (JK). At least sellers now at least have the option to opt-out of returns being sold as new.
One comment from the article:
Legitimate companies in this space have very specific and strict policies about returns. Everywhere I’ve seen (if they accept returns at all) requires items be unwashed with tags still attached, sometimes only the unopened ones.
Going “Oh, Amazon should have inspected it” is a cop-out at best.
I think you misunderstand. This is a business that uses the “fulfilled by Amazon” program, which means they never even saw the return. Amazon received the return, processed it, deemed it worthy of resale as a new item, and shipped it back out without them being involved at all. But they’re the ones that ended up with the black eye from it.
The seller sends an item to the Amazon warehouse to be sold, Amazon fulfillment sends it to the buyer. Buyer returns it, and it goes back to the amazon warehouse and back into the store’s digital inventory. It gets sold again and amazon fulfillment sends it out.
You can run a store without using Amazon but it may be hard to compete. Amazon has identical products in warehouses all over the world so even if it’s not the specific item the seller sent to Amazon fulfillment, the customer can get same day delivery. This system also creates an intractible counterfeit problem.
Yup, never ever buy computer parts on Amazon. Just don’t even think about it.