[HN Gopher] Amazon allegedly resells damaged books
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Amazon allegedly resells damaged books
Author : lepus
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-12-30 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| lepus wrote:
| > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a
| damaged, returned book is shipped to them instead, no new KDP
| printing orders kick in. This means I don't get paid at all,
| because they only pay me when a book is printed.
| gumby wrote:
| That statement jumped out at me too, but I'm not sure what to
| think about it. I also hate to say anything that might seem
| sympathetic to Amazon, a company I consider somewhat unethical.
|
| These two statements below should be uncontroversial:
|
| 1. If Amazon prints a defective book _and rejects it in QC_
| then Amazon should get no revenue nor should the author. It
| should be recycled. Another copy should be printed and shipped
| and the revenue distributed as normal.
|
| 2. If Amazon prints a defective book _and it is shipped
| returned due to defect_ then amazon should get no revenue nor
| should the author. It should be recycled. A new book should be
| printed and sent to the customer (assuming they didn 't ask for
| a refund) and no payment to author / no extra revenue
| recognition to Amazon.
|
| But then:
|
| 3. It's better that Amazon resells products that are returned
| in perfectly good condition rather than trashing them
| (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/amazon-returns-what-
| really-h... https://www.howtogeek.com/what-happens-to-amazon-
| returns/ and a ton of other easy to find links)
|
| 4. Amazon should not resell products returned that are
| defective.
|
| The problem is: how should it know? They can't take the word of
| the customer returning the product. Amazon does resell high
| value returned items like TVs and monitors after checking them.
| But the cost of looking for the defect in the book is quite
| high -- I'd be surprised if it gets more than a casual
| glance/flip through.
|
| I'm not sure what they should be doing in this case, but I do
| think the comment "This means I don't get paid at all, because
| they only pay me when a book is printed" is a side distraction.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| The contention, to me, is if returned or refurbished items
| are being labeled and sold as 'new', then Amazon may be
| running afoul of FTC truth-in-advertising laws.
| sparky_z wrote:
| If I go into a physical bookstore, buy a book, walk out
| with it, walk back in and return it still in good
| condition, should they not just put it back on the shelf?
| Would that be fraud? It's technically no longer "new" at
| that point.
|
| True this was returned as "damaged" but how damaged was it?
| We aren't told and there are no photos.
| bombcar wrote:
| Amazon "checks" them hardly at all. I ordered a warehouse
| item (and I recognize this risk) for a Chicco stroller holder
| and received a Chicco box with a broken Gracco stroller in
| it.
|
| That's not very checked. And there's not much I can do but
| return it (they don't even have a "you got scammed, idiots"
| option to tell them to check again).
| scrapcode wrote:
| My luck they would check it upon return and pin me for some
| kind of fraud.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Whether the author gets paid is a very important issue too.
|
| The math is simple. Books sent to customers minus books
| returned from customers equals royalties paid. And apparently
| that's not happening here.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Who returns books?
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Well, definitely people who get damaged books.
| OJFord wrote:
| If I receive a damaged item I will return it whether it's a
| book or not?
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I received 2 extremely bad books, same press, illegible. Maybe
| print-on-demand, not sure. Complained, got a refund. Was told
| not to bother returning the books.
| kristianp wrote:
| I have returned a book to Amazon. Poorly printed, blurry text,
| unreadable. Low quality cover print. What other choice is there
| but to return it? You can't let them get away with sending out
| rubbish.
| hef19898 wrote:
| _If_ the book was print-on-demand, nobody at Amazon ever saw
| or touched the book. And Amazon is not running recurring
| audits, not even for initial shipments, on those small
| external partners. What happens, is that as soon as too many
| concessions are triggered (refubds or replacements), the
| partner gets warned or shut down (depending on the clout the
| partners Amazon contacts have, well, politics do happen...).
| Or, if the partner is big and important enough, people like
| me at the time, whom are operationally responsible for that
| partner, get the assigent to straighten things out togwther
| with retail.
|
| With millions of customers every day so, the number of fuck
| ups is high in absolute numbers. It is, at least as far as I
| ever saw, minuscule in relation to the overall volume
| handled. Much lower, I might add, than anything I ahve ever
| seen in aerospace manufacturing for example.
| PKop wrote:
| If there's a problem with it, why wouldn't you return it?
| OnAironaut wrote:
| Amazon does this with everything damaged that is returned.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes, the title's not really capturing that the complaint is
| about royalties.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Except for clothing, which apparently is fired directly into
| the landfill. Both cases are not cool.
| OJFord wrote:
| The way this is said makes it seem like they're expecting to be
| paid twice for two orders, one returned.
|
| I assume what's being left implicit is that they're actually
| _not_ paid for the 'KDP printing order' if it ends up returned?
| So then when someone else orders and receives that one and
| doesn't return it, there's a printed copy that was never paid out
| for?
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > The way this is said makes it seem like they're expecting to
| be paid twice for two orders, one returned.
|
| Are you referring to the Dec 30 tweet text, the Dec 28 tweet
| text, or the paper note in the Dec 28 tweet's photo?
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes. The four tweets (not counting one from someone else) and
| photo of the note that I can see without clicking 'show more
| replies' and logging in.
| sparky_z wrote:
| Before getting pitchforks out, I'd like to see what this person
| considered "damaged". If - and I know this is a big if - but if
| it's something extremely minor, such that almost anyone would
| consider it to be in "like new" condition, then frankly that
| would be a case of Amazon doing the right thing, rather than
| pulping a perfectly good book and printing a new one. The fact
| that this person is apparently not providing any photos of said
| damage makes this hard to judge (and honestly raises my
| suspicions a bit).
|
| > Of note: if a customer orders a copy from Amazon, and a
| damaged, returned book is shipped to them instead, no new KDP
| printing orders kick in. This means I don't get paid at all,
| because they only pay me when a book is printed.
|
| Why wouldn't this be true? Why would a return that is then resold
| result in a double royalty payment? Is that something that
| happens for traditionally-published books that are returned and
| resold?
|
| It might have to do with the fact that these particular books
| were "author's copies" but I don't have enough information about
| how those work in a print-on-demand context to know whether this
| actually results in a loss of royalties in this case. Did they
| pay for them to be printed as a self publisher or were they
| provided for free as part of a contract with an external
| publisher? Does Amazon's internal system distinguish between
| "author" copies" and other orders, or do you just order some
| copies of your own book via the standard interface? Would the
| author's replacement copies go through that same system or would
| they be printed like normal and incur royalties? No idea.
| lepus wrote:
| It's implied that he gets paid 0 times for either the return or
| the resold book. There's more discussion on Bluesky
| https://bsky.app/profile/joabaldwin.com/post/3khrp64a5pw22
| sparky_z wrote:
| But is that any time a book is returned and resold, or is it
| just for a few "author's copies" that (I would guess) weren't
| eligible to receive a royalty in the first place?
| jxf wrote:
| He's saying that he got some author's copies from Amazon,
| some of which he returned for being damaged. Rather than
| scrap those, Amazon resold the damaged copies as new. This
| robbed the author of a sale.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| why would he get paid other than the initial buy of a book?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It sounds like he wasn't paid for the initial buy either.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| where does he say that? if someone buys his books in bulk
| to sell them, isn't that the initial buy?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not if it's a special author's copy with no royalties.
|
| It's not completely clear what's going on, maybe returns
| cause other issues, but he's claiming no royalties from
| either sale. If he's not just confused that's a big deal.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| looks like author responded
| https://twitter.com/joabaldwin/status/1741202134845247606
|
| "That's one page out of 600+, I returned 14 books: one was cut
| to the wrong size (actually cutting the text, like an inch
| smaller), others had totally bent covers and pages, others were
| printed beyond the bleed area (offset too far from the max
| allowed), or printed at an angle."
|
| to me it seems a bit dramatic, if a customer felt that was an
| issue they'd just get a refund from amazon
| ajross wrote:
| It's not even that big an if. Every vendor of every product
| receives returns. And every vendor of every product has some
| kind of process for deciding what to do with them. A few
| product areas have specific regulation, but in general if you
| get an unused return that is still in new condition you're
| going to resell it. It's no different for Amazon than your
| corner bookstore, who does exactly the same thing.
|
| Basically this author did a bulk order of his own book from
| Amazon[1], found something wrong, deliberately returned them
| and then _laid a deliberate trap_ just to generate exactly this
| buzz.
|
| [1] Pretty weird to begin with. Marketing copies of your own
| work are normally part of your contract with the publisher. Why
| is he getting them retail?
| sparky_z wrote:
| > Marketing copies of your own work are normally part of your
| contract with the publisher. Why is he getting them retail?
|
| Because he's self-publishing. I can't imagine printers would
| offer that perk to self publishers, because then you just
| become a free vanity press.
| morsch wrote:
| Going by the bsky thread posted elsewhere, he's using Kindle
| Direct Publishing, so he _is_ getting them from his
| publisher, Amazon. And the books he returned were author
| copies, sold to him at print cost.
|
| https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G7BBN68RYX5UMDZF
| ajross wrote:
| Then why did he lay this trap? Again, this wasn't an
| accidental discovery, he knew or suspected he could get
| this publicity by going to war against his "publisher".
| I'll be honest, everything about this screams "bad faith"
| to me. Amazon didn't do anything that any other company
| wouldn't have done. Arguably-slightly-flawed-but-still-fine
| returned junk goes on the shelves of every store in the
| world. This is the only guy who planted bombs in it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product to
| be sold with your name on it?
|
| He clearly didn't think it was "still fine" to be sold as
| "new".
| ajross wrote:
| > What's bad faith about not wanting a defective product
| to be sold with your name on it?
|
| Come on... If he was upset about the publishing quality
| he would have tweeted about that when he got the books,
| letting his fans know he was upset about it. _He planted
| metaphorical bombs_ in these books and returned them! You
| know as well as I do he was looking for outrage, not book
| quality.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They're both problems, the initial print and sending it
| back out. I don't see what's wrong with doing a test for
| the latter. "metaphorical bomb" sounds ridiculous to me.
| It's a metaphorical _tracking beacon_.
| buro9 wrote:
| I received a book that had been written all over, full of notes
| and scribbles... it was sold as "new".
|
| I complained, and they sent another.
|
| That too was scribbled all over, notes on every page.
|
| The book wasn't that expensive, I was a bit annoyed, but it's a
| rounding error to me, so I just ordered another thinking no way
| would this happen again, and because I did need it quicker than
| I cared to go through the service desk again.
|
| The third was also marked on every page.
|
| I complained, and they gave a refund for the 2nd one but not
| the 3rd... all of them were ruined though, none of them could
| be gifted (which was my intent), and ultimately I just sent it
| to landfill / recycling / incineration.
|
| I keep learning, if I actually care about what I receive I
| avoid using Amazon. They're fine for some things, but the list
| of things they're fine for seems to be ever decreasing.
|
| All of this was UK btw, YMMV elsewhere and with different
| categories of goods, etc.
|
| Also, when I got the refund, which took about 20 minutes of my
| time, the tone was weird "congratulations, we're able to offer
| you a refund today"... this wasn't a prize, it was crappy goods
| and you weren't even fully setting me good, I dread to think of
| the number of refunds for obviously damaged goods are not
| honoured such that this was worthy of congrats.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| And that's just the immediately visible problems. In some
| product categories it's difficult to find a single product
| where the description doesn't outright lie about features or
| quality, and the only way to tell is the price.
|
| Louis Rossmann recently tested some of the highest-rated
| fuses sold on Amazon. It took over 8A to blow a 2A fuse.
|
| By now I only order there if I can't find a more local
| alternative, the only remaining area where Amazon is still
| ahead (or rather, not behind) are delivery times.
| pbnjeh wrote:
| They also ship books in oversized boxes with no padding. If
| you're "lucky", they combined your book order with your order for
| something hard and heavy that can help beat the book up while the
| box tumbles.
|
| Not always, but often enough that if I order a book from them, I
| try to remind myself to to wait to order until nothing else I've
| ordered has yet to ship. Then wait after I've ordered the book,
| until the book has shipped, before I order anything else.
|
| I don't order that much from Amazon, but my orders often
| "cluster". For a recent example, the Christmas holidays. I got a
| beat up book cover because they upped the delivery date of the
| book by about a week (newish best seller), while in the meantime
| I'd ordered a heavy object that always ships the next day and
| that I didn't want to wait a week plus for. So, jacketed
| hardcover arrives loose in the oversized space next to big,
| heavy, sharp edged object, with no padding whatsoever inside the
| box.
|
| I guess if I'd returned that book, it simply would have gone --
| damaged -- to someone else.
| Pathogen-David wrote:
| Unfortunately even ordering the book on its own isn't a sure-
| fire way to get it well-packaged. The last several books I've
| bought were shipped in a thin paper bag (or a bubble mailer if
| I was lucky.)
|
| As someone who takes care of their stuff, it's pretty annoying
| to get my books pre-worn.
| pcurve wrote:
| Recently Amazon has been sending me items that were clearly
| returned and poorly repackaged or damaged in the last year. This
| isn't something I encountered or noticed prior to 2023.
|
| Their screening policy for returned items may have changed.
| kevingadd wrote:
| It may be more common now, but I've had this problem with them
| before in the past. In one notable case I bought a new game
| console from Amazon.com and received a box that was so
| obviously used (seals broken, shrinkwrap missing, etc) that I
| didn't even bother opening it, I just returned it. Despite the
| price of the item they raised no objections, so they're
| probably used to this happening and just assume that most
| customers won't notice.
| Astronaut3315 wrote:
| I purchased four used, like new smart plugs from Amazon
| Warehouse Deals a few days ago. Two were the wrong model in the
| right box and were very clearly used. One even had a scorch
| mark on it. I've had similar experiences with other Amazon
| purchases in the last few years.
| jarjar2_ wrote:
| I rarely buy new books anymore. I just use ThriftBooks. Haven't
| had a problem with any of the books they've sent me.
| takoid wrote:
| ThriftBooks is great most of the time but the quality can be
| quite hit-or-miss.
| pbnjeh wrote:
| I've had a few outright duds with them, but mostly their
| product has been as expected.
|
| EXCEPT, they ship mostly in plastic envelopes. And the items
| not infrequently get damaged during transit.
|
| I have a set of "very good" Magnum PI DVD's that I expect
| shipped that way. But the DVD's weren't secured in their box.
| The season 4 plastic case slid far enough out of the boxed
| set to get dinged and broken. The internal DVD holder's mount
| is destroyed and the DVD's are just floating around in there.
|
| I was stocking up on some older, "classic" CS titles, and I
| ordered several together (free shipping on orders over X
| dollars...). They arrived all crammed into one plastic
| envelope that looked like it had been dragged along for a
| while behind the delivery truck. (In reality, this is what
| the distribution center belts can do to an object, and a
| heavy package in a thin plastic envelope does not fare well.)
|
| With just a thin, flexible plastic layer for protection, a
| number of corners on these "very good" books were bent and
| beat up. I've had covers arrive abraded. One title had one
| end of the binding crushed.
|
| I still appreciate getting several titles I've wanted for way
| off cover price. But I wish they'd take a bit more care when
| shipping.
|
| And, you never know what you're going to get. With them, I've
| taken to trying to order such that DVD's and Blu rays won't
| ship together with books (you can imagine what happens). But,
| when an item may not effectively ship for up to a week, this
| takes some schedule juggling and follow up. Plus, that used
| item may sell out in the meantime. And it also means
| sometimes foregoing the free shipping you get by clustering
| items.
|
| I guess these are all first world problems, but it's
| frustrating. Plus, good condition items get trashed for the
| sake of lack of care / expediency in one step. Wasteful.
| nikolay wrote:
| Yes. I purchased The Capital by Karl Marx for my son; at least 5%
| of the pages were blank.
| nonrepeating wrote:
| Ironically, that ended up teaching him an important lesson
| about capitalism.
| optshun wrote:
| My favorite, or I suppose least favorite..., was when I received
| a "new" book that came with a bookmark of a single square of
| toilet paper.
|
| Unsure about you all but there's only one reason I might use a
| square of toilet paper as a bookmark.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This exact thing happened to me and for weeks it would
| spontaneously cross my mind. I thought one of my kids did it
| yet I couldn't guess why, until one day it hit me: they were on
| vacation with their aunt when I received the books and found
| the toilet paper, and the book was slightly damaged when I got
| it. Then it dawned on me that someone had read this book
| before, likely while on their toilet.
|
| For that and a few other reasons, I don't get books from Amazon
| anymore.
| joabaldwin wrote:
| Author from original post here! For clarification, this is not a
| new thing, but something I learned to do from this post:
| https://bsky.app/profile/kristadb1.bsky.social/post/3kb4wbix...
|
| In her case, she ordered author copies (that gives you no
| royalties, of course) and got the same copies sold again to
| herself as author copies.
|
| In my case, I also ordered author copies, but they were resold to
| a normal customer after I returned them.
|
| From an order of 50 author copies, I returned 14. Packaging was
| fine, so it wasn't a problem with how they bumped up during
| shipping. They were misprinted, or had folded covers (they tear
| easily after a fold, really bad), some were printed beyond the
| bleed area (that's what bleed is for, you can't be printing
| beyond it), and a few were printed slightly off angle. One
| particularly bad copy was even cut an inch smaller than it
| should've been, trimming every single page and cover, text and
| all.
|
| So yeah, that's why I returned them. But I do give you that some
| of those defects would go completely unseen by someone at a
| warehouse. You flip through the book, all pages seem to be there,
| but how is a person there supposed to know what the margins of
| the book look like? But most errors would not pass a regular
| printing press QC, particularly the damaged covers.
|
| Also, Amazon both prints and distributes these books, so QC is in
| their hands from the start.
| sparky_z wrote:
| Thanks for chiming in! If you don't mind, I'm trying to
| understand the exact accounting implications of this for you.
|
| In the context of self-publishing, what does it mean to order
| "author's copies"? Are they: A) offered for free, like they
| would be as part of a traditional publishing contract? B) Sold
| to you "at cost" of printing and shipping without any markup?
| C) Sold above cost but with a discount greater than or equal to
| size of the royalty? D) Sold above cost but with a discount
| smaller than the size of the royalty? E) Sold at full retail
| price but without any royalty?
|
| I very much doubt A because then Amazon would basically be
| operating what amounts to a free vanity press. But maybe they'd
| throw in a couple as a perk.
|
| I also doubt B because then they would be operating a revenue-
| neutral vanity press, but maybe it would still be worth it to
| them if they counted on gettong enough non-author sales to make
| enough margin to fund the operation.
|
| I also doubt D or E, because if so, then why would anybody
| order "author's copies" of their book?. Just get your friend to
| order them for you and reimburse them and you'll come out
| ahead.
|
| I would guess the answer is C. But in that case, it seems to me
| that you _are_ getting implicit royalty on those "author's
| copies", but those royalties are baked into the discounted
| price rather than being distributed to you later. (I suppose
| this might also have advantageous tax implications for you on
| those implicit royalties, compared to the alternative where you
| just order normal copies and get your royalties later.) Am I
| wrong about this?
| manicennui wrote:
| If you care about the condition of books you buy, don't buy from
| Amazon. They'll throw a $100+ hardcover in a lightly padded
| envelope and chuck it around. Or they'll put it in a box with
| some other random item and a few inflatable shipping bags, but
| not enough to keep things from shifting around freely.
| bmitc wrote:
| Their packing has gotten comically bad, particularly for
| sensitively items like books and such. I've greatly reduced my
| Amazon buying over the years due to issues with damaged items,
| and lately, Amazon is getting more aggressive about
| discouraging returns. But I'm not going to pay $30+ for a new
| hardcover that comes damaged and covered with dirt and grime.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Ironically books are the one thing I don't buy on Amazon. eBay
| has a much better experience, easily 9 times out of 10 I'm
| confident I'm buying the book in the picture, and usually there
| are several pictures of the exact condition.
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