Amazon bins 130000 products a week from one distribution center alone.

I've gotta send some Bluetooth earphones back that are only a couple of days old. - one of the earphones is no longer charging.

With it being an earphone, I strongly suspect due to hygiene reasons they can't resell it on their warehouse platform. So it goes back to the manufacturer and will end up in waste.

I guess in part some of the problem is the lack of quality and QA testing that goes into a product before selling it.
 
The manufacturers can probably replace them with new parts and send them out again new. I wouldn't have thought Amazon would sell a faulty headphone as a warehouse deal anyway? I thought it was just for stuff that worked but people returned because they just changed their mind.
 
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thenewoc said:
I think most are not Amazon's own stock but 3rd party sellers who've over ordered and then can't justify the storage costs.
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That sounds quite possible, amazon may well have the right to "dispose" of such items as part of the contract with the seller, but no right to profit from it.

One of our family friends is a haulier, one of the contracts his employer has is to take truckloads of new, packaged hand tools from the manufacturers warehouses straight to secure disposal because the packaging or styling is "out of date" so things like hammers, saws etc all straight to the bin because the styling is not what they want this year.

Amazon makes the news because they're probably the biggest retailer in the UK, operating the biggest warehouses and are high profile so people are more aware of it.
 
Maccapacca said:
The numbers probably are minute compared to the sales numbers, the %age of waste is probably quite small.

They will always have waste, end of line items, items that don’t sell and items that cost more in space than the write off value.
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they could sell them for uber cheap but would rather destroy them because otherwise it's a lost purchase at full price
 
arknor said:
they could sell them for uber cheap but would rather destroy them because otherwise it's a lost purchase at full price
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Or they don't have the right to sell them, or they're stock that they've been instructed is unsafe/fake by the authorities, or that they can't resell because of hygiene issues, or they've been instructed to destroy by the lawful owners.

Given that Amazon do warehouse deals I imagine they're quite happy to sell it cheaper if they're able to, but there are a host of reasons why a retailer/shop front like Amazon may not be able to - for example if they get informed by Trading Standards that something they've got in their warehouses is fake or electrically unsafe and cannot be sold they've only got one option - dispose of it in a way that means it cannot end up in consumer hands. HRMC and Trading Standards routinely oversee the destruction of quite large amounts of materials themselves.
There are also times when it is, unfortunately cheaper to simply destroy stuff than even give it away, especially if it's low value/bulk items*, and other times when you legally cannot give it away because it is unsafe,

130k items a week from a distribution centre sounds a lot but it might be a fraction of 1% of what moves through that facility in a day.

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I'm not sure if it's still the case, or if it used to be in the US as opposed to the UK, but iirc there also used to be something where book inventory held by, or on behalf of publishers had a tax value and it had to be paid every 12 months, leading to publishers having a very strong incentive to pulp any books older than a certain age because not only were they usually dropping in value whilst requiring storage to be paid, but every year they had to pay tax on them with the result it wasn't unusual for them to have a negative value..

*I've been in a large DIY store where they had bags of concrete and plaster mix by the exit with a sign saying "free please help yourself" as it was past it's sell by date (plaster and concrete mixes do go off), in that instance it was still probably usable but not worth reducing and giving it away was the last option before they had to pay for disposal.
I suspect no reputable builder would have taken it up because a potentially lumpy mix that could ruin a job isn't worth saving a fiver, but for a diyer who just needed some concrete for a fence post, or enough to patch a crack it was probably ok.
 
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you'd think they would have too dispose of them in a responsible way at the very least.

most of the stuff could probably have been given away as mystery items when someone purchases something, it's weird they want to seem green and responsible but when it actually matters just dump it in a land fill.


maybe manufactures should be encouraged not to overproduce and create so much waste if they aren't prepared to deal with the excess themselves, if it's the actual brands not letting amazon give something away then laws need changing.
 
The inevitable cost of cheap manufacturing, if folks want it to stop then they have to pay for better engineered products and less disposable trash. Seriously what ever happened to the machines that would last literal decades? I get that digital boondoggles on stuff makes them naturally more likely to break down, but jesus christ it feel's like planned obsolescence is in full force now.
 
Werewolf said:
130k items a week from a distribution centre sounds a lot but it might be a fraction of 1% of what moves through that facility in a day.
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And when you consider it seems that all UK returns go to that one address in Dunfermline (at least for me in the South of England), it's surely a very tiny fraction of how many products are shifted nationally daily. The article makes it sound like this happens at every distribution centre, but in 15 odd years I've never sent something back to anywhere but Dunfermline.
 
I've seen first hand in my workplace that it's financially more viable to destroy a product and replicate it later if it's required than keep it in storage long term. Warehouse/DC storage costs are at an all time high right now. We see millions of units recycled yearly.
 
They'll have to introduce legislation to outlaw contract clauses disallowing profiteering from disposed goods. All goods must go to a suitable recycling centre for reclamation or redistribution to sell.
 
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The thing is if this was true, then the reporters could simply go to the landfill and make a video on all the products dumped there.

I don't actually see any evidence of all these items being dumped into a landfill.
 
Doesn't surprise me at all when looking through their website.

I think the modern world economy is becoming more and more broken. When you buy almost anything now there are a bazillion products, all at random different prices (often for the same thing, rebadged) from a bazillion different sellers. I look at it all and wonder how on earth it all sells.

Its almost impossible to make an informed decision on a lot of stuff you buy now. There is this illusion of choice with all these supposedly different brands at different prices with varying reviews etc, when the reality is that most of it is all the same ****. Prices fluctuate wildly from minute to minute in some cases.

I genuinely hate shopping now because of the internet. I think you can definitely have access to too much choice and too much information.
 
Jono8 said:
Doesn't surprise me at all when looking through their website.

I think the modern world economy is becoming more and more broken. When you buy almost anything now there are a bazillion products, all at random different prices (often for the same thing, rebadged) from a bazillion different sellers. I look at it all and wonder how on earth it all sells.

Its almost impossible to make an informed decision on a lot of stuff you buy now. There is this illusion of choice with all these supposedly different brands at different prices with varying reviews etc, when the reality is that most of it is all the same ****. Prices fluctuate wildly from minute to minute in some cases.

I genuinely hate shopping now because of the internet. I think you can definitely have access to too much choice and too much information.
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Communist
 
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