Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 184 posts

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#21

Post by jackhack »

strict9 wrote: post #6

>Amazon in recent weeks also has deleted thousands of suspect reviews, That's a drop in the ocean. But it's not reviews and brushing, the real issue is fraudulent and counterfeit products. I don't even trust Amazon to buy books anymore. Just like craigslist, facebook, and countless other things, once something gets to be too big, it gets co-opted by bad actors and the risks outweigh the benefits. edit: highly recomme…

Thus the importance of sites like https://www.fakespot.com/

checking for likely-fake 5-star reviews before making an expensive purchase is a good idea.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#22

Post by reaperducer »

I'm glad this has finally begun. But it's too late for the Christmas shopping season.

With the exception of items from Amazon Global, I've already bought all of my gifts from brick-and-mortar stores because I can no longer trust that Amazon won't ship me fakes.

Maybe next year.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#23

Post by davinic »

rootusrootus wrote: post #13

As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…

As a former marketplace seller I couldn't agree more. The only inventory I would ever want commingled is the stuff that's not quite up to new quality. It never made sense that Amazon would want that risk. When I sent it in it was only tagged by the ASIN, so I assume they couldn't even trace bad counterfeit or damaged merchandise supplied by a 3rd party merchant.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#24

Post by rchaud »

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors.

These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models.

First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to be my driver". Next it was Fiverr/Upwork/ etc, the digital equivalent of rounding up day labourers in the Home Depot parking lot.

Now it's Amazon selling bootleg crap at scale. What's their excuse? Some variant of "move fast, break things", no doubt.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#25

Post by bitrrrate »

rootusrootus wrote: post #13

As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…

I agree with this. Amazon could still be a huge marketplace if they stocked the virtual shelves and only sold legitimate items or their own brands. Target does it and that is where my business has been going instead of Amazon.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#26

Post by richsinn »

rootusrootus wrote: post #13

As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…

For this precise reason, I've stopped buying things like baby food, baby toiletries, skin lotion, etc. from Amazon. I now purchase direct from the respective online store, or sites like walmart.com/target.com

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#27

Post by PhasmaFelis »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #19
strictnein wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the prices on some of the stuff is just weird, with a lot of the Amazon provided stuff now stuck behind Amazon Prime Pantry. I used to order a lot of our daily household stuff from Amazon: cleaners, dish soap, detergent, etc. So much of that stuff now is priced just horribly. $4 for a bottle from Amazon, but it's just from Prime Pantry so you have to order a bunch of stuff or be stuck with a high shipping cost. I…

>If you go with one of the other sellers, the prices are frequently 2-3x normal retail, I guess preying on the fact that people don't realize they're getting ripped off. And as a result, I've become much more careful about checking prices on Amazon, which can't be good for Amazon overall. By contrast, when I go to the grocery store, I generally assume the amount I'm paying is more-or-less the same as what I would pay…

Yeah, there's a lot of specific products that are always wildly overpriced on Amazon. Mostly anything that is out of print/out of production, no matter how recently it went out or how easy it is to find, but I recently ran into it with Hanes underwear of all things--there wasn't a single seller that wasn't asking at least 50% over Target's online price.

For out-of-print books/toys/games/etc., eBay is usually your best bet. Computer hardware (video cards, RAM, etc.) is often cheaper on either eBay or NewEgg. Et cetera.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#28

Post by decebalus1 »

rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

> These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models.

It's not a secret that lots of business models coming out of Silicon Valley are just regulatory workarounds/loopholes. It's a matter of chance that they coincide with some 3rd world country models as the latter's fuels are survival/corruption/perceived lawlessness while over here it's 'disruption'/first-to-market and the drive to become a temporary monopoly on a regulatory loophole.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#29

Post by PhasmaFelis »

deegles wrote: post #10

(Please hold your pitchforks) Since a lot of these scams come from Chinese sellers, I wonder if Amazon could talk to the Chinese government about interfacing with their new social-credit system... you can't sell on the platform if your score is below XYZ, and reports of fraud affect them directly. Obviously this would lead to a lot of sellers mysteriously relocating to other countries, and there would be a lot of pat…

Much as I hate Amazon scammers, I think I'd rather suffer them than cooperate with the Chinese social credit system in even the most indirect way.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#30

Post by bloopernova »

ineedasername wrote: post #14
bloopernova wrote: post #4

My (anecdotal) experience with dodgy sellers was this: I bought something that didn't work correctly, I left a review. The seller contacted me and offered money direct to paypal, bypassing Amazon. They did so by attaching an image with the offer to the ticket. I wasn't comfortable with that kind of interaction, so I informed Amazon. Lots of copious apologies from Amazon, and I assume the company was "fired". But the…

With the ability to create fake reviews that can (far) outnumber the negative, I'm surprised sellers bother that much like this... I wonder if a legitimate negative review somehow has more "signal to noise" in it in terms of how it's shown and received by buyers.

It's gotten to the point where I won't buy from sellers with names that look like they're from a password generator set to "letters only, human pronounceable"

I did send amazon fraud dept a detailed email about my experiences and the new company selling the exact same items.

Amazon needs to have a vastly larger fraud department staffed with actual humans, instead of automated systems that people can game very easily.

Or offer bounties to customers for successful fraud removals. Although people would probably game that too.

Post reply on HN