According to a new report, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and this is apparently the case with some products being sold on the Amazon platform.
The globally-popular online retailer is known to sell thousands of products daily; however, not all of these are new- some have actually been taken out of the trash by sellers and then repackaged and sold, claims a report done by Wall Street Journal.
Is Amazon Selling Products from Trash?
A spokesperson for Amazon stated that despite the fact that sourcing trash items has been inconsistent with the high expectation they have from sellers and which is banned by the Seller Code of Conduct, the company has updated the policy ‘to more explicitly prohibit this type of attitude’.
This update happened after the Journal talked with some sellers that have gone dumpster diving for products and actually opened up an Amazon shop to test if they could sell products acquired from garbage.
Wade Coggins from Oregon claims they scour store clearance sections, abandoned storage units, as well as dumpsters in order to acquire things to sell.
When they find products, they repackage them with boxes and bubble wraps and make them look brand new when shipped through the Amazon platform.
According to David Gracy, his business partner sold keyboards and humidifiers he would find on dumpsters back in 2016.
He added that Amazon doesn’t ask where one gets the product from and if this could be from a dumpster.
Jesse Durfee from Connecticut claims he uses the platform to sell video games, electronics, and toys he procures at dumpsters in his hometown.
They even opened up an Amazon shop called DJ Co and swept suburban New Jersey dumpsters behind stores like Trader’s Joes. They would find products like stencil set or a lemon curd jar.
They would even place the items for sale, although they bought them right away to prevent actual customers from doing it.
People Are Complaining from some Products
According to the other findings from the report, from around the 45,000 comments left in the past two years and 8,400 of them were complaints with the words like ‘expired, moldy, sticky, and unsealed’.
However, a spokesperson for Amazon says that these examples in the report are isolated incidents. They added that any illegal or negligent activity is unfair to the majority of great sellers on the platform.
To this extent, they’ve expanded the scope of supply chain verification requirements like spot checks of source documents to make sure they comply with their policies.
Also, they will take adequate action against those failing to comply, including legal action if there’s place for it.
Sources: