is Amazon so-called "marketplace" really a marketplace?

I previously wrote of how bad traders Amazon UK and / or PAM-TECH have failed so far to refund money paid for a product delivered physically damaged and operationally dead-on-arrival.

I think Amazon claim that they are not party to such orders, merely operate a marketplace, and that the contract is between the buyer and purported seller.

If this is to be true, then it should be clear at every stage not only that the seller is a separate entity, but also the exact legal identity of that entity.  This includes the jurisdiction in which the seller is based, the full business name and registered office address, or person's name and address if sold by an individual.  There must be enough information to serve legal papers on the seller, should a dispute arise.  If the seller is in a different jurisdiction from the main Amazon subsidiary purporting to operate this "marketplace" (in this case Amazon UK), then this should certainly be made clear to the prospective buyer.

In this order history, how clear is it that the seller is even (purportedly) an entity other than Amazon themselves? :

 

 

Answer: for me, it's not even detectable, let alone clear.


 

In the Order Details page, we do have "Sold by: PAM-TECH" (and a special reference to "the seller" elsewhere).  It's not prominent.  I had to look carefully to detect it.

How did it look leading up to placing the order?

 

 

Today, it does seem to be a different purported seller from PAM-TECH when I bought it.  The presence of a seller, and thus supposed classification of any sale as being between the buyer and this purported seller, is de-emphasised to the point of only displaying the first few letters of the seller's name.  We have "Dispatches from Those IT Guys - VA..." and "Sold by Those IT Guys - VA...".  The full name, if you click on it, turns out to be "Those IT Guys - VAT Registered - UK".  That sounds better than my situation, in which the purported seller appears to be in France.  I wonder if they know each other.. after mediation by an idiot time-wasting AI, I was allowed to submit a question to Those IT Guys asking:


 

How many people are walking around telling people they "work in AI" because of this garbage?

Looking at the feedback for PAM-TECH, it looks like I'm not the only one assuming I'm dealing with a UK entity.  Stark Shift Ltd writes "1) i bout a mi no it or from UK site for a UK delivery and it is missing a UK power cable".

But the real killer, when it comes to this "marketplace" pretence, is the total lack of any geographical or jurisdictional information on the purported seller's page.  To bring this up I had to hover over PAM-TECH's name on the product page, and then click on the link in the little bubble-up that this brings up.  Again, Amazon failing to do basic hyperlinks properly, but you get there after two steps:


I don't see how Amazon can claim they are operating a marketplace when zero jurisdictional or geographic information is given about the party they are claiming to be the "seller".

In this particular case, as I found out after receiving the faulty item, the purported seller is in France.

As a curiosity, I looked up the proportion of Amazon sales that are Marketplace as opposed to direct sales, and apparently the Bezos crook claimed in 2020 that it was 60%.





 

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