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

#371

Post by rendall » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #360

rendall wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing up batteries, paint, USB, restaurants. We were talking about toy drones. Focus, people

Toy drones have paint, batteries, and a USB port. Toy drones are literally painted plastic, some spinning painted plastic, a battery, a USB port, a micro-controller, and some motors.

The original assertion was "Ultimately the only way to guarantee quality would be to vote for politicians who support strong regulations and a strong regulatory apparatus". I disagreed this is the only way to ensure quality. Now people are talking about batteries and restaurants. The original assertion was about quality, not safety

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

#372

Post by JasonFruit » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 3:55 AM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #202

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Fakespot, and I wonder about its accuracy. Seeing a 5-star product given a `D` rating is shocking. If Fakespot is reasonably accurate, then Amazon is inexcusably bad at removing fake reviews. Amazon has orders of magnitude more developer talent and user information than Fakespot to tackle accurate ratings. But I suppose that's the reality of differing incentives...

It's likely Amazon. Of course, there are instances where (e.g. mason jars) where fakes may be acceptable as they're commodity products. It's tiring using Fakespot just to find dozens of D and Fs. For the most part, I use other retailers or just don't buy the item (surprisingly it's a zen option to not buy stuff you don't pressingly need).

They really aren't acceptable, though; they are often not really suitable for pressure canning, and the failure and breakage rate is higher.

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

#373

Post by the_pwner224 » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:07 AM UTC

epmaybe wrote: post #370

Animats wrote: post #282

Skip the Amazon resellers and order direct from China on Alibaba. Their reputation system is less spammy than Amazon's. One of my areas to watch: solid state relays. Here we have yet another fake Fotek solid state relay on Amazon.[1] Note the "Made in China". Here's the real thing.[2] Note the "Taiwan made" from the real Fotek. Costs a lot more. That's because it will actually handle the rated current. The fakes are…

There are many times where I get going on a project and need to get some part (nobody in a 50mi radius supplies electronics unfortunately). I like to keep my momentum going, so I order from amazon because some of those resellers stock locally, and thus I get the product in 1-2 days. Contrast to China/AliExpress, where it may take them 3-4 weeks for the product to reach me. At that point, my interest may have fizzled…

I've found that DigiKey works well. Yes it's $5 shipping, but you can actually buy low quantities at good prices instead of being forced to buy 50 packs of small components for a high $/unit to cover for the free shipping. Because shipping cost is per order instead of built into every item. And they ship within 24 hours, plus everything is good quality, no fakes. I still order stuff like microcontrollers and wire from amazon though.

The disadvantage is since you're paying for shipping you need to do planning and get your final BOM established. If you make a mistake it's $0.20 for the right part and $5 shipping... Which isn't bad, but feels bad.

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

#374

Post by KirillPanov » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:15 AM UTC

zucked wrote: post #297

coldpie wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limited brand selection is actually a benefit. I don't want to spend an hour flipping through shitty USB-C cables to find the one that won't nuke my device. I want to pay the buyer at the retailer a few cents to do that for me.

You're just shuffling the effort of finding a good quality cable upstream to finding a good quality retailer.

That's okay. I use retailers way more often than I buy cables. Find a good retailer and you can buy several products from them over time, not just one.

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

#375

Post by recursive » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #262

SamBam wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're still every looking for instruments, Sweetwater has excellent stuff, and really stellar customer service. They answered questions by phone before we purchased. I received a keyboard for my daughter, then we had a change of heart and decided we had gotten the wrong one, they handled everything for shipping it back and sending a new one, and called a week later to see if we were happy.

And they will call you once every few months for the rest of your natural life (and then some). Sweetwater is notorious for being a company whose contact list you can never, ever escape from. Change your phone number, move across the country... Sweetwater will find you.

This hasn't been my experience. I have been called by them before, but it's been at least a year. And less than a half a dozen times in my life. And most of those were sometime after a large purchase where they were (claiming) to ask if the thing was working ok.

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

#376

Post by KirillPanov » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

mason55 wrote: post #58

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself am convinced that brand recognition is on borrowed time - that is, recognition of old brands may still work as useful filter, but new quality brands will be near-impossible to establish. The reason for that: we're being DDoSed with brands on e-commerce sites. For an increasing amount of product categories, you're going to find 10+ "brands" on Amazon that are selling the same white-label garbage class product…

What you’re describing is exactly how brands work. The garbage brands will continue to cycle because there’s no reason to keep the brand name (in fact it’s better to change it so that people who got burned don’t know it’s the same). But the good brands are investing in the brand name and so they will stick around and you’ll start to recognize them. Look at a company like Anker. They operate in spaces filled with garb…

> Look at a company like Anker.

Same with "gl.inet" (weird name, yes).

They operate in the most trashed-up market on earth: cheap internet-connected widgets. But I will buy from them every single time because all their products run a modified OpenWRT and all of them let you replace it with vanilla upstream OpenWRT. And all of their recent products have a physical "unbrick this device" button you hold down to boot to a slick reflash-the-firmware-over-the-network ROM.

I will not hesitate to pay twice as much for a gl.inet widget because of this.

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

#377

Post by zbrozek » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #38

cambalache wrote: post #29

I was a heavy Amazon customer 8-10 years ago. I only bought stuff sold directly by Amazon, and that was not hard to do, since +90% of the products had that option. The other day I was just checking the price of an article for my mom and I was shocked how different is now, the proportion has totally changed, +90% of the articles are not sold by Amazon and by the "stores" name it looks they are barely better than rando…

The same thing happened to Ebay and Etsy - once they reached a certain level of popularity based on the original premise it turned into a outlet for cheap junk. I've taken to finding as much as I can at places that DO NOT have a "marketplace" such as Target or Home Depot.

Yup. It's all the same trash everywhere. Costco still curates.

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

#378

Post by a012 » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:33 AM UTC

GloriousKoji wrote: post #285

MichaelApproved wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even stuff sold directly by Amazon could be co-mingled with counterfeit inventory from 3rd party sellers.

I've fallen victim to scammer merchants who use Amazon in their name. Before I would just check "Ships from / Sold by" under the Add to Cart button but it's not obvious if it's Amazon official. For example which one of these "Ships from / Sold by" is legit? * Amazon * Amazon Inc * Amazon LLC * Amazon Services * Amazon.com * Amazon.com LLC * Amazon.com Inc * Amazon.com Services LLC * Amazon Warehouse

Two frequent Ship from/Sold by I got is Amazon and Amazon.com, and these items are non-link instead of 3rd-party which has clickable link to their front store.

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

#379

Post by KirillPanov » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

jniedrauer wrote: post #125

dopylitty wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brands aren't perfect either. For example Volvo had a reputation for making great safe cars. The brand is now owned by a company with a reputation for making cars that disintegrate and obliterate the occupants in crash tests. The same is true of Arc'teryx, Jaguar, and many other well known brands that have been sold off to companies with terrible reputations for quality. Ultimately the only way to guarantee quality w…

> The same is true of Arc'teryx Can you expound on this? The same parent company (Amer Sports) also owns Salomon/Atomic and several other well regarded brands. I wasn't aware that something had changed recently. Are you talking about the Anta Sports buyout? People use these brands for life-critical applications in the backcountry, so this is certainly concerning to hear.

I've totally noticed this.

I bought two Delta Lt Zip microfleeces from them in 2018. They were expensive (over $100 each) but incredibly high quality, fit me like a glove, still wearable today after umpteen washes.

In early 2020 I ordered another one -- exact same product name, exact same brand, same size, shipped-from-and-sold-by "Arc'Teryx". It was like wearing a garbage bag; the proportions were all wrong, like it was tailored for an obese person my height. Lower quality material and all sorts of silly zippers and patches tacked onto it in weird unnecessary places.

Something went seriously down the drain in terms of quality with them in the interim. I'd probably bought over $1,000 worth of clothes from them up through 2018, all of it was first rate. Since 2020 I haven't bought anything else from them.

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

#380

Post by KirillPanov » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

orev wrote: post #92

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.

Same here but with Home Depot instead.

They're pretty good at filtering out the absolute junk, because having customers return products is really expensive for brick+mortar retailers.