Reuters:
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled against Amazon in a case that could expose the online retailer to lawsuits from customers who buy defective products from third-party vendors through its website.
Numerous other courts, including two federal appeals courts, have held that Amazon cannot be held liable as a seller of products from third-party vendors. The new ruling from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, which reversed a lower court decision, appeared to be the first to buck that trend.
This is potentially good news for those of us who have been taken advantage of by third-party resellers.
So, same all these marketplace store (I am looking at you Walmart, Best-Buy, Staples. etc..)
It is so difficult to just filter thing physically available at the store.
I know this is real-world, but will the ruling be a precedent for making Apple liable for App Store Apps?
Good. Amazon has been enabling them for years.
They’ll just ban or drastically restrict 3rd parties. This is actually problematic since it will likely hurt a lot of smaller and medium sized resellers.
At the same time, if this addresses the rampant fraud… it’s a good thing.
I doubt it. Apple will already refund you in the event of fraud, won’t they?
if they have to vet products in a similar way that retailers like Target or Walmart do, I dont see a problem with that.
it’s not necessarily a problem for large retailers but they won’t do it for smaller ones, they’ll just boot them off. This isn’t a problem for Amazon and perhaps not for Amazon’s customers but it is for small retailers who also sell though Amazon for the traffic.
Some people sell off their own site but also on Amazon because so many people go to Amazon for everything… those people are likely going to either lose that channel or face a pretty high bar or onerous terms to remain.
Also – what are the limits of a retailer’s liability? If I buy a computer at Best Buy and it catches fire, is Best Buy on the hook for that? SHOULD they be when it’s not possible for them to control the product quality?
Finally it might help cut down on Amazon’s intentionally allowing counterfeiters to rip us off.
There is no comparison to what Amazon does. My policy is never buy anything from the App Store that I can elsewhere because of sandboxing. But sandboxing is not fraud.
Maybe it’s time for sellers to get together and build a new ecommerce site that doesn’t carry Amazon’s baggage. Then market the heck out of it. I’d definitely give it a chance, even if prices weren’t any better than Amazon’s, or even a bit higher.
The problem is that it won’t work…. for a couple of reasons. First, how do you really organize thousands of smaller businesses to build something like this? Then there’s decision making and governance… who drives the design and features? How is growth funded? Who makes the calls on how things are displayed? etc etc.
Running an Amazon-scale commerce site isn’t something you can do part time, either, so you need a full company to do this… how is that governed?
Of course, there are marketplaces etc for some kinds of smaller sellers – Etsy, Ebay, etc. But for better or worse, people turn to Amazon, esp if you have Prime because it’s stupidly convenient.