Amazon selling returned goods as NEW

You can tell me when Amazon is sending you a returned item when the box doesn’t look new and it has an LPN sticker on it. This is becoming more and more prevalent these days, especially with “hot items.”If you’ve ever caught a restock on some Pokemon cards, then you’ll know what I mean. Usually the boxes have been opened and then re-sealed by the previous buyer. Plus Amazon warehouse employees really DGAF these days to check returned items so you never know if it’s truly new or it was a return. What’s really bad is if you are buying it as a gift and it comes with old shipping labels on it and stuff.

This happened to an Oculus Rift I bought last year and here’s a picture of the brand new kayak I got in last week. You can see the LPN sticker on the left there. That big ass UPC looking label on the front is a tell, not to mention the poorly pealed off old shipping label.

Anyway, I do hope someone files a class action against them for pulling this shit. At least at the big box retailers, they resell returns on clearance and you’d think Amazon would resell them under their warehouse as used-like new or something, but they have the audacity to sell it as NEW cuz they think they’re invincible.

7 comments on “Amazon selling returned goods as NEW

  1. Amazon is all covered and allows to sell returned merchandize. All it has to do is to follow the FTC guidelines regarding what’s considered new at the box for the different product categories and prove best intentions and quality assurance in the process. However, evaluation of returns is a manual process done by associates and as such has flows and errors.

    Happy to share more and answer questions if one has any

  2. As a seller I’ve received negative FB when a customer returns an item that’s clearly been opened, yet the warehouse adds it back to my new inventory. And short of recalling all my stock and sifting through all of them there’s no way to know which unit is the returned, opened one.

  3. I had this happen recently as well. My guess is more to do with poor quality control than anything else.

  4. I doubt this is intentional on Amazon’s part. They wouldn’t bother putting the LPN on it if they were trying to pass it off as new. This happens because stowers aren’t paying attention and add the item to inventory by scanning the original barcode instead of the LPN barcode.

    1. This isn’t a one-off incident. Other folks in my Slack are reporting the same thing. Once again, this happens more to ‘hot’ items than normal items. A return comes in and they ship it back out. Intentional or not, it’s sloppy on their part and it’s happening more and more.

      1. Yes, Amazon employees are definitely sloppy. Quality suffers when rates are pushed.
        It should happen more to ‘hot’ items than normal items, because there are more orders and more chances for mistakes.
        Are they refusing to return/replace the misidentified items?

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