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Amazon Dark Patterns

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Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#171

Post by crankylinuxuser »

I no longer consider Amazon. Too many issues to note, but here's a few of them...

  1. Counterfeits mixed in with legit supply
  2. Fraud everywhere
  3. Fake prices ($.99 with $30 shipping)
  4. Fraudulent reviews
  5. the article - Dark patterns everywhere
  6. Not competitive with other e-retailers
  7. Scammy and fraudulent pricing (raises prices by 10% to have a 10% off sale.. Prime Day)
I've migrated to the following for my stuff:

walmart online (order and pick up at store for no shipping cost) eBay for random assortments aliexpress for a direct pipeline of electronic chinese stuff mcmaster carr for hardware that lowes and menards doesn't have Misumi for aluminum extrusion IRC topic groups (like freenode #reprap) for 3d printing specific stuffs from individuals Craigslist, but this is obviously realllly spotty

Amazon is unreliable, obfuscated, and scammy. I can't even guarantee that what I order is what I'll get. It's just not worth the effort or time.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#172

Post by _ea1k »

mrtksn wrote: post #163
_ea1k wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean, he got a refund and didn't even have to return anything. How dark is that pattern? Having said that, Amazon's product mixing is causing a lot of problems and trust issues for a lot of product types. I really hope they fix it.

Me not getting a refund would have been a fraud. I would have filed a chargeback against that fraudulent purchase. A dark pattern is not about taking someone's money an running away but it's about impacting their decision making by designing processes or interactions that exploit common behaviour. An example of a well known dark pattern is adding things to the shopping cart just before check out. Another one is start…

Go do some digging on Amazon and look at all of the obviously fake SD cards out there. Then ask yourself, is this helping Amazon's business? This is a problem, and they treat it as such, they simply haven't found a suitable solution beyond simply making refunds with almost no questions asked. Unfortunately for their business, this actually enables a different kind of fraud that is also a real problem for them.

That is vastly different from dark patterns about trying to inflate review scores or encouraging subscriptions to unwanted services. They do those things too, and pretty effectively.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#173

Post by pixl97 »

Steltek wrote: post #158
taeric wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you think that would work. They could sign the serial number, I suppose, but I don't see why the fakes wouldn't just recycle serial numbers at that point. For fast moving parts, they could include a date, but you could still just copy some other one from recent checks.

Put the serial number under a scratch off. Once the serial number is registered by a customer via an online database, future verification would show other purchases as counterfeit. It has some drawbacks: - You need a significant number of people to start registering their purchases online, which no one does - I've heard counterfeiters sometimes operate from the same factory. Legit serials could be generated for fake…

>I've heard counterfeiters sometimes operate from the same factory. Legit serials could be generated for fake parts.

A few years ago I ordered 60 computers from Dell with office 2016. About half of the 2016 serial cards were from the US, they all worked. Of the other half from China, half were already registered under office accounts. These were cards with scratch off covering part of the serial.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#174

Post by ccarse »

It's gotten to the point that I no longer even pay attention to the overall score and instead I look at the reviews and ignore any review that is a 5 star review. I figure people aren't going to pay for reviews that aren't 5 star. If the only other reviews are 1 or 2 stars I know it's probably a crap product. But, if there are a decent number of 4 star reviews I know it's probably a decent product.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#175

Post by mrtksn »

_ea1k wrote: post #172
mrtksn wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me not getting a refund would have been a fraud. I would have filed a chargeback against that fraudulent purchase. A dark pattern is not about taking someone's money an running away but it's about impacting their decision making by designing processes or interactions that exploit common behaviour. An example of a well known dark pattern is adding things to the shopping cart just before check out. Another one is start…

Go do some digging on Amazon and look at all of the obviously fake SD cards out there. Then ask yourself, is this helping Amazon's business? This is a problem, and they treat it as such, they simply haven't found a suitable solution beyond simply making refunds with almost no questions asked. Unfortunately for their business, this actually enables a different kind of fraud that is also a real problem for them. That i…

Any sources on your claim that they are actively trying to solve that problem and that they are failing at it?

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#176

Post by phyzome »

2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #3

Having recently unsubscribed from Prime, I can say their dark patterns don't stop there. About 5 pages to complete the process, in which the CTA to confirm bumps around the page, gets less prominent, and is given such lousy loss-aversion labels as "Give up my prime benefits".

They've really ramped up selling Prime in the checkout process. It's no longer easy to order from Amazon; it's this adversarial "spot the 5 traps" obstacle course where you have to avoid clicking the "sign me up for Prime" trick buttons.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#177

Post by _ea1k »

mrtksn wrote: post #175
_ea1k wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go do some digging on Amazon and look at all of the obviously fake SD cards out there. Then ask yourself, is this helping Amazon's business? This is a problem, and they treat it as such, they simply haven't found a suitable solution beyond simply making refunds with almost no questions asked. Unfortunately for their business, this actually enables a different kind of fraud that is also a real problem for them. That i…

Any sources on your claim that they are actively trying to solve that problem and that they are failing at it?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-ge... among others.

I don't think they can really solve it without a complete top-to-bottom shift in how they track and inventory products internally. Most of the fixes that I've seen proposed just lead to the vendors and merchants gaming the system in different ways.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#178

Post by dalore »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #111
seren wrote: post #60

Prompted by this post, I wanted to check what happened to the 1-star review I have left 6 months ago. (Product worked for 3 days and then stopped, and after a replacement, the same thing happened). Sure enough, I have 0 comment in my profile, and I just checked, it has also disappeared from the product page. This is shady as hell, because I am 100% sure I wrote this review. I even wrote it twice, once on amazon.com a…

Consider the other side of this argument: should reviews be timeless? Many times a (good faith) vendor will make small, incremental changes to a product that addresses concerns that low-star reviewers point out. However, the product page remains the same - it does not distinguish between "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch A" and "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch C". It simply says "Seattle Coffee Beans". So if you leave a rev…

You can pick a cut off date. Like only reviews in the last 18 months used to calculate score and are shown.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#180

Post by lurn »

paulie_a wrote: post #169
lghh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Isn't that a little dishonest?

Because people write crappy reviews. I remember seeing a 1 start review for a video card that was basically "I ordered the wrong one and it didnt fit my system" reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.

Sometimes the reviews also don't match the rating. I see this happen all the time, not only on Amazon: "Great service, great product. No complaints." 1 star
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