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

Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

thewirecutter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 429 posts

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#141

Post by jabo »

jahnu wrote: post #127
andrewfromx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are…

Only allow reviews from verified purchasers

Here’s how people still game verified purchases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22399781

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#142

Post by andrewfromx »

Zombieball wrote: post #125
andrewfromx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are…

I thought fake reviews were typically from humans? Bot protection / human verification seems like the wrong front to be tackling.

yeah, real humans blast past captcha and enter real heart warming text about how great the product is but don't mention they are being paid to write this review and pretend the product is good. Let's tackle the real issue and like connect wires from the human to the computer and like lie detector style measure their blood pressure, heart rate, sweat, or...

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#143

Post by int_19h »

iamaelephant wrote: post #120
chiefgeek wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? There is zero difference between it's interface and that of Google search.

Because of the search results.

Google search results have been deteriorating in the past couple of years. It feels like the algorithm has been deliberately tweaked to produce larger quantities of less relevant results - it will often substitute words for "synonyms" that are much broader in scope, to the point of rendering the query pointless. I can't help but think that the purpose is to then show more "relevant" ads.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#144

Post by x0x0 »

stilley2 wrote: post #116
lotsofpulp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not the person you responded to, but I use fastmail and migadu.

+1 for fastmail

also +1 for fastmail.

(I say this as a longtime user, and this is not meant to be damning with faint praise). Their email is best of class outside of gmail. It even beats in certain ways: It syncs faster. It's not made by a surveillance company. As a paying user, I've gotten very competent tech support. They have very good privacy controls re: image loading. They seem to permanently grandfather rates, which is nice.

Downsides: their label system is, to someone who really likes gmail, not as good. Calendar syncing on Android with their preferred sync app breaks every couple of months until you hit resync. Fastmail is in Australia, and I'm not sure the impact of Australia's police assistance laws.

Same: They support u2f.

Their product has improved a lot in the 5 years I've been using it, and is very worth the money. I think it's critically important that there exist high quality alternatives to google services, so that's a nice secondary reason to pay them.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#145

Post by leoh »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #88

It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. Recently there are more…

> It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews.

Totally agree. I think a lot of people feel this way, which is why it's so lucrative for Amazon and sellers to cheat on reviews.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#146

Post by rubidium »

andrewfromx wrote: post #124
ThePhysicist wrote: post #88

It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. Recently there are more…

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are…

There are standard ways in industry of dealing with this problem. You verify your suppliers. Amazon doesn’t do this, and so kids eat lead and we get shitty stuff. The real makers get pissed. The scammers and amazon profit.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#147

Post by int_19h »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #88

It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. Recently there are more…

Chinese manufacturers themselves seem to follow this model. When they sell cheap junk, you see those one-shot noname brands. But once some market niche is flooded at the bottom, and the only way to get more of that market is to expand into higher-quality offerings, you start seeing established brands that care about their reputation, to the point where they sometimes outdo Western brands. One example that I know through my hobby is Holosun - not only they compete directly, and quite successfully, against Western market leaders on features and quality, but, in US at least, they have live support based in the country - not the usual call center somewhere in India.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#148

Post by mortenjorck »

This is an excellent piece, but the writer is also working on the assumption that an item marked "ships from and sold by Amazon" is a reliable control group versus a third-party seller.

As many know, Amazon's practice of commingling inventory in its Fulfilled by Amazon program can just as easily result in a fake being sold by Amazon as from a third-party seller. The author got lucky and didn't get any fakes in the control group (though one might not rule out the possibility of a more sophisticated counterfeit!), but it will continue to be a risk so long as Amazon continues commingling in FBA.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#149

Post by thrwaway69 »

jahnu wrote: post #127
andrewfromx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are…

Only allow reviews from verified purchasers

I got requests to do reviews for some of the products I received out of nowhere on amazon and other places. They told me they would send me the money if I can order more myself and leave a review. So I guess, no that won't help as much as you think it would.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#150

Post by nearting »

101008 wrote: post #133
gurumeditations wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, any expensive electronics I buy in person, not from Amazon. Best Buy and the like are trustworthy.

Thanks. The problem is that in BestBuy the price is much higher if the phone is new, not refurbished. I found it new on Amazon fora good price. I just checked and it says "Sold by Google", and it goes to a Google landing page on Amazon, so I should be fine, right?

Not necessarily. (1) Landing pages are relatively simple to fake; just because the link goes to Google, it doesn't mean that Google has authorized an account on Amazon to sell the products. (2) Amazon has been known to mix stock, so even if the seller actually is Google, you might end up getting a product from another seller, which might not be authentic.

Personally, the last 3-4 phones I bought off of Amazon were all different models from what they had been advertised as. It's possible that you might get lucky and receive an authentic phone for less than buying from Google directly, but if you actually want confidence that you will receive the real thing, get it directly from the manufacturer.

Post reply on HN