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Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

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Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#131

Post by mmanfrin »

habosa wrote: post #77

My favorite Amazon scam is the Amazon Ship of Theseus[0]. You sell a product, normally a cheap electronic, and build up a decent corpus of positive reviews. A good example is a USB-C cable or something. Then you decide you want to sell a new product in a more competitive subcategory, like Bluetooth Headphones. You then take the _existing_ listing and change it piece by piece. First the pictures, then the title, then…

ASUS did this with their routers, and pooled reviews by making all of their routers different variants of each other, even if completely different. I was annoyed because I had an unbelievably shitty experience with one of their (very expensive prosumer) routers.

The silver lining, for me, is that I was so fucking annoyed with ASUS support that I angrily shipped it back to Amazon, bought Ubiquiti equipment, and experienced such quality whiplash that I bought a bunch of UBNT (now UI) stock. +160% since I bought.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#132

Post by ummonk »

privateSFacct wrote: post #22

All the ballyhoo about Amazon Transparency and UUID per item. This is a relatively well solved issue in other areas. Make become a seller a bit more difficult with some skin in the game ($2,500 deposit if you sell more than 15 items per year? In person identity verification?). Sellers used to meet with buyers agents (cost money and added identities). Caught selling garbage (product marked new actually used, totaly fa…

> The reality is Amazon doesn't care - there IS a market opportunity here for someone to take them on with trusted product catalog and quick shipping (using UPS / Fedex).

Target? Walmart?

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#133

Post by hrdwdmrbl »

I feel this problem as both a buyer and a seller. The fake copies are everywhere and it's really hard to fix them. I am forced to buy my competitor's fake product, receive it and then file a complaint that it's fake. That is the only way I have to deter the fake sellers. As a buyer, prices are also crazy sometimes. I never buy with confidence any more on Amazon having faith about getting the lowest price. I now always double-check Walmart and often Walmart is cheaper!

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#134

Post by Glyptodon »

heavyset_go wrote: post #125
Glyptodon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart has very similar results to Amazon, just not quite as much, and limiting results to Walmart.com helps a tiny bit more. So I don't agree there. You're mostly right about Target, they pretty much only sell stuff that they carry or brand themselves, but the other side to it for Target is that often you can't find what you want there at all - they have a pretty limited selection, and in any case the stuff they br…

Walmart partners with their suppliers because they have a direct liability for selling dangerous or counterfeit goods. Amazon's lawyers try their best to shift all liability from themselves to their suppliers. If I buy a product from Walmart that is faulty and injures me, liability falls on Walmart.

They still sell tons of stuff from the infinite dictionary of random import brand names that nobody's ever heard of like "Amplim," "Kootion," "Ktaxon," "Yosoo," "Zimtown," "Zokop," etc.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#135

Post by SkyMarshal »

siruncledrew wrote: post #112
Glyptodon wrote: post #64

Forget counterfeits for a second. Even trying to find something like an ultrasonic cleaner on Amazon is like straight going through AliExpress. But wait! Unless you're buying a very very expensive lab model all the "name brands" look to be sourcing the same way and adding a label too. So the name brands are AliExpress with maybe better QC and 200% markup. But wait! Even looking everywhere else it's the same situation…

If 2-day shipping time is not an important factor, then what I've started to do is just buy items from AliExpress and DHGate based on looking at # of orders and customer reviews. The vast majority of stuff on Amazon could be found on AliExpress, DHGate, Alibaba, Tmall.com, JD.com, and Taobao. At this point, I just gave up and decided to buy items I don't care about that much from their 'source' for less money in exch…

>So many of the "brands" on Amazon are not even brands, it's just made up words next to a generic imported product. Like "iGoEnergeeFan" or something similarly stupid.

Indeed, or the recent trend of naming your generic company with an ALL CAPS name, "VECTROMOX", as if that's somehow effective at differentiating your obviously fly-by-night operation.

>Those good ole' "produce cheaply overseas and markup in our stores" business models of American retailers have come right back around to bite them in the ass.

Good, imho. #firstworldproblem here but I loath America's rip-off economy. $25 for a t-shirt that cost $2 to make overseas, or $100 for a pair of pants that cost $5 to make. I try really hard to buy stuff that was either made in the US, or at least somewhere with high quality standards like Japan, Korea, Taiwan or Germany. It takes a non-trivial amount of extra time and work to do that though, especially on Amazon.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#136

Post by cr0sh »

AmVess wrote: post #91
AlexandrB wrote: post #11

Amazon's fulfilment has also become shockingly bad. Most items are shipped in lightly-padded manila envelopes resulting in high percentage of damaged goods if you order books[1], CDs/DVDs/BluRays, video games, or anything else where the packaging is part of the product. eBay is a much better experience in this regard. [1] In an ironic twist, I absolutely refuse to buy books from Amazon anymore.

I received two nvme ssd's in a padded envelope. They could easily have been destroyed. They delivered a $500 video card by slapping a shipping sticker on the product box and shipping it that way. On the other hand, I received a $12 box of wet wipes that came in a giant, nicely padded box. The product itself was in a sturdy box. $400 dollars worth of computer storage was shipped improperly, but Amazon made sure I got…

Regarding your video card, there wasn't an option to have it re-packed in an Amazon box?

Usually for items that will ship with external facing identifiable product information, they will give you the option (a checkbox) to have it packed inside an Amazon box...

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#137

Post by ummonk »

joemi wrote: post #93
dwoozle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market opportunity is already occupied by Target! Great products, shipped to you or delivered to your car in the parking lot. I’ve shifted at least 50% of my Amazon spend to Target. I won’t buy anything that I eat, that touches my children’s skin, that plugs in, or that has a Li-Ion battery from Amazon.

Target doesn't have nearly the same amount of products as Amazon, even if you don't count the junk on Amazon.

There lies the trade off. Quality control / trust verification is hard, and you will have way more products available if you forego it. You’ll also have a ton of junk mixed in too.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#138

Post by dwoozle »

joemi wrote: post #93
dwoozle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market opportunity is already occupied by Target! Great products, shipped to you or delivered to your car in the parking lot. I’ve shifted at least 50% of my Amazon spend to Target. I won’t buy anything that I eat, that touches my children’s skin, that plugs in, or that has a Li-Ion battery from Amazon.

Target doesn't have nearly the same amount of products as Amazon, even if you don't count the junk on Amazon.

Of course. I’m talking about for household essentials. Amazon has built a gigantic marketplace by instituting zero quality control. Target is a marketplace with much stricter quality control and a vastly smaller selection. If you’re fine with caveat emptor than Amazon is the better choice.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#139

Post by Havoc »

behringer wrote: post #118
Havoc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Until you have a listing for your headphones that comes with 5,000 pre-made positive reviews! Fk. That's possible? How has Amazon not done anything about that? Like I can get keeping fake stuff out is a losing battle, but that seems like a rather significant design flaw if you can "transfer" reviews like that.

Amazon thinks it can automate itself out of these problems

Well here you probably can - that kind of substitute a product can't be that hard to detect.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#140

Post by Havoc »

caro_douglos wrote: post #122
Havoc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Until you have a listing for your headphones that comes with 5,000 pre-made positive reviews! Fk. That's possible? How has Amazon not done anything about that? Like I can get keeping fake stuff out is a losing battle, but that seems like a rather significant design flaw if you can "transfer" reviews like that.

I've sat in on calls with Amazon Employees where they tell you to do exactly this to boost sales.......and then deny that they ever did it when you are contacted by the IP rights holder. https://brandservices.amazon.com/projectzero

>I've sat in on calls with Amazon Employees where they tell you to do exactly this to boost sales.

Well that's next level depressing.

It's weird. All these amazon complaints - they ring true to me...yet I've thus far escaped the negatives thus far despite heavy amazon use (say package every 48hrs).

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