Live data from Hacker News

Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

vice.com

31–40 of 234 posts

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#31
post #8

The marketplace-ization (is there a word for that?) of every retailer feels so short sighted. I’ll throw out an example I’ve noticed lately - furniture manufacturers. Search for any item on Crate & Barrel or West Elm’s website and you’ll first see a handful of exclusive pieces that are clearly built for the brand. Keep scrolling and the search results gradually become a bunch of generic third party items that you can…

> I get it, Crate & Barrel sees this as an opportunity to monetize their brand without having to do all that much. Unfortunately it leaves me with a lot less trust for a brand that used to represent a quality and reputation.

It's essentially converting reputation to cash

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"ID houses" in this context is interior design, right? How does manufacturing work -- interior designers are typically not manufacturers? This is super interesting to me, so if you have any links or further info about this process, I'd love to know more.

Industrial design. Whole point is that there’s usually complete vertical integration from conception to manufacturing to logistics, so they can crank out stuff that they can make without a headache with existing toolchains and ship it cheap.

Ah that makes a lot more sense, thanks for clarifying.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#35
post #8

The marketplace-ization (is there a word for that?) of every retailer feels so short sighted. I’ll throw out an example I’ve noticed lately - furniture manufacturers. Search for any item on Crate & Barrel or West Elm’s website and you’ll first see a handful of exclusive pieces that are clearly built for the brand. Keep scrolling and the search results gradually become a bunch of generic third party items that you can…

I think it is SEO driving this. They want to surface product pages for as much stuff as possible so they contract with some third party to also be a reseller of such goods because it probably requires little overhead. And if it brings traffic then they can try to push their own "sponsored" products.

I think it dilutes a brand. I don't know that Walmart has any worthwhile reputation as a brand though (at least in my eyes) to dilute so they're probably selling these things and don't care.

When I search on local chain retailer websites, I try to use the "In Store" or "Same day pickup" filters to get actual products they sell. The nice thing is sometimes they indicate the inventory level.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#37
post #31
post #8

The marketplace-ization (is there a word for that?) of every retailer feels so short sighted. I’ll throw out an example I’ve noticed lately - furniture manufacturers. Search for any item on Crate & Barrel or West Elm’s website and you’ll first see a handful of exclusive pieces that are clearly built for the brand. Keep scrolling and the search results gradually become a bunch of generic third party items that you can…

> I get it, Crate & Barrel sees this as an opportunity to monetize their brand without having to do all that much. Unfortunately it leaves me with a lot less trust for a brand that used to represent a quality and reputation. It's essentially converting reputation to cash

Is this the "It's my money, and I need it now" / "It's your money, use it when you need it!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdPM6j1Q4sg) of execs trying to cash out and bail before things go to shit?

My question is, why is this happening now and why didn't it happen before?

Is it because Amazon is simultaneously wildly popular and a total trash fire, so customers are becoming gradually inured to their bullshit and so other companies are thinking they can slip under the radar with this ploy?

Was there an industry conference where this idea was presented and nobody ever explicitly agreed to collude, but there were nods all around the room and everyone knew what they were expected to do?

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#40
In India, I see lot of fake websites in Google Ads. Their offer is also too good and the images in the ads are so nice and attractive. Interestingly ads are appear even before big websites like Amazon and Flipkart.

After you made the payment, you will realize that you have been cheated. I guess lot of the people got cheated by this method.

Post reply on HN