Comment by HillaryBriss
7 years ago
> "When consumers have tried to sue online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay for selling dangerous goods in the past, courts have ruled they aren’t responsible for products offered by third-party vendors..."
If there's one thing that makes me back away, as a consumer, from Amazon, it's this sort of thing, this lack of real accountability. Sure, Amazon, says they do things to prevent counterfeits from being sold through, but there doesn't appear to be any powerful outside force that consumers can bring to bear on the company when they screw up.
And IMO it's even worse on Amazon than on eBay. At least on eBay you know that it's not sold by eBay themselves, because that's how the whole website works. And also, eBay prominently shows who the seller is on the listing pages.
Amazon's product pages make it so easy to overlook who the actual seller is, and I don't think that's coincidence.
Even the seller information on Amazon may not accurate due to inventory commingling.
I think the question is the alternatives. Say each of these vendors had their own top level online stores. What then?
Maybe you find the site through googling, and decide to buy the item from them. In a way, Amazon is like an extra layer of security to that model. First you can trust the payment channels, you can trust the delivery, and you can trust that you'll get some level of customer support. Beyond that, you know that they've attempted to validate the quality of their products, but in the same way your email provider does spam filtering, so it won't be 100% accurate. And finally they have the review system, which can help learn about that particular vendor or product.
It isn't perfect, but it seems better then that alternative.
Now as a consumer, you also have the alternative to not buy from vendors you don't already recognize and trust. But then you might go back to having the selection issue. What do you do when your trusted vendors don't have the item? Flr those cases, Amazon still seems better then the alternative.
Amazon is also an extra layer of insecurity. Let’s say I buy a widget sold through Amazon by a trusted manufacturer. Some third party is also selling counterfeits. Amazon considers the two products to be the same, and sends me a counterfeit from the third party.
Seems to me that the alternative is simple: mandate that you receive what you ordered, and make the storefront you order from liable for any problems.
I admit that it isn't clear if Amazon can reliably have you choose from what vendor you are buying. That said, not all manufacturer have a storefront. A lot of items can only be purchased through some middleman. And it is hard to validate that a particular vendor is the actual manufacturer and not just pretending to be.
So say you wanted that product, and googled for a vendor, and you found xmanifacturer.com. How would you know to trust that? Also, I forgot to mention price. What if you find the item at xvendor.com at a cheaper price, and wanted to buy there? To me, that all just seem even less reliable.
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