Amazon is Launching a New Program To Donate Unsold Products, After Reports that Millions Were Being Destroyed (cnbc.com) 38
Amazon wants its third-party sellers to make better use of their unsold or unwanted products that often get dumped -- by giving them away to charity. From a report: Amazon is launching a new donations program, called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) Donations, for third-party sellers that store their inventory in Amazon's warehouses in the U.S. and UK, CNBC has learned. Starting on September 1, the donation program will become the default option for all sellers when they choose to dispose of their unsold or unwanted products stored in Amazon warehouses across those two countries. Sellers can opt out of the program, if they want. The donations will be distributed to a network of U.S. nonprofits through a group called Good360 and UK charities such as Newlife and Barnardo's. After this story was published, Amazon announced the program via a blog post on Wednesday afternoon. [...] Recent reports found that Amazon routinely discards unsold inventory, with one French TV documentary estimating Amazon to have destroyed over 3 million products in France last year. Further reading: The Painful, Costly Journey of Returned Goods -- and How You End Up Purchasing Some of Them Again.
Here is Your Free Amazon Echo! (Score:3, Funny)
It even comes with a FREE Cell Link!
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It even comes with a FREE Cell Link!
In the former East Germany, you got these things for free!
And they where more discrete . . . you couldn't see them, but they could record all your conversations.
If the former East Germany had these more advanced devices . . . well, we would probably still have an East Germany.
Amazon, Good or Evil? (Score:2)
Re:Amazon, Good or Evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they could officially have their fullfilment centers run by slave labor and not get caught or called out on it, they'd do that.
Robots, as the new lower class...till they unionize.
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No company is all good or all evil (Score:3)
Amazon does a lot of bad....
Such as? Not disagreeing necessarily but I'm curious what you think they do that is unacceptably odious. Stuff beyond what one should reasonably expect or allow from a profit seeking enterprise.
They don't appear to be doing anything irredeemably horrible to people or the environment or to the community. I've heard rumors their working conditions in the warehouses can be tough but that sort of work is never easy work and I haven't heard anything that is wildly out of line with generally acceptable norms.
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If you ask Amazon to close your account and delete your data (and you are in Europe where the GDPR says they must do so) it is possible to discover that they didn't delete the data, just disabled the login.
Lazy? Deliberate Evil? I don't know, but I do intend to request close and delete on another Amazon account some time before too long and carefully record evidence of the lack of deletion for the Information Commissioner's Office.
Other than that, some of their delivery people are incompetent/lazy/stupid/wh
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To be fair here, the problem is generally coming from returned items. And for this I blame the customers who are far too quick to click and buy and then realize they were too hasty. Or maybe they didn't realize they were too hasty and just assume the easy buy and easy return is a feature they want. Maybe they even realize that the products end up being trashed but they just don't care.
Maybe Amazon needs a feature that tracks how often an account returns items and starts adding an "please be responsible, ar
I'm help, and in need of homeless (Score:1)
I'm homeless, please let me sort through to verify all the "junk" is up to charitable donation standards.
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Sorry we don't have any food products for you. Unless you count this knock-off unbranded chia pet.
the good side of being big (Score:4, Insightful)
The real world is never black and white. We like to beat up the big companies but big can have potentials for good that small doesn't.
This problem is not new. Amazon didn't create it. In the days not too long ago when stores had very strict return policies, more products would just get thrown away at home. In the current environment, liberal return policies are a requirement to compete. Almost everyone has them. This creates a potential to solve the problem by moving it to one place. Amazon's size, and the fact that they are always under the microscope, caused the problem which exists with most retailers to be outed. Luckily, they have a large part of the problem in their hands and the infrastructure to organize a solution.
Public pressure should now cause the other big retailers will follow suit. So a problem that has existed for quite some time and is not unique to Amazon will now be at least partially addressed because Amazon is big enough for it to have been highlighted.
Where we really need this to happen is with the food industry. Waste in that industry has been famously high for decades, but the pressures to solve it aren't the same yet.
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Quebec has a similar program but while distributors participate, it's voluntary (but it saves them the cost of dumping it). Restaurants and caterers have informal arrangements with food banks as well.
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While picking up food from a major grocery chain's local store a for a food pantry a couple of years ago, my wife had a conversation with the store's dock manager. He said that they routinely throw away food that they'd rather give away. They are eager to give the food to charity and can't. The problem here is on the charity side. There aren't enough charities with the approved storage facilities (key to curing that liability issue you mentioned) to handle the available volume.
In addition, the culture is on
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That's true of course. Many charities cannot accept a lot of "used" food. But in the past I've seen the high school cafeteria waste being sent off to pig varms, and I think there was even a Dirty Jobs episode about unused Las Vegas buffet food being used in this way. But there's too much city and not enough rural for this re-use to handle even a fraction of the unused food.
Some of the problem I think comes from restaurants who can't easily make use of leftovers while keeping their upscale reputation. Ou
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Sounds like the problem is one of inefficiency. What can we do to make less waste in the first place?
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Sounds like the problem is one of inefficiency. What can we do to make less waste in the first place?
You mean besides drive brick-and-mortar stores out of business?
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Stores did also try to restock stuff though. So some people would come home with 10 outfits, decide they didn't like any of them and return them all (apparently having never heard of dressing rooms). I can only assume they just like shopping and wanted an excuse to go back. But those ten outfits would be up on the rack again. For items in special packaging they'd be sold again at a discount. Amazon being huge can afford the loss from just trashing the returned items, but the brick and mortar stores coul
Pawning off junk to someone else (Score:2)
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No worse than the "dumping" of gently used clothes into foreign markets.
https://www.pambazuka.org/reso... [pambazuka.org]
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I wish I had mod points to bump this higher...
It becomes someone ELSE's dumping problem.
Why not open an "Ali-booboo" site and sell it at ultra discount prices? Or open it up to discounters who buy things by the truckloads and re-sell them in their markets?
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One problem for that "ultra premium name brand" is that if the homeless and foster children are seen wearing it, then it will quickly lose its "ultra premium" panache. It isn't quality that makes those brands expensive, it's exclusiveness. Really, most "name brands" are marginally better at best. In fact, a pair of $10 jeans from Hamricks will last me much longer than a $100 from Buckle, and my wife emphatically forbids me from doing yard work in the expensive jeans.
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This is exactly why this won't pan out. Reseller agreements likely prohibit a lot of the name brand merchandise from being donated and do actually require them to be destroyed.
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One problem for that "ultra premium name brand" is that if the homeless and foster children are seen wearing it, then it will quickly lose its "ultra premium" panache.k in the expensive jeans.
I've never heard of this being a problem and I'd assume poor people don't get the exposure to make it one.
What I hear is that part of the "ultra premium name brand" branding is that they are expensive, they don't want to be associated with terms such as sale close out and simply do not want their products to be available cheaply.
Wusses (Score:3)
What's with these Millenials chickening out and broadcasting their failures to everyone?
In my day, we just quietly buried our unsalable inventory in a secret landfill in New Mexico, then secured it with a layer of concrete. That way, nobody would ever find out.
So That's Why (Score:2)
Amazon is having trouble getting rid of its crappy AliExpress products?
So that's why Prime Day was 2 days this year!
What KIND of products? (Score:2)
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Children! Once they spoil, one has to throw them out. :-D
Amazon Listing (Score:1)