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Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

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Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#31

Post by thaumaturgy »

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…

I went from being an enthusiastic fan of Amazon Prime and a $50k spend one year [+] to closing my Amazon account and then warning other people away from it in the space of about five years.

I can't recall any other business from which I've moved so quickly and so far from one end of the spectrum of enthusiasm to the other.

[+] Most of it was for business -- parts and equipment for customers, it was often cheaper that way than my wholesale supplier.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#33

Post by leetcrew »

agrippanux wrote: post #18
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.

I started buying electronics at my local physical Best Buy. I thought 4 years ago I would never step inside a Best Buy again but a string of obvious fakes from Amazon changed my mind.

I bought a tv at best buy recently. it was my first time stepping inside the store in ten years. I had very low expectations, but it turned out to be a great experience. the sales associate I spoke to was actually super knowledgeable; it was almost as good as buying pc hardware at microcenter.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#34

Post by 101008 »

Sorry if this is offtopic, I was planning to buy a Google Pixel 3A from Amazon in a week (It's cheaper than from Google Store). Are mobile phones also forgered on Amazon? or they don't aim to forger stuff like that? Thank you. (I am from a 3rd world country and travelling to USA next week)

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#36

Post by intopieces »

There's a follow on question that I'd like to raise, which is: "Are you rich enough to care"? In the race to the bottom on prices, it becomes a mark of wealth when you have the time and money to verify your own purchases, or to shop at more reputable retailers. I'm in that category, but could easily see myself being too cash strapped / too busy to do anything about a fake product being shipped to me from Amazon. I'd probably shrug.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#37

Post by matsemann »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #27

Is it not possible to look at the seller to tell if it's the real company selling the product? I wouldn't buy branded from some no-name seller, that's no better than ebay.

If multiple sellers sell the "same" item and use amazon as warehouse, they can be binned together and you get one at random from any one of the sellers no matter which one you actually bought from.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#38

Post by Symbiote »

VLM wrote: post #29
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 pu…

> fad overpriced gloves and toothbrushes.

That description is unfair.

Regardless of whether the product is overpriced or fashionable, I want the correct product, without the shortcuts taken by a fake: unsafe paints, plastics etc.

I don't mind "Philips-compatible" brush heads being listed, but the description should be clear.

Otherwise we may as well repeal all trademark, copyright and product safety laws.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#39

Post by clairity »

ng12 wrote: post #21

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 kn…

at the risk of upping the amazon paranoia (which i think is valid but blown out of proportion), i also had a little fake product issue recently with amazon.

i had bought two glass (kitchen) storage jars a year ago and decided in november to order one more. the new one was about 10% smaller with slightly different markings, just similar enough that it wasn't noticeable on first glance, but was obvious when placed next to the other two jars.

initially, i assumed it was a warehouse mix-up, so i requested a replacement. the replacement was exactly the same smaller jar and not the original. mind you, the original was already a chinese-made & branded item. the replacement was a cheaper knockoff of what was probably already a ridiculously marked-up import. luckily it was only a minor hassle to return both and get a refund.

i'm not a big amazon shopper and avoid their own electronics like kindles and echos (don't need more plutocratic surveillance in my life), but for anything of (at least moderate) value, i'll sometimes double-check against photos on amazon and manufacturer's sites. fakes have generally not been a significant problem for me.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#40

Post by intopieces »

nappy-doo wrote: post #22
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…

I too learned that the best way to get your problem solved with Amazon is to resort to threats. It took ages to get my account closed -- I was sent by 5 different chat agents to the same "click here and send an email to confirm" page -- until I threatened to complain to the California Attorney General under CCPA. Then suddenly the agent had all the power in the world to close my account.
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