
Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court - hirundo
https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/amazon-liable-for-defective-third-party-products-rules-ca-appelate-court/
======
jarym
Common sense. Amazon want to ‘own’ the customer relationship and go to great
lengths to that end then it follows they will have to ‘own’ any liability too.

Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product and they were to
try fob you off saying you need to go to their
supplier/wholesaler/manufacturer. It mostly doesn’t work that way thanks to
most consumer protection laws in place.

~~~
stickfigure
> Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product

I understand where you are coming from, but there are lots of consignment
stores and flea markets, at least in the middle parts of the US. The person
you pay at the front counter simply records the transaction for the merchant.
Amazon is a sort of cross between traditional retail and a consignment store,
so it's not obvious (or "common sense") where product liability should lie.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is laid out in the judgement[1]. In California, if you are an integral
part between the manufacturer and the consumer, especially if you are the one
that "owns the relationship" you are on the hook for strict liability.

[1] Starting from Page 17 -- [https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-
appeal/2020-d07...](https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-
appeal/2020-d075738.pdf?ts=1597343456)

~~~
imglorp
Then maybe this return policy will only apply to buyers in CA?

~~~
myself248
Now I'm wondering if I can establish personal nexus in CA sufficient to
qualify for such protections, while continuing to reside in place without all
the Californians...

~~~
dangus
There’s something off about this comment, and simultaneously I’m aware that my
response is reading _way too far into it_.

The last phrase you use continues to perpetuate the odd perception that
Californians are weird extreme hippie aliens that Middle America should avoid
at all costs.

And then, your comment simultaneously envies California’s strong worker and
consumer protections.

It’s almost as if Californians aren’t weirdo hippies and they’re just normal
people who have demanded and received robust environmental, safety, labor, and
privacy protection.

I’d _love_ to live in California right next to those _weird_ Californians and
be able to make CCPA requests. I’d also love for non-competes to be illegal.

It’s almost as if other states’ citizens have been failed by their governments
in comparison, and/or their citizens are too unaware of these issues to have
lobbied for data protection laws.

It has astonished me that a certain political party has just gotten away with
labeling an entire state in our country as a bad place, especially one as big
and diverse as California.

Maybe that certain political party would have a chance to win California if
Joe from Texas didn’t think California was a Mad Max liberal wasteland and
considered taking a new job there.

~~~
myself248
Oh no, I love the weird extreme hippie aliens. And the strong worker and
consumer protections. It's the Hollywood and the Disney and the Dot-com bros
I'm avoiding at exactly those other costs.

That plus the completely unsustainable water situation that I refuse to be a
part of worsening.

~~~
amluto
As I understand it, the water situation is all kinds of screwed up, but much
of the _residential_ water is sustainable. SF, for example, uses mostly
surface water and has access to a _lot_ of surface water. One might argue
whether the dam that supplies the water is a good thing or a bad thing and
whether the allocation of SF’s water is reasonable, but it appears to be
sustainable. In addition, residential water usage just isn’t that much.

Agricultural water in the drier parts of California is an entirely different
story.

------
xoxoy
Shopping on Amazon has become unbearable for like 95% of categories these
days. The experience is like rummaging through some shady tourist market with
a dozen stall owners trying to scam you. The pricing is all whack with lots of
counterfeits that have gamed the ranking and review systems. It’s just not
worth trying to filter and find things that are actually competitively priced
and sold directly by Amazon.

Have no idea how they are so dominant still when they seem to not care at all
about these things.

~~~
tedfernau
I could hardly disagree more. It takes some effort to find the good stuff, but
Amazon is the superior way to shop online for most things.

~~~
Exuma
As someone with 2200 purchase on amazon over the last several years, you're
definitely wrong. I have to use every trick up my sleeve to not get pure hot
alibaba trash. It USED to be that amazon best seller items were good at least,
and now those are an absolute trash garbage fest as well too. Go try to buy a
strainer, charger, literally any appliance, anything, and tell me you get good
results.

~~~
fxtentacle
I recently bought Amazon's best seller hot oil frier. When we turned it on,
the cheap thin metal of it bent from the heat so that the hot oil dripped on
the floor. Turns out it was straight from a Chinese noname brand but marked as
"sold by Amazon" on the website. When I tried to refund it, they told me that
Amazon had just purchased the items for resale and that I should contact the
original manufacturer for warranty. And they gave me a Guangdong address and a
Gmail email.

By now every product listing on Amazon should be treated like SEO spam.

Plus there's now all these sellers trying to buy a 5 star review by promising
a gift card. I recently saw a baby carriage with lots of 5 star reviews from
teenagers who tried it out with plush toys because they didn't have kids yet.

~~~
heavyset_go
Report this to your state's Attorney General, they usually have a consumer
protection division.

~~~
fxtentacle
They did give in and give me a refund eventually. It's just that I was
surprised by their laissez-faire attitude that their topseller was some random
no-name factory in China.

~~~
heavyset_go
Attorney General would still be interested in the fact that you were sold a
deep fryer with such a potentially dangerous flaw by Amazon, and the run
around they initially gave you.

------
smsm42
Amazon has been trying to play a parallel game for a while - from one side,
they are a brand name store, with their own brands (Amazon Basics), they own
loyalty club (Prime), and so on - they even own physical stores and a grocery
chain now. On the other hand, they pretend to be a neutral marketplace that
has no responsibility for any goods that are sold there and just renting out
the space to independent sellers. It is a smart game, as they can resell all
the reputational benefits of the established store brand to the tiny sellers
who would never enjoy the same reputation, without actually spending the time
to vet the suppliers and take responsibility for the goods being sold, as the
brand name store would have to. However, looks like the courts are not buying
this game. Which makes sense because Amazon not only does not separate the
marketplace from the brand name store - they actually make as much effort as
possible to mix both up, making distinguishing between goods sold by Amazon
and goods for which Amazon bears zero responsibility quite hard to
distinguish.

~~~
wiredone
I’ve not experienced the neural marketplace element myself. They still have
the A-to-Z guarantee and still have the best return and customer support
policies in the game. I spend 10s off thousands of dollars a year and return
anything I don’t like. Never had an issue with feeling like they had my back.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
That'll enthusiasm will last right up until the few picoseconds before you
realised you've been royally rolled.

What makes you think you're immune to the Arbitrary Hand of Amazon?

------
crazygringo
Honestly, I'm confused as to why Amazon -- or _any_ retailer -- is responsible
for injury from defects in the products they sell in the first place.

Why is it the retailer's responsibility, rather than the manufacturer's
responsibility?

No store has the expertise to independently conduct safety testing of every
item they sell. That would be ludicrous, whether you're a mom & pop store with
1,000's of items or Amazon itself with 1,000,000's of items. Plus it would be
incredibly redundant.

What is the justification for this law at all?

(And if you say it's for international products, then the onus should be on
the importer who takes responsibility on behalf of the manufacturer.)

EDIT: virtually every comment that has replied so far is talking about
defects, warranty, etc. But that's not with this article is about -- it's
about liability for INJURY which is a very different thing. It makes total
sense that if a product doesn't work, you return it to the store and not the
manufacturer. But if a product is _dangerous_ I still fail to see how it makes
any sense to make retailers liable rather than manufacturers. If you get a
batch of improperly made baby formula that makes your baby sick... shouldn't
the onus be 100% on the manufacturer? In what universe is a retailer expected
to be liable for that? How would they ever know? If Nestle makes a bad
batch... what good is it to go around suing Amazon, FreshDirect and 1,000
other local supermarkets? Shouldn't there just be a class-action suit against
Nestle?

~~~
paxys
If a store put a random baby formula from a sketchy Chinese factory on its
shelves and it made babies sick, they're going to get demolished by the FDA.
"Hey I'm just a retailer" is not at all a defense.

As a customer I can't be expected to know about the intricacies of the supply
chain for every product I use, so I establish a relationship with one entity -
the retailer.

~~~
crazygringo
> _so I establish a relationship with one entity - the retailer._

My thinking is precisely opposite.

Because I can't be expected to know about the intracacies of the supply chain,
I consider the quality to be determined by one entity - the manufacturer.

I trust Crest toothpaste over some no-name generic toothpaste that might be
made by anyone precisely because it's Crest. I can buy it from the immigrant
family which owns the corner bodega, and I don't have the slightest idea where
_they_ buy it from... but it's still Crest.

In my mind, my primary relationship is with the brand. The retailer I couldn't
care less about.

Also, I don't want my health to be determined by where the _store_ sources its
stuff from. I want that to be determined at at a governmental level, by the
FDA. Sketchy formula shouldn't be _allowed in the country_ in the first place.
It's the importer who should be held criminally liable. Again, what does a
corner bodega owner know about determining the safety of consumer products?
It's the government's job to set safety standards, not store owners making
their own uninformed decisions.

~~~
donmcronald
IMO the supply chain and knowing your supplier plays an extremely important
role in making sure products are legitimate and conform to all regulations. A
big problem with Amazon is that you can end up with counterfeit products or
products that have fake safety certifications stamped on them and you'll never
nail down the culprits that orchestrated it. It'll be a transient company in
China that's gone by the time anyone knows what happened.

So yeah, you can trust the brand, but if a retailer has no incentive to keep
counterfeit products off the shelf there's no guarantee your toothpaste is
actually being supplied by Crest. You aren't going to have much luck suing a
counterfeiter in a foreign country, especially since they'll be set up to
disappear.

It's important for everyone in the supply chain to be liable and making the
retailer liable to the consumer is the easiest way to do that. If a supplier
sells a retailer a fake unsafe product and the retailer gets sued because of
it, the retailer can sue the supplier. If the supplier is buying from a
respectable manufacturer they can sue the manufacturer (or settle with them).

As soon as you make the consumer go directly to the supplier or manufacturer,
there's a huge incentive to set up a supply chain like Amazon has where a ton
of low quality garbage gets foisted onto consumers and there's no recourse
because all of the liable parties are in foreign countries.

~~~
crazygringo
Thanks for explaining, but I still don't see the logic here.

First of all, how is a retailer supposed to vet their suppliers? They don't
have the expertise or time to audit the supplier's own supply chains.

Second, if the (non-counterfeit) manufacturer puts out a shoddy batch, it
doesn't matter which suppliers it goes through. Why should the store be
responsible for the shoddy product when it could have come through _any_
supply chain?

And third, I don't think lawsuits work the way you think they do. If you get
sued, you can't just sue your supplier to pass it on and be done with it. You
still lose $$$$ hiring lawyers.

You're seizing on the idea of counterfeit products, but I'm not talking about
counterfeits. I've never seen or heard of counterfeit toothpaste in my life.
And I'm not talking about foreign producers either -- if you _import_ it, then
you're liable.

I'm talking about a store purchasing merchandise from a domestic supplier that
is genuine. If that merchandise produces injuries, why on earth would the
store be liable, instead of the manufacturer? It makes _zero_ sense.

~~~
donmcronald
I guess the way I see it is that most manufacturers are foreign rather than
domestic, so that leaves you with making the importer liable for bad products.
I think it’s a lot easier to implement that part of the supply chain with a
bunch of zero asset, disposable companies, so it doesn’t really leave anyone
that’s going to actually assume liability.

The retailer relies on the value of their brand and often have significant
domestic assets. So by making the retailer liable you’re pinning down someone
who can’t just fold their company and walk away.

And I don’t agree the retailer isn’t capable of vetting their supply chain.
I’ll agree it’s not easy, but they’re in the best position to do it because
they have a lot of leverage over their direct suppliers.

------
siruncledrew
Long-term, it would be good business sense for Amazon to address the
counterfeit issue to remove the bad actors from their platform to stay in good
standing with consumers so people continue to use their platform and purchase
items without worry about getting scammed.

Short-term, at least one idea to fix this is to implement more stringent
checks/QA with their FBA policies. Do more stringent verification of imported
items going into Amazon FBA warehouses. Or at least add a mark to branded
items received from other third-party sources. Simply adding "Shipped by: X,
Sold by: X" text on the product page doesn't really help.

There's probably other/better ideas out there. This has been a recurring
problem that has kinda gotten swept under the rug so far, but at some point is
going to need to be reckoned with.

If Amazon wants to be the best customer experience, then it has to position
itself in such a way that it does not devolve into one big flea market +
Aliexpress + dropshipping junk bin.

~~~
bitcoinbutter
It's crazy to me that if I want to buy Ray Ban sunglasses off Amazon, I am
routed by default to random third party sellers. I have purchased these once
before and I'm almost positive that I received a fake product.

How can I know for sure though? How does Amazon know for sure? Since that
experience I have looked at Amazon in a different light, and I've realized how
difficult it is to source name brand products with confidence.

This is as good a time for blockchain as any. Register genuine products on a
blockchain and have them scanned once they hit the Amazon warehouse to ensure
they are authentic.

~~~
foepys
How does blockchain help here? The database would be extremely large - too
large to hold for any ordinary computer system.

The basic problem is solveable without blockchain by simply registering
products by their serial number on the brand's website, which a lot of brands
actually already do for higher priced products.

~~~
ss64
Then the scammers would just copy the serial numbers, you would have to link
every number with a customer name

~~~
mrob
You don't need to link it to any customer details. The way it usually works is
the website records every serial number checked, and warns you if somebody has
already checked that serial number. For additional assurance the serial number
can also be concealed with tamper-evident packaging, e.g. scratch-off paint.

~~~
colejohnson66
D’Addario has a “serial number” check webpage for their guitar strings. If you
enter an invalid (or previously used) serial number, _supposedly_ (I’ve never
had a counterfeit set) they’ll send you a genuine set for free.

Sure, some people will input fake serial numbers to get a free product, but
they probably weighed the cost of counterfeit strings affecting brand image
(if I don’t know mine are counterfeit, I’ll assume it’s D’Addario’s fault if
they’re bad) with the cost of sending a free set of $5 strings.

------
ComputerGuru
I’ve finally figured out how to buy non-counterfeit items on Amazon: try
selling it yourself and see if Amazon says 3rd party listings are allowed. In
the very few cases where you’re not allowed to proceed to create a listing, it
is safe to purchase.

~~~
icebergwarrior
I see this type of comment all the time, but I've never purchased anything but
legitimate items off of Amazon. What are you buying that you consistently run
into fakes / knockoffs?

~~~
Karunamon
Memory cards / thumbdrives are the canonical example here, I think. The fakes
are _plentiful_ , and comingling ensures that you are playing roulette every
single time you purchase one, and the fakes are good enough that they'll stand
up to visual scrutiny unless you know exactly what you're looking for, and
sometimes not even then.

~~~
TakerofVita
I remember for a brief period where there were 256 GB micro SD card listings
on Amazon...before there were any real ones released by anyone.

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, here is the actual decision : [https://cases.justia.com/california/court-
of-appeal/2020-d07...](https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-
appeal/2020-d075738.pdf?ts=1597343456)

It definitely looks like Amazon is going to have to accept strict liability in
California. That will make it interesting to see what they do. Do they leave
California? (their biggest US market) or do they clean up their FBA act? I'm
hoping for the latter, as the justices argue in the decision that is exactly
the intent of California's strict liability.

~~~
manigandham
Why would they leave CA? They would just remove 3rd-party sellers and
implement higher standards if/when they allow them again. FBA sellers don't
get to sell anything they want, you have to get ungated first per category.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Cool, who's making the comparison website that shows which products are the
same price in California, vs all the others that Amazon knows are mixed in
with counterfeits and low-grade and defective items.

------
atum47
bought some wireless earphones from them a while back, the store sold me a
knock off. open up a dispute and the owner told me their delivery guy was
swaping fake ones for the real ones. took forever to send me new ones. after
all that I went to post a review saying that this happened and guess what? my
review never saw the light of day

~~~
Hokusai
> the owner told me their delivery guy was swaping fake ones for the real ones

That seems a scam scheme. They send fakes and for the people that complains
they send the real deal.

> my review never saw the light of day

Amazon does not want to give a good service, Amazon wants to sell products.
Your review could have negatively impacted Amazon sells.

I doubt that, currently, there is any law that forces Amazon or any other
website to publish all reviews. They can pick and choose to float or sink any
store.

~~~
ineedasername
Actually in my experience Amazon has always provided prompt and satisfactory
customer service. I'm not talking about the sort of issue in this article of
course, but just the normal things: Returns, billing problems, charging me for
home pickup on two different returns I'm making at the same time instead of
just once... I've never had one of these common place customer service issues
that wasn't solved quickly & to my satisfaction. Sometimes they'll even go
beyond what I was expecting and add a credit.

Of course none of that means they don't rig the review system, although the
presence of products with near universally bad reviews would indicate that, if
they do rig reviews, it's not a general practice.

No, in my experience, while Amazon is bad in plenty of other ways, good
service isn't one of them.

~~~
stickfigure
Hmmm. I recently ordered an item (pack of quicklinks) and the package itself
arrived with a hole in it and no product (looks like the bubble-envelope seam
failed). After clicking around on Amazon's website, the closest way to solve
this was "return because of missing items" and they seem to still want me to
ship back the original item (which is obviously impossible). The replacement
was shipped quickly, but I have no idea what will happen when they don't
receive a return.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to communicate this to a human. I'm not
impressed with their service.

~~~
AnssiH
AFAIK the correct way to solve empty-package-received is contacting customer
service: Help => Need more help? => Contact Us => Contact Us.

~~~
stickfigure
Thanks... the menu structure is somewhat different on the website, but I
finally found it. I spent 20 mins looking for a way to contact someone before
giving up, assuming it didn't exist.

------
cletus
The next logical step here is that Amazon is also liable for the counterfeit
products they sell and seemingly do absolutely nothing to police.

Consumers currently get blamed for this (eg [1]), sometimes through absolutely
no fault of their own. Imagine walking into into Best Buy or Macys, buying
something, and then getting in trouble for buying counterfeit goods.

Just watch how quickly that problem gets solved once Amazon is liable.

These companies really want the best of both worlds. Amazon wants to own the
customer relationship but have none of the responsibilities ("we're a third
party marketplace"). Uber wants to control what drivers do (as in, not drive
for Lyft at the same time) but not have them as employees. Airbnb wants to run
(illegal) hotels by arguing they aren't running hotels and it's really the
hosts who are responsible.

It's all kind of ridiculous.

[1]: [https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-
counterfeits...](https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits-
global-entry-customs)

------
annoyingnoob
The real issue is that Amazon has turned into Alibaba/Aliexpress and is filled
with low quality products. Amazon will sell anything as long as its cheap.

I think this will only hurt Amazon where there is some injury beyond a
defective product. Amazon already uses its contracts and terms of service to
push the cost of returns and such to the third party supplier. Amazon will do
its best to deflect most or all of the pain through better contracts.

------
Animats
OK, a California decision on this. I thought the dog-collar case in
Pennsylvania was going to be the one that turned this around. Amazon is re-
appealing that one.[1]

[1]
[https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/07/08/53...](https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/07/08/531347.htm)

------
gambiting
Wait, so....previously in the US Amazon wasn't responsible for the products it
was selling?? Lol, what? So who was responsible then??

~~~
marcrosoft
Obviously, it should be the manufacturer. You know, the people that made the
product??

~~~
gambiting
Uhm, no? Obviously, as a consumer, I couldn't care less about who is the
manufacturer - I have no business relationship with them. The person who sold
me the item is responsible for it because they are the ones I entered into a
purchase contract with.

That's how it works in all of EU already - the seller is responsible for sold
items, because....it just makes more sense?

~~~
marcrosoft
Ok, and if you sell or even give away your used item to me and I deem it harms
me in some way? When does the litigation pain chain stop?

~~~
gambiting
The legislation treats used items differently. Unless the seller purposefully
hid something from you then you accept used items as-is with no further
responsibility accepted by the seller. So the chain ends on the first sale on
a new item. There are exceptions to this for certain items(say cars). But if
you buy a second hand phone and it explodes a month later then whoever sold
you the item is not responsible.

------
greggyb
In what world does this not just become a contractually required insurance
policy covering Amazon, paid for by the third party.

Granted, whoever pays in name, the cost will be passed on to consumers.

~~~
kshacker
Well, maybe, maybe not.

At least, it incentivizes Amazon to chase the culprits. The question is
whether that incentive is big enough for them to fix / improve things.

~~~
bloaf
If Amazon can get sued every time someone burns themselves with a knockoff
product, I would think their incentives would shift from:

"Pay as little as possible for quality assurance, down to a floor of $0"

to

"Pay as little as possible for quality assurance, down to a floor of $whatever
number would convince a court that we made a good faith effort to prevent
knockoffs."

~~~
pm24601
Strict liability means that Amazon is liable for _any_ defective product no
matter how "hard" they tried

------
monadic2
Amazon wants to own the revenues of the market but not the liabilities :)

------
djsumdog
How does this apply to eBay or Newegg? I've written about how we've lost a lot
of smaller independent websites and everyone has to have a store on
Amazon/eBay/Newegg/Reverb these days:

[https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-death-of-the-mom-and-
pop-...](https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-death-of-the-mom-and-pop-e-store/)

I imagine this wouldn't affect eBay since it's clearly a site where you are
buying from a seller. eBay is more of a newspaper listening. But what about
Newegg or Reverb which try to create these tight models just like Amazon so
you're not always sure who exactly you're buying from? Newegg even does the
"sold and shipped" by newegg (it's not clear if these are actual products from
newegg inventory or if they are leasing warehouse/inventory pipeline like
Amazon).

~~~
bb611
The decision (linked above) makes the distinction based on Amazon placing
itself in the supply chain between distributor and customer. eBay seems safe
from this one, Newegg will have liability for those 3rd party products they
actually ship.

------
tempsy
I find it perplexing that Amazon is still so dominant in e-commerce despite
being an all around strange and confusing experience with weird pricing and no
name brands that's more like an eBay than a Walmart these days.

I just go to Costco and Walmart now for 99% of the things I used to buy on
Amazon.

------
Schnitz
If you ever happen to run into a seller that's motivated to fight your claim,
you'll actually realize that Amazon is the new eBay. They now play the exact
same game where they sit in the middle, giving each party time to respond,
etc. and it just bounces back and forth forever. In my case I had ordered a
print on white background and it arrived on a yellowish background and the
seller kept fighting. It took 2 weeks and several escalations after which
Amazon finally issued me a refund. Noteworthy as well that it was a "goodwill"
refund, ie they didn't rule against the seller despite having ample proof in
the form of screenshots of the listing and pictures.

------
elasticventures
eBay is not same-same, it's much more marketplace-esque.

eBay does not use a consolidated product listing, much more like a bulletin
board each sellers products being sold under it's own URL. Amazon consolidates
the listing for all sellers into a single product and uses their own ranking
algorithms to determine which seller is in the "buy box" (which accounts for
97% of the items sales velocity). Amazon treats the entire experience as their
transaction, they anonymize the emails and don't allow sellers to send follow-
messages to clients or market other products to them (package inserts). The
cart-checkout process isn't broken down by seller either, it's a unified
payment and "1 click" checkout. I don't feel bad for Amazon at all - they've
had it coming!

FWIW .. I was the first person (as a 3rd party) to develop an integration with
Amazon's marketplace. I also personally won eBays' star developer award. I
recall the year the Internet Retailer show was in San Diego and Amazon didn't
have an employee there. It was against Amazon corporate rules to allow
employees to spend the night in CA in fear it would create sales tax nexus.
Amazon employees would need to fly back to Seattle and then fly back to San
Diego if they came down for a friday meeting and wanted to spend the weekend
on personal time! Amazon has gamed the rules, they compete directly with their
clients (sellers) using the sales data to decide what product to source. They
ran their warehouses as 3rd party entities to avoid nexus and begrudging
accepted 3rd party (non-Amazon owned) sellers when the courts ruled that
wholly owned entities would create sales-tax nexus. I feel no pity for them.

~~~
judge2020
> eBay does not use a consolidated product listing, much more like a bulletin
> board each sellers products being sold under it's own URL.

Try searching for a product on ebay right now and it's the exact same
experience as Amazon. Both Amazon and Ebay's algorithms determine which usb
drives show up first when searching for "usb stick", which is where 99% of
their commerce is coming from.

~~~
brudgers
The eBay list will have a rating for the seller, full detailed customer
feedback the seller received for the previous 90 days including the listing.
It will also have verbatim customer feedback going back 12 months.

This is the top result of my search for "usb stick" \-- a seller with 28k
transactions and 100% positive feedback. [https://www.ebay.com/itm/SanDisk-
Cruzer-Blade-Flash-Drive-8G...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/SanDisk-Cruzer-Blade-
Flash-Drive-8GB-16GB-32GB-64GB-USB-2-0-Pen-Memory-Stick/202906951835)

~~~
judge2020
That doesn't contradict my point. Both have a generic search list that
combines multiple sellers onto one page, making the OP's statement "eBay does
not use a consolidated product listing" incorrect.

~~~
brudgers
The search list on eBay provides provenance. The buyer can choose among
suppliers as well as products. The eBay list is specific, not generic.

------
pauljurczak
Amazon 3rd party store is a flea market full of complete garbage. It's a high
time to force Amazon to clean it up.

------
ratiolat
So, I'm currently living in mainland Europe. Amazon UK (native English) will
be out of EU in the near future. Given this article and also shady 'is this
real thing or not - order and find out' \- what would be a not shady general
kind of store in the EU with native english? I'm ordering mostly books, but
sometimes electronics.

There's tons of e-shops. Telling apart which one is shady and which one is not
is really difficult. Amazon used to be trustworthy in my eyes and that feeling
has faded.

~~~
jurip
This doesn't really answer your question, but Amazon DE offers an English UI
option.

~~~
xxs
amazon.de is fine and the personal does speak English. More also it's the EU,
hence free returns and no questions asked (by law) for 2 weeks. plus 2y
warranty.

I can't say bad words about the EU version of amazon when it comes to customer
service. Yes the counterfeit stuff is there but the free returns mitigate
that.

To the grandparent poster: you wont be able to order e-books off the uk
version... and would have to use .com one.

~~~
dingo454
Note that when ordering outside the country you still have to pay for the
shipping fee of the return yourself _to_ the amazon store of origin you
selected, making this a lot less flexible (and slower) than you'd think.

As a frequent traveler across the EU, this bit me both on amazon.de/fr.

I'm not sure if there are exceptions to these rules, but free returns are
frequently only free if within the same country and it's not unique to amazon.

~~~
xxs
>Note that when ordering outside the country you still have to pay for the
shipping fee of the return yourself _to_ the amazon store of origin you
selecte

That is false - I do order outside and it costs around 10 + 10euro/kg for
around 7-10days delivery (express within 2-3days is around double). When I
returned anything (3x times) - amazon paid back the shipping costs, BOTH my
own sending and the bill sending back to them. If the item was part of a
bigger order, they paid back partially my own cost for sending it to me
initially. And they always foot the bill for the sending back in full.

More also, there was a hard drive that failed 2nd day I installed, I
complained, they called and did send one immediately prior I even returned the
original one to them, which they reimbursed the bill for. The drive arrived
the next day (shipped by courier/air). Like I've said - I cant say bad words
about their service in the EU.

~~~
dingo454
What do you mean by "BOTH my own sending and the bill sending back to them?
When did this happen, and from where?

My last cross-country return was in 2017 for a lens (sold and shipped from
amazon) and I had to pay for the shipping myself to amazon.fr from italy.
Didn't get a refund for the shipping cost, although the replacement arrived
for free. Note that the lens was originally shipped to france. I was
substituting for an identical item, which usually gets shipped right away.
However, in this case, I had to wait for the return to be processed.

I had the same scenario in 2016, but from germany (shipped to germany,
returned to france).

Note that I cannot complain for the service itself. I only had great
experiences in return from amazon in general, but your description comes
unexpected from me.

~~~
AnssiH
Note that you have to specifically ask customer service for the return
shipping refund afterwards, it is not automatic if you self-paid the shipping
(or they might only provide a small allowance automatically which is usually
not enough for international shipping).

I've gotten my international return shipping always refunded when returning to
amazon.de, amazon.it and amazon.fr (when the item was faulty or the item was
otherwise eligible for free returns).

Here's the relevant amazon.de help page:
[https://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G...](https://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GXM7UWCH63ZJHAVP)

> If your item was eligible for free return but you paid a delivery fee, we'll
> issue a refund for the delivery charges.

------
bsanr2
I'm currently dealing with a situation as an Amazon seller where I think the
buyer is trying to scam me (claiming I sent the product wrong/late, hoping
they can manipulate the return process to both get a refund and keep the
product because of Amazon's notoriously customer-biased policies). I wonder
how this plays in.

------
firebaze
I'm not so sure this will hurt Amazon. I'd imagine if this decision holds (for
more regions), Amazon will decide to stop acting as a platform for individual
smaller businesses and focus on its own assortment. And since this decision is
most probably not limited to Amazon itself, competitors would face the same
problem.

------
sinatra
This is a good place to ask this question: Lately, we’re trying to buy
products on Amazon only if it says, “Sold by Amazon.com.” Is that a good way
to ensure that the product is not counterfeit? The assumption is that if
Amazon is selling something directly, it would be getting it directly from the
real manufacturer.

~~~
ss64
Your assumption is wrong - FBA means that 'Sold by Amazon' will often be
supplied by a third party, so you have to dig through all the offers to see if
any are FBA.

------
jcims
How did eBay avoid this?

~~~
Fej
> The Appellate Court didn’t agree with Amazon’s stance, noting that the
> product had been listed on Amazon, was stored in an Amazon warehouse, had
> facilitated payment, and shipped it out in Amazon packaging, proving it to
> have a hand in getting it to Bolger and thus being liable under California
> law.

eBay does not meet the second qualifier and rarely meets the last.
Additionally, it is more obviously a marketplace - the seller of a given item
is highlighted and their credibility made known in the form of their star
ratings. Amazon de-emphasizes the seller name for non-Amazon sellers and
completely hides their rating on the product page.

Of course, the only way to know for sure is if eBay's liability is litigated.

~~~
ROFISH
Product had been listed on eBay: Yes

Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses.

Had facilitated payment: Maybe, but eBay typically just links one Paypal
account to another Paypal account. eBay does not actually touch the funds.
(Paypal has been it's own separate company for awhile now.)

Shipped it out in eBay packaging: Unless they're using a service, typically
shipping is up to the eBay seller.

So I doubt this ruling affects eBay.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses.

eBay used to have a service where you could take any random junk to their mall
kiosk or a FedEx store and eBay would sell it on your behalf. That would
pretty much require them to have warehouses.

Is that service dead?

~~~
rtkwe
They have a Consignment Center [0] but that only really seems to hook you up
with on the the various "I'll sell your crap on eBay" that exist instead of
doing it themselves.

[0]
[https://pages.ebay.com/rcp/consignmentcenter/#/](https://pages.ebay.com/rcp/consignmentcenter/#/)

~~~
thaumasiotes
Well, I wasn't just hallucinating: [https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-drop-off-
locations-coming-to-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-drop-off-locations-
coming-to-1600-fedex-office-stores/)

But the program does seem to be dead.

I found some interesting forum discussion taking the opinion that eBay
strangled consignment businesses by choosing to heavily discourage auction
sales (as opposed to fixed-price listing). They did that because customers on
average strongly prefer fixed-price sales, but I'd be open to the idea that
this could be a case where giving the customers what they want turned out to
be a mistake for the business.

eBay saw themselves as competing with Amazon in the "buy things over the
internet" space.[1] But by emphasizing fixed-price sales so much, they
arguably made themselves much less distinct from Amazon.

[1] I was surprised to learn this, as I had always thought of Amazon as being
for buying things new and eBay for buying things used.

~~~
rtkwe
I think a lot of people didn't understand or know about how the eBay auctions
worked [0]. I only learned about eBay being a second price auction,
effectively, ages after eBay was a thing. Without knowing how the proxy system
works doing an auction would be pretty frustrating because it'd look like you
were usually instantly outbid.

[0] At least the later version I don't know if they used a different scheme
earlier. They must have because the sniping services that existed in early
eBay don't really make sense with proxy bids.

------
maurys
I hear a lot of complaints about counterfeits in Amazon in the US.

But not as many back here in India. I've bought electronics, chairs, phones
and appliances without too much hassle. Always with fulfilled by Amazon
though.

I'm curious if the problem is more prevalent in different locations.

~~~
katbyte
In Canada and haven’t had too much an issue, thou im carful with what I order
and look for red flags

------
jpollock
This will have interesting impacts on all marketplaces.

Ebay, Walmart, NewEgg, all the app stores on every platform - if a game is
malware (or trashes your machine with a bug), is that Steam's responsibility?
It's delivered from their servers with their packaging.

~~~
nomercy400
Depends on how much effort is shown to have been made by these app stores to
prevent malware. For example, if Steam shows significant cases where malware
games have been removed, and can prove they actively work to remove these
cases, then it won't be much of a problem for Steam. They are doin their best.

~~~
nucleardog
That’s not how strict liability works.

Strict liability means even if they do all of those things they are still
liable.

------
EricE
Good. The amount of counterfeit crap on Amazon is getting out of control.
Indeed they are no longer the first place I think of for electronics.

------
gigatexal
Hmm.. this is like if section 230 was written in an opposite way such that
sites that hosted content were liable for the things posted by 3rd parties aka
you and me.

------
joe_momma
I only buy books from Amazon, who knew they were still only good at one thing.

~~~
young_unixer
They sell counterfeit books too. There was a thread about it a couple of years
ago.

------
Haleabus
Amazon is responsible for covering the globe in Chinese garbage.

------
Schnitz
That's good, one less "we are just a market place" scam.

------
Trias11
We need more rulings like that.

Want to peddle chinese crap? Be responsible.

------
physicsguy
This is the norm here in the UK and the EU

------
known
Isn't it obvious ?

------
manigandham
I've had nothing but good experience with Amazon over the past 10 years. Very
few problems but when there is, it's a few minutes to get a replacement or
refund immediately, including complicated scenarios like promos, out of date
returns, and warranty claims.

I must not be the only one with good experiences if they're doing so well.
Then again I also check to make sure I'm buying direct from Amazon and reading
the most recent verified purchaser reviews for any expensive items.

However this ruling needs clarity since Ebay would also qualify, especially
since they also handle payments now instead of using Paypal, and potentially
Shopify as well.

EDIT: what are people disagreeing with?

~~~
quesera
Agree with the experience: Amazon has never done me wrong.

Disagree with the context: You're making the mistake of saying that you do
things the proper way and if others would follow your lead, they might have
better experiences also. People who have been wronged don't like to hear that
other people think it's kind of their fault. Not saying you think, or said,
this: but there's a bit of victim-blaming going on. This should not be
something Amazon customers need to worry about. And for the record, I am less
careful than you. But it's possible that the products I purchase are less
attractive to counterfeiters...

Disagree on the comment about eBay. They do not warehouse or ship. It is very
clear that the seller is responsible for product description and delivery.

Did not downvote. :)

~~~
manigandham
That's helpful, I should've been more clear.

Most products I don't really check and have been fine. What I was trying to
convey was that expensive, specialized or esoteric items have more scam
potential which should require more review before buying (not that Amazon
isn't still at fault).

However people are claiming here that 95% of orders are bad and that's just
hard to believe. The business would collapse tomorrow if that were the case
for any serious number of people, and why would a person keep buying if that's
all they were getting?

