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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

#371

Post by cwp »

cwp wrote: post #335
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…

I wonder how much of this is because Amazon started out selling books and CDs. Those things don't really have quality issues, and are pretty much fungible. Now, decades into their "everything store" strategy, they're still trying to treat everything like books.

Ok, point taken, books can have quality issues too. But especially in Amazon's early days it was pretty easy to deal with - just buy from reputable publishers. They've pretty much destroyed that too.

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

#372

Post by Symbiote »

privateSFacct wrote: post #358
avip wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>branded goods that aren’t easy to convincingly fake s.a Apple power adapters?

Haha - I got burned by this so many times in a row trying to buy genuine I bought direct from apple. Some of the fakes are terrible some ok but none genuine

> I got burned by this

With chargers, it's a real possibility that you mean this literally. People's houses have burned down due to fake chargers that don't comply with CE (or foreign equivalent) regulations.

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

#373

Post by SkyMarshal »

Marsymars wrote: post #305
SkyMarshal wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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"…

> It takes a non-trivial amount of extra time and work to do that though, especially on Amazon. Probably the easiest/fastest way is to just default to brands that are known for enforcing supply chain standards, which mostly won't be available on Amazon anyway.

True, though there’s a challenge even with that, which is that most brands even high quality ones now have a mix of products, where their low-end ones are cheap rebranded crap, and their high-end ones are still manufactured in high-quality facilities. But figuring out where that split in their product line is takes work.

I recently had to do that for buying a torque wrench, a hand blender, and a couple of other things.

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

#374

Post by Symbiote »

jcrites wrote: post #269
owenmarshall wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on uploaded photos that product seems to have a past life as a cutting board, a drying rack, a canopy for a kids bed, some type of dagger (letter opener?) and a lancet. That’s incredible , and the fact that someone hasn’t seen that inside Amazon and said “we have a huge problem” makes me suspect Amazon doesn’t regard it as a problem at all.

I consider it a problem. This appears to be an instance of listing abuse. I'd encourage people to report listing abuse if they come across it. I believe these are the correct instructions: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200444420 Situations where you're fighting against financially-motivated human adversaries are always difficult.

Isn't this quite literally Amazon's job?

Any traditional retailer employs people to maintain the quality of their supply chain.

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

#375

Post by SkyMarshal »

WalterBright wrote: post #170
SkyMarshal wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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"…

> I loath America's rip-off economy. $25 for a t-shirt that cost $2 to make overseas, Buying a t-shirt in Europe isn't any cheaper.

Yeah it’s a problem for all developed economies, not just the US. The rip-off, rent-seeking economies.

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

#376

Post by dv_dt »

refurb wrote: post #327
dv_dt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But gini coefficient measurements show the magnitude of inequality, and the magnitude today has returned to that of the 1920's robber baron era. And the magnitude is important because there is a correlation between higher economic growth and a gini value showing lower inequality than today.

Couldn’t find Gini going back that far, but other measures of inequality show we’re below that of the 1930’s. And interestingly, the poverty rate is near a century low. https://www.chartbookofeconomicinequality.com/inequality-by-...

Look at the poverty curve again. We basically have made zero progress on the poverty rate since the 1970s and actually are drifting higher. Yet from our technology base, and continuously rising productivity, it really should be easier than ever to ensure everyone has shelter and food, and yet homelessness is exploding right now too.

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

#377

Post by wpietri »

perl4ever wrote: post #344
wpietri wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that a sensical definition of waste here? The difference in externalities has to be greater than and opposite to the delta in cost, in order for their decision to be wrong, I think. Just because externalities are ignored doesn't prove anything in particular if you don't know the relative change.

Fair point. Let's say, "Sure to be wasteful compared with a decision that takes everything into account." Or, more simply, "Sure to be more wasteful." Although for the people who experience the negative exernalities, by their account it will always be wasteful, in that they only experience costs, not gains.

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

#378

Post by stingraycharles »

abakker wrote: post #314
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…

The term for this is "Quality Fade" and is by no means unique to amazon. This is a very common thing in all low-cost manufacturing. you start with higher quality and lower margin, and gradually degrade quality to improve margin. You consistently flirt with the lowest quality possible.

The frustrating thing is that sometimes it is extremely difficult to find hardware that doesn’t suffer from this quality fade. Buying decent router hardware comes to mind; if I want a non-professional router that doesn’t use the cheapest hardware possible, it’s very difficult to assess this apart from spending hours hunting down reviews etc.

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

#379

Post by dv_dt »

friendlybus wrote: post #325
dv_dt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is back to the time of robber barons of industry, and so too is the lawlessness of many of the industry practices, where we are in the same state where technology and scale of organization are outrunning the philosophical theories of government operation to regulate them.

Amazon/Alibaba is making money pulling millions of chinese people out of poverty. The inequality equation is the same as normal, we're just not the focus of economic production at the moment. Comparing a normal western job to a chinese wage & lifestyle makes us look like the 1%. Comparing the average westerner who sells to 10k customers to bezos who sells to hundreds of millions makes him look like the bourgeoisie. T…

It's not that gov't is terrified or incapable, it's that the dominant regulatory philosophy in our political leadership right now is neoliberalism. Which has large failure points - the recalcitrance to regulate Amazon is the same stance as not regulating the fossil fuel industry.

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

#380

Post by yuubi »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #367
dannyw wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when something by is sold by amazon, you could get something shipped to them by a third party seller. They keep all products with the same ID in one area, and pick whatever is on top. If I started using FBA and supplying an item, it’ll go in the same box and chances are more likely an “sold by amazon.com” will sell my product, and I’ll sell an “amazon.com” product. See the problem?

"They keep all products with the same ID in one area" No they don't. Google 'random stow' and you'll find articles about how Amazon stores incoming items. They are stowed somewhat randomly, but scanned as they are stowed. So the system knows where to find each unit again, and can use that to optimize picking paths.

By default, the system optimizes for speed and doesn't ensure that seller A's customers get the units sent by seller A and B's customers get those sent by B. This means that in a discussion about provenance of specific units, this is a distinction without a difference (or alternatively, all units of a product are in one area, which isn't necessarily physically contiguous in space).
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