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

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 403 posts

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

#251

Post by wpietri »

dangus wrote: post #48
izzydata wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've received many damaged books from Amazon. Whenever I report the items as being damaged I am prepared with photographs of the damaged goods as proof, but they always send me another one without caring. It just feels so wasteful to save money by mishandling everything to the point where it doesn't even matter if stuff breaks because it is cheaper to try a 2nd time.

But you don't actually know that this practice is wasteful. That all depends on the numbers. Let's say that Amazon sends out 100 books, and 1 or 2 get damaged. But if they add some extra bit of packaging to every single one of those 100 books, zero will get damaged. Did this save cost or materials? I don't know, it depends on how much extra packaging was needed, whether the damage was serious enough to initiate a ref…

If it's a simple dollar-value calculation on the part of Amazon, then it's sure to be wasteful, in that negative externalities will be ignored.

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

#252

Post by egdod »

mmanfrin wrote: post #131
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 experi…

But of course now Ubiquiti has silently added a “feature” that phones home with telemetry data. Does that count as a bait and switch?

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

#253

Post by tracker1 »

cm2187 wrote: post #246
download13 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a more subtle version of this, where the seller leaves the listing the same, but once enough positive reviews have accumulated they move production to a cheaper factory and use cheaper materials. So you might see older reviews for a pair of boots that say they're made from sturdy materials with good stitching, followed by later reviews saying that they didn't match the advertised sizing and pictures, or…

And most reviews aren’t seller specific. What I see is reviews for a product, but some of the sellers for that product will sell a counterfeit version (Intel NIC in my case). The top (default) seller when the reviews were written may be replaced by a bad actor a couple of years later.

Because amazon doesn't add seller stickers/labels it's nearly impossible for them to even determine the seller if it's "Fulfilled by Amazon" ... I tend to stick to the "Sold by Amazon" or "Sold and shipped by MFG" because at least with Amazon, returns become easy and/or I trust orders from MFG slightly more than otherwise.

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

#254

Post by tracker1 »

Pxtl wrote: post #214
mmanfrin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experi…

God damn. I'm disappointed because I went through a series of awful routers (TP-Link, D-Link, Netgear) and the Asus one is the first thing that actually works well. I've got some other Asus hardware I'm really happy with, so I was starting to warm up to them.

I was pretty happy with several Asus routers. Tomato firmware worked on them. After the FCC pushed mfgs to block third party firmware, it wasn't so good... my current higher end Linksys is ok, but will probably go Ubiquity next round when Wifi 6 (ax) becomes more common for actual devices.

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

#255

Post by egdod »

JohnFen wrote: post #186
iliketrains wrote: post #152

One of my Amazon orders was just re-ordered from Wallmart under my name and shipped by Wallmart to my address. I even got the Walmart receipt with the cheaper price in the package. I was not happy about that, esp. that some stranger is entering my shipping info to some other retailers DB. It is also clearly against Amazon ToS. I have contacted Amazon, citing the ToS violation and concern about my personal data and th…

Since Walmart is on my list of companies that I will never do business with, this would make me absolutely enraged. But then, I'm thinking that Amazon should be added to my "no business" list as well, so this may be a moot point.

Why would Walmart be on that list at all?

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

#256

Post by a3n »

agumonkey wrote: post #222
download13 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a more subtle version of this, where the seller leaves the listing the same, but once enough positive reviews have accumulated they move production to a cheaper factory and use cheaper materials. So you might see older reviews for a pair of boots that say they're made from sturdy materials with good stitching, followed by later reviews saying that they didn't match the advertised sizing and pictures, or…

This is an accelerated variant of typical business evolution. How many high grade brands are now cashing on their name subtly. Seduction etc

Like a box that remains the same size over the years, but the contents are gradually reduced.

I would love to have "that much" Mike and Ike's, but it's never in there.

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

#257

Post by JohnFen »

egdod wrote: post #255
JohnFen wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Walmart is on my list of companies that I will never do business with, this would make me absolutely enraged. But then, I'm thinking that Amazon should be added to my "no business" list as well, so this may be a moot point.

Why would Walmart be on that list at all?

Because I don't like several of their business practices, nor the impact they've had on communities in my area.

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

#258

Post by K0SM0S »

mikepurvis wrote: post #194
sithadmin wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two items in this order are now something totally different: https://i.imgur.com/EoJDqT0.png USB C 3.0 cable is now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0119EIHTG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... Other USB C cable is now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0119OI9XU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... What's interesting is that both were originally sold by Anker's merchant account (relatively respectable brand), but now each listing is linking to a…

It's nuts that this is possible— I mean, it's obvious looking at just a handful of the reviews on either page that they're for a totally different product. I wonder if there's some shady marketplace where positive-review Amazon product pages are bought and sold, so that the scammer can grab a bunch of them all ready to go (say, from a merchant closing up shop), rather than having to play the long game upfront.

Sounds like a clear hit on some dark store. I mean, digital reputation is one of the most sought after 'commodity' these days, what with paid likes etc. This is next-level fake reviews!

I wouldn't be surprised it's eventually become a business in and of itself, like some shady companies in eg China farm games to sell accounts and items to rich players who'd rather pay money than time.

Post reply on HN