Comment by didibus
7 years ago
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.
It's actually trivial. If someone pretends to be from foo corp you call foo corps official listed number and inquire. If someone is an individual you ask for an identity document like a drivers license and keep that on file and associate that with all sales. You track who sends you widgets. This is trivial to do with increasingly cheap rfid tags.
For reference Walmart individually tags 10pks of cheap socks so it can via a wireless reader count how many Large foobrand packs of socks it has because it can differentiate between pack 5435454545 5435454546.
You can even give the user the ability to choose between getting shipments slightly faster by allowing you to fulfill their order via the closest item and send the info about fulfilling vendor along with the order OR get it slightly slower via the chosen vendor.
Amazon is technically excellent in a lot of ways its hard to imagine this would actually be hard for them they just don't want to.
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If they’re at the top of the Google search results for “manufacturer” then you’re probably good. Cross check with Wikipedia if you want to be sure.
If you find some random vendor with a cheaper price then you need to make a decision about how much you trust them and how much it’s worth to you.
All of this is pretty standard and expected. The problem with Amazon is that people expect them to be trustworthy, and apparently when it comes to receiving what you order, they often aren’t. People’s defenses against scammers don’t work here because Amazon doesn’t look like one. And yet they will tell you “sold by X” and sell you a product from Y instead without ever telling you.
Stores should be legally liable for what they sell. If they want their suppliers to bear the burden then they can add indemnification to their contracts.
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