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Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

theverge.com

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Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#91

Post by mbreese »

criddell wrote: post #47

I bought a $50 item and a couple of weeks later I received a letter in the mail offering me a $35 Amazon gift card if I leave a 5-star review with a video or picture attached. I'm surprised Amazon allows these kinds of bribes.

They don't, but it's hard to crack down on. The only way for Amazon to know is if the people who get the gift card notify Amazon, which isn't likely to happen.

Here's a story about how Amazon banned a popular battery/charger maker because of the same thing you're talking about. (I have one of their batteries... it was pretty good too).

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/16/22536976/amazon-ravpower-...

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#92

Post by olalonde »

mikeortman wrote: post #16

I really wish Amazon would flag products who using images very similar to other listings. I'm tired of seeing dropshippers putting a random company logo on an alibaba listing. Leads to crap products and a poor experience.

On the other hand, it increases the range of available products on Amazon (at the cost of lowering the average quality). What they really need is to make those sellers easy to spot and filter out, if necessary.

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#93

Post by notahacker »

generj wrote: post #61
lwhi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT can definitely work this out.

Even a simple Levenshtein distance would do the trick for most of these product switches.

Some of them would be as simple as "this sold a lot of copies when listed under Tablet Accessories for $5.99, now it's in Laptops for $599"...

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#94

Post by Analemma_ »

javawizard wrote: post #85
haunter wrote: post #51

The craziest scam I saw on Amazon was ordering an expensive GPU > people change the card's backplate and return a cheaper/broken one. Unsuspecting regular Joe will order the returned GPU ("open box deal!") and they get a fake one. And now you have to fight against the Amazon customer service too. It's incredible. Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays. Might as well I order from China becuase I at l…

> Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays That's an interesting point, and it got me thinking: why do I continue buying from Amazon over AliExpress etc.? Pretty simple answer, really: logistics. I can order an adapter from Amazon and have it here by 6 PM tonight. The same thing off AliExpress will take a week or more to get here. If Wish or AliExpress can figure out near-same day delivery, they could…

> That's an interesting point, and it got me thinking: why _do_ I continue buying from Amazon over AliExpress etc.?

I asked myself the same question back in January and also couldn't come up with an answer beyond shipping speed, so I cancelled Prime and now just use AliExpress for most things that would've been an Amazon purchase before. Even the slower speed isn't that bad: if I genuinely need it right away I'll travel to a physical store; otherwise the extended wait feels healthy for reducing useless impulse purchases.

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#95

Post by triceratops »

srmarm wrote: post #9

I don't get they don't crack down on the product switcheroo scam [0] - it seems like a trivial problem to solve. I've reported items to them before and they don't care. [0] this product for example, loads of the reviews are for something totally different - https://www.amazon.co.uk/WERPOWER-Windscreen-Invisible-Winds...

It's stuff like this that makes me avoid online-only retailers as far as possible. My first choice is still to go to the store. Second choice is to never order from third-party sellers on Walmart or whoever's website.

The minor price differences between online and in-store aren't worth the hassle. The only reason to order online is for long-tail items. Spare parts, replacements that you simply can't get in-store.

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#96

Post by bob1029 »

captainkrtek wrote: post #56

I’ve given up on Amazon shopping years ago. I much prefer to buy things directly from specific retailers, eg: outdoor gear from an outdoor retailer, clothes directly from the brand, etc. This has resulted in never having to return anything, not rolling the dice on product legitimacy, and pretty great customer service who is knowledgable of the products.

I hope that others can find a path too. I worry for some friends & family who seem properly addicted to the idea that stuff can magically appear on their doorstep within 24-48 hours. I know some who receive multiple shipments from all 3 major carriers every single day. Just the slightest amount of planning ahead would prevent the need for the kind of retail model they provide.

Everything about Amazon is intended to increase the amount of time you spend with Amazon. The 50% chance of broken crap keeps you coming back to their support center, with all sorts of dark patterns designed to send you right back into their store again.

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#97

Post by SamBam »

kevincox wrote: post #68
SifJar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple of fairly simple things they could do to at least help somewhat: * Put reviews for current listing at the top of the reviews (currently default sort seems to be a vague "Top reviews", but can be changed to "most recent" which presumably accomplishes this. Vast majority never change defaults though) * Clearly mark any review that is for a previous version of the listing, and provide a link to view the listing a…

I don't think this will work well. Minor updates to listings would trigger all of these actions far too often to make them standard and ignored. I hate to say it but I think some type of heuristics would be needed here. 1. Has the title significantly changed. 2. Has the price significantly changed. 3. Are the search keywords that were finding the old listing significantly different than those finding the new listing.…

Honestly, these seems like a perfect problem for GPT.

Show the title and main description to GPT everytime the seller makes a change, and ask "Do these seem to be the same product?"

If GPT says that they seem different, flag for human review.

You could probably even ask GPT to take its confidence. If it's highly confident, skip the human review.

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#98

Post by tablespoon »

SifJar wrote: post #35
sofixa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it trivial to solve? They either need to prevent sellers from modifying product pages (which would be a disaster because any mistakes could no longer be fixed without losing all reviews) or gate it behind human intervention(slow) /algorithm (complex). There's nothing trivial about the issue.

Couple of fairly simple things they could do to at least help somewhat: * Put reviews for current listing at the top of the reviews (currently default sort seems to be a vague "Top reviews", but can be changed to "most recent" which presumably accomplishes this. Vast majority never change defaults though) * Clearly mark any review that is for a previous version of the listing, and provide a link to view the listing a…

They could also have some system to flag these listings for manual review by an Amazon employee, instead of expecting every individual customer to figure it out.

I mean with all the AI hype, you'd think they could whip something up that would at least be able to detect when the listing has changed to a completely new product category.

Re: Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy

#100

Post by barbazoo »

crazygringo wrote: post #15

This is great, but another thing they really need to do is create and enforce two more rules: 1) Lister must provide all dimensions of actual product (not just packaging) 2) Photographs must show product as actual sized, not photoshopped into a stock photo environment at 3x scale Especially for home items, it's astonishing the number of items that just provide NO WAY to know what the size is. It seems like such an ea…

That whole specifications sections is broken for a huge subset of products.
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