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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?

#291

Post by pyrosome »

askar_yu wrote: post #140
jahnu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only allow reviews from verified purchasers

I am afraid verified purchases are being gamed too. Sometimes I feel like scammers might be going to the extreme of coordinating clustered purchases (I am guessing the merchandise ends up in the owners hand/warehouse anyways somehow?) and posting the reviews. This is not even mentioning incentivized reviwers who may be posting exaggerated (if not fake) reviews for promos, discounts, etc.

> Sometimes I feel like scammers might be going to the extreme of coordinating clustered purchases (I am guessing the merchandise ends up in the owners hand/warehouse anyways somehow?) and posting the reviews.

This is called brushing and there have been several articles written about it. Scammers create fake accounts for real addresses and then ship fake merchandise to those addresses to get the "verified purchase" for their review.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-brushing-scam-couple-rec...

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#292

Post by InternetOfStuff »

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…

> 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.

The other day I came across something interesting: two comments, for two different but related products (dynamos). One comment was in German, the other in Italian, but they both had the same non-sequitur in them.

Apparently scammers reuse comments across products (not surprising) and languages (more surprising).

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#293

Post by sfifs »

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…

> because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews

Well one of the things big brands - especially in the consumer products industry like the one I work in - do quite religiously is product testing during research and a lot of q/a during manufacturing to eliminate as far as possible risk of safety issues.

We sometimes take competitive products through the same tests and while what some of the small producers sometimes produce wouldn't be illegal, we'd never run with those standards. Bigger competitors tend to be largely fine.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#294

Post by humaniania »

LetThereBeNick wrote: post #286
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’ve been happy with the “ReviewMeta” chrome extension, which evaluates the product reviews on any amazon site, and displays a score indicating how likely it is the ratings have been manipulated. It shows examples of flagged reviews which can be pretty funny. Chrome lets you limit extension permissions by domain, so I don’t worry about it snooping on the rest of my browsing. But you’re right about brands. When it com…

Reminder to always be very cautious about installing Chrome extensions. Especially ones being touted by new accounts.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#295

Post by ikeboy »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #229
ikeboy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several of the examples in OP are admittedly not counterfeit but simply look too similar to a name brand, or are older versions. Neither is illegal per se. (Assuming there's no design patent, and the product page doesn't specify year of manufacture or exact model number, which is common.)

Almost all of them were using the brand name of the product they were faking.

There's 6 examples. Out of those, only the first 2 are fakes using the brand name. How exactly is 33% "almost all"?

3 says "Although the YXTDZ booster is not trying to pass itself off as a Mifold by name, it’s clearly a knockoff of the Mifold’s unique design."

4 says it was called "Toddler Airplane Travel Safety Harness" and says it wasn't FAA certified. It doesn't say that it used the brand name.

5 and 6 are authentic products but older stock or a slightly different model number, respectively.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#296

Post by jxramos »

mc3 wrote: post #271
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…

Maybe this is what will save bricks and mortar? Guess where I buy any product I am going to ingest, put on my skin or plug into a wall? A real store with some special online exceptions, but those exceptions are never going to be Amazon or Ebay. There are some shady real stores selling shit too of course, so I have to be choosy, but I'm feeling pretty safe at a national supermarket chain, or Kmart.

I really believe these shady operations are ripe for satire and jabs in advertising. Much in the spirit of this one, just with teeth: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5c_Br-mO7Po

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#297

Post by CaptainZapp »

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…

> You as a seller are not forced to sell on Amazon.

Sorry, but this argument is just silly.

Here's some food for thought: Birkenstock stopped selling on Amazon[1] due to a delluge of fakes. Now go to Amazon.com and search for Birkenstock. You get a shit ton of results.

So if Birkenstock is not selling them, since they don't sell on Amazon, then who sells them and do those sellers have a right to sell a 3rd party product despite the brand not wishing to sell on the platform at all?

If you can regulate that a pimply faced teenager in Tenessee is ruined for life for downloading 10 songs, then it should surely be possible to regulate a behemoth like Amazon not to allow the sale of crap from dodgy suppliers on its platform.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-...

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#298

Post by axaxs »

Amazon is a total landfill these days. As much as I hate to admit it as such, my wife does reviews for 'free' products, often paying in addition. I could write a novel on how this system works, but in short I'll say, reviews are completely useless.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#299

Post by jay_kyburz »

eugeniub wrote: post #167
jay_kyburz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think even a lay person would be able to make some good observations about any product. Then across hundreds of employees you could start to build specialized teams.

But also, you don't want people to be too close to a range of products so they can be somewhat objective. For example is swimming shampoo a real thing? or is it just normal shampoo that costs more?

Here is Australia there is a range of over the counter pain killers, all the same brand, all with the same active ingredients, but marketed at different kinds of pain, and at different price points.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36167011

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#300

Post by undersuit »

reaperducer wrote: post #105
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…

Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy I do the same. I wish I didn't, but I don't know what the practical alternative is. I guess it's the whole reason that brands were created in the first place. I do source some of my stuff from smaller brands and shops, whenever I can. But that's not always an option. When it comes to software, I'm not entirely satisfied with Apple's "walled g…

> It's because of this that I wish Apple† would go back into some of the product lines it has abandoned.

Related: I try to buy Amazon Basics for a lot of items.

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