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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?

#161

Post by [deleted] »

leoh wrote: post #145
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.

[deleted]

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#163

Post by jay_kyburz »

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 Amazon should employ a hundreds of everyday people to review products full time.

When you list a product on Amazon, you have to pay 10-20 of those Amazon Employees to review the product at arms length.

Say each reviewer is given 2 hours for each product, before you can list a product on Amazon you have to pay $2 x 20 x hourly rate.

These should be the only reviews.

Or you can sell your product with no reviews.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#164

Post by SECProto »

robteix wrote: post #104
pas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are they adding in value compared to any regular webshop? It's just as incomprehensibly bad as the standard run of the mill default PrestaShop. At least Shopify is a real platform you can build stuff on. Amazon is just this giant bullying machine. The Dalek of retail.

Super fast and cheap shipping is a big deal. Easy returns. I have several issues with Amazon the company, but any time I buy something only from any other vendor I'm reminded of what makes Amazon different.

> Super fast and cheap shipping is a big deal.

Fast OR cheap shipping. At least in my locality. In the place I most frequently order, free shipping is scheduled for "5-7 business days" to get to me, and frequently gets misdirected and takes an extra day or two (pushing it past another weekend).

When I've ordered to one of Canada's large urban centers it is much faster. But going to an actual store to get something for the same price is also an option, and faster still. And doesn't tend to have difficult to spot counterfeits.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#165

Post by ratww »

mav3rick wrote: post #71
joshgachnang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has been about the same for me. I went from total Google fanboy to migrating a lot of my life away from them and advising others to do the same.

No non tech person is going to use Duck Duck Go.

After moving to Germany I met quite a few non-tech people who ditched Google for DDG: artists, musicians, accountants, translators.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#166

Post by fortran77 »

dimnsionofsound wrote: post #126
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…

Mildly related, here’s another instance of harmful things you can buy on Amazon: “negative ion” trinkets that are actually radioactive [1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/C7TwBUxxIC0

I'm amazed that a person making "negative ion wellness bracelets" would go to the effort and expense of putting a radioactive material in there to actually generate negative ions! Why not just put a copper-colored thread in there and claim it makes negative ions?

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#167

Post by eugeniub »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #163
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 Amazon should employ a hundreds of everyday people to review products full time. When you list a product on Amazon, you have to pay 10-20 of those Amazon Employees to review the product at arms length. Say each reviewer is given 2 hours for each product, before you can list a product on Amazon you have to pay $2 x 20 x hourly rate. These should be the only reviews. Or you can sell your product with no reviews…

This would work for maybe 5% of products. This is no way to review the durability of a product, or review how it performs for specific tasks, e.g. swimming shampoo, internal computer component, sleeping mask, etc.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#168

Post by ebg13 »

lukebuehler wrote: post #35

Gutsy for them to write such an article when they rely so much on affiliate links. Definitely makes me respect The Wire Cutter much more. Maybe does their article imply that as long as you purchase through their recommended links you'd be safe(er)?

> Definitely makes me respect The Wire Cutter much more.

I'll probably respect them more when they stop hypocritically linking to Amazon.

> Maybe does their article imply that as long as you purchase through their recommended links you'd be safe(er)?

The article implies that, but it's not true.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#170

Post by gpm »

empath75 wrote: post #4
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 think you solve it by making amazon directly liable for fraud on their platform. They’d clean up the problem pretty quickly after losing a few billion dollars in lawsuits.

I think they should be liable, but I think even just enforcing the existing laws without making them liable would put a stop to it.

Just have the police start tracking down what warehouses counterfeit items came from, and getting search warrants to search them.

Apart from the fact that this would directly reduce the number of counterfeit's... repeatedly shutting down warehouses for searches would kill Amazon's bottom line. Cleaning up after the police would kill Amazon's bottom line. Etc.

It's not exactly justice, but it is damn effective. You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride and all that.

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