[HN Gopher] Amazon still hasn't fixed its problem with bait-and-...
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Amazon still hasn't fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
Author : Carducci
Score : 411 points
Date : 2020-12-30 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| frankosaurus wrote:
| > When I sorted the reviews by date ... most recent reviewers
| actually had bought a drone ... But the older reviews were for
| honey.
|
| I'm definitely going to use this sort-by-date trick for future
| product research adventures.
|
| I do miss the good old days when Amazon reviews were an amazing
| product research tool.
|
| Aside: I have no idea why they bury the "search reviews" feature.
| It's essential for discovering, say, real-world Linux
| compatibility for random pieces of hardware.
| cbanek wrote:
| Somewhat related due to comments / reviews being for a product,
| but sometimes on Amazon one page has a set of different options
| (with the little boxes). So you can pick like a color or model.
| But then they group all the reviews together despite what buttons
| you've picked. This is so frustrating! At least they've added a
| little thing that says which SKU the review is for. But I wish
| they would just separate out the reviews for different models /
| colors. It just seems another way to get increased review counts
| and make it look like a clear obvious quality winner from the
| search results box.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I agree it's frustrating, but there _is_ a way to do what you
| want.
|
| After you've selected the color/model, go to the reviews
| section, and click to see all reviews, which brings you to a
| new page. There, you can filter to select reviews that are
| _only_ for the single color /model.
|
| It's annoying, and it's even dumber that the filter dropdown
| only lets you toggle between all reviews and reviews for the
| single color/model (when I'd like to compare reviews easily for
| different colors/models), but at least it is there if you hunt
| for it.
| cbanek wrote:
| Thanks for that! Super helpful. <3
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| This is especially a problem for things with different
| flavours. I have run into multiple problems with Protein shakes
| where the vanilla is amazing and everything else tastes awful.
| The comments being merged mean you might have to pick through
| 1000 review comments to work out which flavours are good and
| which are bad.
| cbanek wrote:
| Exactly, same for Amazon pages that decide to sell the "new
| model" on the same page as the old model to harvest reviews.
| And then when I'm trying to figure out if it has better
| support or problems, I'm trying to pick through the reviews
| to figure out which one is talking about which version.
|
| (Mostly a problem when also trying to figure out linux
| support!)
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I saw that around Black Friday where electric toothbrushes
| were on sale and they had merged the product pages a bunch
| of SKUs with just one of them being on sale. Of course the
| one on sale previously had a bunch of bad reviews, but
| merged with the reliable SKUs it appeared to have a good
| average and had a nice star rating. The comments showed an
| inconsistent story all about that one SKU.
|
| What Amazon is doing is just outright dishonest and ought
| to be against the law. They are certainly intentionally
| utilising this to sell products with dishonest reviews and
| star ratings.
| Leherenn wrote:
| I don't know, it kinda makes sense to have the reviews for
| phone (blue) in the phone (red) page. It's not like the colour
| is a major part of the product (in the sense that most reviews
| won't be about the colour, not that it is not important). Same
| with cable x1 or x2. Though it certainly is an issue if it
| changes the product in a major way (say, taste of a yogurt).
| Covzire wrote:
| I despise this practice. I ran into it recently with the LOTR
| 4K Bluray set. I was going to leave a 3 or 4 star review, since
| while it's fantastic, the image detail is hardly an improvement
| over the standard bluray version, with some claiming the 4K
| wasn't even a full rescan from the originals. Side by side
| shots show very minor at best improvements to detail, with most
| of the actual benefits coming from HDR.
|
| Since a 3 or 4 star review was pointless given their SKU
| grouping, I left a 1 star review. If 10% of users started
| punishing companies and Amazon with 1 star reviews they would
| change pretty quickly.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The worst of it is that if you report an obviously fraudulent
| product listing nobody at AMZN cares if you didn't buy it.
|
| Years ago I quit buying things at staples and started buying at
| AMZN because staples only stocked crap brands like vtech. Now the
| crap product listings on AMZN really stink.
| freeAgent wrote:
| They don't care even if you DID buy it. I once reordered some
| toothbrush heads that I liked only to find a completely
| different, inferior product. It turned out that the product
| page had been completely redone since my initial order, but it
| kept all the old reviews. I reported it to Amazon and they did
| nothing for months. I think the page changed yet again and was
| no longer even selling toothbrush heads while still keeping the
| old reviews. After I reported it a few ore times Amazon finally
| removed the old reviews.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| How did you actually report this? I can't even figure out how
| to report some I found.
| IAmWorried wrote:
| I don't know about you folks, but I've received so many "new"
| items from Amazon that were clearly used that I have largely
| stopped shopping there for expensive items. I think it's still
| fine for small gifts, plastic utensils, etc. But anything over
| 100 bucks I try to buy directly off the manufacturer's website.
|
| I think Amazon needs to get a handle on their sellers and reviews
| ASAP because I am rapidly losing faith in the store.
| prepend wrote:
| Same here. I wonder if Amazon employees stopped eating their
| own dog food, and would be interesting to be a fly on the wall
| for how they are trying to solve this problem.
|
| I fear that they've done the math and decided that they make
| more money this way than a quality way.
| _Microft wrote:
| I refuse to believe that Amazon, Google/Youtube, Facebook,...
| have actually _" solved scale"_ unless they can deal with
| problems like this reliably and automatically.
| ryanyde wrote:
| Journalists have never operated an ecommerce company.
|
| In the same year, they'll publish a story about how requiring
| manufacturing information enables them to steal secrets from
| sellers.
|
| You can't have it both ways.
| sathackr wrote:
| If Amazon wasn't directly competing against their sellers, and
| doing exactly what you said, while lying to Congress about it
| [1], then maybe journalists wouldn't be writing about Amazon
| stealing secrets from sellers.
|
| 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-
| its...
| r00fus wrote:
| > You can't have it both ways.
|
| Clearly you have to be a megacorp to get it both ways. Amazon
| shouldn't be able to evade liability for products sold on their
| website if they compete against their "sellers" as well.
| meowzero wrote:
| This is why I use tools like fakespot and reviewmeta to make sure
| Amazons reviews are somewhat accurate. Sure, it's not fool proof,
| but these tools attempt to filter the obvious bad reviews.
| dathinab wrote:
| It's not just reviews.
|
| Recently I have often seen FAQ answers and similar for other
| products of the same vendor listed below the product.
| Raed667 wrote:
| From the article listed (a toy drone) [1], reviews range from
| talking about car oil, stickers for kids, a plaque for finishing
| a race, honey, something about horses (?)..
|
| What is this mess !? And how is this not Amazon's top priority?
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08P14T1Z2
| valuearb wrote:
| I worked for a startup that sold a food product direct, with a
| significant part of sales on Amazon. We decided to switch our
| standard size from 12 packs to 8 packs to better fit our
| customers consumption habits.
|
| But on Amazon that meant creating new listings for new SKUs,
| abandoning hundreds of positive comments/ratings on each 12
| pack flavor SKU, which would crush sales for a while.
|
| So instead we let inventory run out for each 12 pack SKU, then
| shipped replacement 8 pack SKUs, and renamed the SKUs from 12
| packs to eight packs.
|
| They still had some reviews praising them for having a dozen
| packs, which was weird but the ratings were still there.
| opportune wrote:
| Honestly if I were your customer I would probably really
| dislike this since I tend to put food products on
| subscriptions.
|
| Also the fact you were able to do this for something (I am
| assuming) was relatively innocent shows someone could do this
| for more nefarious purposes.
| valuearb wrote:
| We did have Amazon subscriptions, and it was a nightmare,
| esp. given how little contact Amazon allows with your
| customers.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| That's crazy. Can't you add two variants to the same product?
| Like how a single t-shirt item can have different sizes and
| colors? Or maybe Amazon only allows that for certain
| listings, or only if they're set up that way from the start?
| valuearb wrote:
| We couldn't. It's been a year and Amazon wasn't my primary
| responsibility so I can't remember the details out Amazon
| manager laid out, but we were forced to go through this
| time consuming and painful process.
| Raed667 wrote:
| There must be -somewhere- an acceptable delta to keep your
| listing while doing legitimate edits.
|
| The line should be somewhere in-between:
|
| 1- changing the package size from 12 to 8
|
| 2- changing a german car oil listing, to a horse accessory
| and then a toy drone
| Cerium wrote:
| Maybe there is and that is why the listing took the path it
| did. "Horses and cars are both modes of transportation, so
| I guess this change is ok." then "Horses and drones are
| both hobby activities in this day and age, so I guess this
| change is ok." I lean towards change in package size ok,
| but just about anything else is not. Otherwise you can
| anneal the product page to fit your needs.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This reminded me of shopping for an SSD. I found Western
| Digital and Sandisk versions of the same drive). All the
| stats were the same, and they were most likely the same
| hardware with a different label (WD owns Sandisk). One had a
| higher review. What's interesting is different people will
| purchase each, so you're actually getting a different set of
| reviewers, so the ratings could be genuinely different.
| smitty1110 wrote:
| Because they take a percent off the top as the payment
| processor. And even if you return an item, they're not going to
| return that fee. When the seller fulfills the order it's even
| better ,amazon has almost no cost for the entire transaction.
| They won't care until people start ditching them in large
| numbers, not the trickle the dissatisfied in these comments
| (myself included) represent.
| Raed667 wrote:
| I'm assuming through their (in)famous hiring process, that
| they have smart/competent people around. They for sure know
| that this kind of thing will turn people off the platform
| long term.
|
| Devil advocate: Could it be that the problem is actually
| quite complex due to whatever reason?
| pydry wrote:
| Kodak hired smart people too and they all worked towards
| its demise.
|
| If everybody's incentives are geared towards quarterly
| results no way in hell they're going to be the ones to fix
| the fraud in their area if it's actually making their
| division $$$.
|
| There's almost certainly a tragedy of the commons effect
| going on here (where the commons is trust in Amazon).
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Their hiring process works well for a very limited number
| of people, especially in core IT positions. I am working
| with Amazon (they are my supplier in an IT project) and I
| have friends who work for Amazon, core IT people are very
| good, project managers are a mixed bag, the "business
| oriented" people are hit or miss, some are good and some
| are plain incompetent. This is because they are probably
| too large and hire too many people and they cannot always
| be too picky (a friend is a hiring manager and he is
| complaining how hard is to find competent people).
|
| That being said, the problem is not very complex to solve,
| but the motivation is fairly low: they get a percentage of
| everything is sold, at some point that income can be a lot
| larger than the damage a few news articles usually do.
| raunakdag wrote:
| Will it really turn people off the platform though? I'm
| part of the very small minority who hates Amazon right now
| simply because of how easy it is for shops to game the
| review system. But I am more than willing to bet most
| consumers are ever so happy to see prices on products
| continue to drop in exchange for any brand recognizability
| or quality.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Unfortunately, Fakespot isn't catching it either:
|
| https://www.fakespot.com/product/taktoppy-drones-for-kids-uf...
|
| And the example from the article also got an A, but looks like
| Amazon may have fixed it? Only 54 reviews now:
|
| https://www.fakespot.com/product/shwd-ufo-drones-for-kids-ha...
| duxup wrote:
| Originally the reason I liked Amazon was that I grew up in an
| area that didn't have access to stores with higher quality goods.
| Wal-Mart's price sensitive nature and similar stores meant that
| most of what was offered was 10% less in price, but 30% less in
| quality / how long it might last.
|
| Now on Amazon everything is a race to the bottom on price and
| quality and, it is really hard to find something that is good
| quality and if you do ... someone is probably willing to sell you
| a fake.
|
| I've gotten a few items I thought were fakes, and when I post a
| less than glowing review (not even mentioning my fake suspicions)
| I'm often contacted and offered a free product for removing my
| review.... I refuse to take these offers, but I wonder how many
| people do.
|
| Rather than what I sort of expected, Wal-Mart trying to be
| Amazon... Amazon seems desperate to BE Wal-Mart...
| alkonaut wrote:
| Amazon reviews are about as useful as Youtube comments. You can
| read them for entertainment but don't expect anything useful
| about the product, and don't base a purchase decision on them.
| tjoff wrote:
| Youtube comments are actually decent now, with a very low bar
| for decent at least. Also depending on the type of video/target
| audience of course.
|
| That google managed to improve them so much is likely their
| biggest achievement I can think of in many years.
| oblio wrote:
| It's a very low bar. The original, unfiltered ones were
| Chernobyl + WW1 trenches. Now they've just manure.
| MichaelApproved wrote:
| Not entirely true. Yes, Amazon is flooded with fake reviews but
| I still look through them.
|
| Photos and videos in reviews are extremely helpful.
|
| There are also many in-depth reviews that are trustworthy.
| alkonaut wrote:
| You implictly assume that you'll receive a similar product to
| the one people reviewed or photographed. Without that
| assumption, a lot is lost. Under that assumption, I agree. If
| you trust the seller, then you can probably also trust the
| reviews of the kind you mention (e.g. product photos). The
| problem occurs when you want to use the reviews to determine
| whether to trust the _seller_ , not the product.
| jmeister wrote:
| Hyperbole.
|
| I've been reading book reviews on Amazon before buying, on-site
| or somewhere else, for ~15 years.
|
| I've almost never seen an item with unhelpful reviews.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Hyperbole
|
| Fwiw, I completely agree!
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| I think book reviews (and presumably music, movie reviews)
| are going to be quite a bit different from other sorts of
| product reviews, for obvious reasons.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| I always look at _negative_ reviews. From those you can tell if
| there 's a consistent concern, if someone got a fake, or if
| there was just a preference mismatch for someone.
| whatisthiseven wrote:
| This also used to be my strategy, but now I am concerned that
| competing brands are sabotaging each other by just leaving
| poor 1-star reviews. I say this as I have read some low
| reviews that just made no sense, or didn't reference aspects
| of the product that existed.
|
| I still trust 1-star reviews more than 5-star, but I don't
| take them as gospel. As you said, if there is a consistent
| message across all the negative reviews from a mix of
| reviewer types, then it strengthens the signal quality.
|
| Buying online sucks :(
| ve55 wrote:
| I came up with this as well. My strategy for products was
| often to read 1-star reviews, and there were often two
| cases:
|
| 1) The reviews are low-quality and not indicative of much,
| so there are few legitimate complaints, or
|
| 2) The reviews showcase a significant problem with the
| product alongside proof, and/or are often made by
| intelligent consumers
|
| After enough time doing this with success, I've started to
| see many more 1-star reviews on products that get highly
| upvoted until they're the 'top review(s)', which don't
| really contain anything useful at all. They try to appear
| like they are an instance of 2), but often offer little
| evidence or quality argumentation.
|
| I imagine it's easy to upvote 1/-star reviews on
| competitors' products to drive a lot of their traffic
| elsewhere instead. At this point I would love having a
| review system that is curated to only be from people I
| like/trust, but that is another whole story and ecosystem
| of course.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I find the 3-4 star reviews the most helpful. I feel like
| the positive fake reviews are all 5 stars (based on what
| the little notes I get in my Amazon packages, the vendors
| will only reward you for 5 star reviews) and I'm guessing
| the negative fake reviews are all 1 star. So that leaves
| those reviews in the middle as the only ones worth paying
| attention to.
| mancerayder wrote:
| The amount of time I've spent lately just looking for one simple
| thing - honesty - when looking to buy something, is embarrassing
| to say out loud.
|
| One of many, many examples. I wanted to buy a 10k lux light to
| see whether it improves my winter health. I spent well over an
| hour on Amazon going through reviews and products. When I found
| something I liked, on several occasions, Fakespot rated the
| product a C or D and noted it saw tons of reviews being removed
| and other heuristics. Then I personally noticed some products
| from different brands looked almost identical. And sometimes I
| noticed the same product from the same brand with separate
| entries. Also, when I wanted to read 3 or lower star reviews, I
| was told there were some, but I'd click the filter and it'd find
| no reviews lower than 4 or 5.
|
| The other month I posted a review on Amazon for six canning jars
| where 5 spontaneously cracked in the fridge by themselves,
| unmolested. My review got removed and Amazon said it failed some
| guideline. This never used to happen.
|
| Look, I'm happy to pay a little more here and there, I rarely
| look for the cheapest thing or budget item. But why is lying and
| deception so commonplace and lackadaisically accepted? It's
| grating.
|
| Someone should invent an Honest Amazon competition. Honestly,
| Ebay vendors are often more trustworthy.
| djohnston wrote:
| Perhaps I'm in the minority of frequent amazon users, but I don't
| buy anything from 3rd party sellers anymore. There is simply too
| much fraud. In practice, this means that I often need to skip
| past amazon entirely and go straight to the product manufacturer,
| sometimes paying more, just to be sure I'm not being screwed.
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| In many of the cases where I've done this, I've had a worse
| experience. With one company, I wanted to return the product
| because it was defective but was never able to actually contact
| anyone. With another, it arrived broken and I was never able to
| get the company to replace it. In either scenario, Amazon makes
| it easy to correct the problem.
|
| I want to support manufacturers more directly, but their
| customer service has continued to be lacking.
| MichaelApproved wrote:
| Hope you contacted your credit card company to reverse the
| charges and get your money back.
| eganist wrote:
| This is probably the right way to do it since AFAICR Amazon
| also still commingles products sourced by themselves as well as
| sourced from FBA sellers.
| MichaelApproved wrote:
| Even stuff sold directly by Amazon could be co-mingled with
| counterfeit inventory from 3rd party sellers.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| I've fallen victim to scammer merchants who use Amazon in
| their name. Before I would just check "Ships from / Sold by"
| under the Add to Cart button but it's not obvious if it's
| Amazon official. For example which one of these "Ships from /
| Sold by" is legit?
|
| * Amazon
|
| * Amazon Inc
|
| * Amazon LLC
|
| * Amazon Services
|
| * Amazon.com
|
| * Amazon.com LLC
|
| * Amazon.com Inc
|
| * Amazon.com Services LLC
|
| * Amazon Warehouse
| Bedon292 wrote:
| Has this changed? My understanding is that Amazon only
| comingles 3rd parties and keeps their stuff completely
| separate. Of course my only source for that appears to be
| here / reddit so not sure how true it is.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/dmrri4.
| ..
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I have seen it three times this year and the last time was
| November so I would say no its not been fixed and its still
| happening. If they aren't commingling third party product
| then they are directly sourcing counterfeit products and
| that is so much worse and clearly illegal.
| Pxtl wrote:
| As a Canadian this option is particularly frustrating because
| shipping to Canada is a nightmare. So Amazon.ca dominates here.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I have been the victim of multiple instances of fraudulent
| product, sold directly by Amazon. One was a salt grinder that
| had a plastic replacement where it should have been metal and
| was lacking the lettering but was sold on Amazon from the
| official page. Somewhere in their system Amazon is accepting
| product that isn't official and happily selling it under than
| companies brand. If it was a one off I might agree it was a
| mistake but that has happened three times this year and while
| Amazon replaces them it is clearly happening commonly now.
|
| Amazon has lost my trust this year, when my prime runs out I
| wont be renewing.
| rickyc091 wrote:
| Are you sure there aren't multiple variations of the same
| product?
|
| I made an online purchase for some oral-b toothbrush heads
| from Target. The item that arrived did not resemble what was
| on their website. I figure since it's a big retailer, it's
| probably legit. I checked the official manufacturer's website
| and the product was also different. Digging a bit deeper into
| the product images, I finally found one that looked like the
| version I had.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Quite certain, it was actually a Chinese knock off of a
| Salters product. Salters never sold a version with a
| plastic adjustment bar on the bottom for the reason I saw,
| it breaks almost immediately.
|
| Amazon is really muddying the waters by combining products
| too. They seem to be merging comments and products that
| shouldn't be merged and are different SKUs and that is
| definitely a problem, but its also participating in the
| fraudulent sale of knock off products and passing them off
| as the real thing.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > In practice, this means that I often need to skip past amazon
| entirely and go straight to the product manufacturer, sometimes
| paying more, just to be sure I'm not being screwed.
|
| You're not the only one. Depending on the item and it's use I
| would probably pay upwards of a 20% premium just so I know
| there's a far less chance of the received item being
| fraudulent.
|
| Pandemic aside, these issues also have made me much more likely
| in the last 4 to 5 years to purposefully go shopping in-person
| at stores since they seem to have a higher chance of having a
| proper supply chain established.
| cratermoon wrote:
| "just this weekend I was able to pay an extra $3 to get same-day
| delivery on a $9 item"
|
| Spending a third of the price of something cheap to get it NOW is
| peak Veruca Salt.
| ec109685 wrote:
| 9th best selling flash disk is totally fake: USB Flash Drive 1TB
| - Thumb Drive, High Speed USB Drive, Portable Ultra Large Storage
| USB Memory Stick, Jump Drive Pen Drive Come with Keychain
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N16XZNR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_...
|
| Reviews are for Soda and the storage capacity is much less than
| 1TB so you will lose data if you film it.
| umvi wrote:
| I bought magnetic tiles for my kids for christmas, and in the box
| was a card promising me money if I left a 5 star review and
| forwarded proof that I left a 5 star review to the company's
| email.
| cratermoon wrote:
| A friend of mine got a no-name brand spotting telescope as a
| Christmas present, and it had one of those cards in the box.
| Not the shipping box, the actual package. Someone had to have
| unsealed the box, put the card in, and closed it back up.
|
| It's an OK scope, nothing special, and I have no idea how much
| the giver paid.
| ve55 wrote:
| >Clicking on the names of these "brands" takes you to a search
| result with no additional information on who made these products.
|
| This in particular bugs me quite a bit on Amazon. The link for
| the 'brand' appears as if you can click it and then see
| information about who you are buying from, but instead it just
| performs a search for the word and you often get zero useful
| results.
|
| Instead I'd like to see basic information about the seller: what
| items do they sell, how many have they sold, what country are
| they based in, what is their average review, and so on.
| dzdt wrote:
| My Christmas Amazon experience was helping my young daughter
| search for a doll to buy with a gift card and finding mixed into
| the results a large number of graphically illustrated sex toys.
| (She typoed "dolll" as the search term.) The convenience of an
| everything e-commerce site is not worth the nonsense.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I keep getting items I have not ordered, I presume sellers use
| fake accounts to be able to review their products. I reported
| that to Amazon but they only say "they are working on it" in a
| dismissive way. They even assumed I wanted to ask if I can keep
| the products and only seemed to take more seriously when I
| mentioned reporting it to the police. But nothing has changed.
| destitude wrote:
| I'm still having issues where my "Amazon Prime" membership
| results in a delivery usually taking 1 week instead of "2 days".
| jimkri wrote:
| Was running into this when I was looking for an apple watch band.
| When filtering by Avg Customer review, all the bands had
| thousands of fake reviews.
|
| Had to go directly to Apple to buy one.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| This is one of those areas where "breaking up the tech giants"
| _might_ actually work - Amazon is basically an e-commerce
| platform, a global post office, a seller in its own right, and a
| _discovery_ engine.
|
| There really is little reason they all need to be together.
|
| Putting a discovery engine in place that won't make a profit
| unless the right and decent thing arrives surely suggests they
| will have incentives aligned with the customers?
| ProAm wrote:
| It's not a problem for Amazon, it's a net positive feature
| monetarily speaking.
| kevincox wrote:
| Is it? I regularly look elsewhere because I can't be confident
| that I am getting what I want.
|
| I guess if they expect that the products are worse than they
| appear then making reviews useless would be helpful. But if
| they have some good products and good reviews I would be more
| inclined to buy.
|
| It seems that there is the a low area what bad quality reviews
| help more purchases but for the middle quality and good quality
| products I would expect low review quality to drive sales
| elsewhere.
| ProAm wrote:
| Oh its extremely user hostile, but Amazon makes money either
| way. Counterfeit, bait and switch, commingling inventory, all
| of that doesn't matter because the transaction volume going
| out is still greater than the refunds and unhappy users. Way
| past the point of return for that to hurt business. I agree
| with you though, I only shop amazon for simple stupid things
| I cant find local, I don't even buy name brand there anymore.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Bait-and-switch doesn't matter if Amazon doesn't care about fake
| and paid-for reviews.
|
| I was looking for dashcams and came across this:
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/iiwey-Channels-included-Dashboard-D...
|
| 91% 5-star reviews, a lot of the reviews are from "Top XXX
| reviewer", and almost every one seems to be reading off a script.
|
| If you check out all the profiles of these "Top XX" reviewers,
| they all seem to be non-stop purchasers of chinese tat...
| curiously all rated 5 starts.
|
| I'm sure Amazon is perfectly capable of detecting and handling
| this, what incentive do they have to allow all these fake
| reviews?
| dathinab wrote:
| I don't think they have interest in fake reviews.
|
| But they might have an interest in not having a lot of products
| which don't sell at all because of mostly bad reviews (they are
| the Nr1 platforms for cheap "Chinese" products, they would lose
| a lot of sellers if they are no longer suited for selling low
| quality products) .
|
| They also might have some interest into a erosion of trust into
| non "sold by Amazon", "shipped by Amazone" and "Amazone Choice"
| products. But that supper speculative.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > what incentive do they have to allow all these fake reviews?
|
| People buy the tat from Amazon instead of buying a name brand
| from a competitor.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Surely customers will still buy from respected brands on
| Amazon though.
| Zizizizz wrote:
| I was looking at webcams and the Amazon recommended one is
| 1000+ five star reviews some of which say that you only get a
| lifetime warranty if you leave a five star review
| robotnikman wrote:
| Adding fuel to the fire; I remember reading an article last
| year which appeared on HN, it was about how sellers create
| groups on facebook which offer to send people free products in
| they agree to give 5 star reviews. Apparently this is also a
| massive problem with thousands of people doing this
|
| So not only will the reviews be for the wrong product, there is
| also a good chance that the reviews were bought and are fake.
| fmntf wrote:
| They are also in telegram. Just search "Amazon reviews" in
| the public groups, you will find plenty of results.
| xxs wrote:
| A simple test for quality - if the clam shell/body is made of
| ABS (instead of polycarbonate or nylon), it's very likely bad.
| The dashcam appears ABS, judging from the pics.
|
| You can return stuff back when bought online in 14days, I think
| this part remains after the 1st of Jan.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| How can you tell the difference? It seems like you're making
| a judgement based on just the product pictures, what specific
| things make it looks like ABS to you? What would a
| polycarbonate or nylon plastic look like?
| xxs wrote:
| Nylon won't be glossy for sure. PC can be glossy, though.
| However China goods are very often glossy ABS and it'd be
| mentioned if they'd use PC (or some PC composite)
| frontiersummit wrote:
| ABS is not a low quality material. It is a tough polymer
| which maintains its toughness over a wide range of
| environmental conditions. That is why it is widely used in
| applications like automotive interior and exterior panels.
| It's probably a good choice for a product like a dashcam
| which will be exposed to a wide temperature range.
| xxs wrote:
| I guess the most famous part "low quality" ABS is that UV
| unstable along with low resistance to organic chemicals
| like gasoline[0] (and acetone, which is ABS glue). Compare
| that to nylon[1]. Flip note ABS becomes brittle at lower
| temperatures (say -20C).
|
| As for why I thought it was ABS. It's glossy and if it was
| nylon or polycarbonate (esp. glass/carbon fiber composite,
| or even PC+ABS), it'd be written a major pro in the
| marketing materials.
|
| [0]: http://www.kelco.com.au/wp-
| content/uploads/2009/02/abs-chemi...
|
| [1]: https://www.calpaclab.com/nylon-chemical-
| compatibility-chart...
| ryanianian wrote:
| I've been using ReviewMeta to assist identifying the "real"
| reviews and learning the unadulterated score. I don't know if
| it handles "bait-and-switch" as mentioned in TFA, but it's
| steered me away from a lot of products that seemed reasonable
| based solely on reviews. I especially like that it can
| recognize false _bad_ reviews which are often left by
| competitors.
| arafa wrote:
| I also use ReviewMeta and it does handle review hijacking.
| It's not a great experience as a customer, but if I combine
| ReviewMeta and Amazon reviews and search I still get pretty
| good products. My basic guidelines are that it needs at least
| 4 stars (preferably closer to 4.2-4.7) and the product can't
| be a "fail" on ReviewMeta. I also am wary if ReviewMeta is a
| "warn".
|
| I don't trust Amazon reviews without a review checker
| anymore, they used to be much better. The highest reviewed
| products are often some of the worst. Any product with a 4.8
| or better is immediately suspect (though some are fine,
| especially if they don't have as many reviews).
| TravisLS wrote:
| There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand
| recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out,
| replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind
| of partial to this idea myself.
|
| But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon
| reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much
| relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality.
|
| There's still a lot to be said for established brands. Brands can
| afford widespread advertising because they have thriving
| businesses that generate lots of cash. Brands can get stocked in
| major retailers because you need decent products to make it
| through Walmart's buying process.
|
| These are signals that are harder to fake, and they're kind of
| the best we've got right now.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my
| placeholder for product quality_
|
| I've fallen back on a combination of brand, country of
| manufacture, price, and to some extent if the company has its
| own retail presence outside of Amazon and other online or
| meatspace big box stores. For example...
|
| If the brand is good, the item is expensive, but it's made in
| China and sold on Amazon, I try to avoid. There's some risk it
| will be money wasted on something that will last just 3-6
| months.
|
| Conversely if all of the above are true but the item is cheap,
| I'll buy it from Amazon, enjoy their fast delivery, and simply
| build into my expectations and budget that it will need to be
| replaced in 3-6months. This is what I've come to with
| headphones, for example.
|
| On the other hand, if the item is made in (not just designed
| in, but made in) the US, Japan, Korea, Germany, or some other
| Western European countries, then it matters less what the brand
| or retail venue is. For example, buying a room fan, power tool,
| or similar, I'll look for one with a motor made in
| US/Japan/Germany/etc.
|
| These are the best signals I've found to be available atm.
| dopylitty wrote:
| Brands aren't perfect either. For example Volvo had a
| reputation for making great safe cars. The brand is now owned
| by a company with a reputation for making cars that
| disintegrate and obliterate the occupants in crash tests.
|
| The same is true of Arc'teryx, Jaguar, and many other well
| known brands that have been sold off to companies with terrible
| reputations for quality.
|
| Ultimately the only way to guarantee quality would be to vote
| for politicians who support strong regulations and a strong
| regulatory apparatus.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > The brand is now owned by a company with a reputation for
| making cars that disintegrate and obliterate the occupants in
| crash tests.
|
| In China. From what I've heard the products are also still
| completely on the same level because it's not like Geely just
| started selling their cars with the Volvo brand, but they
| keep the company doing what it's good at.
|
| A counter-example is the German car brand Opel that was
| recently sold from GM to french PSA. Because the car
| manufacturer attached to the brand was already largely
| dismantled all Opel cars are now PSA models - which is rather
| well known by people who care and also affects the brand.
| jniedrauer wrote:
| > The same is true of Arc'teryx
|
| Can you expound on this? The same parent company (Amer
| Sports) also owns Salomon/Atomic and several other well
| regarded brands. I wasn't aware that something had changed
| recently. Are you talking about the Anta Sports buyout?
| People use these brands for life-critical applications in the
| backcountry, so this is certainly concerning to hear.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Ultimately the only way to guarantee quality would be to
| vote for politicians who support strong regulations and a
| strong regulatory apparatus._
|
| Speaking as a socialist-leaning libertarian, I'mma have to
| take a hard disagree on this. Let the companies have a mix of
| terrible quality and great quality as they wish, and let the
| market itself decide which products and companies succeed or
| fail
|
| Let a private company, say, Consumer Reports or Vegan
| International, give their imprimatures to quality.
|
| A government, in this specific case of toy drones, is a bit
| heavy-handed, in my opinion. Would "quality specs" work?
| Would they be subject to political whims? Would a connected
| company be able to overwhelm the governmental department
| dedicated to the quality control of toy drones?
|
| Edit: I promise, despite the proximity of "socialist" to
| "libertarian" in my preamble, this is not an ideological
| stance. If you have a better idea, I will change my mind! I'm
| fine with a downvote, but don't just smash it because you
| disagree. Tell us why :)
| username90 wrote:
| There is a reason you aren't afraid of getting poisoned
| when you eat at restaurants, and it isn't because every
| restaurant owner cares about poisoning you but because the
| government have made the common practices which led to food
| poisoning illegal.
| rendall wrote:
| Here is an upvote for engaging.
|
| Kind of a non-sequitur, no? I was talking about toy
| drones.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Kind of a non-sequitur, no? I was talking about toy
| drones.
|
| Batteries are regulated, as is the type of paint used in
| kids toys.
|
| Even with regulation companies still try to sneak in lead
| paint(!) and batteries occasionally burst into flame.
|
| No regulation would mean parents would have to carry
| around lead paint test kits...
|
| Review sites cannot keep up with the deluge of brands,
| and some aspects of product quality, such as longevity,
| are impossible for reviewers to adequately test in a
| reasonable amount of time. (A review that certifies a
| dish washer model last sold 10 years ago will indeed last
| 10 years isn't of much use!)
|
| And in regards to a comment below, those toy drones
| likely charge with USB!
| baq wrote:
| yeah it'd make sense if you disregard externalities.
|
| i sure don't want the usb charger market to sort itself out
| by the metric of which products burn my house down faster.
| rendall wrote:
| The discussion was toy drones, not USBs.
| gnufied wrote:
| I am not sure but volvo's cars are still pretty well rated
| and relied upon - https://www.caranddriver.com/volvo/xc90 .
| Jaguar is now owned by a Indian company and Volvo is owned by
| a chinese company but I haven't heard anyone claim drop in
| their quality.
|
| Can you point out specific examples of how changing ownership
| has affected quality of their cars?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _There 's still a lot to be said for established brands.
| Brands can afford widespread advertising..._
|
| Established brands can do one other thing -- enforce on-ground
| quality assurance in China / manufacturing outsourcer
|
| Chinese factories are amazing. But they produce what you let
| them produce. 1000-units-of-X, only QA'd when they hit
| receiving port, are going to trend to crap.
|
| On the other hand, established brands have the financial and
| relationship muscle to actually inspect and cut things out
| earlier, and therefore can maintain a higher quality level on
| shelves
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I myself am convinced that brand recognition is on borrowed
| time - that is, recognition of _old_ brands may still work as
| useful filter, but new quality brands will be near-impossible
| to establish.
|
| The reason for that: we're being DDoSed with brands on
| e-commerce sites. For an increasing amount of product
| categories, you're going to find 10+ "brands" on Amazon that
| are selling the same white-label garbage class product, just
| with a different sticker and box/ad art. I've seen that in
| electronics, clothing, consumables. And while multiple brands
| under one company was a thing for a long time now (see e.g. how
| many stuff you eat is made by Nestle or Unilever), there seems
| to be a qualitative difference here: white label goods meet
| e-commerce. "Brands" proliferate at the speed of computing.
| rasz wrote:
| What you describe is a digital version of white van speaker
| scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam
| while person you are replying to means old established
| brands, like Sony or Philips. You can pick up cheapest
| Philips hair trimmer and be sure of decent quality, but
| picking even something looking upmarket, but coming from one
| of the made up Amazon brands is almost a guarantee in
| chinesium shock. $300 Panasonic/$400 Moulinex bread maker
| might look identical to
| Silvercrest(lidl)/Medion/Sencor/Hamilton Beach $50 branded
| one, but difference in manufacturing quality and used
| materials are quite dramatic.
| butterfi wrote:
| Lets not forget the brands get bought and the new owners
| lower the quality until the brand name loses its influence,
| e.g. Pyrex glass.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > recognition of old brands may still work as useful filter
|
| Not for long. How many dependable long-lived brands have been
| mopped up by hedge funds and private equity and subsequently
| slapped on the cheapest crap you can make? Remember when
| Craftsman tools used to be top notch?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right. Also the regular "optimization" (i.e. of costs, not
| value). For example, Miele was a decent brand of white-
| label goods, but I've read numerous commenters here
| claiming that they're succumbing to plasticpartisis and
| their products aren't as reliable as before. I also vaguely
| recall hearing that Anker isn't what it used to be.
|
| (Then there are brands spanning great many product
| categories - like Phillips. I'm having trouble keeping
| track which product categories they do well, and which they
| don't.)
| Frost1x wrote:
| I mean, once you get brand recognition and a market
| foothold, that's when you start optimizing on the cost
| quality tradeoffs. That seems to be the normal course of
| business in the US. Smart brands recognize there's a
| limit to gaming the margins before they lose
| trustworthiness and cut quality slowly and only to a
| certain point so as not to eliminate brand loyalty and
| recognition.
|
| If that margin gaming process gets too greedy, the cycle
| kicks back and people start looking for other brands. The
| real strategy is to ride just above the stable point of
| adoption and keep an eye out for competitors that are
| offering better value, then gobble them up before they
| unseat your nice comfortable market position.
|
| The end result is you get a bunch of medicore products
| and services in the marketplace as well as terrible
| products/services. The high quality stuff tends to die
| quickly, undercut by those dominant in the market through
| anticompetitive forces while the poor quality stuff
| survives because their brand will be short-lived anyways.
| Few seem to be able to hold onto the ideals of putting
| and maintaining high quality first over increasing profit
| margins, that just isn't the goal.
| patentatt wrote:
| This is exactly how it works, and a good counterexample
| of how the 'free market' does not work in consumer's
| favor (in some situations, at least).
| quercusa wrote:
| GE used to be a marker for reasonable quality but over the
| past couple of decades they've licensed their name for all
| kinds of crappy consumer products.
| perl4ever wrote:
| The GE consumer product business was sold to a Chinese
| company quite a while ago, and I believe the brand was
| put on a lot of poor quality and poorly designed
| products, but I have the impression they have
| substantially turned around the quality, based on
| consumer reports and other hearsay. I got a GE washer and
| dryer based on this belief (and they were the only ones
| that would fit) and so far, so good, after about a year.
| joseph_grobbles wrote:
| Brands still arise out of that. I buy Spigen cases. Anker
| cables. If I want a low-cost but workable set of headphones
| for the kids, "MPOW" devices fit the bill. I know that Amazon
| Basics keyboards and mice will be satisfactory given the
| price.
|
| These do emerge.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Similarly, Anker, Choetech, and a few others to a certain
| extent.
|
| Some of them come from the ashes of Alibaba rebrands, but a
| few start making decent products and are at least at what
| I'd consider "Belkin-level" but at a better price point.
| ben1040 wrote:
| Even Belkin is now a Foxconn brand at this point, but at
| least I have owned plenty of products built by Foxconn
| that haven't burned my house down.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yeah, that. My son has an MPow fightstick and it's a solid
| product. MPow is doing a good job establishing themselves
| as a reputable new brand for electronics.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > For an increasing amount of product categories, you're
| going to find 10+ "brands" on Amazon that are selling the
| same white-label garbage class product, just with a different
| sticker and box/ad art.
|
| But you could still build up a brand the old-fashioned way,
| by buying advertising (including forms that can't be
| targeted, like billboards) to create broad name recognition.
| It's hard to do and it takes lots of capital, but that's the
| same as it has always been.
|
| And then any white-label product you sell is a reflection of
| the brand you've built up, so it's in your interest to only
| sell high-quality stuff.
| mason55 wrote:
| What you're describing is exactly how brands work. The
| garbage brands will continue to cycle because there's no
| reason to keep the brand name (in fact it's better to change
| it so that people who got burned don't know it's the same).
| But the good brands are investing in the brand name and so
| they will stick around and you'll start to recognize them.
|
| Look at a company like Anker. They operate in spaces filled
| with garbage but they have managed to become trustworthy.
| baryphonic wrote:
| This is on point. When I first ordered something from Anker
| (a USB-C dongle IIRC), I was worried it'd be knock-off
| trash. Their brand hadn't been established long enough for
| me to evaluate their reputation. But the quality was high
| and now I trust it. I was happy to pick up one of their
| MacBook Pro USB-C hubs on Prime Day, and would happily buy
| more Anker supplies in the future.
| prepend wrote:
| There's a cycle with these brands. Monster started out
| not insane and then quickly just became bad stuff with a
| brand. I also remember when Belkin used to be
| consistently good and now it varies by product.
|
| I'm afraid for when monoprice stops being an awesome
| brand and starts coasting.
| Fej wrote:
| The million dollar question is, how do we know which brands
| are the good ones?
|
| Is there a community which tackles this sort of problem
| alone? The best I have found so far is to find the
| community surrounding a type of product, especially on
| Reddit - there is a community around almost every interest
| imaginable - and figure out which brands they recommend,
| via search or just asking.
|
| Often they even have advice in a stickied thread or wiki
| article.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| There was a website here the other day that planned to
| build a community of people that review products as they
| age. A review after the first 2 weeks, 2 years then 10
| years etc. "Buy for Life" or something like that.
| solarkraft wrote:
| An example for not producing anything themselves (afaik)
| but only putting their name on _actually decent_ products
| is Blitzwolf. A brand like that can be built on the most
| basic due diligence (and thus not significantly higher
| prices). A bonus would be actually delivering some
| technical detail on a product, but even "manufacturers"
| like TaoTronics seem to be having a really hard time doing
| that.
|
| I'd say Aliexpress is probably a better way to find
| somewhat established (or trying, which is what matters)
| brands than Amazon.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| The popularity of drop shopping has probably played some part
| in the spread of low quality no-name products on Amazon.
|
| YouTube is stuffed with videos on drop shipping. Many drop-
| shippers have no interest in the product they are selling or
| it's quality. They're only interested in whether they have
| picked a profitable niche. When that niche gets too crowded,
| they move to another product space before the wider drop
| shopping crowd swarm to the same product. And so the cycle
| continues. Rinse and repeat.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That may be true. Between brand DDoS and dropshipper spam,
| I no longer buy anything of consequence on any e-commerce
| platform - I only order from the sites of local chain
| stores (electroncis, pharmacies, comestics) or directly
| from manufacturer. I probably pay slightly more because of
| it, but I avoid dealing with fraudlent sellers and
| fraudlent products.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Unfortunately Amazon's UI is actually pretty hostile to this,
| too.
|
| I was trying to buy simple USB cables... After a pair of
| tablets were destroyed by a bad USB cable, I'm picky about usb
| micro cables. So I tried to search on Amazon for usb a to micro
| cables...
|
| And the brand filter didn't list many of the brands I was
| seeing in the resultset. Like, I know you have Monoprice and
| Belkin cables, I'm looking right at them! Why can I only filter
| to Chinese no-name brands and Amazonbasics?
| 14 wrote:
| This comment caught my attention are bad cables really
| destroying your tablets? I ask because I literally power all
| my phones and tablets with cords I bought at the dollar
| store. Never had any problems. Have I just been lucky?
| jquery wrote:
| Yeah you've been lucky. I only buy brand name cables now
| after getting burned.
| jniedrauer wrote:
| I used an off-brand USB cable for my Garmin watch once, and
| it wouldn't power on for a week afterwords. I have no idea
| what strange software/hardware fault could explain that,
| but it spontaneously recovered after a week of being dead.
| I'm not willing to risk using off-brand cables since then.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| Not sure about Micro, but a few years back a Google
| employee posted a bunch of info about bad USB C cables.
| Sadly I think it was on Google+ and gone now, but his
| reviews are still on Amazon [1]. There were certainly some
| really bad ones, missing resistors and things, so its quite
| possible on C at least.
|
| [1] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFLIC
| GQRF6...
| 14 wrote:
| Well I guess I will consider myself lucky. I learned my
| lesson with an amazon power cord for my Lenovo laptop. It
| charges fine but the casing around the electronics melted
| due to it getting so hot. It is my kids laptop and could
| have literally started a fire on him. I bought a new one
| from Staples and now won't buy any electronics like that
| from amazon.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Maybe Benson Leung?
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/computing/225719-amazon-bans-
| che...
|
| Try https://usbccompliant.com/
| Pxtl wrote:
| They physically mangled the connector itself, so the
| tablets could no longer charge. They were 4-year-old Galaxy
| Tab 7" so not worth repairing.
|
| Basically I had a usb cable where the metal of the
| connector bent in just the right way that it scraped off
| the contacts inside the tablets' female port.
| cratermoon wrote:
| That mechanical connection is definitely prone to
| failure. I've had phones where the charging port was
| physically worn enough that I could plug them in and
| charge them OK but bump it just a bit and it would
| disconnect. Wireless charging isn't quite there yet but
| I'd be happy to get rid of all cables.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If anything, the last few years of politics have convinced me
| that objective information is more likely to die out, replaced
| by advertising, brand recognition, and coercive tools.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| An older friend of mine made the observation that really
| before the few large news networks and papers in the last
| 40-50 years objective information that everyone roughly
| agreed upon was not the norm. Yellow journalism, hearsay and
| rumors dominated common conversation.
|
| He observed that with the internet we're returning to what
| was this "normal" state with anybody being able to post
| something and gain widespread recognition, the difference of
| course being the rate at which this non-objective information
| travels and the better ability to weaponize it.
|
| I think, after looking into it a bit more, I agree with him
| and that our period of fairly objective news and political
| information and the general consensus that brought was the
| anomaly. This raises the question then how do we as society
| re-learn to cope with that and filter out non objective
| information because clearly we're not doing so well with it
| now.
|
| So, I don't think so much as it will die out as much as I
| think we need to develop abilities to separate wheat from
| chaff, stronger societal bullshit filters because truth will
| have a weaker signal.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| Nostalgia for the days when the NYT and co. could lie the
| whole nation into some war (or rather the people who read
| the NYT).
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's remarkable how people have taken the NYT and others
| reporting what they were told over the Iraq war, where
| finding contradictory evidence was extremely hard, as a
| reason to go to _far less reliable_ news sources.
| [deleted]
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Your words not mine bud.
| [deleted]
| username90 wrote:
| How much of that was the American propaganda machine doing
| its job to keep the western world united against communism?
| The change we are seeing could just be the end of the cold
| war leading to slow return to normal and not due to
| technology at all.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| I mean united news cycles predated the cold war and
| wasn't an isolated American phenomenon and I'm not
| talking about America but the world so I don't see how
| your opinion is relevant to the topic other than to stir
| the pot.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I think, after looking into it a bit more, I agree with
| him and that our period of fairly objective news and
| political information and the general consensus that
| brought was the anomaly. This raises the question then how
| do we as society re-learn to cope with that and filter out
| non objective information because clearly we're not doing
| so well with it now.
|
| I don't know the answer, but my opinion is that we need to
| stop optimizing for views. I.e. kill the online advertising
| market. You can do your part by installing an ad blocker
| and paying for services you like with real money.
| kube-system wrote:
| I feel like this could be said any time over the past 100
| years, at a minimum.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| I know my comment will be lost in a sea of voices, but I need
| to share my experience _somewhere_ else other than amazon
| reviews. I got my fiance two Christmas presents this year -
| both bought off Amazon. One was an electronic keyboard that was
| dead on arrival, the other was a snuggie type blanket that
| started falling apart yesterday. Both items had thousands of 5
| star reviews.
|
| I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else besides Amazon because I
| have had bad experiences in the past, but this was the only
| place I could find the niche keyboard because it's an older
| model. I now have a firm rule that I will never order from
| Amazon again.
| SamBam wrote:
| If you're still every looking for instruments, Sweetwater has
| excellent stuff, and really stellar customer service.
|
| They answered questions by phone before we purchased. I
| received a keyboard for my daughter, then we had a change of
| heart and decided we had gotten the wrong one, they handled
| everything for shipping it back and sending a new one, and
| called a week later to see if we were happy.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| And they will call you once every few months for the rest
| of your natural life (and then some). Sweetwater is
| notorious for being a company whose contact list you can
| never, ever escape from. Change your phone number, move
| across the country... Sweetwater will find you.
| SamBam wrote:
| Huh, they haven't called once since June, when I bought
| the keyboard. But it's possible they will in the future,
| though.
| CC38 wrote:
| Fakespot can help reveal which products have misleading
| reviews
|
| https://www.fakespot.com/
|
| Obviously it isn't perfect but it does help.
| asimpletune wrote:
| That's a pretty cool app. I love their interface, using the
| share button to expose the analysis.
| graton wrote:
| https://reviewmeta.com/ is another site which does the same
| sort of thing.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| I use Fakespot, and I wonder about its accuracy. Seeing a
| 5-star product given a `D` rating is shocking. If Fakespot
| _is_ reasonably accurate, then Amazon is inexcusably bad at
| removing fake reviews. Amazon has orders of magnitude more
| developer talent and user information than Fakespot to
| tackle accurate ratings. But I suppose that 's the reality
| of differing incentives...
| kongolongo wrote:
| I also question them. It seems a lot easier to accuse
| Amazon ratings of being poor especially if it feeds into
| an already existing confirmation bias against Amazon. For
| all we know Fakespot could just be making all of it up
| right? How are Fakespots ratings verified? Do I need a
| Fakespot for Fakespot too? Maybe rating systemes like
| these are fundamentally flawed.
| silexia wrote:
| Just switch to a reliable vendor like Costco or Target
| and stop buying from Amazon.
| CC38 wrote:
| So you believe that those companies somehow avoid review
| manipulation? I sure don't.
| SevenSpirits wrote:
| Amazon does have the disadvantage of being more worth
| circumventing. I.e. if amazon cracks down on some method
| of cheating the system, to a large extent the cheaters
| are going to find some other method of cheating.
|
| Whereas since Fakespot etc are less popular, there's less
| reason to evade their detection algorithms.
|
| That said, yeah, it sure seems like amazon's doing an
| awful job for consumers in this area.
| CC38 wrote:
| I do think that Amazon is inexcusably bad at removing
| fake reviews.
|
| However, I think there are some instances where Amazon
| probably rearranged large numbers of reviews because they
| found out the reviews were for a different item. It's
| likely that Fakespot can't tell the difference between
| mass censorship and legitimate removal. So you do have to
| take the results with a grain of salt and read recent
| reviews.
| r00fus wrote:
| It's likely Amazon. Of course, there are instances where
| (e.g. mason jars) where fakes may be acceptable as
| they're commodity products.
|
| It's tiring using Fakespot just to find dozens of D and
| Fs. For the most part, I use other retailers or just
| don't buy the item (surprisingly it's a zen option to not
| buy stuff you don't pressingly need).
| briffle wrote:
| Any time I put a less than 5 star review, i get contacted by
| the seller, who many times offer to send me a free
| replacement, a newer model, or another product I may be
| interested in, if I change my review. I have refused, but I
| imagine many others did that.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Ha! I got a shitty appletv stick on holder that dropped off
| the TV the other day after a couple months, I put up a 1
| star review _hoping_ that would happen but it hasn 't as
| yet!
| zucked wrote:
| I'm pretty convinced there are a lot of sellers on these
| third party marketplaces that arrive with a truckload of
| Widget A - once Widget A sells out, they're gone... on to
| the next thing or rebranded and selling Widget C.
| Especially when you're selling a low-margin plastic
| commodity item.
|
| If you don't get support while they're still actively
| selling YOUR widget, good luck.
| mikehollinger wrote:
| Best Buy is my secret weapon. For the last couple of years
| I've gotten gifts for people last minute with same day pickup
| - as small and simple as new earbuds and as large as a color
| laser printer.
|
| This Christmas I even got an echo show from them when Amazon
| itself was back ordered past the holidays.
| baja_blast wrote:
| I have been doing the same, Best Buy/Target/Walmart any big
| box retailer I know does some quality control. I have
| purchase way too many products from Amazon that broke
| immediately, just shockingly terrible quality. And the
| worst part is Amazon isn't cheap anymore, I have found that
| they have a 20-30% markup over their competitors and the
| cheap things just third party fake goods.
|
| IMO buying the cheapest products on Amazon is like using
| disposable plates and utensils, sure the one time purchase
| is cheaper than buying dishes and real utensils, but over
| time it's way more expensive.
|
| Honestly, opening a package from Amazon for a 5 star
| recommended item that you had high hopes for only to find a
| cheap piece of garbage is infuriating.
| silexia wrote:
| Walmart and Amazon both do not quality control vendors.
| Target and Costco do. Use Costco and Target and Best Buy.
| zucked wrote:
| Best Buy has done a pretty admirable job digging out from
| what seemed like a surefire death sentence. Target and
| Walmart weren't dead, but Amazon was eating their lunch.
|
| What they are doing much better at now is the hybrid
| e-commerce/brick and mortar that Amazon is struggling with.
| Whole Foods helped give them a platform, but Whole Foods
| are nowhere near as prolific as Target/Walmart/Best Buy.
|
| For all the reasons mentioned throughout this post, Amazon
| has gone from my first stop to far down on the list when
| looking to buy something.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| Yup, best buy is the first place I go for electronics. They
| don't have nearly the selection as Amazon unfortunately..
| StreamBright wrote:
| I was thinking about creating a site (allreviews.com or
| something) where you could write a review about anything,
| purchase, service, etc. Not sure about the legal background.
| Could I face legal challenges having such site in the US?
| coldpie wrote:
| I've completely stopped ordering from Amazon, for three
| reasons: they have too much market power, they have serious
| ethics problems, and their 3rd party seller program has made
| the buying experience garbage. Welcome to the club.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| It is really good to diversify your purchasing. Walmart is
| often a great alternative to Amazon: Newegg or Bestbuy for
| consumer electronics; Jensen for bikes; Adafruit or
| Robotshop for hobby electronics; Apogee for rockets.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I've come full circle and only order books (usually used)
| or things I don't care if they're Chinese bargain-version
| off Amazon anymore.
|
| Target, or occasionally Walmart, gets what used to be
| Amazon's business from me.
| hinkley wrote:
| B & H photos has done right by me so far. CDW seems okay.
| Newegg appears to have vendors reselling stuff from
| Amazon with markup. And while you can filter third party
| out, you quickly discover Newegg doesn't have much
| inventory.
| steelframe wrote:
| tl;dr: I expect to get something with shoddy build
| quality from Newegg, but at least the reviews seem non-
| gamed.
|
| After a few months of lackadaisically making sporadic
| attempts to order an RTX 3080, I finally threw in the
| towel and ordered a prebuilt machine which will come with
| whatever brand 3080 card is in stock at the time from
| Newegg. I could really use the CPU upgrade anyway, and
| the markup on the parts isn't at all bad compared to the
| markup from scalpers, who I refuse to do business with on
| principle.
|
| The reviews on Newegg at least seem not-gamed. They're
| largely, "Quality parts slapped together and shipped
| unprotected, so I received the box with cards and RAM
| modules unseated and case parts bent due to being thrown
| around during shipping." I'm going to end up merging
| parts from two systems to produce a watercooled variant
| anyway, so all I really care about is just getting the
| parts, in particular the 3080, at this point.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> I'm going to end up merging parts from two systems to
| produce a watercooled variant anyway, so all I really
| care about is just getting the parts, in particular the
| 3080, at this point._
|
| Fwiw you still run a risk that the CPU heatsink or
| something similar will come dislodged during shipping,
| and tumble around inside like a wrecking ball, smashing
| up the CPU, 3080 and the other parts you want to keep.
|
| I learned this the hard way. There's a difference between
| how computers like Dells that are designed for mail order
| are made, vs modular DIY ones. The interior parts of the
| former are more strongly locked down inside. They're more
| likely to be non-standard and difficult or impossible to
| upgrade, but that's the cost of making them UPS-proof
| (United Package Smashers).
| nitrogen wrote:
| I know a couple of people who've done the same thing --
| order a prebuilt machine just to get one of the new CPUs
| or GPUs. Hopefully it remains unviable for scalpers and
| thus viable for users who actually want to use what they
| buy.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Newegg went down the toilet in 2016 when Liaison
| Interactive bought it out.
|
| Adorama is also good and, like B&H, you can't do any
| business with them on Saturday.
| coldpie wrote:
| Has any retail company ever gotten better after being
| bought out (thinking NewEgg, Toys R Us, Guitar
| Center...)? Some incentive is fucked up if decent
| businesses are being run into the ground.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Toys R Us and Guitar Center are among the retailers
| bought by private equity firms explicitly so the
| investors could wring the value out of the company and
| throw the remains in the dumpster. G.I. Joes was another.
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/toys
| -r-...
|
| By the way the remnants of Toys R Us are now owned by Tru
| Toys and they are looking to make a comeback.
| sampo wrote:
| > so the investors could wring the value out of the
| company and throw the remains in the dumpster
|
| What does that mean in practice?
| dingaling wrote:
| > What does that mean in practice?
|
| Buy the company with loans, strip the tangible assets for
| cash, burden the company with the loan repayments and
| bail out.
|
| Basically use the company as leverage to buy it, and then
| make it pay for having been bought out. It will seldom be
| able to do so, and eventually will stagger into
| bankruptcy. Both the company and the creditors lose, but
| not the 'investors'.
| genericone wrote:
| Low expected long term business value due to predicted
| market shifts. Compress all dwindling future value into
| an immediately extractable source of income at the cost
| of the existence of the business itself. Basically,
| squeeze the brand name dry until the brand name itself
| means nothing.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Vulture capitalists bleed them to death. Toys R Us is
| particularly sad as their business was strong.
| nicwolff wrote:
| Last year I ordered a high-priced item from Newegg,
| received a different model from a reseller, and returned
| it - then ordered it from Walmart and got the same
| different model from the same reseller! Finally CDW sent
| me the correct product.
| hndude wrote:
| For used books you could try thriftbooks.com
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Bookshop.org and Better World Books are great
| alternatives to Amazon for new and used respectively.
| coldpie wrote:
| Even books aren't safe. Support your local booksellers!
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2019/02/amazo...
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Even for non-counterfeit books, I've often got shit
| quality print-on-demand versions with plates that look
| like an inkjet printer running low on ink and with the
| letters having fuzzy boundaries.
| steelframe wrote:
| For books I've gone from buying on a Kindle to
| Kobo+OverDrive which I use to check out e-books from the
| library. But I'm one of those freaks who actually prefers
| e-ink devices over dead tree books.
| monksy wrote:
| Don't give them money if you don't support them doing
| crappy things. Still using them is giving them money.
|
| Also if you're looking for Chinese knockoffs.. go
| directly to the source and go with Aliexpress.
| dasudasu wrote:
| Ebay isn't that bad either for cheap Chinese products.
| Lots of direct Chinese sellers.
| julianlam wrote:
| Many Chinese sellers will list items on Amazon for a
| multiple of the price listed on AliExpress. You're
| essentially paying a multiple of the price for faster
| shipping.
| perl4ever wrote:
| I can relate to this experience, but the thing is, similar
| things have happened to me with other retailers, that I think
| have especially high markups and used to be in my mind decent
| brands.
|
| I got a shirt from Macy's with sewn in stripes that started
| to unravel before long, this was many years ago, but I never
| bought clothes from there again.
|
| And more recently, I got pillow cases from bed bath & beyond,
| that were very expensive, but otherwise exactly what I
| wanted, and the seams started coming undone.
|
| Amazon is not a reliable brand, but on the other hand, one
| can justify trying it again and again, _because_ it is not a
| single (tainted) brand.
|
| I've said before and will say it again, I read the reviews
| starting with the worst, as if all the five star reviews were
| always all fake. I don't know what they might have been for
| your products, but usually I see no connection between the
| best reviews and the useful information in the worst.
| afavour wrote:
| One extra problem with Amazon is that a lot of products are
| sold by third party merchants and their site UX seems to
| deliberately obscure the fact. Same goes for Walmart,
| though I have less experience using them.
|
| If I order from Amazon, from Amazon, I tend to have good
| experiences. If I order third party from Amazon it's a crap
| shoot.
| wombat-man wrote:
| walmart used to be better about this but now I notice
| they, and other major retailers are trying to adopt the
| amazon platform concept.
|
| Sometimes it's easier to just make a list and physically
| go to a store so I don't need to question whether or not
| what I'm buying is legit and deal with that stuff.
| silexia wrote:
| I bought this exact drone for my nephew and was sorely
| disappointed by it. I agree with the earlier comments
| saying that we need to go back to buying from
| manufacturers in legitimate countries and relying on
| strong brand names like Sony and the like.
|
| Both Amazon and Walmart are not reliable vendors. Costco
| does still vet all it's products, I will probably just
| use them from now on.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| This experience is alien to me. I order from Amazon all the
| time and everything I get is generally fine. Occasionally
| something breaks after a while or is missing a part but that
| can happen anywhere and Amazon has extremely generous return
| policies. If anything I've come to trust AmazonBasics as a
| reliable brand if I'm deciding between products.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Maybe this is a longer game by Amazon. Let bogus reviews
| and bad experiences pile up for third party sellers, slowly
| driving people to only trust "Amazon Basics." They have
| nearly perfect knowledge of the profitability of any item,
| so they know what items they should have under the "Amazon
| Basics" umbrella. Over time they could expand this into
| other Amazon "Brands" at varying quality/price points.
| dasudasu wrote:
| They do already have other Amazon brands.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_brands
|
| For instance, Goodthreads is one step above Amazon
| Essentials for clothing.
| xnoise-beta wrote:
| I buy only prime items and only after i do a fair amount of
| research about them. I stay away from products that are
| prime but have chinese names and also i tend to look at the
| bad reviews rather than the good ones.
|
| I recently decided to buy a tensiometer and i avoided about
| 2 bad ones (even if they were overall at 4.8 or so) because
| of the latest bad reviews indicating that the quality has
| been worse in the last few years.
|
| Imo most of these things could be avoided with a little bit
| of care. I am not expecting amazon to be able to do that
| for me. On the other hand, the amount of chinese crappy
| products is staggering. Just looked for a subwoofer and i
| had to apply quite a lot of filtering to only get the
| decent brands up.
| ry4nolson wrote:
| Same. I really feel like this is one of those things where
| 99+% of people have zero issues and don't comment on stuff
| like this. Myself and just about everyone I know order from
| amazon all the time and have very very few issues. And when
| we do, the return/replace/refund/whatever process is smooth
| as butter.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The problem is consumers are unorganized and people wanting to
| sell things can easily induce distortions in whatever
| recommender system by buying labor, companies, or products. You
| can only temporarily solve the problem before wealth demolishes
| objective feedback systems.
| gumby wrote:
| > There's still a lot to be said for established brands.
|
| Thus the loop comes full circle.
|
| Originally the idea of a brand ("burned" -- burned into the
| hide of an animal or a piece of wood) was a way to label the
| provider in the hope that people would learn which providers
| were trustworthy and had high quality. This extended into
| manufactured products once printed packaging become popular
| (logos and labels, starting with low-input goods like tea).
|
| Then sometime in the 20th century people figured out that they
| could use mass advertising to build the brand (by then just a
| label) itself, sometimes even rendering the product itself
| almost irrelevant. I remember articles in the paper (80s I
| think) expressing shock and/or bemusement that someone would
| wear a shirt with "Tommy Hilfinger" printed boldly across the
| front. At that point such brands become an expression of stance
| rather than product quality, or perhaps the product was merely
| a way to broadcast the brand. For example Diesel jeans which
| can only be worn a small number of times, compared to levis
| which last much longer.
|
| And now it's come back to the starting point: seeking the
| brand, but for some level of quality assurance rather than
| lifestyle adherence.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > [first paragraph]
|
| This is effectively being debated by proxy is most apple
| threads - i.e. It's easy to forget that we're debating this on
| HN, where even the least informed still have some idea what's
| going on whereas most consumers only information about a
| product is from very few sources and mostly advertising.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > replaced by better objective information about products
|
| I don't have much to add here, but economists call this
| _perfect information_.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Branding is an emergent phenomenon in nature as well, e.g.
| flowers of particular shapes to attract bees. The book
| "Alchemy" by Rory Sutherland goes into this.
| nikanj wrote:
| Too bad buying the name brand on Amazon still gets you
| counterfeits and headaches
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Yes, and even if the product seems like its legit - the
| manufacturers often won't honor warranties on products bought
| from Amazon if they don't have a formal relationship with
| them.
| bombcar wrote:
| Amusingly enough if you trace the history of brand names ...
| this is why they started!
|
| And this is the strength that the major retailers have against
| Amazon - if Amazon won't police (and they have problems with
| commingling counterfeit brands, too) then Walmart and Target
| will jump ahead.
| javert wrote:
| I go to Walmart or the grocery store if I need stuff from
| Amazon that may be counterfeit.
|
| Batteries, for example.
|
| Amazon is throwing away money.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Completely agree. Unless I'm familiar with the seller on
| Amazon (a known brand like Anker) I _try_ to stick to
| Walmart, Target, Staples. Bonus, often times the identical
| item can be found at a lower price. Downside is the
| shipping may take a few days more.
|
| For something like an SD card or a battery your chance of
| getting a counterfeit or unreliable product is pretty high.
| I prefer not to think too much about how that maps to food.
| There was an article (I think here on HN) a few years ago
| where a bookseller who was forced to buy Amazon ads for his
| own book just so the counterfeits wouldn't outrank him on
| Amazon.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| I would absolutely never order food, supplements, OTC
| meds, etc. from Amazon.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I get the sense this problem is massively overstated around
| here. My experience on Amazon is great, same for everybody I
| know who uses it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| searchableguy wrote:
| > if Amazon won't police (and they have problems with
| commingling counterfeit brands, too) then Walmart and Target
| will jump ahead.
|
| I think they are solving this differently. Amazon introduced
| their own brands for almost all daily necessities. Amazon
| basic, amazon pharmacy, amazon fashion, amazon elements,
| amazon pantry, amazon echo and few more. They generally have
| average or above average products at an affordable price and
| good support.
|
| You can buy AC, fridge, vacuum cleaner, clothes, baby food,
| dog food, dog bed, multi-vitamin, ramen, TWS, carpet,
| blanket, swiss army knife, solder machine, and a lot more
| from amazon itself now.
| robotnikman wrote:
| From my experience i've had some mixed results with the
| quality of Amazon basics products.
|
| I remember buying a charger for my phone, only for the
| plastic shell of the charger to break in half a few months
| later
| capitainenemo wrote:
| The last time I bought a "new" phone "Sold by: Amazon.com
| Services LLC" it arrived several weeks late, with a burned
| in screen, scuff marks, and randomly rebooting.
|
| My impression is they did not have the item they were
| selling, and were relying on some presumably "trusted"
| reseller to provide it.
|
| I ended up purchasing a used one in much better condition
| on eBay for several hundred dollars less where the
| condition at least matched the sale entry.
| pr0zac wrote:
| Be careful using eBay, a rather scary number of listings
| on there are people just relisting items from Amazon at a
| higher price and reshipping (or just ordering with your
| shipping address, I had one eBay purchase come directly
| from Amazon).
| bittercynic wrote:
| There are plenty of terrible sellers on ebay, too, but it
| is much easier to sort out the garbage sellers. Seller
| feedback is right there in the search results, and though
| you can't filter by feedback any more, it is easy enough
| to just skip over any listings with a low number or less
| than 99.9% positive.
| _jal wrote:
| Yeah, tried that. Amazon Basics are as hit-or-miss as the
| rest of the garbage.
|
| I'm frankly surprised they want to put their name on what
| appears to be dollar store crap that might be fine, might
| not, who knows. You can almost see the flickering neon and
| smell the cleaning fluid.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _smell the cleaning fluid_
|
| 2020 brick and mortar's new motto
| SilasX wrote:
| Semi-related: there's that 4000 year old clay tablet
| recording a customer service complaint, so ... old problem,
| reliably signaling product quality.
|
| https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-
| writings/4...
| rurp wrote:
| Unfortunately Walmart seems to be doing their best to be just
| as bad as Amazon. I had good luck ordering from them for the
| past few years but more recently it's gotten almost as bad.
| They now have a lot of fake/junk products being sold by
| random parties, plus I had a really awful experience with
| their customer service recently.
|
| The product page for one item that my partner was looking to
| buy for her Mom's birthday said something like "Free 2-day
| shipping, receive it by the 4th". Well when she went to check
| out the only option to get it by that date cost $30+ dollars.
| I ended up getting on the phone with a support person who
| fully acknowledged that the shipping info was wrong but to my
| shock completely dismissed it as not being a problem.
|
| I said that people were putting items into their cart based
| on false information and the response was basically a
| dismissive shrug. We went back and forth a few times to make
| sure I really understood his response and there's no doubt
| that he did not care that they were displaying false shipping
| info.
|
| Since then I've been wary of buying anything else from
| Walmart.
| robocat wrote:
| > I ended up getting on the phone with a support person who
| fully acknowledged that the shipping info was wrong but to
| my shock completely dismissed it as not being a problem
| ...We went back and forth a few times to make sure I really
| understood his response and there's no doubt that he did
| not care that they were displaying false shipping info.
|
| You have as much agency and incentive to fix the problem as
| the support person. Most arguments for why the support
| person should spend their time and energy trying to fix a
| problem outside their authority, and their reasons for not
| doing so, could equally be applied to you.
| fuzxi wrote:
| As the face of the company at that moment, a better
| response is to pretend to care and say you'll pass on the
| message.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Amusingly enough if you trace the history of brand names
| ... this is why they started!
|
| That sounds like an interesting history. Do you have any
| recommendations for reading on it?
| mbesto wrote:
| > Walmart and Target will jump ahead.
|
| Actually, I think it's D2C that will jump ahead. The problem
| with Walmart and Target is they either (a) have limited brand
| selection (target) or (b) they dilute themselves so much to
| compete with Amazon that they eventually become Amazon
| (Walmart).
| coldpie wrote:
| Limited brand selection is actually a benefit. I don't want
| to spend an hour flipping through shitty USB-C cables to
| find the one that won't nuke my device. I want to pay the
| buyer at the retailer a few cents to do that for me.
| zucked wrote:
| You're just shuffling the effort of finding a good
| quality cable upstream to finding a good quality
| retailer.
| fuzxi wrote:
| Well, yes. The difference is that once you find a trusted
| retailer, you don't need to put in the same effort every
| time you need to buy something. You just trust them to
| have vetted their products for you.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I dunno. I don't think anyone actually wants D2C, for rare-
| purchase (ie the mass majority of goods).
|
| It's one thing if the brand has an ongoing relationship
| with its customers, but nobody wants the burden of dealing
| with 1,000 slightly different processes for ordering toilet
| paper.
|
| That's the inherent value of Paypal et al. -- abstracting
| diversity on one side into a standard interface on the
| customer side.
| mbesto wrote:
| > It's one thing if the brand has an ongoing relationship
| with its customers, but nobody wants the burden of
| dealing with 1,000 slightly different processes for
| ordering toilet paper. That's the inherent value of
| Paypal et al. -- abstracting diversity on one side into a
| standard interface on the customer side.
|
| I guess you've never ordered something from a Shopify
| based store then?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Shopify is Stripe + Ruby. Same strategic idea as PayPal
|
| Point being: D2C doesn't solve the trust problem in a
| scaleable way, except for repeat purchases
| fuball63 wrote:
| I was of a similar mind this year, but when I went to
| Walmart's website, they had 3rd party sellers on there too.
| It is really annoying, especially with the pandemic, trying
| to sift through all the trash online.
|
| I ended up buying we webcam from BestBuy.com, because a
| webcam I got from Amazon was pay-for-review and was utter
| garbage.
|
| Just more evidence, to me, that the era of internet business
| models being "get everything online" (Amazon, Spotify, Steam)
| is closing, and the era of online aggregation as a product is
| just beginning.
| hanklazard wrote:
| I've also found myself buying a lot of things from Best
| Buy, something I would have scoffed at 5-7 years ago. These
| days, I just want to know that I'm getting a genuine (vs
| replica) product and most of the time I can go pick-up my
| purchase same day, solving the "fast shipping" problem.
| brewdad wrote:
| I've shifted a lot of purchases to Best Buy as well. I
| also ordered far more products directly from the
| manufacturer's web site this year. Many offer the same
| free shipping if you are buying anything of value.
|
| I figure if Netgear sends me a fake switch when ordering
| directly from them it's time to give up on capitalism.
| zucked wrote:
| Searching out the manufacturer (assuming there is a brand
| behind the product and not just an Amazon shop) has made
| my recent efforts, too. A surprising number of times, the
| item is cheaper from the manufacturer, and they offer
| free shipping or a coupon for further discount. I imagine
| that works out for the buyer and seller - I get a genuine
| product at their chosen price, and they get to keep fees
| that would have otherwise gone to Amazon.
| coldpie wrote:
| Since NewEgg started up their 3rd party seller program,
| I've also switched to Best Buy. Running out of places to
| buy from that aren't flooded with trash.
| kabdib wrote:
| One 3rd party seller on NewEgg has been ripping off
| customers for years. (You order something from them --
| say, a mouse -- and they find some shitty used product on
| Ebay or someplace and ship _that_ to you _. Getting a
| refund can be a challenge).
|
| Multiple complaints (including contacting the CEO of
| NewEgg) haven't removed this bad actor. So I just assume
| that this practice of retaining terrible 3rd parties
| reflects NewEgg's _true* extent of their caring for
| customers, and I don't buy stuff from them anymore.
| mcpherrinm wrote:
| BestBuy has added third party sellers online too:
| https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/about/selling-on-
| marketplace/bl...
|
| Though they don't seem to have many yet, I did run across
| it recently. In-store pickup items are still seemingly
| safe though.
| coldpie wrote:
| Seems to not be on the US site, for now, but that's very
| discouraging to see. I don't know where to turn for
| electronics if Best Buy goes to crap, too.
|
| (I smell a market opportunity for a retailer that sells
| only quality products...)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Adding third party sellers is not a problem. Removing the
| ability to filter for items sold by the retailer, and
| commingling inventory with random resellers is the
| problem.
| bradfa wrote:
| I've started buying electronics from B&H Photo and
| Provantage recently. So far I've been very happy and the
| prices are reasonable.
| thwarted wrote:
| This is the trend because the existence of the brand's
| website as a multi-seller marketplace is considered more
| valuable/higher ROI than the actual direct selling of
| items. And that's a reasonable view considering most of
| what is being sold is commodity and prices, thus margin,
| having downward pressure. The e-commerce website gets a
| positive reputation and a brand is built for being a good
| place to buy things, so it expands into being a hosting
| platform other sellers, with the intent of drawing more
| customers based on the brand reputation.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| At the risk of long term diluting that brand reputation.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Aka "the Etsy effect" (lowering the bar for new sellers
| results in a flood of bad-faith sellers)
| scioto wrote:
| > Since NewEgg started up their 3rd party seller program,
| I've also switched to Best Buy. Running out of places to
| buy from that aren't flooded with trash.
|
| I still buy from NewEgg, but the first thing I do when I
| hit the search results is to click the Sold by Newegg
| button. Might be a few bucks more, but at least I'm
| getting the real deal ... at least so far.
| treis wrote:
| NewEgg screwed me out of a monitor. I wouldn't trust them
| as as retailer anymore. That's from someone who used to
| buy all their computer stuff through them.
| bombcar wrote:
| I avoid marketplace sellers like the plague - usually you
| can do a "ships and sold" or "pickup today" to weed them
| out.
| biztos wrote:
| I just made a pretty big purchase decision in a field (cameras)
| where there is a lot of competition and reviews carry a lot of
| weight.
|
| In the end, the information that helped me make up my mind was
| from video reviews by mostly well-known photography vloggers on
| YouTube.
|
| This is also something that could be messed with by
| unscrupulous marketers, but there is a strong counterbalance to
| those anti-patterns: the vloggers themselves are trying to
| build reputations, because "top photography vlogger" presumably
| pays better than 99% of all other work that involves
| photography.
|
| I'm not sure how much this counts as "better objective
| information" -- other than seeing an object move around in
| someone's hands you're mostly getting an opinion -- but I found
| it super helpful and could easily imagine this being the
| "future of purchase-decision influence" or something like it.
|
| For example here are three channels I used, with radically
| different styles:
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCknMR7NOY6ZKcVbyzOxQPhw
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/user/christopherfrost
|
| 3. https://www.youtube.com/user/JaredPolin
| FireBeyond wrote:
| You're wise to do so.
|
| People believe (speaking of photography / video YouTubers)
| that Apple generally doesn't give pre-release or demo units
| to users (except the "inner circle", shall we say - Daring
| Fireball, etc.).
|
| Odd, then, how a whole bunch of photography vloggers, the
| vast majority of whom made absolutely no mention of loaner /
| demo units, promotional consideration, etc, all got launch
| day Mac Pros.
|
| "Much anticipated", people might argue, so of course they
| pre-ordered.
|
| Odd. They must have all got together and talked. Because on
| my YT subscriptions list I counted no less than eight
| photography vloggers who somehow, coincidentally, managed to
| get the EXACT same configuration:
|
| The 24 core, 384GB, 4TB, Vega Pro II Duo, with a Pro Display
| XDR, nano coated.
|
| Now, not only is this an overkill for ANY photography
| editing, even 100mp medium format, it's also a $25,000 (33
| when you count the display).
|
| I'm willing to guarantee that these were all Apple loaner
| units and that at some point they bought their own with the
| specs they really wanted, and "subbed it in" to their setup,
| later.
| quasse wrote:
| > because "top photography vlogger" presumably pays better
| than 99% of all other work that involves photography.
|
| Just to be clear though (I work in a field that relies
| heavily on niche-specifc YouTubers for marketing) - the
| reason that being a "top niche blogger" pays so well is
| because companies pay them _a lot_ to encourage favorable
| opinions of their product lines.
|
| I've seen amounts that are several multiples of my annual
| salary for fairly small market segment channels - and it's
| not explicit like "We are hiring you to post positive reviews
| of our products" because that would need to be disclosed.
| It's more along the lines of "We are nominally hiring you as
| a brand ambassador, you will visit our HQ and make a
| collaboration video". But of course, YouTubers aren't stupid,
| they're not going to post negative content about brands that
| are paying them even if it's theoretically for something
| else.
|
| This is the same problem that PC hardware review magazines
| had back in the day - companies that purchased a lot of
| advertising from the parent company just happened to never
| get negative coverage in review articles. You can't bite the
| hand that feeds you.
| Kluny wrote:
| > Brands can get stocked in major retailers because you need
| decent products to make it through Walmart's buying process.
|
| Not only this - brands that get stocked at Walmart need to have
| considerable production capacity. I was involved in a
| manufacturing business that did great as long as we stayed b2c
| - but when we started doing b2b sales, even in small local
| shops, we got swamped rather quickly because we didn't have
| enough capacity.
|
| It's not much use finding a quality product if you can't buy
| it.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| > There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand
| recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out,
| replaced by better objective information about products. I'm
| kind of partial to this idea myself.
|
| Based on what? Are people investing less in marketing than
| before?
| prepend wrote:
| My personal experience is that many brands had a high markup
| on brand recognition and I used to be able to find better
| quality and value through no name brands that made good
| products. The internet is supposed to spread information well
| and with perfect information I should be able to
| differentiate true quality vs just a known brand signaling
| quality.
|
| I think the problem is that places like Amazon distort
| information (eg, tolerate crappy reviews) because it makes
| them more money. The bazaar model is supposed to have some
| positive feedback loops to incentivize positive events, but
| that's drifting away.
|
| So I used to think that effective marketplaces would replace
| brands with disintermediation and perfect info. But not so
| much now.
|
| This is sort of a tl;dr for why I buy Apple. They have a huge
| markup for brand name, but it's exhausting to me to try to
| evaluate what's the best laptop this year and I can trust
| Apple to probably be pretty good.
| [deleted]
| orev wrote:
| Given the counterfeit problem on Amazon, I have been using the
| retailer as a proxy instead. I feel much more comfortable
| buying things from a known retailer like Target or Walmart,
| since I can rely on them to at least do _some_ kind of due
| diligence on the products they carry. I think this will be the
| way forward for these companies to stay in business as Amazon
| becomes overrun with junk.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Even though Walmart also has a marketplace full of mystery
| sellers, at least they still offer a simple filter at the
| outset to limit your results to only things they sell
| directly. At Amazon, you have to have already put another
| filter on your search results to see that option.
| prepend wrote:
| This Christmas I used Walmart more than Amazon over 21 years
| of previous "Amazon christmases."
|
| When I filtered for Walmart only my experience was great. No
| searching for ps5 and seeing Xbox ads, just stuff that
| matched my search.
|
| Also Walmart shipping was 1-2 days and free. So I guess
| logistics is getting figured out when Walmart free is beating
| Amazon prime.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I use the retailer so that if the product breaks I can just
| walk back in and get my money back.
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| Here's one solution: don't buy cheap garbage.
|
| Yes, someone makes a $23 drone. It is cheap plastic shit from
| China. Do you really need to buy it, and then throw it in
| landfill a week (or two days) later after it breaks?
|
| Did OP reeeeeally expect a $23 drone to be on the up-and-up and
| NOT end up as landfill? OP is a bit oblivious to his impact on
| the environment.
|
| This race to the bottom for the cheapest crap is what inspires
| these tactics.
| omginternets wrote:
| I've heard this phrased as "buy once, cry once".
|
| A few years ago my New Year's resolution was to stop buying
| cheap crap, and to consciously save up for nice things. This
| had a few unexpected consequences:
|
| 1. I accumulate less junk and produce less waste.
|
| 2. I buy less stuff and end up spending _less_ money in the
| long run, since there 's only so much you can save up for at
| once.
|
| 3. My purchases bring me _much_ more pleasure; the anticipation
| and research heightens the joy of actually getting the thing.
|
| Number 3 was the most surprising to me, most likely because I
| have a rather strong anti-materialism streak. I'm not the kind
| of person who "goes shopping", but even I must admit that
| deliberately saving up for something makes its purchase a bit
| more meaningful, and loads more satisfying.
|
| Oh, and I basically don't experience buyer's remorse anymore,
| which is nice.
| ptmcc wrote:
| I've come to similar conclusions as you.
|
| > the anticipation and research heightens the joy of actually
| getting the thing
|
| I've found that the research and thinking process is often
| the most fun part, and that I can replace that little
| dopamine hit from buying a bunch of cheap crap by window
| shopping for nicer, more expensive things for the future.
|
| Then when I am finally ready to buy something nice, I've
| already done most of the research to know exactly what I
| want/need.
|
| It also helps filter out stuff I don't really need or care
| about, since I tend to forget about that junk if I don't
| impulse buy it. Put junk in your cart but don't buy it until
| you sleep on it, and 9 times out of 10 you realize you don't
| really need it or even care about it once the novelty is
| gone.
|
| I end up buying less throwaway crap, and I end up mostly very
| pleased with the nicer things I do buy.
| kevincox wrote:
| The problem is that we don't have a great indicator of quality
| other than price. Why do I think the $30 or $50 will be better?
| It _probably_ is, but I have no way to tell if I am getting a
| better quality product or basically the same just sold at a
| higher price. It is hard to decide to take this "risk" when
| you don't know.
|
| Trusted reviews and recommendations can solve this but they are
| hard to come by.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| There's lots of indicators of quality on the amazon page
| beyond the price and reviews.
|
| Look at the title. It's just restating generic "drone" SEO
| nonsense over and over. There's not even a real name of the
| product.
|
| The photos of the item are pretty clearly photoshopped stock
| imagery.
|
| The description is full of grammatical and punctuation
| errors.
|
| The brand has no online presence beyond its Amazon listings.
| It doesn't even have its own Amazon brand page.
|
| It may be asking too much of the general consumer to look at
| these signals, but they seem pretty obvious to me.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| It has become increasing difficult to find good reviews too.
| The use of affiliate links means there are a lot of affiliate
| link farm sites now that do top 10 product listings and
| sometimes they make really hard to determine if they know
| what they are talking about or not. You can waste a lot of
| time trying to find real roundup reviews that aren't just
| affiliate link scam sites on search engines.
| prepend wrote:
| It's a children's toy meant to be played with for a few hours.
| So $23 makes since since this is a simple toy.
|
| The thinking that people shouldn't pay low amounts leads to
| companies selling the same junk but for $100 instead.
|
| Cheap things should be cheap, I think.
| r00fus wrote:
| Amazing mentality. Of course, no concern for the
| externalities...
| dan-robertson wrote:
| ... Except that Amazon also has a problem with counterfeiting,
| especially for known brands.
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| Absolutely agreed. It's a different topic though. Amazon even
| steals top sellers, copies them, and pushes out the
| originator! (I think there was a radiolab about a guy who
| invented a bunch of grill tools that Amazon duplicated, and
| bottom-listed him).
|
| There are lots of problems with Amazon, but in hindsight,
| perhaps my original comment was a bit offtopic...
| tangoalpha wrote:
| This is how the seller can do it, atleast on Amazon India.
|
| Swapping the details completely triggers AI based flags and often
| causes the change to be manually reviewed.
|
| But the seller can add a variant of the product (like size or
| color). But the seller instead adds a completely different
| product he intends to swap the original product with. Now the
| listing will show two completely different products as variants
| on a single product listing. Then the seller removes the old
| variant. Nothing gets flagged. No manual review.
|
| This has been around for long and a very popular trick with shady
| sellers on Amazon in India. I don't think Amazon never figured it
| out. For whatever reason, Amazon turns a blind eye to this
| practice.
| kevincox wrote:
| This is a huge problem. Or a single "product page" with
| "variants" that are completely different products.
|
| I just outright refuse to buy from these sellers but it is
| clearly a successful model.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I was just seeing something like this the other day on US
| Amazon. I was looking at 'nano tape' to stick some stuff in
| place. And came across the top reviewed one, with 11k reviews
| [1] but all of the reviews are for a guitar wall mount. I was
| very confused as to how they achieved it.
|
| [1] Example: https://smile.amazon.com/Double-Sided-Tape-Walls-
| Decoration/...
| mdoms wrote:
| Presumably you've all stopped using Amazon because of this issue,
| so they're motivated to fix it..?
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Right now it doesn't seem to have a competitor. I think the
| market is now primed for an ethical competitor to come along
| and steal its business however, a lot of people are getting
| irritated with Amazon and would happily chose an alternative.
| mdoms wrote:
| Amazon's competitor is every other store on Earth. Amazon
| doesn't even exist in my country but somehow I have made it
| this far.
| r00fus wrote:
| My family purchases went from tens of thousands of dollars in
| 2018 to thousands in 2019 and even less in 2020.
|
| Now I'm on the brink of closing my Prime account. So yeah.
| ilamont wrote:
| Other bait-and-switch problems on Amazon are manufacturers and
| "brands" launching a product with high production standards, then
| switching them out with cheap, low-grade junk made with inferior
| components or materials later on. This is often coupled with
| rampant paid review scams, as discussed on HN
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25459434)
|
| A twist on bait and switch is another manufacturer or reseller
| taking over the "buy box". This is how pirated items or used
| items sold as new get dumped on customers, with Amazon's full
| encouragement (lower prices for customers!) and non-
| enforcement/honor system for sellers. Legitimate manufacturers
| and brands can scream to the high heavens that they and customers
| are being ripped off, but Amazon does next to nothing to stop the
| bad guys let alone compensate customers and brands who were
| cheated.
|
| Case in point: Bill Pollock's experience having his Python books
| _repeatedly_ pirated
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199135)
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I 100% agree with this article. And yet, I still do most of my
| shopping on Amazon. Unfortunately, when it comes to general
| merchandise, they're still the best at inventory, discovery,
| quality, fulfillment, and price. Which is a scathing indictment
| of the state of the rest of the e-commerce world.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Does anyone know of an alternative to Amazon that addresses
| quality and environmental issues (ideally something that isn't
| trying to sell me the latest hot garbage from whatever country is
| willing to trash the environment and enslave its citizens for a
| quick buck)?
| Zelphyr wrote:
| The only way this changes is when more people stop buying from
| Amazon. The incentives otherwise are too great for Amazon to do
| anything about it.
| maya24 wrote:
| Yep. I found Amazon pretty useless these days and rarely use
| it. I buy household essentials from Target their service and
| delivery is good and I have an option of in-store pickup within
| a day or delivery within a couple of days. At least they have a
| stable set of brands that they sell it's not the highest
| quality but it's good enough for most things. The things I care
| about quality I will buy directly from the seller.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| I've actually found, to my surprise, Walmart to be somewhat
| comparable to Target in the sense of feeling like I'm getting
| what I ordered instead of a knockoff like with Amazon. I had
| avoided them for years because of the terrible customer
| service I have received in their stores in the past but their
| online service is noticeably better. Their grocery Pick Up
| system is far superior to the competitor grocery stores in my
| area.
| lesinski wrote:
| Here's why Wirecutter can make an entire business out of credibly
| reviewing products
| s0rce wrote:
| Other sites like Outdoorgearlab do this as well, although, I
| could be wrong, it seems like they strongly favor items that
| can use affiliate links to make them money, which makes sense.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| And then wreck it by putting most reviews behind a login wall
| (sure it's free but I don't want another account). Reader mode
| to the rescue!
| symlinkk wrote:
| I have never seen a paywall for Wirecutter
| tomrod wrote:
| Note that I am not for Section 230's removal (mostly because it
| makes sense to me that platforms should be able to host negative
| content). However, if it were removed, would that mean bogus
| reviews become a liability for Amazon?
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| I would argue that reviews aren't content. a review is
| implicitly understood as an opinion of someone without ties to
| the company and of someone who actually owns or have 'reviewed'
| the product. In the case of amazon I think ownership of a
| product should be mandatory to leave a review.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| While this can help the seller can so radically change the
| listing that it doesn't always stop review hijacking. As I
| understand it they sell something simple and cheap then
| repurpose the listing for something else entirely.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Now you know why Section 230 has to go. Comcast, TWC & so on is
| just a series of pipes, but Facebook & co has editorial control
| or at least should have.
| MichaelApproved wrote:
| Editorial control over every single post on the site? That's
| impossible.
|
| Without 230, social media sites like Facebook would cease to
| exist.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Facebook already has armies of moderators for child porn
| and gore, which shows that they have control over what's on
| their site. The bigger question is of course: are we safe
| with Facebook?
| bitcurious wrote:
| At least on Amazon they already have editorial control of
| every review, in that there is a approval process for them
| to be posted.
| mrlala wrote:
| I guess HN will have to go as well, all the misleading
| articles and posts on here.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello.
| ..
| learnstats2 wrote:
| Does Section 230 remove Amazon's liability for
| misrepresentation, in the way it promotes is reviews as being
| tied to a particular product?
|
| I'm doubtful about this.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Amazon uses this tactic themselves! They did it with the high
| capacity Amazon Basics AA batteries. The community pretty much
| verified they were rebranded Panasonic batteries manufactured in
| Japan. Then, after a few years and thousands of 5 star reviews
| they switched the batteries out for Chinese manufactured
| batteries. Check for yourself:
| https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-High-Capacity-Rechargeab...
| epistasis wrote:
| > As a result of Amazon's action, the top-ranking drone, which
| previously had more than 6,000 reviews, now has only about 50
| reviews and its star rating has dropped to three and a half
| stars. But the other two listings I mentioned above--both of
| which I also mentioned in a Monday email to Amazon--still have
| thousands of positive reviews, including a bunch of obviously
| bogus ones.
|
| The result of blatant fraud and manipulation is simply removing
| the fraud? Why is Amazon continuing business with this shady
| company _as if nothing happened_?
|
| I consider their "corrective" action far worse and damming than
| their inaction on other pages. Inaction could be from an
| inability to police everything. But merely covering up fraud when
| it happens is nearly as bad as taking no action.
| jquery wrote:
| This is the core of the problem. Amazon simply doesn't
| understand how trust works.
| wnevets wrote:
| More and more I've been switching my purchases back to brick and
| mortar. Amazon isn't cheapest, highest quality or the widest
| selection.
|
| Amazon prime makes it the most convenient but if you stop for a
| minute and break the cycle you'll find better prices at a higher
| quality else where.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| What I like, are the companies that create a separate listing for
| every variant of a product, within a price range, so searches get
| overwhelmed.
|
| A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a Mag-Safe stand for my
| new iPhone 12 Mini. When I searched for it on Amazon, look at
| what the search returned[0]. Now, scroll down, until you get to
| the "Cheetah" pop stand.
|
| Keep scrolling.
|
| But don't touch that dial! It goes on for 400 pages![1]
|
| Note they raise the price slightly, so they "sort."
|
| I ended up giving up, and getting one straight from the
| manufacturer.
|
| Oh...BTW. Those stands have this little gem in their description:
|
| _> (Not compatible with Apple MagSafe wireless charger or
| MagSafe wallet.)_
|
| Great that they overwhelm a search that is, explicitly:
|
| _magsafe iPhone stand_
|
| [0]
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=magsafe+iPhone+stand&i=mobile&s=p...
|
| [1]
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=magsafe+iPhone+stand&i=mobile&s=p...
| quitethelogic wrote:
| That is certainly a suboptimal shopping experience. One page
| with variants wouldn't seem to work very well for this either,
| with nearly 10,000 variations.
|
| Interestingly, they are all sold by amazon directly and are
| printed on demand so it doesn't seem to be a case of a 3rd
| party trying to game the site.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Interestingly, they are all sold by amazon directly and
| are printed on demand so it doesn 't seem to be a case of a
| 3rd party trying to game the site._
|
| Eek. I didn't even notice.
|
| That makes it even worse.
| Animats wrote:
| Skip the Amazon resellers and order direct from China on Alibaba.
| Their reputation system is less spammy than Amazon's.
|
| One of my areas to watch: solid state relays.
|
| Here we have yet another fake Fotek solid state relay on
| Amazon.[1] Note the "Made in China".
|
| Here's the real thing.[2] Note the "Taiwan made" from the real
| Fotek. Costs a lot more. That's because it will actually handle
| the rated current. The fakes are notorious for overheating and
| burning out. The real thing has overheat and surge protection,
| will shut off if it overheats, and can stand a big short term
| overload for motor starting or when a short is in the process of
| tripping the circuit breaker upstream.
|
| Here's a similar solid state relay from China, from the actual
| manufacturer.
|
| They actually provide a table which shows how much they
| exaggerate the ratings. They're over-rated by 2X for a resistive
| load, and 6x for an inductive load. "For a motor with rated
| current of 15A and the motor is inductive load, the formula is
| 15A x 6 = 90A, so you should choose to buy 100A solid state
| relay".
|
| For a little extra, you can have your own fake label. Minimum
| order 200 pcs.
|
| Here's a fake Fotek.[4] What's amusing is that this is the actual
| manufacturer in China selling the fakes. They're in Guangdong,
| and they're selling under their own name, but with a fake label.
| No shame.
|
| There are legit manufacturers in China selling solid state
| relays.[5] They put their own name on the product, show pictures
| of the inside their rather grubby factory, and have realistic
| numbers on their data sheets, along with pictures of UL
| certification documents. About 4x more expensive than the fakes.
| If you're in China and are building industrial equipment which
| needs these components, you need ones that won't fail and shut
| down a manufacturing line.
|
| Here's a teardown of a fake. [6] The fakes are just solid state
| switches with power ratings way beyond what their components are
| good for. UL warning notice about fake Fotek solid state
| relays.[7] UL issued that notice six years ago, and they're still
| on Amazon and eBay.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/SSR-25-DC-AC-Solid-State-
| Relay/dp/B07...
|
| [2] https://www.fotek.com.tw/en-gb/product-category/143
|
| [3] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1PCS-SSR-10-DA-DC-
| Con...
|
| [4] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-quality-
| SSR-25DA...
|
| [5] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SSR-S25DA-H-DC-TO-
| AC_...
|
| [6] https://youtu.be/DxEhxjvifyY
|
| [7] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ul-warns-of-
| solid-s...
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I had this problem literally half an hour ago. Looking for power
| strips, and the top rated one (average > 4.5 stars) thankfully
| has customer pictures showing extremely flimsy connections and
| soldering, a huge fire hazard.
| devinplatt wrote:
| Ugh, I had this problem looking for power strips on Amazon too.
| I wanted something with lots of reviews (to verify quality),
| but every product with a high number of reviews had at least
| one scary customer picture.
|
| I ended up relying on brand trust: I looked up reputable brands
| and bought some Tripp Lite power strips.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I had a power strip catch fire. Posted photos and the seller
| tried desperately to get me to take them down. Monetary offers
| transitioned to creepy comments about my social media activity
| to try and freak me out.
| LoSboccacc wrote:
| Looking for smart Christmas tree light for next year and the
| listing go from sketchy Chinese stuff with clearly manufactured
| reviews to outright fraudulent products that use images
| straight off name brand advertisement for their knock-off
| lights
| vsskanth wrote:
| Naive question, but can't they just tie the reviews to the
| product's UPC Code ? I thought Amazon also has their own unique
| product identifiers.
| cambalache wrote:
| I was a heavy Amazon customer 8-10 years ago. I only bought stuff
| sold directly by Amazon, and that was not hard to do, since +90%
| of the products had that option. The other day I was just
| checking the price of an article for my mom and I was shocked how
| different is now, the proportion has totally changed, +90% of the
| articles are not sold by Amazon and by the "stores" name it looks
| they are barely better than random dropshippers. So if you buy
| 3-4 articles instead of dealing with a single established company
| you are dealing with many unknown vendors. The probability of
| getting lemons rises up dramatically.
|
| Amazon has gotten complacent due to its quasi-monopoly. I think
| now it is the time for a serious competition to take business out
| from them. One of those brick-and-mortar ex-giants, the ones who
| were displaced could make a comeback. If I buy online I want to
| deal with recognized companies who have a track record of
| shipping real products and honoring the warranties, not with some
| randoms hidden behind not recognizable names.
| bombcar wrote:
| The same thing happened to Ebay and Etsy - once they reached a
| certain level of popularity based on the original premise it
| turned into a outlet for cheap junk.
|
| I've taken to finding as much as I can at places that DO NOT
| have a "marketplace" such as Target or Home Depot.
| s0rce wrote:
| Ebay has lots of junk (the worst being the people who drop
| ship items from Amazon marked up or just outright scams) but
| its also a source of really good deals that you really can't
| find elsewhere. Refurbished PCs, obscure electronics,
| mechanical and pneumatic fittings, lots of stuff I order for
| work to test/prototype which can save $100s-$1000s.
|
| I also use ebay for various antique/vintage stuff (only
| <$100). Seems like overall a positive experience and the few
| times I've had issues I've always got my money back and the
| scammers account was closed, although I'm sure they just pop
| up again under a new name.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Quick counter: eBay is legit and has so much non-junk that
| its one of my top 10 visited sites. I've only once received a
| counterfeit item and it was a Sandisk branded sd card, but
| everything else in my three-hundred-and-counting auction
| history has arrived as described by the seller.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Where do you purchase things from now? I've been using Zappos
| for clothing and shoes, their filters are dead simple and allow
| laser-targeting.
| cambalache wrote:
| I dont buy much stuff these days but my last cell phone for
| example, I bough it from my regular supermarket!, same price
| as Amazon (just a Blu phone, nothing fancy), 1 year warranty,
| and I could check it first for a while so I had a better idea
| on what I was getting.
|
| I liked Newegg too for PC parts and other stuff so I am
| dismayed to see they are going Amazon's way too.
| prepend wrote:
| > I think now it is the time for a serious competition to take
| business out from them.
|
| I think this is Walmart nowadays. They bought Jet in 2016 and
| seem to have scaled Jet up and everywhere. Jet was the last
| company I know of to go up against Amazon.
|
| I think it's a real opportunity for a Chinese or Korean brand.
| Or if Aldi/IKEA want to go into retail space.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| This problem exposes an aspect of the AI difficulty chasm between
| Amazon's dream of assigning a unique barcode (ASIN) to every
| object under the sun that has been or ever will be sold, and
| Amazon's dream of doing so without spending a single dollar on
| expensive human curators. Amazon is trying to solve a well-known
| library science problem using AI, and it's been a miserable
| failure.
|
| Their AI systems can't detect when sellers bait and switch
| because there's no way to detect this that doesn't have a massive
| false positive rate, and they aren't willing to spend a single
| dollar on 'app store' reviewing product changes by third parties.
|
| Another demonstration of this chasm can be found by searching for
| 'claritin'. There are pages of duplicates, terrible and missing
| product photos, and a wide array of metadata errors due to human
| inconsistency by the sellers listing the product on the
| marketplace. Fixing this would require human curation, since
| their AI curation is incapable of doing it, and so Amazon simply
| allows the rot to spread unchecked.
| toss1 wrote:
| This would be pretty simple to solve if Amazon appended a couple
| new fields to each review logging the string of text in the main
| headline at the time the review was posted, and the sales
| category.
|
| Using this field could then at least provide a control for us
| poor customers to filter only reviews for the current
| version/category of the product
|
| And if they really wanted to do it right, they'd scan
| headlines/categories and reviews for substantial changes. Just a
| bit of good logic or AI pattern recognition should be able to
| sift this down to a manageable set of changes for human review
| and appropriate action, such as demanding a re-listing as a new
| product, weeding out repeat offenders, etc.
|
| The article's point about Amazon failing to show a focus on
| "customer obsession" in this area is key - Amazon used to be a
| great place to search for products, and it is now a miserable,
| long slog to find anything good in the sea of crap with bogus
| listings & reviews.
| ada1981 wrote:
| I was hoping they would explain how exactly this is happening?
| What about the amazon seller ecosystem allows this to happen in
| the first place. Why aren't reviews linked to the SKUs?
| S_A_P wrote:
| I think the review system is good for generalities as long as you
| toss out the hyperbole. Very few products are hyperbolically
| good. Once you weed that out you can find trends so long as the
| company is not engaging in fraud or other deception. I also try
| not to buy anything on impulse so that I can spend enough time
| researching my purchase. So far I've been pretty lucky in that I
| have not gotten a fraudulent product or something that is not as
| advertised. How often is the fakery happening? What types of
| products are commonly fake/bootleg? It may just be that I don't
| ever buy the de sorts of things.
| charlescarver wrote:
| I run all potential Amazon purchases through fakespot.com. It's
| definitely caused me to change my mind on multiple occasions.
| hackernewsacct6 wrote:
| Used to be a brief period a few years back when you could order
| quality items on amazon.co.jp. All with free Prime shipping to
| US. Now it's equally full of poorly designed and manufactured
| Chinese products.
| notacoward wrote:
| The thing that really annoys me is that when you go to report
| problems with a listing, none of the options you're given really
| match this. "Problem with item description" is the closest.
| Considering that this is one of the top three problems turning
| Amazon shopping into a garbage-fest, you'd think they'd have a
| clearer way to report it. That they don't shows that they just
| don't care.
| SMAAART wrote:
| Moral Hazard: same principle why FB/GOOG have not fixed their
| advertising fraud problems.
| prepend wrote:
| Apple and Google require developers to have some info and a
| persistent profile to publish an app. Every app has a publisher
| and I can see what else they publish, how long they've been
| around, etc. nothing extensive just letting me know that they
| exist and at least a mailbox or url for support.
|
| Amazon doesn't do this. Many of the seller pages are bogus or
| hard to see what they sell. I assume that since it sucks so much
| Amazon doesn't care or they specifically don't want me
| associating sellers with their own brands.
| natex wrote:
| Not mentioned in the article, but Amazon also hasn't fixed its
| problem with fake reviews at Audible either. Thousands of 5-star
| ratings are similarly worded blurbs by accounts with 1 or 2 book
| reviews.
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| Even when Amazon reviews are legitimate, keep in mind that the
| reviewer may have been looking for something different than you
| are. Plenty of times I've bought stuff expecting one level of
| quality based on review scores, but got something less--all
| because I had a higher standard of what should be a 5 than most
| of the people who bought that.
| detaro wrote:
| one of the reasons why reading negative reviews is often
| helpful: there you often can figure out if the complaints about
| quality are from people with your standards or from people with
| higher ones. (after you filter out all the people who don't
| understand the difference between a product review and a review
| of their local postal service of course...)
| vidarh wrote:
| It's almost always the negative reviews which convinces me to
| buy a product. The positive reviews rarely have much
| _information_.
|
| The negative reviews far more often will tell me where the
| weaknesses and problems are so I can determine if they are
| things that matter to me.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| It has become the same with game reviews on Steam as well.
| I think most people just aren't very discerning or critical
| with their reviews. Those with negative reviews however
| have at least one complaint about the product and
| determining those as a combination matter to you is a big
| part of finding the right product.
|
| It marks the death of high quality reviews however because
| professional reviews can be done in context weighing things
| up better, where as most customers just don't have the
| experience with alternatives to say if its a good example
| or not.
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