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When you\\u2019re the biggest e-commerce company in the world, people love to bag on you. And if you\\u2019re Amazon, sometimes you deserve it.

According to an article in Business Insider, third party sellers accounted for 58 percent of Amazon\\u2019s gross sales in 2018. And the sales can certainly be gross, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal.

That\\u2019s because the WSJ says its reporters, in an attempt to test the oversight of Amazon\\u2019s third-party seller network, were able to successfully sell products via the platform that they\\u2019d found in a dumpster. The outfit says it was following up on reports from dumpster divers that it was \\u201ceasy to list discarded toys, electronics and books on the retailer\\u2019s platform.\\u201d

Reporters obtained the trashed items, cleaned and packaged them, and sent them to by an Amazon warehouse, where they would take advantage of the Fulfillment by Amazon service. This means they would be listed as Eligible for Prime, and hard to distinguish from the products Amazon sells itself. Once they were listed, reporters quickly bought the products back as \\u201ccustomers.\\u201d

One package, they said, even came back in the original box they\\u2019d sent it in \\u2013 not Amazon\\u2019s own packaging \\u2013 and appeared to have been unopened. And it was a food item retrieved from a dumpster at Trader Joe\\u2019s. Trader Joe\\u2019s told the Journal that it doesn\\u2019t approve of any of its products to be sold on Amazon, though the seller\\u2019s account wasn\\u2019t flagged until much later, and nobody confirmed the origins of this new third party seller\\u2019s products.

Following the report, Amazon added to its list of \\u201cunacceptable items\\u201d those intended for destruction or disposal \\u2026 and a spokesperson told the Journal that Amazon expects its sellers to act honestly and fairly, which begs the question: does anybody actually check? Not according to former Amazon compliance director Rachel Greer, who told the Journal there is \\u201cabsolutely nothing stopping you from dumpster diving.\\u201d

We already know Amazon has a counterfeit problem and Business Insider suggests that stories like the Wall Street Journal\\u2019s only compound the problem of growing consumer distrust, saying that as problems continue to crop up, consumers may consider shopping elsewhere. And likewise, from the third party seller side, merchants worried about brand reputation and counterfeit competition may opt not to list their goods with Amazon.

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