In a grilling of the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest tech companies, there have been some significant revelations coming out, straight from the horse’s mouth. The US Congress hearing, that lasted just over six and a half hours, saw Amazon’s Jeff Bezos repeatedly questioned on the ethics and standards being followed at Amazon, specially with regards to sellers.
However one peculiar incident, that happened late into the hearing, led Amazon CEO Bezos to admit, that stolen and counterfeit products are being sold across Amazon’s marketplace. What was even more surprising and revealing, was the fact that Bezos’ responses to the questions seemed to show that the company has perhaps lost control over such sellers, with its seller verification systems not competent enough to deal with the ever increasing menace that sellers of stolen and counterfeit goods have become.
In a line of questioning initiated by Congresswoman from Georgia’s 6th congressional district Ms. Lucy Mcbath, she asked Bezos point blank “Are stolen goods sold on Amazon?” To which, Bezos replied, “Congresswoman, not to my knowledge.” But he then changed tune, saying, “There are over a million sellers so I am sure there have been stolen goods sold on Amazon”.
Mcbath further pressed into the question asking Bezos “Really Mr. Bezos? There’s not? You believe there’s not, that surprises me”. To which Bezos stuttered a bit again, saying “With over million sellers, I am sure that it has happened. But certainly, I don’t think its a large part of what we are doing.”
Mcbath again asked point blank, “So basically Mr. Bezos that means you are saying Yes?”. To which Bezos finally responded, “I guess so”.
While it is certainly not news to know stolen and counterfeit goods are selling on Amazon like hot cakes, it is interesting to see Jeff Bezos publicly accepting the same Further, he accepted that his company may not have tight controls in place to stop such things from happening again. When Mcbath further asked whether there is a way to verify if information provided by sellers is accurate, Bezos replied, “I don’t know the answer to your question.”
