After being blamed for no reason, Amazon is going to crack down on defective products? !

According to foreign media reports, Amazon was recently rejected by the Intermediate Court in an appeal. In this case, the court ruled that Amazon needs to be responsible for third-party products sold on its platform.

The plaintiff is an ordinary consumer from Pennsylvania, Oberdorf, who purchased a retractable dog leash sold by a third-party seller on Amazon in 2015.

While Oberdorf was walking his dog, something happened to the dog leash. The leash swung back suddenly and hit his eyes, causing Oberdorf to go blind.

As a result, neither Amazon nor Oberdorf himself was able to contact the third-party seller of the dog leash, so Oberdorf filed a lawsuit against Amazon and demanded that Amazon take responsibility.

The court eventually ruled that Amazon was responsible for the incident and had to compensate Oberdorf . Amazon was naturally dissatisfied and immediately appealed to the Intermediate Court, but the court rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.

It seems to be just a successful case of consumer rights protection on the other side of the ocean, so why does it have an impact on us sellers? Let me analyze how serious the impact of this judgment is.

To be honest, we Amazon sellers have seen many similar cases, but they all ended with Amazon’s victory (after all, that’s what the legal departments of large companies do).

For example, the explosion of the self-balancing scooter that caused a lot of controversy last year even caused a customer’s house to be burned down due to the explosion . In the end, the court ruled that Amazon was not liable for compensation in this case.

Amazon has been criticized by the media and consumers for these cases, but its legal department is powerful and consumers will never win if the case goes to court.

As a result, Amazon, which has been domineering for many years, suffered a setback in the Oberdorf case. Don't think that this is just a small accidental incident that will not happen again in the future.

The reality is that because Amazon lost this case, it is very likely that Amazon will not win similar cases in the future!

Why? This has to do with the Anglo-American legal system - the common law system.

In the codified legal system practiced in our country, the most important reference for adjudicating a case is the legal provisions. The judge will first consider the circumstances of the case and the legal provisions when sentencing. The verdicts of other similar cases will not affect the judge's judgment.

The common law system in Britain and the United States is just the opposite. The most important reference is similar incidents that have occurred in the past . Applicable legal provisions will be applied based on the judgments of similar incidents, and the judgment results will most likely be consistent with previous judgments on similar incidents.

In simple terms,

Our country's legal system puts the provisions first, and the case is judged based on what is written in the book , while the UK and the US put past cases first, and the case is judged based on how it was previously judged.

After reading this, you should understand why Amazon's defeat has far-reaching consequences. In the future, when similar incidents occur, Amazon has little chance of winning the case and can only pay compensation.

Don't think that things that can be solved by paying money are not a problem for Amazon. As we all know, in disputes involving large companies and ordinary consumers, foreign fines and compensations are astronomical, just to prevent capital giants from bullying customers.

Even Amazon cannot afford the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in compensation for a single case. Since they cannot win the lawsuit, they can only prevent such incidents from happening in the first place.

That’s why I speculate that Amazon will crack down on defective products on its platform in the future to prevent similar cases from resulting in sky-high claims.

Amazon has not responded to this ruling yet, but I expect that in the future it may implement more stringent security reviews and seller identity checks (to prevent you from being blamed if something goes wrong).

However, at present, Amazon is likely to go through a lengthy appeal process, so it will not have much impact on us in the short term.

Let’s focus on the upcoming Primeday. I’ve prepared a set of tips for you to prepare for Primeday. Please PM me to get them.

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group

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