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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?

#421

Post by perjes »

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’d recommend using https://reviewmeta.com. It filters out suspicious reviewers and makes it much easier to avoid products with bought reviews on Amazon. Wouldn’t make purchases there without it.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#422

Post by lsc »

pmart123 wrote: post #198
lsc wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, but if this problem gets bad enough, it will kill amazon. If I order a certain brand of stuff off of amazon and I get something I can't use often enough, I'm going to order from another store. Right now, I'm paying a premium for the convenience of amazon. I'm willing to pay a reasonably large premium for convenience; taking that premium is a sustainable business, but if I'm paying a premium, I expect the product…

I won’t buy anything I would ingest on Amazon anymore outside of Wholefoods. I’ll go to Target for things like Advil or toothpaste.

I personally trust all of amazon fresh enough to feed me? but yeah, it's probably good advice to not put things that come from the rest of amazon in your mouth.

It's so weird to me, though 'cause here I am, totally willing to pay extra for convenience, and amazon seems to be throwing that premium away.

Clearly, it's not an impossible problem to solve, 'cause basically every other major retailer (and for that matter, nearly all minor retailers) has solved it. It's only the places where they try to both sell their own stuff and be a marketplace of shady third party sellers where I have problems, and even then, most places that try to do both do a better job of segregating the real business from the 'let's compete with ebay' business than amazon does.

I mean, it seems to me like this would be costing amazon money both in the short and long term. If I were an amazon shareholder, I'd demand they drop the third-party garbage until they figured out how to solve the problem as well as target does.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#423

Post by devdas »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #395
j-c-hewitt wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The tricky thing about this is that there isn't much stopping anyone from starting a US shell or paying an associate to do it and then logging in to the account from anywhere. There are plenty of super functional countries that disobey court orders. China for example does have a functioning court system. Like many countries, they don't cooperate with US court orders as a matter of sovereignty. Not even when Nik…

> The tricky thing about this is that there isn't much stopping anyone from starting a US shell or paying an associate to do it and then logging in to the account from anywhere. But then if they commit fraud the US associate gets arrested, and it's hard to find volunteers to do that.

They create a Delaware C corp, and if the product is found bad, the company just goes bankrupt. Replace with a new one.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#424

Post by ryukafalz »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #387
zeveb wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft continue to produce proprietary software, i.e. software which infringes on its users' freedoms to use, examine, modify & share software; that is wrong.

Are you suggesting that those users have no choice but to use that software?

Most users have no idea they have a choice, so... effectively, yes.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#425

Post by x0x0 »

aerique wrote: post #364
x0x0 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

In the case of Fastmail I don't know what you mean with "their preferred sync app" but I've used CalDAV-Sync in the past and now DAVx5 (because it's easier to use (used to be DAVdroid)) and I've never had these problems you mention.

caldav flakes for me regularly. Frequently on Nexus and HTC versions of Android; less frequently (but still every other month) on my Pixel.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#426

Post by pmart123 »

lsc wrote: post #422
pmart123 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won’t buy anything I would ingest on Amazon anymore outside of Wholefoods. I’ll go to Target for things like Advil or toothpaste.

I personally trust all of amazon fresh enough to feed me? but yeah, it's probably good advice to not put things that come from the rest of amazon in your mouth. It's so weird to me, though 'cause here I am, totally willing to pay extra for convenience, and amazon seems to be throwing that premium away. Clearly, it's not an impossible problem to solve, 'cause basically every other major retailer (and for that matter,…

I definitely agree that this could potentially cause long-term damage. Amazon could be one bad counterfeit away from destroying its brand. Brand trust ultimately matters for consumers making a default choice of what to buy or where to shop.

To take an extreme example, as fears surrounding the Coronavirus spike, people are trying to buy 3M masks from Home Depot, not Amazon. It tells me consumers already have a trust issue building with Amazon when they are buying a product that needs to work.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#427

Post by speedplane »

iainmerrick wrote: post #331
speedplane wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think brand matters more than ever. I'd go further and say that branding is now often the product itself. Nike can sell a hat for 20X more than a generic hat when it has their swoosh on it. Perfume is basically a generic chemical wrapped in a huge amount of marketing. Apple makes excellent products, but there's no question that at least part of the premium you pay is not for better quality, but for the brand itse…

“Moving from”? That happened decades ago, before e-commerce became significant. This sounds like the kind of thing discussed in No Logo , which was published in 1999.

> “Moving from”? That happened decades ago, before e-commerce became significant.

Yes, absolutely, since the invention of brands, at least some brands were the product rather than a signifier of quality.

However, in the last 10-20 years, largely due to globalization, high quality goods have become widely available. Before, that Nike hat may well have been much higher quality than the generic, but now they are indistinguishable. As overall product quality has improved, the only thing left to sell is the brand itself.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#428

Post by spy888 »

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 had the same issue with not being able to tell what is from a 3rd party or Amazon.

I assume that sold and shipped Amazon has a greater chance of being real. For example, my wife was looking to buy some masks (I know, give into the fear) but I refused to buy from 3rd parties since I have a low level of trust.

So I built an app to help me and friends quickly tell if from a 3rd party or Amazon. Welcome to try and let me know how it can be better. https://www.trueseller.co

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#429

Post by LetThereBeNick »

humaniania wrote: post #294
LetThereBeNick wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only time it can see my browsing it when I’m on a .amazon.com/ domain
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