> You're not saying Amazon needs to spend $20. You're saying Amazon needs to buy one of every product on Amazon that gets a complaint.
Amazon, being one of the largest and most successful companies in the world, can afford to do that and then some. Yeah, it won't be exactly $20, but it will still be a tiny amount for a company that size.
I mean, "inspecting the products you sell for compliance" shouldn't be an optional thing, but a basic function of a retail business.
And we're back around to the quote "It's very difficult to make someone understand something, when their salary depends on their not understanding it."
Unless Amazon loses because of these misrepresentations, they're not going to care. Cash flow and sales volume up, and they'll let anything go unless it somehow causes lost sales at scale.
Even if Amazon orders one of every product, it's easy to beat that system.
I make two fake companies selling the same product. Each of them asks buyers to write a fake review 50% of the time. One of the companies should pass the Amazon inspection.
Well, then you say Amazon can place more than one order for each product. I just keep tweaking the numbers. I'll have 2% of customers for each of my fake companies get asked to write a review. One of them will not get flagged and the fake reviews will help them rise to the top.
> Even if Amazon orders one of every product, it's easy to beat that system.
I wasn't talking about proactively ordering one of everything, but ordering something in response to a specific complaint about a specific practice. So, while we're making up numbers, they might actually end up ordering 10 copies of 0.01% of their items. Make the penalties for getting caught onerous enough, and they might deter the practice completely.
Sure, some vendor might then only put a solicitation in 1 in 20 items, but they'll still have a significant chance of getting caught, and it's not like Amazon should be so transparent about the process so a vendor can game it.
But to my original point: it's totally practical for Amazon to take visible action in response to a single complaint, without opening the door up to griefing.
The reason for this is that they don't need to rely 100% on crowdsourced feedback for compliance enforcement (and to think they would shows a really blinkered webtech-centric viewpoint). The complaint -> investigation -> substantiation -> enforcement process is tried and true technology that's even older than UNIX.
The cheapest solution would just be to add a thing to the T&C that says that Amazon reserves the right to place a reasonable number of undercover orders, which the vendor must accept as a refund (other than the shipping fees). Then Amazon is only on the hook for the shipping for one of every product they get a complaint on. That seems like a pretty reasonable amount for them, especially given that there is 0 shipping fee for anything from Amazon's fulfillment. Unless merchants are hiding these things inside the actual product box, instead of inside the shipping box. In that case, they should just ban the manufacturer's goods from Amazon entirely.
