Paul and Rachelle Baron were an Amazon success story. The washable swim diaper they designed for their infant son quickly became a best-selling product as the online retailer’s algorithm worked its magic.
Earlier this year, Amazon instituted a new policy that for the first time lets sellers instruct the company not to resell any returned products.the new policy on LinkedIn and wrote “Better late than never!” “During the returns inspection process, our teams are instructed to open the box every single time and validate the integrity of the inner seal. We are not aware of further incidents with this type of product since these improvements were made several years ago.
They used a credit card to place their first order with a factory in China and launched Beau & Belle Littles on Amazon. Before long, the business had reached $1 million in sales. Even though the diaper had a four-plus-star rating from hundreds of buyers, it was hard to miss the stain photos. More than 100 shoppers upvoted the damaging review as “helpful,” which increased its visibility.“It should be common sense,” Rachelle said. “Why would something like a diaper ever be put back into inventory to be resold?”
Paul recalls spending hours on the phone, getting passed from one department to another. Seller support representatives acknowledged a used diaper had been mistakenly resold, but told him they couldn’t take the review down, he said. Rachelle responded that Amazon shouldn’t resell used diapers, but sometimes it does anyway and that it was beyond their control. She offered her apologies and sent the shopper a replacement.