[CobrastanJorji]

For such a one-sided article, I came down rather on the other side. A dozen warnings that he needed to claim his stuff before it was destroyed. The evidence of authenticity was illegible. At least four customers complained that the merchandise was not authentic. If he had paid to have his stuff returned, he'd only be out the cost of shipping whatever hadn't been sold. And this is just what I learned from an article from HIS point of view.

[Lazare]

> At least four customers complained that the merchandise was not authentic.

According to the article, one customer said the item didn't fit, and wondered if it might be a knock-off, but they didn't outright claim it was. And the other three complained about packaging. Depending on how you score it that's ZERO customers complaining, or maybe one at most.

> The evidence of authenticity was illegible. [...] And this is just what I learned from an article from HIS point of view.

That was Amazon's claim; he claimed he sent in the correct, authentic, legible invoices, and they were rejected out of hand because Amazon refused to accept invoices dated in the year the merchandise was purchased, and instead wanted invoices dated in a different incorrect year.

> If he had paid to have his stuff returned

He claimed he tried at one point and the web portal rejected it.

Obviously, I don't know who's right here, and some of his claims are a bit confusing. And he does admit to ignoring some notices. Still, if you're evaluating his story as he presents it, taking his claims at face value, then: His evidence was not illegible, no (or at most one) customer alleged fake items, and he did make an effort to retrieve the merchandise.

[bagacrap]

"either illegible or didn't match the records of the brand owners" --- so Amazon has done some due diligence by reaching out to other parties to the sales, and found that these receipts are likely counterfeit. Besides which, I'm not sure how even valid receipts prove that the inventory is legit; how do you know the receipts refer to this particular merchandise and not some other legitimate purchase? It seems entirely plausible to me that the retailer's brick and mortar started to fail, so he cut costs by switching to counterfeit goods. It still failed, so he tried to hawk them on Amazon. Amazon caught him, but he tried to fool them with old receipts. Amazon demanded he retrieve his goods, but he let Amazon destroy them so that he could sue for some imaginary value and extract money out of them that way.

Why does a journalist feel the need to get involved here? This seems like a job for the lawyers.

[LorenPechtel]

Or Amazon's customer support can't read scans of pieces of paper that have been around for a while.

[Lazare]

> It seems entirely plausible to me

That is plausible. It's also plausible Amazon, who famously has poor customer service and often makes mistakes when their automated system glitch, has done so yet again.

You are, of course, free to assume that in a dispute one party is telling the unvarnished truth and the other is lying.

[megous]

Sounds like a good cautionary tale for others, so why not?

[user5994461]

I don't know where you read these things you talk about.

1) He said he couldn't fill a request to have his stuff sent back because the form was broken. It's very believable if you ever used the amazon seller tool.

2) He submitted the evidence of authenticity and it was rejected for being older than 365 days. It shouldn't be a problem, clothes have a longer shelf life than one year.

3) Customers complain about products being unauthentic all the time, easy way to get a refund and to vent. It's the most generic 0 star review that can come up possibly from a competitor trying to damage your business. You can't sell a thousand items without getting a few bad reviews.

[dpmitu]

My main takeaway from the article is how easy it would be to destroy your competition with a few false complaints.

[megous]

It's amazing how these megacorps manage to have their software broken in fairly scary workflows for their users.

I have recent experience with paypal where they demand I confirm some information (they provide almost 0 information what they want actually in the UI, and the link I'm supposed to follow just redirects to my account overview, where there's nothing to do, no warnings, no prompts, just the regular summary of balances.) They also send a scary email that they'll block my account if I don't proceed by certain date, and the actual date is just an empty html template placeholder.

I ask them via support for what they want. And they send automated response. I almost ignored it, like usual, because these notices usually just say thank you we accepted your requests and we'll respond soon. I came back to it though, and at the end there's a note that they will not respond to me unless I ask again.

At this point, I'm like wtf? It's completely ridiculous, seeing so much stupid details and omissions in user experience in a row.

At some point I think large orgs just stop caring about customers, and just optimize some aggregate metrics, and this is the result.

[NoOneNew]

I'm in the same boat. I'm one of the first to pitchfork against Amazon... but this feels like we're not getting enough info to have a fair opinion. But even the article makes it seem like the guy had lots of opportunities to fix this issue, but screwed it up. Now, did he bumble it because it's a bureaucratic nightmare maze? Is he lazy and doesn't do stuff on time or correctly? Was it all actually knock-offs and he's full of shit?

I can tell you this, no one from HN can solve this mystery from their chairs. So, as much as I don't like any FAANG, this isn't clear cut against Amazon.

[xiphias2]

Also having inventory of brand new original fashion items that's older than 365 days sounds strange, as fashion changes every year, and the value of goods go down over time.