I hate how every retailer is starting to turn their online stores into these Chinese marketplaces. Best Buy, The Bay, Walmart, the list goes on. It’s just endless junk being peddled everywhere now in pursuit of endless profits. I feel bad for genuine quality manufacturers who just can’t (and aren’t willing to) compete because everyone is just buying throwaway garbage that ends up in the landfills in record time versus stuff with some semblance of quality.
As a guitarist, for example, never in a million years would I have found Chinese junk products when I played in bands less than 10 years ago. It’s was all brand name music gear from well known companies or small shops run by fellow musicians. Now it’s 90% noisy, poorly built Chinese junk that knocks off the big name gear, and well known outfits are closing up shop or consolidating.
Ottawa resident Arthur Stewart said he was “surprised” and “concerned” to learn a package he returned to Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Mississauga, Ont., was recently being sold at a liquidation store in Toronto — with the shipping label showing his full name, home address and phone number clearly visible.
He’s one of several Amazon shoppers CBC identified whose returned items were being sold at Toronto liquidation stores with their personal information still clearly visible on the packaging — putting them at risk of identity theft, a prominent privacy expert says.
Top Binz, which has two stores in Scarborough and another in Thornhill, buys truckloads of returned and overstocked items from Amazon and other online retailers through a distributor, reselling them to the public at low prices.
But a former provincial privacy commissioner says the situation raises concerns about how online retailers like Amazon — as well as the other companies involved in the liquidation of returned items — are handling personal data.
Spokesperson Barbara Agrait said Amazon doesn’t provide packages directly to resellers like Top Binz, but has contracts with “reputable liquidators” that require them to remove customers’ personal information before re-selling.
Vito Pilieci, a spokesperson for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, said the federal watchdog hasn’t received any complaints about the personal information of online shoppers being on display at liquidation stores.
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We’ve got one of these stores here in the midwest a couple of miles from our house.
I stopped using Amazon years ago, it’s gone from “place to find quality for low cost” to “just another low quality Chinese marketplace”
This is actually so true. It’s like a Chinese market place at higher cost with fast shipping.
I hate how every retailer is starting to turn their online stores into these Chinese marketplaces. Best Buy, The Bay, Walmart, the list goes on. It’s just endless junk being peddled everywhere now in pursuit of endless profits. I feel bad for genuine quality manufacturers who just can’t (and aren’t willing to) compete because everyone is just buying throwaway garbage that ends up in the landfills in record time versus stuff with some semblance of quality.
As a guitarist, for example, never in a million years would I have found Chinese junk products when I played in bands less than 10 years ago. It’s was all brand name music gear from well known companies or small shops run by fellow musicians. Now it’s 90% noisy, poorly built Chinese junk that knocks off the big name gear, and well known outfits are closing up shop or consolidating.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ottawa resident Arthur Stewart said he was “surprised” and “concerned” to learn a package he returned to Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Mississauga, Ont., was recently being sold at a liquidation store in Toronto — with the shipping label showing his full name, home address and phone number clearly visible.
He’s one of several Amazon shoppers CBC identified whose returned items were being sold at Toronto liquidation stores with their personal information still clearly visible on the packaging — putting them at risk of identity theft, a prominent privacy expert says.
Top Binz, which has two stores in Scarborough and another in Thornhill, buys truckloads of returned and overstocked items from Amazon and other online retailers through a distributor, reselling them to the public at low prices.
But a former provincial privacy commissioner says the situation raises concerns about how online retailers like Amazon — as well as the other companies involved in the liquidation of returned items — are handling personal data.
Spokesperson Barbara Agrait said Amazon doesn’t provide packages directly to resellers like Top Binz, but has contracts with “reputable liquidators” that require them to remove customers’ personal information before re-selling.
Vito Pilieci, a spokesperson for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, said the federal watchdog hasn’t received any complaints about the personal information of online shoppers being on display at liquidation stores.
The original article contains 1,066 words, the summary contains 220 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!