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

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

#61

Post by sp0rk »

kbos87 wrote: 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 this trend of trading in good will towards your brand for a quick buck has been growing powerfully over the last decade or so. It seems like a lot of brands (that make physical products, specifically) have decided to start making "economical versions" of their products that are far inferior to the ones that built up the brand's reputation. This wouldn't be an issue if they were labeled as such, but it seems like it's usually a tactic that's meant to trick you into buying something that you thought was higher quality.

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

#62

Post by georgemcbay »

samwillis wrote: post #25
kbos87 wrote: 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…

What I find particularly annoying is that these online “marketplaces” are not curated - they literally sell anything, probably drop shipped. It used to be that you would shop at a branded store, and there was a level of expectation that they had curated their collection so that it was of a quality that matched the stores brand. Some of their wares may be under their own branding, but they would sell other bands too t…

Not only are they not curated, the marketplace owner will often do nothing about borderline fraud.

A real life for-example:

There's a specific kind of cat treat I used to buy on Amazon, at some point various (or maybe the same under different names, who knows) resellers began to sell that treat in a way where they would break up the retail packaging and sell single pouches for the same price as the MSRP for a whole case (the way the manufacturer sells it).

Technically not exactly fraud because they mention the size in the item description fine print, but because of the pricing and the way Amazon tends to just mix different SKUs from both themselves and resellers willy-nilly into different options of the same listing, its incredibly easy to just assume you are buying the full retail product as packaged by the manufacturer.

To Amazon's somewhat-credit, they've refunded me when this situation occurred, but to their shame they've never done a single visible thing to stop this practice from happening and I've proactively reported it to them repeatedly.

End result is there's a whole bunch of categories of products I won't buy from Amazon anymore because I don't want to have to do in-depth detective work every time I make a purchase. I get my pet stuff from Chewy now as I've yet to run into a similar scam on that website.

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

#65

Post by LarryDarrell »

wyre wrote: post #26
powerhour wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"eBay gets away with selling random junk from random sellers, how can we get a piece?"

I’ve had much better experiences getting what I order from eBay than I have from Amazon. Random junk is fine, but I at least want it to be the random junk I ordered.

I order a lot of new-old-stock auto parts from eBay. Best of both worlds while it lasts.

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

#66

Post by bentcorner »

heartbreak wrote: post #44
samwillis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find particularly annoying is that these online “marketplaces” are not curated - they literally sell anything, probably drop shipped. It used to be that you would shop at a branded store, and there was a level of expectation that they had curated their collection so that it was of a quality that matched the stores brand. Some of their wares may be under their own branding, but they would sell other bands too t…

There is one notable exception. The third-party products sold on Apple’s online store are all vetted by Apple. Apple, of course, are masters at guarding their reputation.

The difference is in scale. Compare and contrast the quality of Apple's online store for their physical goods with their app store.

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

#67

Post by Philadelphia »

heartbreak wrote: post #44
samwillis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find particularly annoying is that these online “marketplaces” are not curated - they literally sell anything, probably drop shipped. It used to be that you would shop at a branded store, and there was a level of expectation that they had curated their collection so that it was of a quality that matched the stores brand. Some of their wares may be under their own branding, but they would sell other bands too t…

There is one notable exception. The third-party products sold on Apple’s online store are all vetted by Apple. Apple, of course, are masters at guarding their reputation.

By contrast, Apple has let their App Store become a scam marketplace

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

#68

Post by m463 »

kbos87 wrote: 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 in Amazon's case, it is slowly degrading into a flea-market type of experience.

It's harder and harder to find the good products from decent brands, even with a direct search. Many times the decent brand product seems to be someone independent who is buying the product elsewhere and shipping it on amazon for a markup.

Then there's the word-jumble brands for products - they all seem to be fly-by-night products that only seem to exist as long as the product entry has enough stars to get traction.

sigh.

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

#69

Post by MichaelCollins »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #23
dimitrios1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did Walmart ever have a reputation for quality?

There was a baseline expecting of quality, because Walmart would not be expected to buy from counterfeiters. For example, if I buy 3 mule team borax from Walmart, I expect it to come via official sources. If I buy 3 mule team borax from a Walmart reseller, I have no idea where it is sourced from or how much those entities care about reputation. It could be from 3 mule team, it could be counterfeit.

Branded borax? It's a mineral, coming out of the same mines no matter what brand you buy.

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

#70

Post by m463 »

pupppet wrote: post #12

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the meeting when reputable businesses decided it was in their best interests to sell random garbage they couldn't vouch for.

many might be like segway - where they were bought by a less-reputable brand like ninebot and then used for the name.
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