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Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

kurtisknodel.com

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Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#81

Post by supermatt »

gizmo686 wrote: post #69
Ephil012 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for obvious scams (e.g. a blender that breaks in a week). However, for subtle scams people often don't realize the scam. For instance, many people won't hit the actual size limit of the USB and won't realize it's not 1TB. In these cases, Amazon does not take a reputation hit for these individuals due to them being unaware of the scam. Only the technically inclined or those who research before buying will…

A typical user might not recognize the nature of the scam. But they very easily could realize that the drive they bought from Amazon is defective. 8GB is not that much space (particularly when the OS thinks it has 1TB to play with). When the firmware runs out of real space to play with, it needs to start dropping data, and that is very visible.

> When the firmware runs out of real space to play with, it needs to start dropping data, and that is very visible.

Only if you are actively verifying the data. Im pretty sure most people would just look at a file listing and consider it stored.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#82

Post by herpderperator »

Jamie9912 wrote: post #55
agolio wrote: post #22

Seems to be a bug in this page FYI, may have to do with the fact I am trying to access from Germany https://i.imgur.com/5C8Kgq4.png

The certificate served to me was valid until December 2022

Same, but Chrome still didn't want to show the page and said the date was invalid...

Safari is doing the same: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rupu0y3wswxs2l2/validbutinvalid.pn...

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#83

Post by eyelidlessness »

esses wrote: post #31

I think there's one thing that should be clarified from the article. "Sponsored" does not mean that the product is "sponsored by Amazon" as italicized in the article. It means the seller paid money to be at the top of the search query. Perhaps it is a healthy dose of old aged jadedness, but I have a habit of trying to avoid Sponsored items.

It absolutely implies some amount of endorsement. It’s the same as seeing the endcap of a supermarket aisle. They decide to co-market the product and they decide to promote each other in the process. If anything, it’s advertisers on Amazon who have little choice in the arrangement because there are so few alternatives to market themselves in.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#85

Post by llanowarelves »

blackoil wrote: post #42
josephcsible wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges But remember that Amazon keeps what's basically a social credit score on you that drops every time you return something, and then they permanently ban you (including from non-retail things like AWS and Prime Video) if it ever gets too low.

>including from non-retail things like AWS is there any example of this?

This is more common than it should be for accounts. So best to assume the least charitable and plan accordingly.

You lose access to your consumer Gmail, Drive, etc if your YouTube account gets banned for comments.

You lose access to your Epic Games dev account if you get banned from Fortnite (unless they decoupled this in last few years).

AWS used to be hard-linked to your Amazon shopping account back in the day (they can't separate them for you if you ask).

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#86

Post by dymk »

josephcsible wrote: post #33
RobertRies wrote: post #32

While I agree this is a problem - one which I have been the victim of as well - Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges. This, of course, is not a great consolidation, especially for a novice who doesn't understand or encounters it too late. But I strongly disagree with "Amazon runs little to no risk selling the fraudulent products, but still makes money off of them." In the next paragraph the auth…

> Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges But remember that Amazon keeps what's basically a social credit score on you that drops every time you return something, and then they permanently ban you (including from non-retail things like AWS and Prime Video) if it ever gets too low.

That’s called fraud prevention

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#87

Post by RobertRies »

Ephil012 wrote: post #43
RobertRies wrote: post #32

While I agree this is a problem - one which I have been the victim of as well - Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges. This, of course, is not a great consolidation, especially for a novice who doesn't understand or encounters it too late. But I strongly disagree with "Amazon runs little to no risk selling the fraudulent products, but still makes money off of them." In the next paragraph the auth…

This is true for obvious scams (e.g. a blender that breaks in a week). However, for subtle scams people often don't realize the scam. For instance, many people won't hit the actual size limit of the USB and won't realize it's not 1TB. In these cases, Amazon does not take a reputation hit for these individuals due to them being unaware of the scam. Only the technically inclined or those who research before buying will…

No one is arguing the scam isn't insidious and inherently difficult to detect for possibly even most customers. The argument is that Amazon is complicit because they're banking off those sweet counterfeit thumb drive profits, and that there's little risk to Amazon.

I'm suggesting there is a significant risk, and anyone reasonable at Amazon would account for it. There's enough users (tech savvy, or heavy researchers as you point out, and ultimately some portion of casual customers) who will have a negative experience and potentially be skeptical of all purchases - major or minor. Amazon will certainly incur reputational and real return/handling costs.

It seems fairly implausible to me that Amazon would make the decision to say "Yeah, while tech savvy and discerning customers, and some portion of casual users will discover the scam, we just make so much money from fake thumb drives that it's worth it to destroy our reputation with that subset since a significant portion may not notice or ultimately associate Amazon with selling low quality products." All while we see the listings for these items get removed nearly as quickly as the pop up. Doesn't add up.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#89

Post by jgaa »

Amazon does what's in their own best interest. This year, it looks like scamming is it.

I wrote a 1 star review last month on a scam product (I fell for) with obviously fake reviews (the product was an earplug, the 3000 5-star reviews was totally generic or for womens beauty creams). The review was rejected because it was violating Amazons "policy". The scam product itself and the 3000 fake reviews was fine.

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