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Ok, how do you know if something is clean, safe, and resonable if it comes out of a dumpster? A kids toy could have biohazard material on it, that is disgusting.



As long as it is sold as used it as wouldn’t be any different really to the potential contaminates that could be on anything second hand.


Eh I’d expect a used item to be sitting in some secondhand store or someone’s basement but not literally next to a pile of trash covered in cockroaches and rat poop.


It could have that coming out of the factory. How would you know? Do you personally conduct inspections?

Not every dumpster is filled with expired vegetables or used heroin needles. Some are just full of discarded products.


> Do you personally conduct inspections?

What a dishonest argument. Pointlessly contrarian.

The whole point of having vetted suppliers is that they've been vetted, so that their output's QA is authorized by a regulatory body. Sure it's possible to sneak past that but it's very hard to do so. Dumpsters don't have QA.

Amazon is performing a negligible vetting process in a race to the bottom.


> Amazon is performing a negligible vetting process in a race to the bottom.

I suspect this is exactly astrodust's point. Amazon ain't doing any meaningful vetting, so unless you're doing your own inspections, you have effectively zero reliable way to know whether or not your brand-new toy is going to give your child radiation sickness.

Nothing dishonest about that argument at all.


Yeah technically that is true but using the same logic you could say, "since no one is doing QA on swimming pool water I can fill my pool with used toilet water and not tell anyone."


More like "I can fill my pool with water that was at one point toilet water and has since been filtered and not tell anyone", and this (on that note) would be the reality in the case of virtually (if not literally) every single swimming pool.

That is: your pool water is statistically near-certain to have had animal (human or otherwise) excrement or heavy metals or soap/disinfectants or some other contaminant in it at some point in its existence at at least some proportion, and you're trusting your municipal water utility (or your septic field, if you live out in the boonies) to filter that out before it's delivered to be your pool/drinking water.

In this analogy, Amazon is the municipal water utility, and you live in Flint, MI.


No. Used toilet water is definitely dirty and unsafe.

Something from a dumpster may be perfectly clean, and a lot of people take stuff from the trash, and as long as it's not been in contact with gross stuff that's not a problem.

Nobody reuses toilet water.


Actually, here in the USA we reuse our toilet water. We have water treatments. It's a wonderful thing. https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/public/water_treat...


Yep, that's about right, except that Amazon is filling your swimming pool.


The problem with their argument is they are implying its the fault of the consumer, not amazon.


That's a rather uncharitable reading of that comment, and not at all how I read it.


The whole reason of buying a product from a company you "trust" is that they aren't giving you dumpster trash.


Presumably the factory's reputation would suffer, their manufacturing dries up and folds. Any consequences from a one-off sale by a third party are borne by the official source and Amazon. Which is the confusing part for me: why does Amazon not care about their reputation hit from enabling fraudulent third parties?


Third parties have been selling junk (figuratively and literally) on Amazon for years. Yet people still buy it in vast quantities. Why would Amazon change?




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