- This topic has 11 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 5 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
My wife sent me this article, thought it was interesting athough also kind of aggravating. Great confirmation of Gell-Mann amnesia’s rightness as a concept.
The author is shocked – shocked! to discover that you can sell new items as new on amazon, even though they might not have the proper provenance, and your “new” stencil set may *gasp* have once been thrown in the garbage. We can’t have people selling things to people without a corporation stamping the transaction with its seal of approval.
Luckily there’s a simple solution – make unenforceable rules to prevent bad things from happening.
-
-
You can usually read WSJ articles for free if you have Chrome and use the incognito tab.
-
-
-
I’m worried about these constant negative articles bashing 3rd party sellers from WSJ/NYT/etc,. All roads lead to just new items sold directly from Amazon and “authorized” 3rd party resellers in the future. Amazon will have to pull such a move to show that they have everything under control. It’s going to get ugly in the future.
-
-
This article is really about the problem with selling items as “new” when they’re not. I won’t be popular saying this but I think that reselling platforms should only allow authorized resellers to sell something as “new”. Everyone else would be able to use the term “like new” if they’ve got an item that’s factory sealed or with tags or whatever but they’re not an authorized reseller. That’s a more accurate description.
I think if a buyer cares where the item came from that they’re entitled to be able to choose an authorized retailer without having to go through hundreds of “brand new” listings that might have come out of the trash. Whether something is “new” is important under the law. Trademark holders have much stronger law behind them if something is sold as “new”. It implies that a manufacturer’s warranty will apply and that the manufacturer controls the quality of their retailers who will back up the sale.
Amazon is wrestling with the issue by requiring purchase documentation though it’s unevenly enforced. Ebay used to care but they gave that up a long time ago. Maybe 20 years ago an item of mine was taken down on eBay because I had described it as “Like New” which at the time was a prohibited descriptive. Ebay was trying to enforce the distinction between an item new at retail and an item not new at retail. Obviously that has gone by the wayside.
The reason this matters to me is because of the negative perception of eBay as a flea market for those who feel that’s a pejorative. I personally don’t care if something comes out of the trash (and I’ve done my share of trash picking) but I know people who do and they will not buy anything on eBay, period (and they won’t buy from third party sellers on Amazon, either). I think it would benefit the platform if I could tell those folks that they could trust that something sold as “new” on eBay has a warranty and comes from an authorized retailer.
-
I believe it was two or three years ago, maybe longer, that Amazon stopped allowing us booksellers to sell books as new. If you wanted to list them as new, you had to send them an invoice direct from the publisher. I had a few hundred listings that were brand new and still sealed that I had to change to “like new” condition from new when this happened. Still getting sales from those listings as “like new” to this day, so it’s not that big of a deal.
I believe part of the problem was newbies buying books that to them looked like they were in new condition, but in reality were just very good at best, but for the most part just in good condition per Amazon’s condition system.
-
-
-
In my mind products are either used or new. Then you can get in to further descriptions based on minor details like new but damaged packaging, new unopened, etc. And used can be broken down as well describing all the wear and imperfections.
Think of the places that sell the scratch and dent canned food, they are selling NEW food, definitely not USED food, and those places are not the original manufacturer or original seller. -
When we were selling on Amazon for a year, we got caught in this conundrum. We would find “new items” that were never used but had damaged packing. On eBay, it’s easy to sell this stuff.
On Amazon, we were getting a lot of returns because customers were unhappy. NowI understand why: the items arent “new” like you get from a manufacturer. We were just Amazon amateurs.
If Amazon thinks they could kick off all the small sellers who do retail arbitrage and scavenging…and just sell items sold directly by big companies…more power to them. eBay will suddenly have a bigger influence as the flea market of the internet.
-
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.