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It may turn out that you buy any rubbish on Amazon - and literally

Fans of digging in the garbage say that through Amazon it is easy to sell discarded toys, electronics and books for sale. We also decided to try.




Almost anyone can open their store on Amazon.com and sell just about anything. Ask, for example, lovers of digging in the trash.

These are some of the most dedicated sellers on Amazon. They rummage in what other people throw out, including directly garbage bins, clean the things found there and sell them on the Amazon platform. Many document the process of such a video hunt and share it on YouTube.

These people avoid publicity. Many of those whom WSJ tried to contact refused to share details about their sales, said that they had stopped doing this, or no longer put them up for sale as "new" ones, did not respond to requests, or unexpectedly stopped communicating. Some said they were afraid that Amazon would close their stores.

Therefore, we decided to independently verify these statements. Our reporters went to rummage around in several New Jersey cities and took out dozens of discarded items, including a stencil, scrapbooking paper, and an unopened jar of Trader Joe's lemon paste.

Then we opened a store on Amazon to find out if we can put some of our products as new.

It turned out that this is pretty easy to do.


We got this lemon paste from the trash can near the Trader Joe's store.

When we revealed the existence of our store last month, an Amazon spokesman said store rules do not prohibit the direct sale of garbage products. The rules require that most of the goods be new, and note that sellers can offer used books, electronics, etc. if they mark their condition accordingly.

“Sellers are responsible for meeting Amazon’s high standard for product quality,” a company spokeswoman told us. She said that our examples of stores with goods collected from the trash are “rare exceptions.” And she added: “We are investigating these cases and will take appropriate measures against unscrupulous sellers.”

She refused to comment on our store.

Amazon reported last week that it had updated its rules and explicitly prohibited the sale of items found in garbage, adding to the list of items unacceptable for sale “items intended to be destroyed or eliminated or otherwise marked as unsuitable for sale by the manufacturer, supplier or seller” .

Control problem


Amazon's control over third-party stores, uniting customers with millions of sellers from around the world, is limited. The company says it’s not responsible for what they sell, and in the courts explains that it’s not Amazon itself that sells products specified by third parties.

“You have an internal saying: we will accept any product unless it is on fire,” said James Thomson, who helped develop the Fulfillment By Amazon code of practice for Amazon to deliver third-party goods before leaving the company in 2013. He is currently advising brands with their own Amazon account. From his point of view, "in fact, consumers themselves are involved in tracking order on the platform."

An Amazon spokeswoman said Thomson’s allegations are “clearly false.” Thomson said he was not going to give them up.

Wade Coggins from Beaverton, Oregon, said he was looking for products to sell on Amazon in sales departments, abandoned warehouses, and in trash bins. He says he used boxes and packing tape found in the garbage to pack his orders.

He said that in such cases it is necessary to remove stains, and added that some people wrap the goods with vacuum film to make them look better. “If you sell junk on Amazon,” he said, “it needs to look brand new.”

Coggins showed us one store on Amazon and said that he has one more that he did not want to show us. An Amazon spokeswoman said the company was unable to find signs of a second store.

To sell products at Amazon Prime, a subscription that offers fast and free shipping, third-party sellers ship items to Amazon's warehouse, where the company itself deals with packaging, delivery, and return. Amazon logos are often visible on boxes and labels. Sellers themselves can directly send goods to customers, from home or from a warehouse, and participate in the Prime program if they register in the Seller Fulfilled Prime program.


Jesse Durphy in his garage with things that, he said, he got in the trash, and now he will sell online, including and on Amazon

A 49-year-old salesman David Gracie, reselling, among other things, new goods bought from stores and individual brands at sales, said his business partner in 2016 was engaged in mining in garbage bins in Austin, Texas. Among the mined were humidifiers and keyboards. The Gracie store on Amazon has been selling similar items for over a year under the Amazon Prime program. He says that since then he has not traded finds from the trash.

He said that it would be unpleasant for him to sell certain types of garbage collected - for example, food - but “Amazon will not ask you, 'Where did you get them?” Have you found them in the trash? ”

'DJ Co' opens a store


Amazon says it requires sellers to provide IDs and uses a “system that analyzes hundreds of unique reference points in the data to identify potential risk,” and that the company “proactively blocks suspicious stores.”

Our magazine filed an application to open a store on the Amazon platform in September, sending a scan of the driver’s license of one of the reporters and bank details. Two days later, the DJ Co store was opened.

The welcome email read: "Welcome to the Welcome to Fulfillment by Amazon program." The magazine subscribed to the program at a rate of $ 39.9 / month, and also paid for additional services, including storage.

A few days before the opening of the store, our reporters in the evening, armed with flashlights and blue latex gloves, rummaged in the garbage bins located at office outlets of stores (for example, needlework or grocery stores) in several cities of the state of New Jersey.

There was a lot of broken glass and crumpled boxes in the wet garbage in the tanks, and they smelled of rot. However, there were also several products, partly in packaging, partially stained with coffee, moldy berries or juice.

Among the obtained values ​​were: a set of stencils, a sheet of paper for scrapbooking and lemon paste with a shelf life of up to May 2020.

We cleaned and packed these items — a jar of pasta was wrapped in a sticky cloth and scotch tape — and sent them to Amazon's Pennsylvania warehouse in September-October last year. We filled out all the necessary forms, entering the codes of these products, which were written next to the barcodes.

Amazon did not ask about the origin of the product or its expiration date.

Soon, our garbage extraction was on the Amazon Prime logo sales page and could be bought by millions of people - including a position such as Trader Joe's Imported English Authentic Lemon Paste, 10.5 oz. For $ 12.00.


Items we found in trash cans were put up for sale and shipped to Amazon

After another raid on garbage cans, we were able to almost completely fill out and add to the list of goods for sale pastilles we obtained for freshening our breath, sunflower seeds, marmalade, bread, fig oil, olives, a hair band and a Halloween mask. But we did not send these items to the Amazon warehouse, which was necessary to put them up for sale on the site.

To put up sunscreen lotion for sale, Amazon asked for a safety certificate. When we tried to put protein powder, dietary supplements based on pea powder and a face mask on the market — we found all this in the trash — Amazon requested proof of purchase.


We made a sale of these items found in the trash, but did not send them to Amazon

Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokeswoman for Trader Joe's, said the store does not approve the sale of its products on Amazon, and that the company throws the product away if it is not suitable for sale. Michaels store spokeswoman Mallory Smith said: “We do not approve the sale of goods from the store by third parties without permission.”


These items could not be put up for sale - they required safety certificates

Broken things


Amazon forces warehouse workers to pay attention to problematic products, and computers instruct them to conduct spot checks. Some former employees said that the daily volume of inspections can be too large, and they can’t cope with it - sometimes an employee gets to scan hundreds of items per hour.

“Most often, I simply ignored the broken items,” said Chris Grantham, who worked in several positions at Amazon’s warehouses in Ruskin, Florida, until 2017 — including the position of quality inspector.

He said that Amazon appreciates speed over accuracy and punishes workers who do not meet productivity standards. Sometimes employees change expiration dates on products that have already expired on a computer so as not to bother with the complex process of writing them off. This method was discussed by several warehouse employees in a closed group on Facebook for Amazon employees, which our editors watched.

An Amazon spokeswoman said that workers have the authority to reject products of inappropriate quality, and that the company has “carried out many inspections during the inventory and product selection process to maintain quality standards.” As for the requirements for employee productivity, she said that “their effectiveness is measured and evaluated over long periods of time.”

Jesse Durphy said that he used Amazon to sell toys, video games, electronics and all kinds of trinkets found in trash, including garbage dumps at Michaels and GameStop stores. This 26-year-old resident of Torrington, Connecticut, said that he liked most of all to search for products that could be sold on Amazon at his city dump. He said that he spreads the found things with the characteristic “used”, and did not give us the address of his store, out of fear that other sellers might sabotage it.


“I started rummaging through the trash because I didn’t have the money to buy the product,” said Durfy.

On a YouTube video from 2017, he tests the TV remote control, which he said was found in the trash, and tells the audience that traces of batteries in the compartment for them can be washed off with soda and water.

He says he opened a store on Amazon six years ago, when he realized that it was much more profitable to resell things than make money. “I started rummaging through the trash because I didn’t have the money to buy the goods,” he said, and then added to this the purchase of goods in economy stores and on sales, which he then sells on Amazon.

“I walked around the pawn shops, I rummaged through the trash,” he said. “I am one of those who are ready for anything.”

Abusive comments


In internal forums for Amazon sellers, some of them are worried about garbage appearing on the site. One, in a post entitled "lovers of digging in the trash, filled the category of cosmetics" writes that the sale of these products of poor quality caused complaints about products that he and other sellers in this category were selling.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the seller’s opinion that this category was “flooded” is “wrong and unfounded.”

To find out if this topic is causing concern for Amazon customers, we analyzed about 45,000 comments posted on Amazon in 2018-2019. About 8400 comments on 4300 products from the sections “food”, “cosmetics” and “medicines without a prescription” contain keywords that indicate that the product was not sealed, it expired, it was strangely sticky or there were other problems with the product of a similar nature.

About 544 of these 4,300 products were advertised in the Amazon's Choice section, which many customers see as a sign of quality or endorsement by the company. On the Amazon website it is written that such a mark reflects a combination of factors - rating, prices and delivery time.

Among the 4,300 products we reviewed, 241 products — including ibuprofen generic, Sun Chips, and a face lotion marked as Amazon's Choice — had at least 5 comments from different people that said the product was used or expired shelf life.

One reviewer said that the ordered lipstick came to her without packaging, rumpled and moldy. Five said they found a fungus on their protein bars. One wrote: “My daughter ate a few of them, and today she called me to the kitchen, to show that on the bar, from which she had already eaten half, MOLD !!!”

Last year, Eileen Anastassopoulos bought applesauce with grapes from one of Amazon's third-party sellers. It turned out that the expiration date of the soft mashed sachets expired seven months before. Eileen, a 39-year-old mother, left a review with a photograph, which shows that the expiration date is indicated as “November 2017”.

According to her, after her complaint, Amazon sent her a new order, but "if I had not been careful and checked the expiration dates, my son might have problems." We did not find her seller, but we found another seller of the same puree, with reviews, judging by which, he is selling damaged goods with an expired shelf life.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the company is looking at consumer reviews and taking action as necessary. She commented on our findings as follows: "the number of reviews that indicate problems with the quality of the goods is less than 0.01% of the total number of reviews for this product."

According to her, Amazon uses “a combination of AI and manual checks to track product quality and security issues in the store,” and that if the product does not fit the recommendations, Amazon “will take the necessary measures against the seller, including, possibly, deleting his account records. "

Amazon customers are not always completely free to choose from whom they buy the product. By default, the so-called. “Mixing” - when a client thinks that he is buying from one seller, but in the end the goods come from another. This can happen when the product arrived at a warehouse located closer to the customer.

The representative said that such a process "allows Amazon to efficiently process, execute, and deliver orders."

Refunds on sale


Third-party stores of one of the types that can be found on Amazon buy their assortment from liquidation companies - these are large boxes the size of a bathtub, filled with goods seized from the warehouses or shelves of large retail stores, as well as goods returned after purchase. Often such goods are scattered around in a box, and no one checks them.


Heather Hooks, 40, buys boxes from liquidation companies and resells them to Amazon

Heather Hooks, 40, said she had already sold thousands of products to Amazon on liquidators such as Lego sets, Tylenol tablets, Hanes underwear, and Maybelline cosmetics. According to her estimates, approximately 75% of the goods that she buys do not have any problems, and she sells such goods as new. She sells the rest through eBay and other sites, honestly noting their status.

Sellers say that on eBay, restrictions on which product is considered “second-hand” are less stringent. An eBay spokesman said the site requires sellers to accurately describe things, including whether they were in use or if they were damaged.

Hooks, who lives near St. Louis, said she earns more than $ 20,000 a year by selling products on Amazon this way and posting a business blog on her on YouTube. On the page of her personal store there are hundreds of goods - toys, sweets, toiletries, cosmetics and clothes. About three years ago, Amazon temporarily froze its sales, as one of the brands complained that it sold their products, not being an authorized seller.



“Now I’m very meticulously approaching this issue,” she said, saying that she was studying each product for package integrity and all components. “Even if there is a small dent in it, I will not sell it anymore.”

Regarding digging in the trash, she said that “this is not mine,” but that “some people consider the purchase of liquidation goods to be something like this.”

In a closed forum for Amazon sellers, one of them complained that Amazon itself was reselling the returned goods. This seller earns on earrings, and in May 2018 wrote a post stating that Amazon sometimes repackages goods returned by customers and returns to warehouse shelves, if approved by its employees. The seller wrote that he asked Amazon to stop reselling the returned earrings, but in response he was told that since the company checks all returned items, there is nothing wrong with that.

“I hope one day I’ll stop panicking,” the seller wrote, “every time a couple of earrings are returned to me that Amazon sends them to someone else, along with unhygienic diseases in the kit.”

An Amazon spokeswoman said the company carefully checks all returns "and all items that fall back on shelves under the guise of new ones meet the same high standards as goods received directly from the manufacturer."

Some sellers say they buy rejections rejected on Amazon from the liquidators, and then sell them again on Amazon. Amazon says it works with liquidators, and that items that satisfy their rules can be sold again on Amazon.

Lemon paste


The three products we found in the garbage dump, put up for sale through Amazon in the DJ Co store, we immediately bought ourselves - so that no one else would.



Everyone came to us with the return address of the Kentucky Amazon warehouse. Someone bent a set of stencils. The paper reached without a problem. They arrived in packaging from Amazon, and not in the one in which we sent them.

Lemon paste came in the same packaging that we used when sending and we, in an untouched bumble and adhesive tape. Amazon just stuck their own sticker on top of ours.

DJ Co store remained open until last week, however, without any goods.

Amazon said on Friday that it had updated the rules to prohibit the sale of items found in garbage. A store spokeswoman said: “Garbage collection has never met Amazon’s high expectations from sellers, and is prohibited by the store’s code of seller behavior. The code requires honest and fair work from sellers. We updated our rules to more explicitly prohibit such behavior. ” When asked about how Amazon was going to force people to follow this rule, the spokeswoman said the store has stepped up efforts to confirm the origin of goods, including increasing random checks on origin documents.

On Saturday, we received an email from Amazon:
“Your account has been closed due to violation of seller’s rules and code of conduct. We learned that your products were obtained by you in a manner that did not meet the high requirements of the store, designed to maintain the trust and safety of Amazon customers. ”

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