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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

#211

Post by HALtheWise »

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…

How expensive would it be to perform an airport-style x-ray scan of every box (over some price) before it's shipped out, and when it's returned? That would give the customer support agent something to look at when judging somebody's claim that they were shipped a fake product, and you could probably even train ML models to distinguish genuine from knockoff goods in many cases.

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

#212

Post by michaelmrose »

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.

This seems to have about a half a hundred solutions

- Changing listing voids prior reviews

- Changing product category voids prior reviews

- Enable transferring reviews by a paying a fee which will pay for a human reviewer to approve this

- Make people put up a bond to sell goods and or agree to a huge fine if they do this. When you find people doing this take their bond and or fine money out of the money they would have received for their goods. Also delete all their listings and ban them from the platform. If any account attempts to do business in a way obviously linked same card same email etc ban them too.

- Find mismatches between reviews and product by having a program classify reviews by probable product type reviewed and have a human review hits starting with the most prolific offenders and bring down the ban hammer. If you can actually collect fines directly out of money intended for the scammer this trivially pays for the enforcement activity and improves the health of the platform.

If the economics of the scam are I'll make a little money to if I do this at a large enough scale to make any real money I'll probably be caught and lose money it doesn't look like an attractive scam to run anymore. It's not necessary to be perfect just good enough to mostly resolve the issue.

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

#213

Post by rngname22 »

mabbo wrote: post #106

There is a famous story about Customer Obsession and returns that I used to tell during training sessions for new Amazon employees- Customer Obsession 101, which I was a teacher for. Jeff is in a call center for a day shadowing a customer support agent. A customer calls about a specific item and the CS agent is like "They're going to say it's broken in this particular manner" before the call even starts. Jeff later i…

Working in the trust and safety / bad actors space, I imagine that bad actors realized fairly quickly they could just purchase 20 of their competitors products and then rate/write in saying they were damaged / fraudulent and trigger that andon button being falsely triggered.

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by m463 »

coding123 wrote: post #49
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...

The product switcheroo thing should be fixed with AI. Chatbot, is this product update similar to the previous product that was posted here?

it is way easier than that - just allow feedback about a product listing. "This does not seem to be the product described".

or flag a listing for review when photos are changed.

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

#216

Post by SkyPuncher »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #186
SkyPuncher wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gone back to ebay for commodities/non-name brand. So far, prices are better, shipping is faster, returns are easier, and fakes aren't an issue.

There's not a single reality where ebay has faster shipping and easier returns than Amazon.

I can assure you that I live in one of those realities. It might not be entirely common, but it's absolutely true where I live.

I cannot get most Amazon items in less than 5 days. I can get most ebay items in 2 to 3 days.

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

#217

Post by m463 »

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 trust amazon to resolve problems with orders.

They have always resolved missing packages, late shipments, wrong item, etc.

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

#218

Post by whoopdedo »

mabbo wrote: post #106

There is a famous story about Customer Obsession and returns that I used to tell during training sessions for new Amazon employees- Customer Obsession 101, which I was a teacher for. Jeff is in a call center for a day shadowing a customer support agent. A customer calls about a specific item and the CS agent is like "They're going to say it's broken in this particular manner" before the call even starts. Jeff later i…

And once a fraudster finds out they set a troll army to the task of calling in complaints against their competitors' products.

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

#219

Post by lamontcg »

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)

The correct objection here is not "slow" but "expensive".

All of the "FAANGs" (or whatever we call them these days) need to be forced by government regulations to have transparent appeals processes that use actual humans and make them spend the money on it.

And when it comes to fraud clearly amazon needs to be forced to deal with it.

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

#220

Post by Filligree »

dilyevsky wrote: post #32
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.

Are you saying that in the age of ai it’s impossible to tell whether the page is now featuring a completely new product without human review?

It took me five minutes or so for a proof of concept with GPT-4. So...
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