Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#91

Post by Bedon292 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

tangoalpha wrote: post #78

This is how the seller can do it, atleast on Amazon India. Swapping the details completely triggers AI based flags and often causes the change to be manually reviewed. But the seller can add a variant of the product (like size or color). But the seller instead adds a completely different product he intends to swap the original product with. Now the listing will show two completely different products as variants on a…

I was just seeing something like this the other day on US Amazon. I was looking at 'nano tape' to stick some stuff in place. And came across the top reviewed one, with 11k reviews [1] but all of the reviews are for a guitar wall mount. I was very confused as to how they achieved it.

[1] Example: https://smile.amazon.com/Double-Sided-Tape-Walls-Decoration/...

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#92

Post by orev » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

TravisLS wrote: post #18

There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…

Given the counterfeit problem on Amazon, I have been using the retailer as a proxy instead. I feel much more comfortable buying things from a known retailer like Target or Walmart, since I can rely on them to at least do some kind of due diligence on the products they carry. I think this will be the way forward for these companies to stay in business as Amazon becomes overrun with junk.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#93

Post by ben1040 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

geerlingguy wrote: post #67

joseph_grobbles wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brands still arise out of that. I buy Spigen cases. Anker cables. If I want a low-cost but workable set of headphones for the kids, "MPOW" devices fit the bill. I know that Amazon Basics keyboards and mice will be satisfactory given the price. These do emerge.

Similarly, Anker, Choetech, and a few others to a certain extent. Some of them come from the ashes of Alibaba rebrands, but a few start making decent products and are at least at what I'd consider "Belkin-level" but at a better price point.

Even Belkin is now a Foxconn brand at this point, but at least I have owned plenty of products built by Foxconn that haven’t burned my house down.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#94

Post by valuearb » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

noveltyaccount wrote: post #73

valuearb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a startup that sold a food product direct, with a significant part of sales on Amazon. We decided to switch our standard size from 12 packs to 8 packs to better fit our customers consumption habits. But on Amazon that meant creating new listings for new SKUs, abandoning hundreds of positive comments/ratings on each 12 pack flavor SKU, which would crush sales for a while. So instead we let inventory run o…

That's crazy. Can't you add two variants to the same product? Like how a single t-shirt item can have different sizes and colors? Or maybe Amazon only allows that for certain listings, or only if they're set up that way from the start?

We couldn’t. It’s been a year and Amazon wasn’t my primary responsibility so I can’t remember the details out Amazon manager laid out, but we were forced to go through this time consuming and painful process.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#95

Post by libraryatnight » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #88

TravisLS wrote: post #18

There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…

Too bad buying the name brand on Amazon still gets you counterfeits and headaches

Yes, and even if the product seems like its legit - the manufacturers often won't honor warranties on products bought from Amazon if they don't have a formal relationship with them.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#96

Post by jquery » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

14 wrote: post #68

Pxtl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Amazon's UI is actually pretty hostile to this, too. I was trying to buy simple USB cables... After a pair of tablets were destroyed by a bad USB cable, I'm picky about usb micro cables. So I tried to search on Amazon for usb a to micro cables... And the brand filter didn't list many of the brands I was seeing in the resultset. Like, I know you have Monoprice and Belkin cables, I'm looking right at them…

This comment caught my attention are bad cables really destroying your tablets? I ask because I literally power all my phones and tablets with cords I bought at the dollar store. Never had any problems. Have I just been lucky?

Yeah you’ve been lucky. I only buy brand name cables now after getting burned.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#97

Post by Bedon292 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

freeAgent wrote: post #10

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

The worst of it is that if you report an obviously fraudulent product listing nobody at AMZN cares if you didn't buy it. Years ago I quit buying things at staples and started buying at AMZN because staples only stocked crap brands like vtech. Now the crap product listings on AMZN really stink.

They don’t care even if you DID buy it. I once reordered some toothbrush heads that I liked only to find a completely different, inferior product. It turned out that the product page had been completely redone since my initial order, but it kept all the old reviews. I reported it to Amazon and they did nothing for months. I think the page changed yet again and was no longer even selling toothbrush heads while still k…

How did you actually report this? I can't even figure out how to report some I found.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#98

Post by robotnikman » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #77

bombcar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusingly enough if you trace the history of brand names ... this is why they started! And this is the strength that the major retailers have against Amazon - if Amazon won't police (and they have problems with commingling counterfeit brands, too) then Walmart and Target will jump ahead.

> if Amazon won't police (and they have problems with commingling counterfeit brands, too) then Walmart and Target will jump ahead. I think they are solving this differently. Amazon introduced their own brands for almost all daily necessities. Amazon basic, amazon pharmacy, amazon fashion, amazon elements, amazon pantry, amazon echo and few more. They generally have average or above average products at an affordable…

From my experience i've had some mixed results with the quality of Amazon basics products.

I remember buying a charger for my phone, only for the plastic shell of the charger to break in half a few months later

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#99

Post by rickyc091 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

PaulKeeble wrote: post #84

djohnston wrote: post #12

Perhaps I'm in the minority of frequent amazon users, but I don't buy anything from 3rd party sellers anymore. There is simply too much fraud. In practice, this means that I often need to skip past amazon entirely and go straight to the product manufacturer, sometimes paying more, just to be sure I'm not being screwed.

I have been the victim of multiple instances of fraudulent product, sold directly by Amazon. One was a salt grinder that had a plastic replacement where it should have been metal and was lacking the lettering but was sold on Amazon from the official page. Somewhere in their system Amazon is accepting product that isn't official and happily selling it under than companies brand. If it was a one off I might agree it wa…

Are you sure there aren't multiple variations of the same product?

I made an online purchase for some oral-b toothbrush heads from Target. The item that arrived did not resemble what was on their website. I figure since it's a big retailer, it's probably legit. I checked the official manufacturer's website and the product was also different. Digging a bit deeper into the product images, I finally found one that looked like the version I had.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#100

Post by Frost1x » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #79

ryandrake wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recognition of old brands may still work as useful filter Not for long. How many dependable long-lived brands have been mopped up by hedge funds and private equity and subsequently slapped on the cheapest crap you can make? Remember when Craftsman tools used to be top notch?

Right. Also the regular "optimization" (i.e. of costs, not value). For example, Miele was a decent brand of white-label goods, but I've read numerous commenters here claiming that they're succumbing to plasticpartisis and their products aren't as reliable as before. I also vaguely recall hearing that Anker isn't what it used to be. (Then there are brands spanning great many product categories - like Phillips. I'm hav…

I mean, once you get brand recognition and a market foothold, that's when you start optimizing on the cost quality tradeoffs. That seems to be the normal course of business in the US. Smart brands recognize there's a limit to gaming the margins before they lose trustworthiness and cut quality slowly and only to a certain point so as not to eliminate brand loyalty and recognition.

If that margin gaming process gets too greedy, the cycle kicks back and people start looking for other brands. The real strategy is to ride just above the stable point of adoption and keep an eye out for competitors that are offering better value, then gobble them up before they unseat your nice comfortable market position.

The end result is you get a bunch of medicore products and services in the marketplace as well as terrible products/services. The high quality stuff tends to die quickly, undercut by those dominant in the market through anticompetitive forces while the poor quality stuff survives because their brand will be short-lived anyways. Few seem to be able to hold onto the ideals of putting and maintaining high quality first over increasing profit margins, that just isn't the goal.