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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

#261

Post by CWuestefeld »

zargon wrote: post #236
CWuestefeld wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AliExpress's user interaction is different, and IMHO much less friendly. In Amazon, the user interacts with a product, and from here can either allow it to be fulfilled from whatever's its default seller, or select one explicitly. In AliExpress, the user interacts with the [product,seller], so in search you'll generally see 50 instances of the same product, and leave it to the user to decide which one to open into Pr…

I prefer the opposite. eBay and AliExpress are a better experience because I interact directly with the seller. The seller has control over their listing, their inventory, and their fulfillment. I'm not playing the lottery as with an Amazon listing.

I'm not playing the lottery as with an Amazon listing.

I agree that in fulfillment, Amazon is causing problem. But I still believe that in User Interaction, the Amazon approach is better for most users.

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

#262

Post by michaelt »

HALtheWise wrote: post #211
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.

There's actually some equipment that's sorta similar - meat packing plants can get conveyor belt x-ray machines which detect bones and bolts inside burgers.

I've never heard of it for general retail, though.

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

#263

Post by kipchak »

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...

I like that "Spy Cameras Mall" and Spy Camera Small" work as ways to read the address.

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

#264

Post by SifJar »

lamontcg wrote: post #221
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…

> Couple of fairly simple things they could do to at least help somewhat: Thing is that they don't really care. Mostly what they care about is handling returns which is what costs them money so they're targeting items with high return rates, and that's it. They don't actually care about you getting scammed if they get their cut and don't have a lot of overhead. All of this brainstorming is meaningless when the econom…

Yep for sure. Was just a response of simple things they could do, if they cared. Obviously nothing they won't have thought of themselves, was really just pointing out that it's not the case that there's nothing that can be done about it, as the parent comment to mine seemed to suggest.

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

#265

Post by erik_seaberg »

gowld wrote: post #196
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Sellers in China don't go to jail in US. "Ships from and Sold by Amazon" if you don't want foreign sellers. That doesn't solve the problem , because it locks out legit Chinese sellers. Solving the problem is hard.

I would prefer Amazon receive stock from legit manufacturers with a reputation to protect, whatever country they happen to be in.

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

#266

Post by mattfrommars »

Looking forward to the day Amazon decide to remove the option to return and have the cost to return Removed as well.

This move will be a pro environment as well as it will make us do more research before buying and once item is in our hand, try to make it last as much as we can.

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

#267

Post by SCUSKU »

pcamen wrote: post #230

One thing I have seen mentioned yet is this change from the perspective of honest sellers. Amazon customers are notorious for not bothering to read the listings and because of the generous return policy for FBA items, will just buy something to see if it works. I also sell on my own website and don't have any of that type of problem, but my return policy is not quite so generous. So me, as an FBA seller has certain p…

I've seen a few of these in the wild just as a consumer and I always wonder why people even bother leaving a review. My thought is you're just exposing to everyone how ignorant you are.

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

#268

Post by omgomgomgomg »

anfilt wrote: post #243
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.

Like you shouldn’t be able to change a products category from clothing to electronics for instance in my opinion. Same with similar changes. Small changes should be fine in my opinion also it’s not like it’s impossible to also determine the edit distance between two pieces of text. Amazon could be doing a lot more here.

It will get flagged eventually.

No, really, I have worked at amazon in a job exactly around product compliance and such.

All this is very hard to solve and they do what they can, people wont believe it, but amazon is not just an app, the heavy lifting part is logistics, admin thereof and compliance.

Theres no easy way to be fraudulent on amazon, the cost of market entry for sellers is rather big.

Mislabeled products and bad account health have terrible consequesnces for sellers.

I do understand it might appear from the outside that nobody cares, but it looks different once inside.

As for the allegations a profit/benefit calculation being behind it is most likely wrong, amazon, apart from fullfilment center staff is always overhiring to be ready for peak seasons and the whole thing is subsidized via aws, the real money maker.

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

#269

Post by philipwhiuk »

tfourb wrote: post #195
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

"It's hard" should not be an excuse for not preventing fraud. Most arguments from tech companies boil down to "but we would have to spend some of our billions of dollars of annual profits or venture capital to prevent this and those jobs wouldn't be sexy engineer stuff, so why would you want us to do something like this." I never understood how/why these companies are getting away with this, given that fraud/abusive…

This is the same argument I have when people say "YouTube is too big to moderate properly".

If it's too big to keep legal, maybe it's too big. It was YouTube's choice to allow everyone to upload as much as they like.

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

#270

Post by bawolff »

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.

The obvious solution would be make sellers put up a bond. If they are fraudulent, sieze it.

Its not like fraud is a new phenomenom in the world.

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