Amber Neely
In an effort to mitigate wasted stock, Amazon is now giving sellers new options to deal with items that are returned or unsold.
Amazon has begun rolling out two new "Fulfillment by Amazon" programs that would allow sellers the option to resell returned items or liquidate unsold stock.
The first program, Amazon's "FBA Grade and Resell" is currently available in the U.K., will be available in the U.S. by the end of the year, and will arrive in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain in early 2022.
When a buyer returns an item, sellers will be able to reroute it to Amazon, which will grade the item with one of four conditions: Used - Like New, Used - Very Good, Used - Good, and Used - Acceptable. Once the item has been graded, sellers will be able to resell the items on Amazon.
The second program is "FBA Liquidations," which would allow sellers to use the company's wholesale resale channel and technology to recover a portion of their inventory cost from returned or overstock inventory. The program is already live in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain and will go live in the U.K. this August.
Sellers will now be allowed to resell items through Amazon's bulk resale partners rather than needing to deal with the unsold stock themselves.
It was reported in June that Amazon was destroying millions of unsold stock items each year in the U.K., including unused and unopened Apple products like AirPods, iPads, and MacBooks. It was estimated that nearly 130,000 items a week are organized into boxes marked "destroy." Eventually, the items were dumped into bins and shipped to recycling centers or landfills.
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4 Comments
So this sorta confirms Amazon was dumping large amounts of unsold product and at least this is a small step in the right direction. If governments want to combat e-waste, they would be best to target the corporate behavior of dumping huge amounts of unsold product as opposed to esoteric right to repair concerns.
Likewise, instead of focusing on pseudo-monopoly app store concerns, governments should focus on robocall and online scams that target the elderly which are now epidemic and cause real harm.
My elderly parents get bombarded daily with email, browser and cell phone scams.
When we visit them, their phones are ringing non-stop with scam appeals.
Sorry to get off topic but governments seem to jump on popular issues and avoid the real ones that bother people day to day.
Until I see otherwise I will assume that this is just a show effort that won’t make a real dent in the amount of usable stuff Amazon dumps. It’s Amazon after all and I’ve learned not to trust them.
I didn't know anything about Amazon litterally (LOL) dumping unsold or returned merchandise. I thought they just resold returned stuff as new. I've received five items sold and shipped by Amazon that were obviously returned and/as defective.
I don't believe they've ever sold me counterfeit products, so items reported to be counterfeit and sold by Amazon are purchased from other stores or the manufacturers' site.
Apparently some vendors won't or can't just offer firesale prices on overstocked items. Some people have had good luck but I'll never by 'used' from Amazon or they're third-party sellers again.