Amazon could soon be on the hook for safety of third-party products it sells and ships — Government order could classify it as a distributor, potentially exposing it to more legal claims

Darkassassin07 , 5 months ago

Relevant; Louis Rossman on Amazon product quality/safety:

(pt1) https://youtu.be/y83BS_mK9GE

(pt2) https://youtu.be/B90_SNNbcoU

Pika , 5 months ago

Wait Amazon isn't classified as a distributor? wtf that's litterally it's entire buisness model

Blackmist , 5 months ago

Good.

If you're taking a whacking great percentage of everything you sell, you need to be held accountable for the fraudulent, fake and outright dangerous shit that you can buy from it. It's literally just AliExpress with better delivery times.

Like, I know that 2TB USB stick for £21 is fake, but the poor grandma backing up all her photos to it doesn't until it goes over the amount of storage that's actually in it and the whole thing corrupts.

_sideffect , 5 months ago

Hahaha good, fuck bezos and fuck amazon.

When they first started, Amazon really did have great products, but now it's just overpriced reverse engineered low QA crap.

Masamune , 5 months ago

Hey, low QA crap isn't a fair assessment. I recently bought something that had absolutely NO QA behind it.

Squizzy , 5 months ago

How in the name of God are they not a distributor?

blackfire , 5 months ago

I think distributor normally sends to other business rather than gen pop. I might be wrong though.

Squizzy , 5 months ago

They do VAT receipts in my country, that's B2B

grayman , 5 months ago

Well all they do is take in bulk shipments of, categorize, store, individually package, ship, and deliver products. I just really don't see how you could call that "distributing" goods. /s

AlexWIWA , 5 months ago

Finally. They sell ship loads of dangerous and faulty wares

breakingcups , 5 months ago

About fucking time. They've known about the massive problems for years and haven't acted.

alphacyberranger , 5 months ago

Rossman would be pleased.

Mango , 5 months ago

Louis Rossmann will be happy to hear this.

Sanctus , 5 months ago

I mean, how is it not a distributor? Honest question, all those trucks sure do look like they are distributing products.

Shadow , 5 months ago

Typically a distributor deals to stores that deal to end users.

Amazon call themselves a store, but at their scale and volume they're pretty much a distributor.

Gormadt , 5 months ago

Not even pretty much, they really are a distributor

They have many different businesses all selling on their shelves and then Amazon ships you the product

watson387 , 5 months ago

Amazon is the American Aliexpress.

brbposting , 5 months ago

Nooo the businesses are truly totally independent!

Amazon just handles:

• marketing (choosing who gets the “buy box”)
• warehousing
• fulfillment in their own trucks
• some customer service
• transaction processing / disbursement

Am I forgetting anything? Besides the disclaimer that sellers don’t have to use Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) and could ship themselves.

I could be more sympathetic if they just changed the user interface to put seller names front and center. Even keeping FBA. Even if eBay handled warehousing and fulfillment, we’d still think of it as more of a platform than Amazon - right?

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/a1f51c1e-0817-4ab3-9d43-a60367c97dd2.jpeg

Hidden too deep.

(Interesting, eBay announced “Managed Delivery in 2019, but pulled the plug before launch. They do still help you ship internationally.)

LodeMike , 5 months ago

So section 802(?) but for e-commerce not social media.

kittenzrulz123 , 5 months ago

Maybe then they'll stop selling male to male extension cords

Xavier , 5 months ago

What‽ Why would such a thing exist ??? 🤔

Testing your electrical panel? and how fast the firefighters are to get to your house?

ocassionallyaduck , 5 months ago

Ob it's far stupider and more deadly: hooking up your personal little generator so you can backfeed electricity to your house during a power outage.

It's even more stupid and deadly than it sounds.

variants , 5 months ago

Don't you need one of those to use your tesla as a house generator

Gormadt , 5 months ago

There's a specific process and kind of panel you need to back feed power into your home

Basically your panel needs to have it setup so that it can either be powered by the generator or the grid. 1 or the other but never both at the same time.

abhibeckert , 5 months ago

Um, no. Normally you would use a regular male to female extension cable for that. Your electrical panel would have a male plug on the wall which is specifically wired up to safely provide power to your home.

Ferris , 5 months ago

teslas specifically don't generate electricity

what is going on in this thread?

fkn , 5 months ago

"As a" implies knowledge that it is not a generator but can effectively be used as one.

brbposting , 5 months ago

RIP power company linemen who’ve checked the power’s cut off, ‘til somebody pulls that stunt

Pika , 5 months ago

this is sadly actually one of the largest use cases, it's called a dead-mans cable (for good reason) but it's how many northern residents run generators in the winter during power outages. Cheaper then running a bypass switch (which can easily be 300-500$ to buy plus install cost) by a huge margin. They just throw the main breaker prior to running the generator. It shouldn't be done but it happens more frequently then you would expect especially in the antiqued houses that may not even be up to code in the first place

captain_aggravated , 5 months ago

"I ran my Christmas lights without paying attention, and now the plug is on the wrong end. Can I just have a male to male so I can feed them the wrong way?"

phoneymouse , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Saw a YouTube video about it. It’s not a big deal. You can plug them into an outlet and it’s fine.

https://youtu.be/H-4mvK2FW78?si=YDSQ8a98mAoQq1OE

kittenzrulz123 , 5 months ago

Fun fact: when you plug in one side of a male to male connector the other becomes hot, if you somehow manage to plug it in you WILL fuck up your electrical system

phoneymouse , 5 months ago

https://youtu.be/H-4mvK2FW78?si=YDSQ8a98mAoQq1OE

EtherWhack , 5 months ago

Or adapters to plug a 30A device into a 15A receptacle

Landless2029 , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

I've seen these used in low income homes where the basement electricity is paid by the landlord for coin operated washers. Then someone gets their electricity cut (lack of payment) so they use these cables to jump the outlets and steal electricity from the landlord.

The dude just went to a hardware store and bought an extension cable and a replacement plug head. Snipped the female end and added the male in like 5 minutes.

The only practical usage of those things is jumping a generator to a house during a blackout.

Edit: yes please bring on the down votes for me sharing a story about how the poor use these scary cables. Real nice.

fkn , 5 months ago

And that "practical use" kills linemen.

Landless2029 , 5 months ago

I think the correct way to jump is to flip your main so you're disconnected. I'm probably talking out of my ass tho.

I don't own a generator nor have the need. Just basing this on what I've seen in the wild.

theneverfox , 5 months ago

The more correct way is to install a switch that does that, so you can be connected to the grid or to the generator, not both. It's basically what you said, but it doesn't trust users to remember to do it correctly

Landless2029 , 5 months ago

Does such a switch exist?

theneverfox , 5 months ago

It does, there's even automatic ones so you can have the generator kick in after a second or two without power and shut off when the grid comes back up

I watched a video on it a week or two ago, I think the general term would be an interlock

fkn , 5 months ago

Yes, in theory that would work. But they actually make main disconnect switches for this in the event that the main breaker fails. It's a mandatory install in all grid tie electrical generator systems (including solar).