this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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I found the article really poor. They very obviously we're doing everything they can to play defence for the company here, including blaming the person who left a completely accurate review of the product they received. Somehow Ars thinks that review broke Amazon's community guidelines? What nonsense.
It is a multi-faceted issue. Both the customer and the company are victims of Amazon.
It’s not the company’s fault that the diaper was re-sold, so they don’t deserve to have that negative review. It’s true that the review was against Amazon’s policy. Whatever you make of that policy, Amazon should have removed the review when asked.
Meanwhile, it’s not the customer’s fault and you can’t blame them for making such a review.
Ultimately it’s Amazon’s fault for re-selling the diaper and for not removing the review when asked. Both are bad decisions Amazon made. The customer is a victim of one decision, and the company is a victim of the other.
Not the policy as described in the article it's not. The article says "by focusing on seller, order, or shipping feedback rather than on the item's quality". Mentioning the seller isn't against the rules, only "focusing" on them. And from what we've been told, the review focused on the fact that the item had literal shit on it. That's a problem with the item's quality, as received by the customer.
Maybe there's some nuance in the full text of their policy and the full text of the review that would change that, but for someone without any pre-existing knowledge going entirely by what the article says: the review should have stood.
This is a fair criticism.
From my read, other details mentioned that the reviewer realized and mentioned that they suspected the item was returned and not inspected before being re-sold. This makes the review about the return process, not about the item itself.
Yeah that's not an unreasonable read of it. IMO that's basically speculation on the part of the buyer though, and the underlying fact is still the quality of the product as they received it. To me "return process" seems more like if they were themselves trying to return the product and gave a review based on their experience doing that return.
Actually I'd say the company is the victim of both.
The customer should be free to review the product as they received. Amazon shouldn't have removed it (regardless of policy) because it was a completely accurate review of what the customer received.
The store was a victim of Amazon because Amazon led to the problem to begin with. Amazon's returns policy is overly lenient to begin with: stores simply should not be allowing simple change of mind returns on underwear or underwear-like products. (And frankly, from an environmental perspective & from systemicly avoiding even the possibility of this kind of stuff-up, I'm not sure change of mind returns should be allowed by default anyway.)
And then there's the fact that they sold it as new. Nothing that's been returned should ever be sold as new. Even if it's in mint condition. "Oh, but we'd be losing money/people wouldn't buy it if they knew it wasn't new, even though it's in perfect condition" they might complain. Too bad, perhaps that's a case for not allowing change of mind returns.
And then finally is the more obvious problem: reselling a product that was absolutely not fit for sale, because it's covered in shit.
The company is a victim of Amazon's return policy being too lenient, and of Amazon failing to properly uphold their end of the returns policy agreement. But the former is the actual underlying issue.