
I ordered a box of boxes from The Packaging Wholesalers via Amazon.ca - jellicle
https://twitter.com/meslin/status/1225834920611848192
======
mkeeter
At one point, my parents bought a toilet from Amazon, and got along with it a
_12-foot long balance beam_.

Trying to return it was a bit of an ordeal:

[https://kkeeter.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/dear_amazon/](https://kkeeter.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/dear_amazon/)

~~~
colejohnson66
There’s actually laws regarding stuff sent to you in error. Basically, they
can’t ask you to return it unless you offer. Hence why there’s probably no
formalized process for it.

~~~
userbinator
It should also not come as a surprise that a company whose process is highly
optimised to move product in one direction has problems dealing with unusual
situations in the other direction.

~~~
eh78ssxv2f
This article is also from 2014. I wonder if the return process is smoother
now.

~~~
mcpeepants
normal returns are pretty painless - I order thing, I get exactly that thing,
I return thing.

I imagine there's still no formal process in place for "oops we sent you a
thing, keep it or throw it out or whatever"

~~~
User23
Returns are super painless now. You just click a few times on a webpage and
then go to your local UPS store (or whatever you picked) show them your phone
so they can scan the QR code you got sent, and then hand them the item.

~~~
fredophile
Returns of things they know they sent are painless. In the linked article
there was no tracking showing the balance beam and that caused most of the
problem.

------
scottlamb
> 8\. Today I figured out the problem. The granola company and the coaster
> company buy THEIR boxes from the same people I'm trying to by mine from. And
> the barcode scanners at @amazonca are picking up the old sticker - from the
> box company!

So the granola company, coaster company, etc. forgot to remove the old bar
codes from the outermost box before packing it full of their own product and
sending it out. One could tell them this, but there will probably always be
more small companies making this mistake.

Probably what should happen is for Amazon to mark this item (the box of boxes)
as requiring special handling when scanning on entry into the warehouse,
verifying that it actually is a box of boxes (right weight, no other barcode,
etc), and explaining why. And audit all the ones currently in the warehouse.

I have no idea how to convince Amazon to do this. Like the author, I'd give up
and start buying my boxes elsewhere.

~~~
mabbo
> I have no idea how to convince Amazon to do this

Funny enough, I do. I know and work with a lot of the people who would be
involved in that. My org in Amazon is all about ensuring everything is ready
to be used for customer orders. (We're hiring; Toronto, Seattle and
Nashville).

We call this the "multiple scannable barcodes" problem. In terms of inventory
tracking, we trust that there's only one barcode on the item that maps to a
valid product because that's nearly always the case. It's also really hard to
notice/catch when it happens.

I'm going to send this to a few friends today. I definitely know someone on
the operations side who would know what to do about it (and would laugh at the
absurdity).

~~~
dwild
Couldn't you add your own barcode on the boxes? It can even be a new barcode
standard to make sure it never mistaken with another one.

~~~
joeframbach
If someone reuses one of these boxes to sell their items back to Amazon,
Amazon will now have two Amazon barcodes on the box. We're back to square one
here.

------
jrockway
Something similar happened to me about ... 10 years ago. This was back when
everyone was going on and on about how good Amazon's customer support was, but
what I noticed is that they don't actually listen to the customer, they're
just robots that give you money for talking to them. The customer only comes
out ahead if their Internet connection is free and their time is worth
$0/hour. But people love it!

In my case, I ordered road bike tires. They shipped me mountain bike tires
from the same manufacturer. This was hilarious because the road tires were
"folding" (they have a kevlar bead instead of a wire bead, so don't take up as
much space in shipping) but the mountain bike tires weren't, so the set of 2
tires arrived in a refrigerator-sized box. I opened a ticket with Amazon. "Oh
sorry, we'll send you the right item." Same mountain bike tires arrive. "Oh
sorry, we'll refund you for both." This was about 2 weeks later and I checked
the product page... everyone in the reviews section was complaining, but
Amazon took no action to fix it. Like the author of this Twitter thread, I
finally ventured to a bike shop that I heard was really good, and they were
really good. I never bought another bike part from Amazon.

If I were Amazon, I would be super alarmed that people "in the field" don't
have the ability to talk to people in the back office. Every one of these
incidents should be a ticket for the supply chain management team. But instead
the customer service team looks at CSAT scores, the warehouse team probably
looks at "average time to pack an item", and the investors look for growth.
Nobody cares if the business runs well, just that each individual department
set an arbitrary metric and met it. If you want to eat a big company's lunch,
this is how you do it: look at the business as a whole, not as a million parts
that don't work together. (See also: Google and 5 chat apps, Google WiFi vs.
Google Fiber WiFi, etc.)

------
exabrial
Hilariously, there's no way anymore to get help from any "real" person over at
Amazon anymore, even for Prime members. I've gotten all kinds of weird stuff
shipped to me, including a $12,000 server motherboard once, which Amazon told
me I was free to keep as they would ship out the $124 SSD I ordered. I
insisted that I return it, and after much hassle over several weeks, I was
finally able get ahold of a non-chatbot, non-foreign service rep that finally
took the time to listen and sent me a return label. Since I finally got ahold
of someone real, I remarked this is the last time I go through such a hassle
to return their property because of the way they treated me when I was trying
to do them a favor.

~~~
nuclearnice1
Why did you insist on retuning it?

~~~
exabrial
The right thing to do. But my time and sanity is valuable too.

~~~
nuclearnice1
Yeah maybe take the company that does $283,000 in sales per minute at their
word when they say don’t bother returning it.

They told you not to do it. You did it. Now you’re pissed that doing it wasn’t
a smooth process. Ok.

~~~
mcbutterbunz
He’s the customer (or she). If he doesn’t want the wrong item that was
shipped, amazon should accept the return. I know this is HN but now this dudes
gotta figure out what to do with a 12K server does he use it? Does he toss it?
How much does it cost to dispose of a server like that. Maybe he donates it. I
don’t know but he didn’t ask for it the trouble. It’s not like he won the
lottery for $12K.

The customer asked for one thing but the company delivered something else.
Don’t make your customers deal with your mistake.

~~~
nuclearnice1
I think we agree that Amazon should do the thing that makes the least trouble
for the consumer. The wrong item is there. Return or disposal or charity or
resale. One way or the other your customer is going to deal with your mistake.

You seem to have some concerns that being left with a $12K server to dispose
of any way she pleases would be a burden.

I believe and her actual experience suggests that the rerun will be more
trouble.

Ok same values, different views on likely outcomes, we disagree.

------
Scoundreller
> 11\. I responded, with honesty: "The error has been fixed? It wasn't fixed
> the first three times.. so I'm skeptical!"

> @amazonca responded: "You will get the correct item. I do not want any more
> hassles for you. Please do not worry. "

> So I re-ordered the @PkgWholesalers boxes...

... and got packages of granola again in 1 PkgWholesalers boxes.

I hate how frustrating it can be do convince a multijillion dollar company
that, No, they are wrong, and I am right.

It's like we need an "No, I actually need you to _help_ because they problem
is unsolvable from my Point-of-View phone number" that's kept a secret from
anyone.

Had a similar issue with my credit union where they referred to a payment
number entry field the wrong way.

I managed to schedule a call with someone, and they didn't understand the
problem. They said: "So you want us to change this _just_ for you?". My answer
of "No, I want you to change it for everybody." didn't go over well...

~~~
wizardforhire
Used to be that getahuman[1] was a thing, but like all good things on the
Internet it seems to have not been able to hold up to the sheer volume of bad
actors.

[1] [https://gethuman.com/](https://gethuman.com/)

~~~
foobarbecue
Except for the miracle of Wikipedia

~~~
lopmotr
Kind of, but I wonder about niche articles with nobody keeping an eye on them.
I have notifications for a small page that contains some empirical formulas
which contain arbitrary constants. Every now and then, somebody will modify
one of them so it looks similar but is completely wrong. What if I wasn't
keeping an eye on it? Readers would never know they were seeing wrong
information.

~~~
jborichevskiy
I’d be curious to hear more about this. No need to link the page, but:

\- is Wikipedia’s reputation system useful for preventing this sort of abuse?
I thought most changes have to be approved?

\- how would one go about establishing the validity of a page from first
glance? One thought I had is a browser extension which colors text according
to its age on the page; relative to other text

~~~
Stratoscope
No, in general, changes to Wikipedia do not have to be approved. Anyone can
edit and their changes go live immediately.

You don't even need an account! But if you edit without an account, your IP
address is recorded in the edit history. Accounts are recommended both for
that reason and because an account gives you a contribution history and a
"talk page" where other Wikipedians can communicate with you.

Why don't you try it and see? Find a page where you can make a minor and non-
controversial improvement: clarify some wording without changing the meaning,
fix a grammar or punctuation error, etc.

Create an account, make the change, and watch it go live!

The check and balance here isn't that you need approval, but that others with
an interest in the page will be watching for changes, and you may find your
change reverted if some other editor doesn't like it.

Of course if no one is watching the page, then you may have the problem
lopmotr referred to.

~~~
OJFord
The weird thing to me is that IP bans supersede being logged-in to an account.

So even if you're logged in, you can't edit from a large corporate/etc.
network or commercial VPN.

------
IgorPartola
Once bought spark plugs for my car from Amazon. I got three new ones and three
from the Amazon Warehouse since those were about 30% cheaper and I figured
what could be wrong with spark plugs? Got the right box, wrong spark plugs.
Returned them. Re-ordered. Got the same spark plugs. This time I marked the
boxes with and plugs with a permanent marker. Returned them and reordered. Got
the exact same ones. Finally returned and ordered new ones. I am sure those
same plugs are still in the mail going back and forth between Amazon and
frustrated customers years later.

~~~
racnid
Minor plug for a vendor I've used with great success for a long time: Rock
Auto, don't even try to deal with Amazon for specific parts. Their website is
a nice throw back to actual usability too.

~~~
IgorPartola
Yes! I have ordered parts from them before and they are fantastic both on
selection and price. 10/10.

------
jellicle
A little bit of a non-standard sort of HN post, but it illustrates an
interesting sort of system failure.

My speculation, never having set foot in an Amazon warehouse:

1) Amazon stockers are told to put the incoming inventory in a spot, and scan
all visible barcodes on the product, which are all associated with that
product in Amazon's DB henceforth. Normally extraneous barcodes are no problem
because they aren't SKUs, so no one ever tries to pick them by the extra
codes. Easier to tell the stockers to scan everything than to try to get them
to pick the right one.

2) Company X, Y, Z ship their products to Amazon with their own barcodes and
fail to remove the box company codes. Dozens of different random products
around the warehouse end up with a secondary, identical barcode associated
with them.

3) Someone orders boxes. Inventory system probably automatically sends pickers
to the closest source of SKU 12345, of which there are - unusually - many
scattered around the warehouse. So the product received is essentially random,
out of whoever uses these boxes. Product roulette!

4) Customer service can't solve this problem. Maybe there's someone in
Amazon's inventory team that can go in and fix it, but it occurred for good
reasons! Everyone was behaving rationally. There are probably other similar
problems in the database as well.

~~~
adamcharnock
Just a thought, could this be engineered to work in one’s favour? For example,
order a box of something expensive, receive it, attach a barcode for something
cheap which is low in stock / rarely ordered, then send it back. Now order the
thing you labelled it as, and see what turns up. Perhaps you’ll get a box of
Epyc CPUs for the price of a box of out of season kwanza decorations.

~~~
nneonneo
That sounds like mail fraud - and you could get prosecuted by the feds for
that. Not something I recommend trying, especially in the US.

~~~
gumby
If you don’t use USPS (use say fedex) can you still be prosecuted under those
statutes? I though the USPS jealously guards whatever remaining prerogatives
they retain.

It’s still regular old fraud, and still wrong and you deserve to get trouble
for it. Just curious about who will finger your collar.

~~~
nneonneo
The statute on mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341))
clearly states:

> places in any post office or authorized depository for mail matter, any
> matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by the Postal Service, or
> deposits or causes to be deposited any matter or thing whatever to be sent
> or delivered by any _private or commercial interstate carrier_

(Emphasis mine). It is clear from this that committing fraud via FedEx and UPS
would be treated the same as USPS.

The one difference, AIUI, is that the USPS is protected by the US Postal
Inspection Service (who are, as you say, quite zealous), whereas I’m not sure
the same extends to UPS/FedEx (where you’d probably be looking at an FBI
investigation instead).

However if you (or Amazon) mailed e.g. the return labels over USPS the USPIS
could still get involved.

~~~
gumby
Thanks.

------
megablast
> "You will get the correct item. I do not want any more hassles for you.
> Please do not worry. "

Said by someone who did not understand the problem at all.

~~~
wruza
That’s the same situation when we shipped code with “I swear this time it
works correctly with all new excessive to-the-point tests we wrote after
analyzing the last failure in detail” label. Understanding the problem in a
complex automated system doesn’t always make it disappear overnight.

------
nwrk
Guess, you just saved them >$10M of wrong orders ?

8\. Today I figured out the problem. The granola company and the coaster
company buy THEIR boxes from the same people I'm trying to by mine from. And
the barcode scanners at @amazonca are picking up the old sticker - from the
box company!

~~~
tcbawo
you would think the granola and coaster companies would have caught on when
they started receiving their own products instead of more boxes.

~~~
twic
Unless a box of boxes costs less than they can sell a box of granola or
coasters for, in which case this is the ultimate free money machine.

------
fest
The way to get Amazon to fix this (at least on this particular item) is just
that- publish an article that you get granola (which I assume costs more) for
the price of empty boxes.

Nature (i.e. the internet) will fix the problem for you by creating a large
loss for Amazon/stock discrepancy.

------
Animats
Order from Uline instead. Those guys are probably just reselling Uline.

Compare the Uline box ordering page [1]. Looks rather similar to Packaging
Wholesalers, doesn't it? Order direct from Uline, and you'll probably get a
better price. It's hard to tell, because "Packaging Wholesalers" won't show
prices until you log in, while Uline has theirs visible.

Uline only sells shipping and warehouse products. They're #1 in North America
in a dull, boring, and essential business. No way will you get granola. If
you're ordering in industrial quantities, order from an industrial supplier.

[1]
[https://www.uline.com/product/GuidedNav?t=184360](https://www.uline.com/product/GuidedNav?t=184360)

~~~
throwaway284534
Just a heads up. The Uline management has made significant donations to
political organizations against equality of marriage, universal health care,
worker's rights, and cannabis legalization.

Regardless of your stance, I would consider the consequences of supporting
their lobbying efforts.

------
gnicholas
now just have to figure out what box company Amazon's fine jewelry vendors
use...

------
aaron695
I don't get the theory why?

So the Granola company buys boxes, puts in the product, sends it back to
Amazon, then Amazon accidentally puts it into the boxes pile?

Except wouldn't it be a boxes of boxes pile?

Is the Granola company recycling the outer box?

~~~
girvo
I believe the way it works is the warehouse worker is given a number/barcode
which they scan, which tells them where the item is. As the barcode has been
reused by accident, the worker is pointed towards the box of granola which has
the same barcode as the box of boxes!

~~~
mturmon
My further dystopian riff is that the reason for the scan-bar reuse is:

They have a robot cycling around the warehouse, automatically indexing the
items for sale by scanning all codes in sight, uploading to a database...that
is used by other automated pickers.

On average, you still make a profit even if the wrong thing happens sometimes.

------
jaifraic
I wonder i you could exploit this 'bug'. Offer some cheap bought products for
way to much money via Amazon. Boxed in wholesale boxes with clearly visible
original barcode.

No one ever will buy your product, but it will be sent out in error, customers
can keep it and Amazon reimburses you for it.

Repeat for profit.

------
unnamed76ri
Last year my son ordered a Nerf gun. It came but so did an $800 portable
refrigerator. I tried three times to do the right thing and send it back but
they told me to keep it. Ended up selling it on eBay.

------
easytiger
My wife had an interesting issue in the UK with Amazon very recently. I order
a lot from Amazon. A lot. 99% of all packages turn up same or next day no
issues.

My wife started ordering some things and they kept going missing. We compared
addresses and they were identical. Order tracking kept showing a delivery
date, then the date came and the item was just returned to warehouse. Repeat
5x times and after many 40 min phone calls she just cancelled the order for a
refund.

Repeat 7 or 8 times. Phoning up the Indian based call centre helped not at
all. Hours wasted

She tried one last time and got a call back from a manager in the UK who
looked into it. After a week or was resolved.

I still don't have a technical explanation, but apparently some special
routing meta data had been added to that address where the package was always
routed through another logistics centre or something.

Total nightmare getting it sorted out

------
AmVess
I reuse Amazon boxes, and now I feel vindicated that I always fully obscure
the old bar codes.

~~~
Domenic_S
Don't need to fully obscure them, just draw a single vertical line through
them to make them unscannable!

~~~
epse
If your line isn't big enough, it might not make a difference due to error
correction

------
Timpy
I once ordered a 20' cable on Amazon, a 10' was delivered. I double checked my
order to make sure I wasn't the one who had made a mistake, then returned my
10' in exchange for a 20'. They sent me another 10' cable. I contacted
customer service and told them something in their process must be wrong, to
please carefully ensure that they understand I want a 20' cable, and ensure
that a 20' cable is sent to me. This probably went unread. They sent me a 10'
cable, then asked for a nice review. I returned the cable for a refund and
took my business elsewhere.

------
blaines
Just today this happened to me! I ordered a 6 pack of batteries and got a box
of 6 packs of batteries. Now I’ve got enough for the rest of my life!

I had already read this thread, and first thing I check is the barcodes. The
box of packs of batteries has the same barcode as the package of batteries
itself.

[https://twitter.com/blaines/status/1227430981134516224?s=20](https://twitter.com/blaines/status/1227430981134516224?s=20)

------
adonovan
Tune in for next week's installment: how I threw out a garbage can!

~~~
slavik81
My brother once told me a story about an auto plant in Ontario and their
industrial-sized bins. They had a huge metal recycling bin, big enough to fit
a few cars inside, and a smaller garbage bin, maybe two-thirds that size.

One day, after emptying the trash bin, the garbage truck driver stacked it
inside the recycling bin.

The next day, the truck came and recycled the trash bin.

------
MagnumPIG
I don't often get to use the word kafkaesque...

This is kafkaesque.

------
anarazel
I got a box with several items I ordered (damaged), but _also_ a bunch of
metal piping (bent), two lsat training books (damaged), and a bunch of other
crap I can't remember. IIRC the stuff I ordered was a filing cabinet or
something of that sort - heavy. It was quite hard to convince them that no, I
don't just want to throw it all in the trash. Multiple calls etc.

I can kinda get how you one ends up reading the wrong labels, but throwing in
additional stuff requiring considerably larger packaging?

------
raverbashing
This reminds me of some self-checkout experiences where the scanner wouldn't
pick the barcode on the pack (4-pack) but it would pick the barcode of the
product inside the pack (which are not usually sold separately but oh
well...).

Cue having to call the assistance to back on that purchase and scan the right
one. Happened a couple of times. I think I just actively started covering the
wrong barcodes or got a different product.

------
abrax3141
I once ordered some sheet music. I don’t remrber exactly how many pages it
was, maybe 10 or 20. It came in the biggest box I think I’ve ever received,
from anyone. Literally there was a thin booklet floating around in a - approx.
3ftx2ftx2ft box. (Sadly, no packing peanuts! :-) I should have taken a
picture.

~~~
chihuahua
There used to be a team at Amazon whose mission was to prevent this situation.
The technical term was "grotesque packaging". I assume they eventually gave up
trying to solve the problem.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Well, in the last couple of years they seem to have shifted from shipping
books in a box with padding to shipping them in tight-fitting envelopes that
damage the corners. So I guess that's a victory for the grotesque packaging
team, at the same time it's a big loss for people who want to buy books on
Amazon. :/

~~~
dmurray
I usually get them wrapped in a thick piece of cardboard, a few inches longer
than the book so an impact to the corners of the package doesn't damage the
book. It works pretty well.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I know the style you're referring to; that works fine. But I've been getting
books delivered in bubble-padded manila envelopes. In one case, I set up a
return for the damaged book, explicitly noted that the packaging was
inappropriate, was assured the problem would be fixed, and the next three (!)
replacement deliveries were also shipped in the stupid manila envelope and, of
course, damaged.

They never shipped me an undamaged copy; I gave up after their messaging went
from "return the earlier book" to "don't bother; just keep everything".

------
Geeflow
Not removing old labels before entering something into (partially) automated
systems is just asking for trouble.

A friend of mine once returned an item to amazon but forgot to remove the
original shipping label. The shipping company picked it up and promptly
shipped it back to him instead of returning it to Amazon.

------
dusted
Welcome to the future indeed :) This sort of thing is somehow going to end up
getting someone killed.

------
SaltPork
Remember when a someone ordered a TV from Amazon and received a Assault Rifle?

[https://gizmodo.com/guy-orders-tv-from-amazon-gets-giant-
ass...](https://gizmodo.com/guy-orders-tv-from-amazon-gets-giant-assault-
rifle-ins-5933021)

------
Zenst
It would appear that whilst Amazon have saved on Thrift overheads, they have
in essence, automated it upon themselves as so many items they send by mistake
and they don't collect appear to be more common than isolated instances.

------
mhandley
According to amazon.ca, the granola costs $63 and the box of boxes only costs
$29. I really hope the granola company is buying as many boxes of boxes from
Amazon as they can! Free money!

------
alyx
Might be related to what is described by the scam here,

[https://youtu.be/2IT2oAzTcvU](https://youtu.be/2IT2oAzTcvU)

~~~
robjan
The eighth tweet in the story explains the cause

------
coreyhn
I applaud your patience

------
celticmusic
Reminds me a little of a recent experience I had.

My gf wanted a little Japanese plushie so I bought it for her. I don't recall
the exact amount, but I bought 2 of them for roughly $100.

A few weeks later we get a large box FULL of varying types of these plushies.
After doing some research we find out there was some issue with a new shipping
company and they were sending orders to the wrong addresses and so forth. The
plushie company basically just said "if you receive it, keep it", and they're
currently taking this shipping company to court over it.

Well.... for the next several months every once in a while we'd receive boxes
of varying sizes full of different types of plushies. Some of them are
recognizable, such as Dragon Quest slime plushies, other's are little food
based plushies. I don't know what they are, but like anthropomorphized bread
and so forth.

At one point my girlfried tallied it up and I think we received over $3k
(retail) worth of these plushies.

~~~
barbs
Wow. Did you try to sell them on?

~~~
celticmusic
She's planning on it, we've sold a few but put it on hiatus while she visits
friends.

edit: family, not friends... brainfart.

