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

Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

wpri.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 252 posts

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#141

Post by mrtksn »

c2h5oh wrote: post #106
ng12 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a product on Amazon this Christmas that was completely fake. It was "sold by Amazon" but didn't even have the same label as the brand I had ordered. I complained to Amazon and they just gave me a refund without requiring that I return the product (I ended up just throwing it out). I suspect that they knew the inventory was tainted but figured the cost of dealing with noisy customers like me is less than the…

If multiple suppliers ship same product to Amazon warehouses Amazon will ship closest one to buyer regardless who supplied it. In fact if the seller requests their goods back they won't get the same ones they sent to Amazon - they are mixed together with others sharing ASIN There must have been an Amazon marketplace seller using same listing but shipping fakes. Or Amazon got duped.

So if you are selling the absolute lowest-quality stuff, you may increase the quality of your inventory by simply giving it to amazon and request them back? Now I sympathize with Amazon, knowing how shady some merchants could be.

If it's true that they do not track products by suppliers, this could be a scalable fraud. Send in absolute garbage and take it back/buy it to enrich your metarial.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#142

Post by oneplane »

hgoel wrote: post #84
aritmo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The message is that they are not good enough in handling privacy to serve EU customers.

Or more accurately that they don't make enough from the EU to justify dealing with the GDPR mess.

Or just because the US doesn't have good privacy laws doesn't mean you should then decide to suck up as much data on everyone as possible. Just because they can be a dick doesn't mean they have to.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#143

Post by oneplane »

TylerE wrote: post #58
pergadad wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because they don't want to give anyone an option to opt out of data collection - easier to lock out all EU than actually stop/reduce/give choice for data collection.

It really isn't. I used to work in IT for a newspaper. They _really_ are hyper-local. They don't went to spend a cent on even out-of-state visitors, much less out-of-continent. Resources are tight, and the ROI is non-existent.

But if a law came in to effect that requires them to not abuse customer data in their local area as well, there suddenly would be a 'ROI' on that?

Seems to me they chose to simply not care about what data they collect on who from the start and it will bite them in the ass eventually.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#144

Post by muzika »

rladd wrote: post #73
Xamayon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accuracy is mostly fine in my experience, but the battery life is often poor and they tend to be relatively loud. I like quiet, so the noise is more than enough reason to swap the movement when easy imho.

I have a $12 Ikea clock that looks rather like a Swiss train clock (not exactly of course) and which keeps nearly perfect time and runs for over a year on one battery. It is miles better than the $5 Ikea clock, but I see no reason to pay more since the $12 one looks good and runs perfectly well.

One year on a battery is nothing to be proud of :)

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#145

Post by perl4ever »

erichurkman wrote: post #99

Their quality control, or lack thereof, also extends into Prime Now. It is now a game when I get a Prime Now delivery: what did they replace without telling me, what products did they get wrong, and most critically: what did they overbill me for? It's now to a point I weigh everything coming in, and over half of the items are off weight, some egregiously so (0.2 oz of jalapeno, but billed for 1 pound; .5 pound of chi…

I don't get groceries by mail order, but I generally don't look very carefully at prices at a grocery store - until one time recently that I was charged the wrong price for something. I complained, and was refunded like 20 cents at the customer service desk. I kind of did a double take because I could swear they used to have a policy of giving you anything that came up with the wrong price for free. It's not that the money matters, but where's the deterrent for making mistakes? I also saw once where the unit price was obviously wrong (comparing it with a similar product of a different size) and it felt so pointless to complain. Quite likely a random error, but what's preventing them from doing it systematically if there isn't vigorous enforcement?

Automation initially provides accuracy, but then it provides the potential to systematically conceal inaccuracy.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#146

Post by perl4ever »

StavrosK wrote: post #105
hgoel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more accurately that they don't make enough from the EU to justify dealing with the GDPR mess.

It's only a mess if you can't be bothered to respect people's privacy.

It appears that "respecting peoples' privacy" currently equates to having an overlay with a button to accept cookies, and a message stating that using the website means accepting . So I haven't figured out what the button means, but to preserve maximum uncertainty, I try not to click it.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#147

Post by acollins1331 »

appleiigs wrote: post #120
alister wrote: post #31

Along with counterfeits, another issue that makes shopping unpleasant is that many products are superfically different but underneath are the same thing. You can see this most clearly in a retail store when the products are side by side. Walmart might have 30 kinds of wall clocks with wood vs plastic frame, with or without Roman numerals, but the actual clock mechanism on the back is the same cheap black box. Home De…

The solution is to buy local. That gives the Home Depot guy an opportunity to tell you, “you know, the internals are all the same”, and the pharmacists lady can say “the generic Tylenol/Advil is called this”.

Shopping at home Depot reminds me of the parks and rec episode where Ron Swanson goes into home Depot and an employee goes up to him to ask him if he needs anything -- "I know more than you".

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#148

Post by perl4ever »

RandomTisk wrote: post #118
m0zg wrote: post #46

The most surprising part of this story to me is that someone manages to make millions of dollars on bird feeders.

I got my folks a bird feeder a few years ago when they bought a new house. I grew up a few miles from there, remembering only sparrows, blackbirds, robins, etc and on rare occasions a yellow bird, or a brown bird, or red-wing blackbird. But with a bird feeder, it was amazing to see the number of unique birds that show up now every few minutes, birds of all colors that I didn't even know lived in the area.

I was in a home improvement store and noticed that a sparrow had found its way to the aisle with the bird seed.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#149

Post by skrebbel »

alister wrote: post #31

Along with counterfeits, another issue that makes shopping unpleasant is that many products are superfically different but underneath are the same thing. You can see this most clearly in a retail store when the products are side by side. Walmart might have 30 kinds of wall clocks with wood vs plastic frame, with or without Roman numerals, but the actual clock mechanism on the back is the same cheap black box. Home De…

This is basically a rant against industry standardization.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#150

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Lammy wrote: post #26
creato wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the long tail of sellers operating on the marketplace. With a long tail of sellers, you get a long tail of fraud and bullshit too. When you search on Amazon for random basic goods, you'll get thousands of results from insane numbers of gibberish sounding sellers. But there might be only a few dozen unique results. It's going to be basically impossible to combat fraud when this is allowed. I'd even cons…

These days when I end up on one of those Amazon search results filled with obviously-identical no-name goods it’s my cue to head over to Aliexpress instead. The product I’m getting is the same garbage, but at least I recalibrate my expectations and even save a few bucks by cutting out one layer of middleman.

Lots of Ali Express experience here, some of the Chinese stuff can be great, it's just hard to know which is which amongst tge sea of good knows what
Post reply on HN