I worked on a tool at Amazon once that incorrectly calculated royalties, not because Amazon was greedily trying to steal from publishers, but just because of general incompetence (or, lack of sufficient competence maybe).
Basically, of the people who wrote the tool, tested the tool, and used the tool, none of them knew exactly how royalties should be calculated and none of them could tell whether or not they were being calculated correctly. They weren't. We eventually figured out something was wrong and went through a very annoying process of learning about royalties and how they interplay with prices, discounts, and other factors and then set things right.
Still, if I were paid by Amazon royalties in any capacity I would carefully double check their math and read the fine print.
Maybe it's greed in this case, but in my time at Amazon I saw many teams in "Keep Lights On" mode where one or two people with vague memories of how services are supposed to work try to keep them running. There's also high turnover, so it's very easy to be the person on your team with the longest tenure and also be mostly in the dark about how your services should and do work. As I say, maybe it's greed, but I would never rule out the people responsible just not understanding (or doing) what they should be doing.
Basically, of the people who wrote the tool, tested the tool, and used the tool, none of them knew exactly how royalties should be calculated and none of them could tell whether or not they were being calculated correctly. They weren't. We eventually figured out something was wrong and went through a very annoying process of learning about royalties and how they interplay with prices, discounts, and other factors and then set things right.
Still, if I were paid by Amazon royalties in any capacity I would carefully double check their math and read the fine print.
Maybe it's greed in this case, but in my time at Amazon I saw many teams in "Keep Lights On" mode where one or two people with vague memories of how services are supposed to work try to keep them running. There's also high turnover, so it's very easy to be the person on your team with the longest tenure and also be mostly in the dark about how your services should and do work. As I say, maybe it's greed, but I would never rule out the people responsible just not understanding (or doing) what they should be doing.