“Amazon Air” Taking Market Share
12-05-2018, 02:08 PM
#11
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Joined APC: Mar 2006
Position: retired
Posts: 560
Originally Posted by CallmeJB
My observation is that Amazon's goal is to make overnight shipping of products irrelevant. They aim to have all the products you want already in one of the warehouses close to you, making overnight or even same day delivery cheap and convenient.
There will always be a need for overnight, cross-country shipping of many things. But Amazon tries to reduce that need for their products as much as possible.
There will always be a need for overnight, cross-country shipping of many things. But Amazon tries to reduce that need for their products as much as possible.
12-05-2018, 05:25 PM
#13
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Joined APC: May 2011
Posts: 182
Originally Posted by wjcandee
Hard to do in real life. One Amazon program to do this ended up introducing all sorts of counterfeit and beyond-expiration stuff into the system.
12-05-2018, 06:20 PM
#14
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Joined APC: Aug 2016
Posts: 493
Sure. What they did was try to utilize the significant stocks of particular SKUs of certain products that had not been acquired by them, but rather were in the warehouse as a result of being put there by participants in Fulfillment by Amazon, which is something offered to Marketplace users.
They figured if there was, say, a hoverboard with a particular SKU in Cleveland, but it was owned by a Marketplace participant, they could use that (with the owner's permission) to fulfill an Amazon order in Cleveland, rather than airmail one in from California. Fair enough. But what they discovered was that things under the same SKU weren't necessarily authentic or even in date, the way they would be if Amazon directly sourced them. So they got a lot of complaints about very popular products being counterfeit or out of date, not because Amazon didn't properly source them, but because they were relying on the good faith of Marketplace participants. Big mistake.
And some of the products that were being faked would just blow your mind, because who would think it would be worth doing so? But they did. I don't know if they still use the program at all, or merely severely restrict it, but it was a huge fiasco. Counterfeits from Marketplace participants in general are I'm sure still a problem, but at least now if it says shipped from and sold by amazon.com, it is likely to be authentic, which wasn't always true when this program was in place. It might be shipped from and it might be sold by, but it wasn't necessarily sourced by Amazon.
They figured if there was, say, a hoverboard with a particular SKU in Cleveland, but it was owned by a Marketplace participant, they could use that (with the owner's permission) to fulfill an Amazon order in Cleveland, rather than airmail one in from California. Fair enough. But what they discovered was that things under the same SKU weren't necessarily authentic or even in date, the way they would be if Amazon directly sourced them. So they got a lot of complaints about very popular products being counterfeit or out of date, not because Amazon didn't properly source them, but because they were relying on the good faith of Marketplace participants. Big mistake.
And some of the products that were being faked would just blow your mind, because who would think it would be worth doing so? But they did. I don't know if they still use the program at all, or merely severely restrict it, but it was a huge fiasco. Counterfeits from Marketplace participants in general are I'm sure still a problem, but at least now if it says shipped from and sold by amazon.com, it is likely to be authentic, which wasn't always true when this program was in place. It might be shipped from and it might be sold by, but it wasn't necessarily sourced by Amazon.
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