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Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

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Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#101

Post by username223 »

superhuzza wrote: post #83
benjaminwootton wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think this is overblown on HN. We must have placed more than 100 orders a year as a family for approaching a decade, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a counterfeit. Not sure if it’s different in the UK.

Definitely not overblown. I personally know people who have ordered sports equipment from Amazon and found it be fake. Extremely dangerous because some of it was climbing equipment. Luckily they were wary of the Amazon goods, got refunded and went to the MEC instead. "Firstly, Amazon commingles fake and genuine goods in their warehouses. Here’s what happens: You buy a real Arc’teryx jacket, paying the full price, fro…

That's surprisingly evil. Someone selling niche maps with a market in the hundreds or low thousands was ripped off by counterfeiters on Amazon.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#102

Post by mhaymo »

my_username_is_ wrote: post #89
Innominate wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my concern as well. They're becoming victims of their own success with knockoffs and scammers increasingly gaming the system. Everything from knockoffs piggybacking on real listings, to entire lines of products being dominated by no-name Chinese companies throwing armies of shills at the reviews. Amazon figuring out how to deal with the problem is critical for their future.

They've had a long time to figure that out. It's been an issue for a while. They've just neglected to do anything about it. It doesn't take a genius to look at all the reviews that some products have and realize that they're fake

This is a common sentiment, but seems wrong to me. It doesn't take a genius to recognise a spam or phishing email either, and yet no company has created a perfect email filter.

It's not neglect, it's a very hard problem, as is any problem where you are trying to make an inference with limited information controlled by an adversary. Amazon could spend billions on incredibly sophisticated fake-review-detection algorithms, but they still couldn't stop sellers finding real amazon customers and paying them to buy and review their products.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#103

Post by iambateman »

skohan wrote: post #91
iambateman wrote: post #85

I wonder if Amazon’s days as the de facto online retailing site are numbered. For nearly everything I buy on Amazon now, I wonder: “is this real? Are these reviews real? Will it break in 10 minutes?” Obviously, Amazon is doing just fine, and we are a long way from my parents asking those same questions, and they have tons of businesses beside retail. So yes, they’ll be ok. But I think they’ve left the door open for c…

Who in your mind could replace them? I am sure they have issues, but it seems like they have such a massive lead in terms of logistics it's hard to imagine anyone delivering a comparable customer experience anytime soon.

I don’t know, but that’s how people felt with Yahoo, AOL, IBM, etc at different times.

A few ideas:

Walmart. Their grocery delivery service is already baked into our weekly workflow. Plus they benefit from having X000 stores around the USA. They really are getting their act together.

Wayfair and friends. Wayfair is demonstrating that certain verticals really benefit from having a dedicated site and customer service matters.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#104

Post by nitrogen »

hbosch wrote: post #60
nitrogen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search and category browsing have different purposes. Search is not a substitute for a decent taxonomy. Unfortunately, MS (start menu) and Amazon seem not to realize that.

Search is better than category browsing... you can spearfish instead of cast a net. If you had typed “hot plate” into search, you would have avoided your entire frustration... you already knew what you wanted. Amazons web site is a mess for sure, but finding a specific product is not one of those problems. The search is quite good...

If you don't know what something is called, then you need categories to find it.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#105

Post by superhuzza »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #64
randomacct3847 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely not overblown. Easy to do simple searches on Amazon and compare to a site that doesn’t rely on 3rd party sellers like Best Buy. If you searched “wireless headphones” the top results are all knock off airpods and other suspect cheap Chinese made electronics with thousands of likely fake reviews. It’s a joke

> If you searched “wireless headphones” the top results are all knock off airpods and other suspect cheap Chinese made electronics with thousands of likely fake reviews. But isn't it a feature of all on-line shopping? If you type a generic query like this, you'll always get generic garbage as results. If you want to buy quality items, you search directly for those items - by their exact name or SKU. E-commerce storef…

Amazon commingles inventory, so counterfeits end up in the same bins as real products. So even by ordering a specific product or SKU, from a reputable seller, you can still have a decent chance of getting a counterfeit.

https://sellercentral.amazon.ca/gp/help/external/G200141480?...

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-products-project-zer...

https://www.climbing.com/gear/counterfeited-how-illegal-knoc...

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#106

Post by erik_seaberg »

superhuzza wrote: post #83
benjaminwootton wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think this is overblown on HN. We must have placed more than 100 orders a year as a family for approaching a decade, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a counterfeit. Not sure if it’s different in the UK.

Definitely not overblown. I personally know people who have ordered sports equipment from Amazon and found it be fake. Extremely dangerous because some of it was climbing equipment. Luckily they were wary of the Amazon goods, got refunded and went to the MEC instead. "Firstly, Amazon commingles fake and genuine goods in their warehouses. Here’s what happens: You buy a real Arc’teryx jacket, paying the full price, fro…

Arc'teryx is the manufacturer. Amazon is the retailer, they're adding fulfillment and collections. Why are these randoms even involved? If I wanted eBay I know where to find it.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#107

Post by Retric »

elcomet wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism does not require growth. Many markets are stagnant or even shrink as technology evolves. Capitalism incurages growth, but does not require it.

Do you have some reference on this ? I'd love to read more about it.

Plenty of examples from film cameras to the often mentioned buggy whip manufacturing. More recently the decline of the newspaper industry has often been profitable to declining companies. Cut investment into the future and ride them into the ground.

Often it’s a question of sunk costs, the capital has already been allocated now it’s time to maximize the return. As a rule, dying industry’s can be profitable up to the point where they become irrelevant as long as people correctly predict the fall.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#108

Post by sonnyblarney »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #41
sonnyblarney wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's reasonable to show one thing when the user typed another. There are dozens of product results, there's no reason why one of the proper results wouldn't show up as well. "Results for Mousr ..." "Results for Mouse ..." etc

There is a link on the search result page for "Search instead for X" if you really want to search for "Mousr". There's also nothing wrong with correcting what appears to be a typo'd word for a user (Google and every other search engine I can think of does this). Seems more like poor naming on Mousr's part.

Totally disagree, and it seems nobody understood my comment.

I pointed out in that I'm fully aware where the probabilities are, and the fact the 'keys are close to one another' - that's my whole point, it's a statistical suppression.

The 'short view' is to just show 'mice' - but there are problems with that:

1) 'over correction' is far worse error that 'insufficient correction'

2) There are tons of 'Mousr' products out there, i.e. products that overlap closely to more common things.

The likelihood of some random error being a product is low - and since 'Mousr' is an actual product, it makes sense to show it.

In this case, the rational product choice would be to show 'Mousr' first, and to not assume over-correction.

To take a more extreme example i.e. going with the 'highest probability case' ... it might make sense by that logic to show only the most commonly purchases products purchase, almost whatever is typed.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#109

Post by schredder »

mhaymo wrote: post #102
my_username_is_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've had a long time to figure that out. It's been an issue for a while. They've just neglected to do anything about it. It doesn't take a genius to look at all the reviews that some products have and realize that they're fake

This is a common sentiment, but seems wrong to me. It doesn't take a genius to recognise a spam or phishing email either, and yet no company has created a perfect email filter. It's not neglect, it's a very hard problem, as is any problem where you are trying to make an inference with limited information controlled by an adversary. Amazon could spend billions on incredibly sophisticated fake-review-detection algorith…

Neither the sentiment nor the difficulty of the problem matters. Big A gets a cut of a sale whether or not the reviews or products are genuine so they won’t do more than the bare minimum to deal with it, until their tide starts to change.

Re: Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon’s growth is slowing

#110

Post by aussiegreenie »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #44
randomacct3847 wrote: post #36

Shopping on Amazon has become like shopping on Canal Street in NYC (e.g. street lined with shops selling counterfeit goods). You never know what you’re going to get.

I honestly think this is overblown on HN. We must have placed more than 100 orders a year as a family for approaching a decade, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a counterfeit. Not sure if it’s different in the UK.

You did receive fake goods. About 3-5% of all sales are counterfeit.
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