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Amazon's Shifting Definition of What Is 'Essential' (themarkup.org) 136

Posted by msmash from the what's-in-a-name dept.
Maddy Varner, reporting for The Markup: On March 17, Amazon informed U.S. sellers that it would no longer accept nonessential products at its warehouses. To the casual shopper, it might have sounded similar to the pledges Amazon has made in Italy, France, and India to stop taking orders from customers entirely for nonessential goods. But examining the fine print reveals that it was nothing of the sort. The original pledge -- which was announced as policy for March 17 to April 5 -- allowed Amazon to ship nonessential items that were already stocked in its warehouse, and sellers could also stock nonessential items in their own warehouses and ship directly to customers.

Amazon defined essential loosely, saying that "most of the products" it would accept were in the categories of "Baby Products," "Health & Household," "Beauty & Personal Care," "Grocery," "Industrial & Scientific," and "Pet Supplies." Since that mid-March announcement, Amazon has quietly relaxed even further its definition of what is essential, while also extending indefinitely the date by which "operations will be fully restored." On March 27, archived snapshots of the page indicated that Amazon would broaden the list of new shipments it would accept from sellers, on an unspecified "item-by-item" basis. As of April 6, in the United States, you could still order a bowling ball, a 10-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress and have them show up at your door within a week. All of the items are described on the website as either "Fulfilled by Amazon" or "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com," and none of the items are in the categories previously deemed essential.
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Amazon's Shifting Definition of What Is 'Essential' More

Amazon's Shifting Definition of What Is 'Essential'

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  • What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jarwulf ( 530523 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @08:49PM (#59923604)
    If the supply chains are intact and they have the space and they're not affecting the flow of important goods why not start restocking even nonessential items? Pretty dumb virtue signaling if you don't have to right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bobby ( 109046 )

      Absolutely agreed. Keeps some of the economy flowing.

      I think it's purely a shortsighted PR stunt.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @09:33PM (#59923682)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by erice ( 13380 )

      If the supply chains are intact and they have the space and they're not affecting the flow of important goods why not start restocking even nonessential items? Pretty dumb virtue signaling if you don't have to right?

      Given that it takes nearly a week to get over the counter medical supplies with Prime, I think the flow of important goods is being affected.

      • Given that it takes nearly a week to get over the counter medical supplies with Prime, I think the flow of important goods is being affected.

        Not necessarily. It could be different warehouses in different cities.

        One of the biggest risk factors for C19 is poverty. Keeping the economy going means keeping paychecks flowing, which helps keep people healthy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjm1231 ( 751545 )

          Right. Those warehouse workers are so very far above the poverty line that not having that warehouse job really puts their health at risk.

      • Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @10:52PM (#59923866)

        >"Given that it takes nearly a week to get over the counter medical supplies with Prime, I think the flow of important goods is being affected."

        Why would you assume that has to do with space in their warehouse? It is far more likely there is a shortage of certain "over the counter medical supplies" that affects Amazon like all other retailers. in such a case, having more empty warehouse space won't help that situation, nor will limiting other types of purchases.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by erice ( 13380 )

          >"Given that it takes nearly a week to get over the counter medical supplies with Prime, I think the flow of important goods is being affected."

          Why would you assume that has to do with space in their warehouse? It is far more likely there is a shortage of certain "over the counter medical supplies" that affects Amazon like all other retailers. in such a case, having more empty warehouse space won't help that situation, nor will limiting other types of purchases.

          I doubt it is literally space in the warehouses but it also isn't a shortage of the supplies either. Lidocaine in various forms is readily available in stores and almost certainly readily available in Amazon warehouses but it is still taking a couple of days or more for them to get the orders ready to ship and days longer to actually deliver. Whatever the reason, Amazon is not able to handle the load. The fewer items that are in their warehouses, the faster they can process orders for things that are in

      • Given that it takes nearly a week to get over the counter medical supplies with Prime, I think the flow of important goods is being affected.

        I ordered some totally non-essential items last week and was given an April 21 delivery date. They arrived two days later.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If the supply chains are intact and they have the space and they're not affecting the flow of important goods why not start restocking even nonessential items?

      For all of the would-be pedants out there this is an example of begging the question; the 'question' in this case being the assumption that supply chains are intact. Given that many nations have adopted isolation and social distancing policies this premise is arguable.

      Pretty dumb virtue signalling if you don't have to right?

      Could be... could be...
      Or it could be that the available workforce is shrinking and there really is a good reason to prioritise packing parcels containing essential items. If this is true then why bother shipping things to a warehouse that is

      • The thing is, stuff isn't uniform. The closest Amazon facility to me only carries large (cribs, TV's, etc) products. No matter if that warehouse is running at 90% of capacity, or 10% of capacity, none of the choices at that warehouse are going to come down to essentials vs non-essentials - its all nonessential. The warehouses aren't homogeneous, so when Amazon says they are accepting more products that weren't originally essential, it doesn't mean other products that are essential are automatically going to
        • And I'll be the first to call Amazon evil. I mentioned my house to give some weight to my every day interaction with this platform, versus someone who sold a textbook and wants to make the same claims that I have done. I'm not a shill for Amazon. We have a punching bag at work with Jeff's face on it.

      • If the supply chains are intact...

        But the last legs of the chains are not intact. Back in the day, like in January, Amazon could and did use cargo space on passenger airline flights to quickly move goods around the country. Now those flights are mostly gone and slow trucks move goods from the large, centralized warehouses to regional distribution centers. That is not only a bottleneck, but a problem that was unforeseen when Amazon was developing its algorithms.

        Hence the lack of apparent reason why sometimes items scheduled to arrive in 21

    • "As of April 6, in the United States, you could still order a bowling ball, a 10-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress and have them show up at your door within a week."

      That's what _I_ ordered.
      Come on, a prom, without rubber chickens and a bowling ball?
      Unthinkable!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 )

      virtue signaling

      Iike to think of such phrases as analogous to bright yellow stripes on insects. It's there to send a strong signal to a casual observer so that they can know something about the poster without the need for further investigation. It's amazing that a mere two words can tell me not only your political proclivities but also that what you say may safely be ignored.

  • Essentiel for Work From Home is not (Score:4, Interesting)

    by denisbergeron ( 197036 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `noregreBsineD'> on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @08:49PM (#59923608)

    My monitor die, I can't order a new one from Amazon because is not essential.

  • A free market system (Score:5, Informative)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @09:14PM (#59923644) Journal
    They have stock thats local and can sell.

    Do you really want some state gov to say what is vital in for state?
    That only food will be allowed to be sent in that state for months?
    A list of approved food in the state?
    Say you need a computer part? The state gov says thats not vital food?
    Part for a truck, van, car, SUV? State gov says thats not approved food that month?
    Clothing? Still not food.
    Food? State gov food expert says that not on the list of approved healthy food.
  • So fucking what? If you're depending on buying groceries from Amazon (other than a local Whole Foods - $$$), you're doing it wrong.

    • Re:Why is this posted? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @09:50PM (#59923732) Homepage Journal

      I'm depending on Amazon because Whole Foods hasn't been able to deliver anything in the South Bay since early March, and Target almost never has delivery slots, nor Instacart, nor any other service that I've tried. Amazon is the delivery method of last resort for those of us who can't take the risk of going to stores regularly and don't want to die of starvation in the wealthiest metro area in America.

      It's not because we're "doing it wrong". It's because the entire Bay Area is imploding under a lack of unskilled service workers to deliver groceries, arising largely out of its comically inflated housing market.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        I spent the last month encouraging people to go shopping and let people required to stay in their homes make use of the limited number of delivery slots.

        Sadly too many people are acting selfishly.

        Not that it's much better if you do go to the shops. Stood for ages waiting to get in, find out the shelves have been stripped bare by the privileged few allowed in first (yes, NHS workers, I fucking mean you, you selfish cunts) and the few items left you're rationed on so you can't buy more than 2-3 days food anyw

      • > the entire Bay Area is imploding under a lack of unskilled service workers

        You could always get them bused in. "Google" [wikipedia.org] does it, right?

      • So, the Bay Area isn't doing delivery wrong, it's doing zoning laws wrong?

  • Of course it will change as they figure out what is actually possible. Amazon is probably the most capable entity in the world of figuring out something like this. If they want to adjust how they process orders based on highly unpredictable priorities then there are very few people in the world who could give them educated advice on how to do it better. We can have mostly academic discussions about what we think "essential" means, but they'll be doing all of this based on hard data and with all of the exper

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by alvian ( 6203170 )
      To be fair to Amazon, their grocery and household items were priced high even before the pandemic

    • >"It was, it is, and it will always be whatever profits Amazon."

      That is how the free market works. What profits Amazon is the reward for giving customers goods and services they want and how/when/where they want it and with the service they demand.

      >"Amazon has said that they will fight against price gouging, but go look at some of the items sold by and shipped from Amazon. Amazon itself is price gouging!!"

      Not necessarily. Economics- supply and demand. If supply lowers and/or demand increases, pric

  • Is a plumber essential? I just got my broken water heater replaced. Having hot water seems pretty important to me. The three weeks ago I had to go into Home Depot to get parts to fix my furnace. I'm glad they were open, even though their hours were restricted and there was a huge line because only a few people were allowed in the store at a time.

    As more and more people get the virus, and more and more recover, we'll broaden the definition of what is essential. My truck has a slow leak, I keep filling the ti

    • Meaning no offence at all, perhaps some good will come of this crisis for you: you'll never forget how important it is to carry a good spare tyre.

      As for haircuts and/or pogonoculture, now is a good time for a bit of DIY. Even if the result is a disaster it will still lighten the mood.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Corbets ( 169101 )

        And a spare battery?

        Spare spark plugs?

        Maybe a spare exhaust in case that breaks?

        You missed the point of his post by focusing on the detail. I’m not one of this folks arguing that the world should open up, far from it, but the lines aren’t black and white.

        • I think is point is that most cars/trucks have the space to carry a spare tire. He should already have one.

          • I think is point is that most cars/trucks have the space to carry a spare tire. He should already have one.

            The point is that things will still break, and the geniuses in government get to decide which parts are "essential".

    • Can't get a haircut? Buy yourself a WAHL clipper kit, something like the Color Pro #3183.

    • Not sure where you live but here car repair facilities are essential. One of them even offer free tyre repair.

  • Okay (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @09:37PM (#59923694)

    ... you could still order a bowling ball, a 10-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress ...

    That sounds like the makings of a great party.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I can see how you could use the ten rubber chickens as bowling pins, but I'm still not clear about the prom dress.

      *confused*

    • > > ... you could still order a bowling ball, a 10-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress ...

      > That sounds like the makings of a great party.

      Depends are they the regular sort or the ones with a pulley?

    • ... you could still order a bowling ball, a 10-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress ...

      That sounds like the makings of a great party.

      I have no mod points but know that your comment made my day.

  • What's essential right now is *flour* (Score:5, Informative)

    by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @09:42PM (#59923702) Homepage Journal

    From what I'm seeing, the main thing that's utterly impossible to buy right now is all-purpose flour. If you want a 50-pound bags, you can get that for about $60 shipped, but it is not possible to buy normal 5-pound quantities except through eBay with extortionate markups. Local stores are all completely out, and *stay* completely out — presumably because everybody who would normally be buying food at stores that purchase 50-pound bags of flour are now cooking things at home, and the market has yet to shift production from manufacturing industrial quantities to individual quantities.

    Amazon, amusingly, has yet to run out, as far as I can tell. However, Amazon's available flour bags are available only via "Amazon Fresh" and "Whole Foods Market" deliveries. Unfortunately, for the past month, it has been impossible to schedule either of those deliveries in the Bay Area, even when looking an entire *month* into the future (which is as far as they'll let you look). Amazon is delivering anywhere from three to eight packages a week to me, but there's no way to get them to deliver flour at the same time. This is SERIOUSLY broken.

    Amazon's entire Fresh model failed utterly, to the point of being utterly unusable, the moment that this lockdown hit, and in spite of promise after promise, things haven't gotten any better. Amazon should really stop wasting time worrying about what is or isn't "essential" in their warehouses, and should instead spend that effort to get their house in order, starting with making it possible to get shipped delivery of every single nonperishable item that they sell through Fresh and Whole Foods Market. Until then, it will continue to be impossible to get most essential items through Amazon (or anywhere else).

    • Amazon is delivering anywhere from three to eight packages a week to me

      We see the problem now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        You mean that Amazon randomly breaks a single order into eight packages? Yeah, that's part of the problem.

    • Wholesale food supply is still flowing, I can still buy flour.

      You're just in an area with poor local logistics.

      • Wholesale food supply might be available, but that is 16kg or 25kg bags without full retail labelling.

        The supply lines to pack (with correct labelling) and distribute 1kg, 1.5kg, etc., are extremely overloaded.

        Meanwhile, the wholesale food supply is not set up for many small deliveries - and one sack of flour is a small delivery to them. They expect a van full of stuff to deliver to commercial premises, not one line item to your house and another line item to my house and so on. So even the wholesale delliv

      • You're just in an area with poor local logistics.

        Or hoarders.

        • Oh, right, they have McMansions with 12 car garages down there, that's where it all went.

          Get together some friends. Figure out who the biggest hoarders in your neighborhood are, ask your friends if anybody knows how to get them to "share" their stockpile.

          I'm probably not even joking.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cederic ( 9623 )

      The shortage of flour is less the availability of flour itself and more the limited capacity of the 5lb (or in the UK, the 1kg) bag filling machines.

      Flour has a long shelf life, if it's that important to you just buy the 50lb bag. Hell, find 5-6 people on your street that also want flour and split the cost with them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        The shortage of flour is less the availability of flour itself and more the limited capacity of the 5lb (or in the UK, the 1kg) bag filling machines.

        Well, that combined with the limited amount of stock on hand resulting from everybody switching to zero-inventory just-in-time fulfillment to save money, yes. :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      Haven't had any issue getting flour. Check out yeast though ...

      Also going on a month of no toilet paper ANYWHERE.

      Shipping shit on Amazon right now estimates at least a month out. Not sure where the article author lives but it sounds like bullshit to me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Shipping shit on Amazon right now estimates at least a month out. Not sure where the article author lives but it sounds like bullshit to me.

        What I've seen is that some products have really long lag time, while other products that are nearly identical don't. Delivery times for anything coming directly from China are measured in months now, and products coming from distant warehouses take a couple of weeks. Products from the nearest warehouse are mostly about four-ish days instead of two, but they're still

    • So it's impossible to get unless you buy a lot of it?

      That's a value of impossible with which I am not familiar.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Most people can barely even lift a 50-pound bag of flour, much less find a place to store one. It's impossible to get flour here in quantities that are feasible for home use.

  • 10-pack of rubber chickens (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bohnanza ( 523456 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @09:48PM (#59923724)
    I don't want to live in a world where this is not essential

  • OK ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @10:04PM (#59923760) Journal

    ... well, it's hard for me to get too outraged, since my state considers marijuana shops (the kind with the signs that say "high there!") to be essential.

    Oh, and you can go jogging, to crowded trails and sidewalks. You just can't go to work.

    The whole thing is like a big Monty Python skit. Only not as funny.

    • Weed stores here are doing telephone orders with curbside delivery, minimal contact.

  • as long as amazon is delivering essential things I'm glad I could also order and get the cable and mic headset I needed for videoconferencing while I'm working at home, even if delayed a bit. Silly me, at the start of march I was stocking up on essentials while idiots around me had only toilet paper in their carts, I forgot about a longer usb cable. About two weeks later those shoppers started thinking about canned meat and beans and such, the morons.

  • My NAS is suddenly throwing SMART messages, bad enough I need another drive Right Frickin Now. A 2 drive NAS with RAID 1 is suddenly really important to me, and it's not like I can drive to Best Buy (closed), Walmart (2 hour + lines, they're gonna have a RAID 1 box?), or Target (ditto).

    I won't even ask (OK, I'm asking) why a portable hard drive costs 50% more when you add a network connection (yeah I know it's not a RAID, it's just a simple/cheap replacement for my 8 y/o NAS).

    I'm rambling, it's late,
    • Do you have any old hard drives? If so, you could buy a cheap external enclosure, such as this one; https://www.newegg.com/orico-2... [newegg.com]

      I use old drives as a secondary backup for important data. I have one of those dual-bay top loaders and keep it with the drives, unplugged and put away. For the short term, it might be best for you to just go the cheap enclosure and reused hard drive route, and when you're financially ready to fix your NAS, you'll be in better shape going forward, as you'll have a backup.

  • There are three pieces of the puzzle:

    1 - First the sellers need to procure the goods from suppliers. Currently we are lacking the supply for many "essentials", like toiler paper, cleaning, diapers, and so on.

    2 - Then they ship it to Amazon, and Amazon processes the incoming package in the warehouse. This process usually takes about a week, and this is where Amazon had made the change.

    3 - The last part is shipping to the buyers. This does not seem to have changed, except once outside the warehouse it is now

  • So What. Cheeseburgers and quesadillas are "essential" in most places, and restaurant workers are going to work every day without any protection or distancing from each other, even where they've been forced to close their dining rooms. I can't believe they've been allowed to remain open, since it is almost impossible for any restaurant to operate normally and keep workers safe. Most haven't even tried to do anything for their staff other than posting signs. Of course it isn't surprising that poor and entry-

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cederic ( 9623 )

      quesadillas are "essential"

      Damn right too.

      Not that you can get a decent quesadilla in this forsaken country. I have to make my own.

  • A girls dream: To get her prom dress from Amazon

  • Ok, so you can't go out. You can't get reception for a cell phone even if you wanted to pay the extra $900-1200 price tag / year for one. Now something happens to your lifeline -- a computer part essential to it functioning goes down -- be it a monitor, a disk controller, keyboard, whatever -- any part of a computer which is increasingly becoming a lifeline for people HAS to be considered essential.

    Feet going numb due to falling nerve functionality due to spinal issues -- try to order some floor padding t

  • So yeah in canada, same thing. Only shipping "essential" items. All other items are shipped a month out. However you can pay 7.99 as a prime member and have basically anything shipped to you with less delay.

    This is a cash grab, pure and simple. I have also heard that their orders are up 50x and they can't possibly keep up, which is why they want people to believe the "essential" BS and order less.

    I desperately needed some specialty bolts not available locally, and had them in less than a week after i paid t

  • Beware (Score:2)

    by dcw3 ( 649211 )

    Well, be careful what and who you order from. We just received delivery of what was supposed to two boxes (two sizes) of rubber gloves. They arrived in a couple of unmarked (including the size) plastic bags, and appear to be super thin compared to any I've previously used. I expect super thin from Trojan, but not this.

  • "Several workers" testing positive in France doesn't sound like much. It would be nice to know the numbers.

    In the US operation, every report I've seen of their numbers indicate their infection rate has stayed lower than the general population if not much lower. They seem to be doing a lot right in educating their workers if they are managing to work and yet have an infection rate that is lower than the 1 in 500ish rate of the nation in general. If they just kept the US warehouse infection rate to be the sam

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