alt Hacker NewsThis feels gross. If the manufacturers are not held accountable, then they will never stop making shite products. If the retailers are knowingly selling shite products, then sure. But most of the time, retailers are just selling products they think customers will want to buy. Lots of shite products get returned to the manufacturer when the retailers cannot move them, or other issues arise from the products.
The retailers are the front line for returns as that's the point of contact for the customer. That's just the nature of the beast. If a company establishes itself as a maker of decent products that retailers can trust suddenly gets lazy/cheap/profit focused to the point they cheapen their products, it is not the retailer's fault.
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> If the manufacturers are not held accountable
How does a customer of a retailer hold a manufacturer accountable when they have no relationship with said manufacturer?
> But most of the time, retailers are just selling products they think customers will want to buy.
I don't think retailers are nearly as helpless or unwitting as that. Amazon definitely know they have unsafe products on the shelves no matter how dumb they may play.
> The retailers are the front line for returns as that's the point of contact for the customer
They're also the front line for consumer safety reporting, by law. All companies (not only retailers, actually) have a statutory duty to report unsafe consumer goods, even in the US, and not only for CPC/GCC certified goods. When a customer reports an unsafe product to their retailer, the retailer should forward this information, along with batch codes, origins, sourcing information etc (which the customer obviously will not know). This is the early-warning system that leads to things like recalls, withdrawals and so on, before something causes widespread harm.
The _retailer_ has the relationship with the manufacturer and will need to return the returns to them and get a refund.
> This feels gross. If the manufacturers are not held accountable, then they will never stop making shite products. If the retailers are knowingly selling shite products, then sure. But most of the time, retailers are just selling products they think customers will want to buy. Lots of shite products get returned to the manufacturer when the retailers cannot move them, or other issues arise from the products.
Retailers shrugging their shoulders is what I would call gross. You shouldn't sell a product to the public that you're not willing to stand behind. Retailers have a lot more ways to protect themselves from from shoddy manufacturers - and, fundamentally, operate at the kind of scale where they can do so - than customers have to protect themselves from shoddy anything.