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Amazon accused Channel 4 filmmakers of carrying out a “crude stunt”.
In a rather bizarre incident, Amazon allowed a user on its e-commerce site to sell bottles of its drivers’ urine that were marketed as an energy drink, according to a Channel 4 documentary. In the documentary, titled “The Great Amazon Heist”, filmmaker and past prankster Oobah Butler claimed that he collected discarded bottles of Amazon drivers’ urine to sell on the e-commerce platform and titled it ‘Release’. He stated that the drink emerged as the top-selling in the “Bitter Lemon” category of Amazon, and revealed that the product was made from bottles or urine that he found discarded near Amazon fulfillment centers.
In his documentary, which aired on Thursday, Mr Butler said that he collected the discarded bottles of urine from the Amazon delivery drivers, and then repackaged them and marketed them as a yellow-coloured drink, the Telegraph reported. Separately, speaking to WIRED, he said that it was “surprisingly easy” to get the product listed on the site. He even claimed that Amazon’s algorithm moved the bizarre product into its drinks category on the site after he had put it in the “Refillable Pump Dispense” category.
Mr Butler got some of his friends to purchase the product and felt “initially really excited and found it very funny”. However, he added that when real people started trying to buy the product, he felt a bit “scared”. Mr Butler reportedly claimed that he never sold the item to any real customers.
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Mr Butler said that he decided to make the documentary and list the bottles on Amazon to help shed some light on the company’s impact on society, which includes its workers who stated that they were forced to urinate in bottles so that they could meet strict deadlines. He even spoke to some workers who said that they would be urinating in bottles to meet delivery deadlines on the e-commerce site.
However, reacting to the story of “Release” being sold on the e-commerce site, Amazon said that a distorted picture of their process has been shown to the world. According to Vice, an Amazon spokesperson said that it was a “crude stunt” and that the company has “industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed”. No “genuine customer” brought the product, they added.
“Safety is a top priority for Amazon and we require all products offered in our store to comply with applicable laws and regulations,” stated the spokesperson.
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