>Since they commingle products at the warehouse level and handle actual fulfillment at the SKU level and not the vendor level - how do you know this?
Because Amazon does not commingle first and third-party inventory and I do not buy, since it is so easy to avoid, from third parties (or drop shippers) unless it is an extremely niche item like a 0.1" to 0.025" 10-pin header adapter.
Unless, of course, they are lying. Do you have evidence they are lying?
Do you have any proof they are not commingling? Have they outright said it at any point? Because there's more than enough anecdotes out there (and in previous threads about it on HN) that show that 1st party products are not treated any differently.
Amazon has to list the value of their inventory in financial reports.
If they were commingling every single report would be a lie.
Also, they explicitly state that:
>Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory as product sales and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by third-party sellers as service sales.
If they were commingling, those figures would be a lie.
The reason that would be lie is that Amazon has defended itself from product liability lawsuits for harms caused by defective products sold by third parties by repeatedly claiming in court that they do not take title to the goods in their possession that are supplied by third parties.
When you take title to something it is yours.
If it is yours, you need to include its value in an inventory valuation.
If inventory that you have title to and inventory you do not have title to is commingled there is no way to track which of the two have been sold, who holds title to what remains in inventory, and what that is worth.
Their inventory valuation would be a lie, their product sales figures would be a lie, and their service sales figures would be a lie. The amount of insurance they carry would be wrong, and that would open them up to legal vulnerabilities if anyone can demonstrate that the toaster they bought from a third-party seller which exploded was actually a toaster Amazon had title to and was shipped to them due to being commingled.
The only thing an investor has to do to sue the shit out of amazon is establish that their numbers are wrong, and are wrong on purpose, and they have been harmed by their numbers being wrong.
They can commingle but simply keep track of how much of the inventory is theirs and how much is not. I think you have a limited understand of how their system works.
I got an Amazon product the other day, likely counterfeit, Amazon listed as seller and has 3rd party sticky barcodes on the packaging. How is that possible without commingling.
Ok cool, so they haven't actually said it anywhere. You're just assuming because of your interpretation of wording in their reports, and then taking it to the slippery slope extreme.
> If inventory that you have title to and inventory you do not have title to is commingled there is no way to track which of the two have been sold, who holds title to what remains and inventory, and what that is worth.
How is this not a problem for the 3rd parties with commingled inventory? Amazon clearly has a way to know which of the many 3rd party sellers they commingled sold the product in order to pay them, and know how many products are in stock across their commingled inventory.
Considering the product is supposedly the same, the cost would be the same, and they would only need to do the exact same tracking they do with 3rd party sellers whenever they themselves sell an item from the commingled pile.
By design, it is assured that the number of products you put into the system are the number you will eventually sell, even if it's not the exact same physical product. And that is totally fine if the products are identical and cost the same. That is the whole point of the commingling system; that the products are meant to be completely interchangeable. There's no accounting magic to be done, you're just tracking the number you sold vs the number you put in.
Because Amazon does not commingle first and third-party inventory and I do not buy, since it is so easy to avoid, from third parties (or drop shippers) unless it is an extremely niche item like a 0.1" to 0.025" 10-pin header adapter.
Unless, of course, they are lying. Do you have evidence they are lying?