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.
“I have no issue with the fact that Amazon or any other retailer would be able to resell things that are returned or things that don’t get sold,” Stewart said in an interview.
“My issue is that they aren’t taking adequate steps to protect the privacy of people.”
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.
A CBC Toronto investigation found the personal information of three dozen people on display at two locations of liquidation retailer Top Binz.
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.
Returned Amazon products found at liquidation stores with buyers’ personal information visible
A CBC Toronto investigation found dozens of returned products for sale at two locations of a Toronto discount store with shipping labels containing personal information. Ryan Patrick Jones explains how Amazon is hoping to put an end to it.
Top Binz says, going forward, it will check to ensure all personal information is removed from the products it sells.
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.
The current federal privacy commissioner’s office says it will look into the issue, while Amazon says it’s launching an internal investigation of its own.
36 names, addresses on display
CBC Toronto visited two Top Binz locations in November after a customer raised privacy concerns.
Inside the stores, customers sift through bins filled with all kinds of consumer products, from children’s toys to household goods to electronics. Products are displayed out of the box, in original product packaging or in delivery boxes, some with shipping labels still intact, and are sold at flat-rate prices.
Of the 36 items labelled with personal information that CBC Toronto found inside Top Binz stores, two-thirds were linked to Amazon. The remaining third had shipping labels with personal information visible, but it was unclear to which retailer the item was returned.
CBC Toronto reached out to several shoppers whose contact information was visible.
“I’ve got a lot of privacy concerns,” said Ken Bachmeier, a Kingsville, Ont., resident who recently returned a TV stand purchased through Amazon.
“I don’t like it … having the information out there for anybody to access,” Bachmeier said.
“These people that are out there, they can find out a lot of things with a little bit of information.”
Top Binz is a liquidation store that sells returned and overstock items from Amazon and other retailers. CBC found it selling dozens of items in boxes with shipping labels displaying the original buyers’ names, addresses and, in some cases, phone numbers. (Spencer Gallichan-Lowe/CBC)
It’s not just Amazon products ending up at liquidation stores.
Teresa Coppens’ name, address and phone number were visible on a box bearing the name of a company that sells Dutch plants and flower bulbs.
“I’ve heard lots of horror stories about your personal identity being abducted … and that kind of stuff always worried me,” said Coppens, who lives in Millbrook, Ont. “It just never dawned on me that resellers would be keeping that information for everyone to see.”
In general, federal privacy legislation requires organizations to get consent before collecting personal information and disclosing it to third parties, and to dispose of it when it’s no longer needed.
Exposing personal identifiers such as home addresses is a privacy breach that can leave customers open to identity theft, said Ann Cavoukian, who served three terms as Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner.
“Anyone should know in this day and age that personal identifiers linked with anything without their consent, which is obviously the case here, can cause, at times, unbelievable harm to those individuals, beyond just the invasion of privacy,” said Cavoukian, who is now executive director of the Global Privacy and Security by Design Centre.
“Don’t do it, especially if you’re a big company like Amazon. You should know better.”
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A CBC News investigation has found the practice of sharing customer data to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, without their consent is more widespread than previously thought. The list of Canadian retailers doing so includes Lululemon, Hudson’s Bay and Best Buy.
Amazon launching internal investigation
Top Binz owner Amjad Atieh said he buys 60,000 to 80,000 returned and overstock products per week from two suppliers that get their stock directly from retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy and Costco.
The industry has grown alongside the rise of online shopping.
While there’s not much Canadian data available, and Amazon declined to share its return numbers, online shoppers in the U.S. returned more than $212 billion worth of goods in 2022, representing approximately 16.5 per cent of all online sales that year, according to the National Retail Federation.
Items whose value decreases once they’re returned can be expensive for Amazon and its third-party sellers to manage, according to Omar Fares, a lecturer in the retail management department at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“Every hand that touches the product is a financial loss,” Fares said. It can also be logistically challenging to manage returned inventory, he said, and “in some cases, you’re better off getting rid of it, even at a potential loss.”
Atieh said Top Binz receives items from its suppliers on skids and re-sells them “as is.” He wouldn’t disclose the suppliers’ names.
“Usually if we find something [with a shipping label], we take it and we throw it out,” Atieh said.
“You can’t check every single box.”
Amazon says its contracts with liquidators require them to remove customers’ personal information before they resell the packages to third parties. Amazon says it has no direct relationship with liquidation outlets like Top Binz. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
Following inquiries from CBC Toronto, Atieh said going forward, he planned to hire more staff to ensure personal information is removed from items before they are sold.
Amazon sells returned merchandise on its website via a platform called Amazon Warehouse. It also sells large pallets of returned items to liquidators.
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.
Agrait said Amazon has “robust processes” and conducts regular audits to ensure compliance.
“Our expectation is that our partners remove customer personal information before any resell, and we’re disappointed to learn that may not be happening,” Agrait said. “We’ve launched an internal investigation into this matter and will take appropriate actions based on our findings.”
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. However, Pilieci said the office would be reaching out to Amazon for more information.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
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