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

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

#111

Post by londons_explore »

sofixa wrote: post #22
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...

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.

I'm pretty sure GPT-4 could be shown the product page as it was when the first review was posted, and then again as it is now, and be asked "Are these two pages about the same product, please answer Yes or No with no further context"

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

#112

Post by lostapathy »

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…

The worst are items that are photoshopped not just into a background, but containers holding things that are the wrong scale. The other day I saw some 1.5oz shot glasses with a drink with 3 or 4 lime slices floating in them. The person editing that clearly had no idea the scale of the item they were editing in the first place.

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

#114

Post by bogwog »

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…

I had the same concerns about shipping speed, but then I just said fuck it and cancelled my Prime anyways. It turns out that waiting a few more days for items actually isn't a problem for me. It also brings the added benefit that I no longer feel constrained to a single shitty store, and can buy from anywhere on the internet again.

Also, when I do buy from Amazon as a non-Prime member, I find that often (not always) items tend to ship faster than the estimates claim. A few days ago I bought some RAM for my computer, and the estimate said it'd take a week to arrive. Instead, it "shipped early" and arrived in 2 days (on a Sunday). I think they've just optimized their shipping process for Prime so much that for some items it probably is cheaper to ship as fast as they can than to artificially delay shipping orders for non Prime members.

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

#115

Post by Aeolun »

vlovich123 wrote: post #31
heavyset_go wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring new listings for new product titles/SKUs, or approval for significant changes to titles/SKUs, seems like it would stop a good portion of these scams.

Yeah, with permanent delisting of the entire company as the penalty. Of course, these people don’t care. They’ll just spin up a new seller and thus the only people you end up hurting are legitimate partners updating their product line.

A new seller won’t benefit from a bunch of existing products.

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

#116

Post by londons_explore »

I just hate the amazon empire, so whenever I have no option but to buy something I give an opposite review. If the product is decent, it gets 1 star and a scathing review. If it's shit, I give a glowing 5 star review.

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

#117

Post by bogwog »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #80
redox99 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people change the card's backplate and return a cheaper/broken one People really have to ruin everything

I wonder do they ban people’s accounts for doing such things? That’s basically theft

I think the term is "mail fraud", and it's very illegal

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

#118

Post by lozenge »

blarghyblarg wrote: post #60
mortenjorck wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivial is an overstatement, but the solution space is far broader than the two options you propose. I can think of one off the top of my head: Give each listing a change score, where changing a description is a point, changing a photo is a point, perhaps changing categories is 2 or 3 points… At a certain threshold of points (tweaked over time to calibrate against false positives) the listing is flagged for human rev…

Not to be argumentative, but... that's the second option. Algorithmic. The initial implementation would be simple. One point, two points, three points. Then, some categories turn out to have significant change requirements, some change infrequently, some changes turn out to be very important in some categories, some categories need immediate human review...

This is like saying that stocking groceries is complicated because some items are perishable, some are frozen, some sell faster than others, they go to different parts of the store. Isn't it just a fundamental part of what the business is meant to do? To have reviews that actually relate to the product?

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

#119

Post by riffraff »

sofixa wrote: post #22
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...

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.

Avoid changing name? If you had a bad name you would have changed it before you got a lot of positive reviews.

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

#120

Post by cyborgx7 »

SamBam wrote: post #97
kevincox wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is just a simple classification problem, the prime application for basic neural networks. Using a general text generation system for this seems like complete overkill. Just a bunch of wasted resources.
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