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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

#111

Post by cyberlurker »

georgemcbay wrote: post #62
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…

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 c…

I bought a light fixture off of Amazon that caught fire on its own. I reported it to customer support and said it should be removed from the marketplace. They did for a day but it was up the day after.

So yeah add light fixtures to the list.

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

#112

Post by kevin_b_er »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #69
lotsofpulp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and how do you know its actually Na₂B₄O₇·10H₂O? How much filler did the 3rd party seller add? How much of the filler is toxic or will react in unexpected ways? At least if I bought walmart borax from a brick&mortar walmart, I generally expect it to be all borax. 3rd party reseller? Even that's not guaranteed. If the seller is caught, they'll just disappear and another will fill its place. It is all snake oil salesmen wearing masks and unless you get a lab test on everything you order, you'll get burned one day.

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

#113

Post by elliekelly »

inasio wrote: post #73
hotpotamus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I relatively recently learned about Aliexpress and it seems like most American retailers are just a local cache for them. But if I can order sketchy Chinese knick-knacks directly and skip the markup at the cost of a bit more waiting time, I'd just as soon do that. I've also found the Chinese customer service speaks English just fine and have been great whenever I've had to deal with them.

There's a story in the news this week about an undercover Russian spy that had a jewelry shop/brand in Italy [0], one funny detail about the story is that the jewelry was actually sourced from Aliexpress [0] https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1563060250269589505

This thread is wild. It's shocking they'd issue consecutively numbered passports to spies. Using random numbers seems like it would have huge benefits for essentially no cost.

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

#114

Post by andrewia »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #78
hotpotamus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I relatively recently learned about Aliexpress and it seems like most American retailers are just a local cache for them. But if I can order sketchy Chinese knick-knacks directly and skip the markup at the cost of a bit more waiting time, I'd just as soon do that. I've also found the Chinese customer service speaks English just fine and have been great whenever I've had to deal with them.

A facebook friend posted a picture of a bangle that she'd bought off an e-commerce site in the neighbourhood of $20 that was disappointing. I simply did a google image search on the picture (the e-commerce site's listing) and sure enough, it hit on Ali Express for something in the neighbourhood of $1.80, free shipping.

This has become the norm. I am a TikTok user* and there's a lot of ads and organic posts about "innovative new products" that are exposed as dropshipped items from a warehouse in China. And you may have seen "get rich quick" gurus promoting their strategies for opening Amazon stores to resell stuff from AliExpress. I've seen quite a few AliExpress sellers advertise dropshipping ("just send a spreadsheet and we send packages with no receipt") and/or bulk order discounts (to ship the goods yourself with faster, domestic shipping).

To be fair, not all direct-from-China goods are cheap crap. I've received excellent USB cables, noise cancelling earbuds, and much more from various sellers. And the middlemen selling on Amazon are offering the convenience of easy returns, fast shipping, and excellent customer service from Amazon. Depending on the seller, [their profit margins can actually be quite thin because Amazon charges a lot for their customer service, warehouses, and return handling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yhc6mmdJC4).

* I know TikTok is quite controversial, for good reasons like data security, lack of ethics, and algorithmic infobubbling/censorship. But I am still a fan and use it because its algorithm was the only thing that was able to string together my liked posts and begin showing content/advice about what mental health disorders I might have. That significantly sped up my diagnoses with my psychiatrist, who confirmed 2 of the 3 disorders.

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

#115

Post by short_sells_poo »

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…

Are you seriously equating the ability to synthetize images and video to the invention of writing? I mean, one elevated us from hunter gatherer packs to a knowledge based society. The other means that we have to trust media less than before and will make it easier for people to generate art and custom porn. It's great, but I feel such breathless exaggeration will only hurt the effort in the long term, because it is taking on crypto currency like hype.

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

#116

Post by hattmall »

pmezard wrote: post #13
madaxe_again wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those “exclusive pieces” are typically not designed for a given brand, but are designed on spec by various ID houses, perhaps with a brand or set of brands in mind as target, and are then pitched and sold, or pulled in by buyers. This has been the way for at least the past several decades, and fashion and furnishings have lead the trend which is now ubiquitous. Crate & Barrel I know do this, as I’ve worked with Otto…

Does it achieve the same outcome, at least on the quality side of things? Instead of a brand sending specs aligned to what their brand should represent, the seller creates spec to match what it expects target brands to look for.

Buying in bulk direct from manufacturers you typically get designs and then quality options. So you can essentially have the exact same product with a wide range of qualities. Things like material density, connector construction and all types of finishing touches from a variety of options. The manufacturer will have a huge assortment of stock products.

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

#117

Post by kevin_b_er »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #90
paxys wrote: post #46

Walmart is a retailer. Do people really think they (or Amazon, or anyone else) test every single one of the hundreds of millions of products sold on their site? If people choose to trust a hard drive made by "XGeek", well, that's on them. This is exactly why branding is a thing. Just stick to Seagate or WD next time.

You and I know how the marketplace system works. My 70 year old uncle might just -reasonably- assume that buying from walmart.com is the same as walking into the store, and comes with the same return and quality guarantees. Stuff in the store is very much vetted, and individually chosen. Shelf space is an incredibly valuable commodity and any retailer knows not to just give it away. I don't know why e-store search re…

> My 70 year old uncle might just -reasonably- assume that buying from walmart.com is the same as walking into the store, and comes with the same return and quality guarantees.

And that is exactly the deception the Walton family wants out of this.

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

#118

Post by hattmall »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #50

You know it seems to me that we are going to eventually end up reinventing the idea of a brand. As these massive online marketplaces continue to allow third party sellers their reputation will continue to suffer, people will be less and less likely to get what they ordered, and eventually look for a way to identify good products. Eventually some sellers and marketplaces will end up being identified as only having goo…

Interestingly Aldi and Dollar Tree almost exclusively sell their own house brands.

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

#119

Post by matrix_overload »

Well, this is a direct consequence of allowing the marketplaces to "vertically integrate" with their own brands.

Imagine you poured a year of work into finding product/market fit and creating a truly great product. You put it for sale on Walmart/Amazon, and what happens next? Amazon's algorithms find you among 100s of less successful sellers, your product gets knocked off as "Amazon basics", produced at scale you cannot afford, so you end up taking all the risks, and Amazon takes all the profit.

So the only business models that not vulnerable under these rules of the game are small-time grift, semi-automated Aliexpress resellers, very niche products and huge established brands that can compete with the platform owners in terms of scale.

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

#120

Post by wnevets »

hotpotamus wrote: post #60
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…

Yep, I relatively recently learned about Aliexpress and it seems like most American retailers are just a local cache for them. But if I can order sketchy Chinese knick-knacks directly and skip the markup at the cost of a bit more waiting time, I'd just as soon do that. I've also found the Chinese customer service speaks English just fine and have been great whenever I've had to deal with them.

Drop shipping has become a cancer for the online shopping experience.
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