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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

#161

Post by lotsofpulp »

mint2 wrote: post #46
kingforaday wrote: post #5

Amazon's product management criteria has a threshold of (number of returns) / (number sold) within time-frames and if you hit the threshold (which is about 10% iirc), your product is automatically removed until you file an appeal. I guess that isn't sufficient enough.

I thought clothing bought online normally had return rates far higher than that?

I order 1 size above and below what I think I will need, so I return at least 2 items for every 1 item I keep. But usually much more, I just returned 15 to 20 clothing items and kept 5.

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

#162

Post by throwaway290 »

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.

Updating product line or need to amend something? No problem. Allow to add new content. Insert a link to the new version or a notice at any time.

Just never allow to edit existing content beyond a few typos. Updating product line and want to keep reviews? Sorry it's dishonest even if seller thinks of itself as "legitimate".

I don't think in the end any legitimate seller is hurt.

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

#163

Post by treis »

adoxyz wrote: post #107
javawizard wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah with Amazon you'll get in 2-3 days, but you'll end up paying 2-3x as well. I considered building a browser extension that just lists the Alibaba/AliExpress item for you when you land on amazon listing and did a bit of research. Most things you search for on Amazon these days that crowd the first page results are literally just copies of AliExpress items at 2-3x the markup. Sometimes the convenience is worth it.

It's rare that I see that significant of a discount on Aliexpress. Most are within like 10% and sometimes cheaper on Amazon.

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

#164

Post by 29athrowaway »

stackedinserter wrote: post #153
29athrowaway wrote: post #75

There are other products on Amazon you should probably not buy either. Namely, products from randomly named companies, or companies that claim to be American but it their address is a warehouse and their Internet presence is hosted on Alibaba Cloud. Most of what they sell is toxic, like PVC figures for children cakes, toxic kitchenware, counterfeit refrigerator filters and other magnets for penny pinchers. It is almo…

> It is almost as if they were intentionally trying to poison people. This, this, this. Just look at what are dollar stores selling us. To me it looks like China packs their garbage in form of children toys and useless things like so called "squishees" that smell like they fished right out a toxic river. Story time: my wife tried to import toys from EU, high quality wooden building blocks. I remember that regulatory…

Most returned stuff goes to a warehouse and then gets destroyed. You can buy pallets of that stuff for a reduced price.

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

#165

Post by crazygringo »

lostapathy wrote: post #112
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.

Yes exactly! It baffles me so much because I could at least understand if they did it only in cases where bigger is better -- deceitful, but there's a logic to it.

But nobody wants a shot glass the size of a whiskey tumbler. That's not going to drive sales of shot glasses.

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

#166

Post by throwaway290 »

hedora wrote: post #145
Cyykratahk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's not trivial to solve perfectly, there are easy wins to be had. For example: prevent changing the top-level category of a product. E.g. Shoes should not be allowed to become camera gear.

As always, the internet has already generated a counter example to your rule: https://www.spycamerasmall.com/mobile-spy-camera/bodyware-sp...

It only means that either category is okay, not that it should be allowed to be changed.

But I don't think this restriction would fix all the issues where listing in the same category is swapped.

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

#167

Post by archgoon »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #120
SamBam wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is true; but this is a cost optimization argument; not a feasibility one, which is all the OP was proposing.

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

#168

Post by crazygringo »

londons_explore wrote: post #116

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.

So you mislead other buyers?

That's not hurting Amazon, it's hurting regular people.

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

#169

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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.

> gate it behind human intervention(slow)

That's not my problem. The courts have already weighed in on this.

Marting Lewin sued facebook for publishing ads that used his face to defraud people. Facebook used the same excuses you just wheeled out, and the judge wasn't impressed.

Fraud is a crime, little people go to jail for less every day.

https://news.sky.com/story/martin-lewis-settles-lawsuit-agai...

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

#170

Post by dspillett »

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.

That would start a game of people updating a listing a bit at a time. The listing might be confusing or even meaningless part way through but after a while it would be fine enough. Update API limits would make this impractical for long listings but it might work for short ones. Detecting scams and working around the detection semantics is an unending arms race.
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