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.
The brand is "20 Mule Team". I would be quite suspicious of "3 mule team": how would a 3-mule hitch even work? Who makes a harness for three mules? b^)
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…
I try to keep abreast of SSD prices, as I've been looking to swap out the spinning rust on my ESXi server with SSDs, but the prices are still a bit too high for my taste, and that hasn't changed much over the past few years. Which is why I was really surprised to see this both on Vice and ArsTechnica[0]. A quick web search for "4TB external SSD" shows prices in the USD$400-600 range. So 30TB for ~USD$40 seems too goo…
No, you see 30TB is just the company name, not the actual size /s
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.
In another universe they did use random numbers, but based on the old C rng, people figured out the seed and were able to again find all of the GRU passports
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…
That's nothing compared to what worse things could actually be happening. There doesn't seem to be any quality control or authenticity verification on any of these marketplaces including Amazon. Good case scenario the item you buy is a high quality fake. Worst case scenario it's a low quality fake. Filled with toxic chemicals (without the warning that it is carcinogenic or causes reproductive harm etc.) Are you buying kids toys from these marketplaces? Food items, clothes, kitchenwares, face masks, anything really.
It's gotten really bad, particularly on amazon. Search for anything and you are likely to find the same item with 50 different brand names but all essentially the same garbage from aliexpress/wish. For example, here's a search for "bike trainer" [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bike+trainer&crid=KCCRWTVZHHQ7&sp...
I dropped Amazon (again) a while back. I'd gone back to using them during the plague, and got lazy. What jolted me back was multiple delivery failures in a row followed by a shitty "give me my money back" experience. Right now, Amazon combines the honesty of flea markets with the reliability of a stoned teenager. I'm back to shopping at physical stores, and am enjoying it, at least at the moment. And when ordering th…
Yup, I've been doing the same. Amazon is for things I don't care too much about if it's a knock off. But generally speaking, I'll try and by stuff directly from the manufacturer or in store.
I really wish online shopping wasn't so messed up.
This is extreme libertarianism (of which Jeff Bezos - Founder of Walmart’s competitor and probable source of inspiration for the idea to open a “marketplace” - is a proponent) taken to its logical conclusion.
On a practical level, caveat emptor is a good principle for buyers to live by, especially in this era of pervasive cheating. But pushing to enshrine it as an acceptable norm is morally bankrupt, and in the long run, it will lead to the collapse of society.
I try to keep abreast of SSD prices, as I've been looking to swap out the spinning rust on my ESXi server with SSDs, but the prices are still a bit too high for my taste, and that hasn't changed much over the past few years. Which is why I was really surprised to see this both on Vice and ArsTechnica[0]. A quick web search for "4TB external SSD" shows prices in the USD$400-600 range. So 30TB for ~USD$40 seems too goo…
Yet despite the scam being obvious, Walmart still listed it.
>Yet despite the scam being obvious, Walmart still listed it.
And so they did.
How does that old saw go? "It is useless to argue with a man whose opinion is based upon a personal or pecuniary interest;"[0], and/or something similar.
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.
I'm not an intelligence expert so this is purely spectulation. However, this assumes lots of things. Perhaps the Russians are truly that sloppy. However, more likely in my eyes is that this is a strategy to make them appear dumb and sloppy. The US claims to not send spies into foreign countries without the cover of a diplomatic passport (whether or not this is actually true, I don't know. However, this is one of the…
That's the call where Alexei Navalny tricked an FSB agent into admitting they had poisoned him.
I think often people try to come up with too clever explanations for stupid behavior. Sometimes it's just stupid behavior. Often times this is the catalyst for conspiracy theories - it's a nice explanation for random or stupid events.
This is end stage capitalism greed. It's a full blown assault on the consumer. The trust that citizens have in their retails is being mortgaged for desperate profits. The quality of the products is dropping to possibly dangerous levels. There's no quality control. The products that you are buying could be full of toxic, carcinogenic, reproductive harm chemicals. The cast iron pan you buy has lead in it. The kids toys are using toxic paints. The cotton clothes you are buying are not cotton.