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Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

thewirecutter.com

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Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#21

Post by ng12 »

This happened to me the first time this Christmas. Bought a $25 electric doodad that was "sold by Amazon" for a family member and it was obviously a fake. It came in a very generic white box with the company logo stamped on it, inside was a product that looked completely different and was non-functional. Not only that, but the product was difficult to return (I had to contact support) which makes me suspect Amazon knew it was a fishy product.

It has completely shaken my faith in Amazon. This is probably my last year as a Prime subscriber.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#22

Post by nappy-doo »

someonehere wrote: post #5

I have friends who are no longer buying from Amazon. Especially friends with kids. You can’t trust anything safe for your kids when crap like this is allowed. Amazon is in a race to flood the market with availability at the cost of consumer confidence. Remember all the hoverboard fires you saw on the news several years ago? They weren’t knock offs, but items sold that didn’t have any real safety certifications in min…

My neighbor bought a set of woodworking clamps from Amazon. When the ~25lb. box arrived, the driver threw them up onto his porch (his house is quite raised from the street), and he has video of it damaging his siding as it took three attempts for the driver to get them over the railing onto his porch. When he contacted Amazon, they said to contact some insurance company they had. When my neighbor called the insurance company, they never returned the call.

He proceeded to begin researching the insurance company, which was owned by Amazon, but wasn't listed as a valid insurance company in Massachusetts. He contacted Amazon again, and said, "would you like me to call the insurance commissioner and attorney general that you're operating a non-registered insurance company in Massachusetts." Someone was out to fix his siding in 3 days, and they painted the porch as well (due to some paint matching problem).

Despite how much I love being able to order stuff, and not have to go out, Amazon is pretty scum-tacular.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#23

Post by DaveSapien »

I got stung buying some midrange earphones. I got my money back no problem, but the hassle was far from worth the $10 saving. When the prices of the fake items aren't obviously too cheap, its impossible to tell the difference until its too late.

That said, I left a review warning other customers. I hope I helped them.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#24

Post by jccooper »

miked85 wrote: post #6

I have started buying most products directly from manufacturer's websites or in physical stores now. The amount of fake products on Amazon is appalling, I wonder why they don't put effort into stopping this.

The actual solution would require them giving up being a "platform" or would require changes that would make logistics and/or management of the platform take much more effort. They'd rather let a "fraud department" keep chopping off hydra heads at a much lower cost.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#25

Post by disappearance »

nostromo wrote: post #13
quickthrowman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you convince Congress to pass that legislation when there’s lots of money on the other side lobbying for the status quo?

There's a lot of anti-tech energy on the left lately. And Bezos painted a target on his back by getting into Twitter feuds with Trump. He's also now synonymous with the Washington Post which has never met a Republican they liked. This all adds up to a company nobody seems to like in DC. If there's any company I could see getting a Washington smackdown soon, it's Amazon.

There is no political solution until politics is clean. Left, right, whatever. It’s all mood until then.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#26

Post by jka »

the_snooze wrote: post #10
erentz wrote: post #2

I see the Amazon fake products problem as related to the social network fake news problem. In both cases you have a company that wants to both have it's platform cake and eat it's publisher cake at the same time. (Sorry for the bad spin on that phrase there.) One important part of our solution here has to be that we force these companies to take a position one way or the other. So in Amazon's case it would need to de…

>I see the Amazon fake products problem as related to the social network fake news problem. In both cases you have a company that wants to both have it's platform cake and eat it's publisher cake at the same time. (Sorry for the bad spin on that phrase there.) These companies innovate by showing off a layer of whiz-bang techy goodness so people don't notice that they've simply externalized all the responsibility and…

It also wouldn't be surprising to learn that they identify customers (buyers) who have louder voices and more social influence, and shield those people from fakes -- or provide rewards to mollify them when they do report problems.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

nostromo wrote: post #13
quickthrowman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you convince Congress to pass that legislation when there’s lots of money on the other side lobbying for the status quo?

There's a lot of anti-tech energy on the left lately. And Bezos painted a target on his back by getting into Twitter feuds with Trump. He's also now synonymous with the Washington Post which has never met a Republican they liked. This all adds up to a company nobody seems to like in DC. If there's any company I could see getting a Washington smackdown soon, it's Amazon.

[deleted]

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#29

Post by VLM »

miked85 wrote: post #6

I have started buying most products directly from manufacturer's websites or in physical stores now. The amount of fake products on Amazon is appalling, I wonder why they don't put effort into stopping this.

Very few products on Amazon are sold by the creator. Virtually everything is sold by a mixture of middlemen and importers and drop shippers.

Its virtually impossible to tell the difference between a product I'm middle-manning that's interpreted by investigators as real, vs a product that's interpreted as fake.

With books, nobody really minds if conceptually a book sat unopened on a bookstore shelf with the general public touching and pawing it occasionally vs a book that sat pristine untouched and cleaner on my home bookshelf, although one is marketed as "new" and one as "used", but in practice it usually doesn't matter. Also see the weirdness with $10 "indian subcontinent only" textbooks that normally sell for $200 to sucker american students, nobody complains their book was "fake" with a 95% discount to keep them quiet.

On the other hand, do that same game with toothbrushes and in roll the complaints.

This may be a problem inherent to online shopping in the long term. A copy of "Numerical Recipes in C edition 3" is a fungible commodity. Apparently, as per the linked article, that is not the case with fad overpriced gloves and toothbrushes. Possibly that type of product is inherently unsuitable for online purchase.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#30

Post by leetcrew »

tracer4201 wrote: post #8
erentz wrote: post #2

I see the Amazon fake products problem as related to the social network fake news problem. In both cases you have a company that wants to both have it's platform cake and eat it's publisher cake at the same time. (Sorry for the bad spin on that phrase there.) One important part of our solution here has to be that we force these companies to take a position one way or the other. So in Amazon's case it would need to de…

Disclaimer: I don’t own amazon directly but do own funds where Amazon is a significant chunk. I don’t agree with this kind of regulation. It’s simply not the governments role to decide. You as a seller are not forced to sell on Amazon. I say that as the spouse of a seller who owns a store on EBay that’s continued to be successful. We had a bad experience selling on Amazon and are better off without them. Of course th…

> I do think Amazon needs to be held liable for fake products and whatever damage they cause its customers.

what would this look like? they already have a pretty generous return policy. they pay the return shipping and return the funds as soon as the package ships. I'm not thrilled with the status quo of playing fraud roulette every time I order something, but the worst thing that's ever happened to me is having to wait a couple extra days for the genuine item.

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