Comment by ajross
17 hours ago
Yeah, this is structurally no different than hiring an assistant to shop for you.
The complaint isn't a moral one. It's fundamentally a trademark dispute. Manufacturers of goods want control about how their products are presented to consumers. Hermès doesn't want their stuff on the shelves at TJ-Max because it "dilutes their brand" or whatever.
Unfortunately trademark law doesn't speak to AI Agents, which is why there's a tech angle here. This is likely going to need to be solved with legislation.
> this is structurally no different than hiring an assistant to shop for you
In my opinion it's fundamentally not, because when you hire an assistant, you're hiring them with the intent to have them buy the product from the merchant.
Here, it would be like if you went to your local Safeway or other supermarket and there was a man standing at one of those sample carts who said "Hey, what you think of these papayas?" They're good, you look at them and decide you want two. "Great, I'll go in the back and get it." They disappear and come back with the papayas.
What's different:
1. You probably don't know where the papaya came from. Your intent in buying papayas didn't start with a clear understanding of the whole transaction.
2. You didn't interact with the merchant. If you want support, you have to go through the supermarket.
3. Whether you can file a credit card dispute is questionable. You likely won't win a dispute saying "I bought these and they're bad." You paid for a personal shopper, not a product. They substantially complied with their end of the transaction. You can't reliably dispute your instacart order saying "The papayas were disgusting." Instacart didn't sell you papayas, they sold you shopping services.
4. The merchant didn't sell to your email, they sold to some Amazon email. Good luck getting tracking details or getting customer support to talk to you directly. Good luck with returns.
5. Either Amazon is giving out your real credit card number (!) or using a virtual card. If it's the former, they've just invented credit card fraud as a service: you really going to trust Amazon's AI to hand out your card details safely? If it's the latter, you're probably going to get billed separately from the merchant charging you, which means Amazon is a middleman for refunds and payment issues.
In November I ordered a nozzle that I needed, which I knew had been discontinued. I ordered from a small seller, thinking they might still have some in stock. Turns out, they never even charged my card (probably because they don't have one and never will). I have been unable to get in touch with them about the order. I suspect this is very common, especially with drop shipping.
If Amazon charged me up front but they were not charged, that's outrageous. They don't even have a way for me to prove I didn't get my item (how could they?). Or will they mysteriously charge me at some point in the future? Who knows!
To add to this. Having a personal shopper is not new. Net-a-Porter for example do it. But you are paying for the personal shopper and the brands have a closer connection to their customers.
So I agree, it's very different.
> the brands have a closer connection to their customers
That's... not a thing though. No such thing as "brand rights" [1] beyond stuff like trademark, which clearly doesn't apply here. In particular there's no inherent recognition of a manufacturers ability to control what happens to downstream goods. Stuff is stuff, if you sell stuff the people you sell it to can sell it too.
[1] Nor do we really want there to be? I mean, I get that this seems bad because ZOMG AMZN, but in general do we actually want to be handing more market control to manufacturers vs. middlemen and consumers?
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