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

arstechnica.com

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

#251

Post by perl4ever »

quercusa wrote: post #138
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?

GE used to be a marker for reasonable quality but over the past couple of decades they've licensed their name for all kinds of crappy consumer products.

The GE consumer product business was sold to a Chinese company quite a while ago, and I believe the brand was put on a lot of poor quality and poorly designed products, but I have the impression they have substantially turned around the quality, based on consumer reports and other hearsay. I got a GE washer and dryer based on this belief (and they were the only ones that would fit) and so far, so good, after about a year.

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

#252

Post by pjc50 »

yrimaxi wrote: post #179
Grimm1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An older friend of mine made the observation that really before the few large news networks and papers in the last 40-50 years objective information that everyone roughly agreed upon was not the norm. Yellow journalism, hearsay and rumors dominated common conversation. He observed that with the internet we're returning to what was this "normal" state with anybody being able to post something and gain widespread recog…

Nostalgia for the days when the NYT and co. could lie the whole nation into some war (or rather the people who read the NYT).

It's remarkable how people have taken the NYT and others reporting what they were told over the Iraq war, where finding contradictory evidence was extremely hard, as a reason to go to far less reliable news sources.

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

#253

Post by steelframe »

hinkley wrote: post #189
ethbr0 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come full circle and only order books (usually used) or things I don't care if they're Chinese bargain-version off Amazon anymore. Target, or occasionally Walmart, gets what used to be Amazon's business from me.

B & H photos has done right by me so far. CDW seems okay. Newegg appears to have vendors reselling stuff from Amazon with markup. And while you can filter third party out, you quickly discover Newegg doesn’t have much inventory.

tl;dr: I expect to get something with shoddy build quality from Newegg, but at least the reviews seem non-gamed.

After a few months of lackadaisically making sporadic attempts to order an RTX 3080, I finally threw in the towel and ordered a prebuilt machine which will come with whatever brand 3080 card is in stock at the time from Newegg. I could really use the CPU upgrade anyway, and the markup on the parts isn't at all bad compared to the markup from scalpers, who I refuse to do business with on principle.

The reviews on Newegg at least seem not-gamed. They're largely, "Quality parts slapped together and shipped unprotected, so I received the box with cards and RAM modules unseated and case parts bent due to being thrown around during shipping." I'm going to end up merging parts from two systems to produce a watercooled variant anyway, so all I really care about is just getting the parts, in particular the 3080, at this point.

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

#254

Post by mbesto »

ethbr0 wrote: post #157
mbesto wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walmart and Target will jump ahead. Actually, I think it's D2C that will jump ahead. The problem with Walmart and Target is they either (a) have limited brand selection (target) or (b) they dilute themselves so much to compete with Amazon that they eventually become Amazon (Walmart).

I dunno. I don't think anyone actually wants D2C, for rare-purchase (ie the mass majority of goods). It's one thing if the brand has an ongoing relationship with its customers, but nobody wants the burden of dealing with 1,000 slightly different processes for ordering toilet paper. That's the inherent value of Paypal et al. -- abstracting diversity on one side into a standard interface on the customer side.

> It's one thing if the brand has an ongoing relationship with its customers, but nobody wants the burden of dealing with 1,000 slightly different processes for ordering toilet paper. That's the inherent value of Paypal et al. -- abstracting diversity on one side into a standard interface on the customer side.

I guess you've never ordered something from a Shopify based store then?

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

#255

Post by asimpletune »

CC38 wrote: post #153
CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know my comment will be lost in a sea of voices, but I need to share my experience _somewhere_ else other than amazon reviews. I got my fiancé two Christmas presents this year - both bought off Amazon. One was an electronic keyboard that was dead on arrival, the other was a snuggie type blanket that started falling apart yesterday. Both items had thousands of 5 star reviews. I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else b…

Fakespot can help reveal which products have misleading reviews https://www.fakespot.com/ Obviously it isn't perfect but it does help.

That’s a pretty cool app. I love their interface, using the share button to expose the analysis.

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

#256

Post by cratermoon »

coldpie wrote: post #237
cratermoon wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newegg went down the toilet in 2016 when Liaison Interactive bought it out. Adorama is also good and, like B&H, you can't do any business with them on Saturday.

Has any retail company ever gotten better after being bought out (thinking NewEgg, Toys R Us, Guitar Center...)? Some incentive is fucked up if decent businesses are being run into the ground.

Toys R Us and Guitar Center are among the retailers bought by private equity firms explicitly so the investors could wring the value out of the company and throw the remains in the dumpster. G.I. Joes was another. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/toys-r-...

By the way the remnants of Toys R Us are now owned by Tru Toys and they are looking to make a comeback.

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

#257

Post by jamiek88 »

coldpie wrote: post #237
cratermoon wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newegg went down the toilet in 2016 when Liaison Interactive bought it out. Adorama is also good and, like B&H, you can't do any business with them on Saturday.

Has any retail company ever gotten better after being bought out (thinking NewEgg, Toys R Us, Guitar Center...)? Some incentive is fucked up if decent businesses are being run into the ground.

Vulture capitalists bleed them to death. Toys R Us is particularly sad as their business was strong.

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

#258

Post by hndude »

ethbr0 wrote: post #139
coldpie wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've completely stopped ordering from Amazon, for three reasons: they have too much market power, they have serious ethics problems, and their 3rd party seller program has made the buying experience garbage. Welcome to the club.

I've come full circle and only order books (usually used) or things I don't care if they're Chinese bargain-version off Amazon anymore. Target, or occasionally Walmart, gets what used to be Amazon's business from me.

For used books you could try thriftbooks.com

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

#259

Post by jamiek88 »

briffle wrote: post #181
CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know my comment will be lost in a sea of voices, but I need to share my experience _somewhere_ else other than amazon reviews. I got my fiancé two Christmas presents this year - both bought off Amazon. One was an electronic keyboard that was dead on arrival, the other was a snuggie type blanket that started falling apart yesterday. Both items had thousands of 5 star reviews. I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else b…

Any time I put a less than 5 star review, i get contacted by the seller, who many times offer to send me a free replacement, a newer model, or another product I may be interested in, if I change my review. I have refused, but I imagine many others did that.

Ha! I got a shitty appletv stick on holder that dropped off the TV the other day after a couple months, I put up a 1 star review hoping that would happen but it hasn't as yet!

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

#260

Post by gumby »

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…

> There's still a lot to be said for established brands.

Thus the loop comes full circle.

Originally the idea of a brand ("burned" -- burned into the hide of an animal or a piece of wood) was a way to label the provider in the hope that people would learn which providers were trustworthy and had high quality. This extended into manufactured products once printed packaging become popular (logos and labels, starting with low-input goods like tea).

Then sometime in the 20th century people figured out that they could use mass advertising to build the brand (by then just a label) itself, sometimes even rendering the product itself almost irrelevant. I remember articles in the paper (80s I think) expressing shock and/or bemusement that someone would wear a shirt with "Tommy Hilfinger" printed boldly across the front. At that point such brands become an expression of stance rather than product quality, or perhaps the product was merely a way to broadcast the brand. For example Diesel jeans which can only be worn a small number of times, compared to levis which last much longer.

And now it's come back to the starting point: seeking the brand, but for some level of quality assurance rather than lifestyle adherence.

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