Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by brutusurp » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

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…

Agree. "Day 1" is no more, as are those leadership principles.

My own divorce from Amazon retail was when 3rd party vendors had no control over Amazon binning fake goods alongside vendors' non-fakes goods. This ensured that reputation of 3rd party vendors would suffer. Where did the fake goods come from? Were they supplied by Amazon? Perhaps yes, actually.

It makes consumer anti-trust lawsuits [1][2] even more necessary, to ensure protections against monopolies.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/amazon-loses-bid-toss-consumer...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/11xyfem/was...

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

#272

Post by chihuahua » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #184

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 buy hundreds of items per year and almost never return anything. If I buy from xiangxiangshenzencorp then I expect the item to be crap, but it's obvious from the listing and the price. If I buy from a reputable brand I also know what to expect. I honestly don't get how people can get a quality different from what was clear from the listing (well, I've been positively surprised in the past).

My experience is the same as yours. I don't understand all these complaints. I've been using Amazon since 2002, about 30-50 orders per year, and I've had to return maybe 2 things because they were disappointing. And on the rare occasion where a delivery doesn't show up, it's very easy to complain and get my money back.

Driving to a store to buy something has become a waste of time, except for a few things, like shoes and gloves. I no longer need to drive 15 minutes to a store, spend time searching for the thing I want, find out that they don't have it, have someone offer that they can order it for me, and drive home.

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

#273

Post by albrewer » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #240

rngname22 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Add in some pretty basic filters & I think I'd be game to try. Is the complaint from someone >X years active? Is the complaint from someone with >$Y dollars spent? I can imagine a lot of factors that could go into discerning customer reliability, but there's some pretty blunt force ways to cut out a ton of noise really quick. And... Amazon should have some pretty clear smoking gun evidence in these cases of updating…

> I can imagine a lot of factors that could go into discerning customer reliability

This just makes hacking Amazon accounts a higher priority

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

#274

Post by ethbr0 » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 9:53 PM UTC

krferriter wrote: post #260

Nifty3929 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive ~= effortful, meaning that it would take a lot of human labor, which would otherwise be contributing differently in the economy, at Amazon or elsewhere. Every hour spent manually reviewing product pages could instead be spent growing food, producing shoes, building homes, providing accounting services, etc. This doesn't mean it is or needs to be determined centrally - just that it is an economic truth that…

If Amazon's retail profit relies on allowing fraud and illegal activity to happen with their knowledge, that's just not something we should accept. Making more money for shareholders shouldn't happen at the expense of knowingly defrauding customers. The decision to not prevent fraud on Amazon just means the cost of dealing with that fraud is borne by the customers.

On the other hand, we balance health hazards to the public against economic activity.

"Minimal risk while still permitting economic growth / treating disease" vs "no risk"

It's fair to apply the same standards to internet companies. A hyper efficient Amazon has social benefits.

(That said, I agree that the optimal point for Amazon and most internet companies is a lot stricter than how our current laws are enforced)

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

#275

Post by throwawaysnake8 » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 9:54 PM UTC

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...

I worked in this area of the company - it's actually quite a hard problem.

For one thing, these are some of the oldest systems owned by Amazon - the team/service/system diagram is a whole massive mess, so there's that initial part of just grasping all of the pieces that go into it, and everything else that comes with legacy architecture (assumptions, data flows, formats, etc.).

Secondly, uhh trying to limit the amount of info I give - this link hints at the issue concretely enough - https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/itemsandoffers... - but there's some pretty complicated automated systems that handle relationships between ASINs, and basically it's those rules that get taken advantage of. And the rules are hard to fix because they do genuinely merge together a lot of duplicate ASINs/manage other relationships between ASINs, and then sometimes they end up merging unrelated stuff. And some of the rules are ML based, so you've got the whole recall/precision stuff.

And the people talking about categories, there's like 4+ different systems for categorizing ASINs which all have separate use cases and taxonomies, so any answer that starts with "just do X" is probably not grasping the number of interdependent parts there are.

Not saying I'm a fan of Amazon at all - I left for good reason - but these comments are just so incorrect about how Amazon works under the hood. No comment on if it's intended behavior, but I never saw anything that would indicate it was the case, and we had multiple teams actively working in this space.

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

#276

Post by Acutulus » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

SCUSKU wrote: post #267

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.

Of the (generally) many things those specific types of consumers are ignorant about, their own ignorance is usually one of them.

Whereas I read "Unsatisfied! I did not read the listing!", they feel they wrote "Unsatisfied! Seller did not explain the item in the listing!" to the benefit of the other consumers in their same category. In a perverse way I could see it actually curbing those unwanted purchases in the future, but sadly at the expense of the seller.

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

#277

Post by bktkech » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

Tinder/Hinge/Bumble should do the same.

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

#278

Post by captainkrtek » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

verteu wrote: post #121

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 would, but it's such a hassle to enter my address and CC info on every manufacturer's site. The last 3 things I bought were shaving cream, toothbrush heads, and a cheap tennis racket. Do I really want to signup/purchase/unsubscribe-from-spam for a Proraso account, a Philips Sonicare account, and a Wilson account? Perhaps Google Pay could add a useful layer here.

I buy these kind of smaller value items from my local drug store, grocery store, etc. feels wasteful to ship and add more layers of packaging to small goods like this.

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

#279

Post by Semaphor » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 10:34 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #225

thinkling wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, I've never had a problem on Amazon across hundreds of purchases. I don't think either of our experiences proves anything.

You never noticed an issue, that doesn’t mean you avoid getting counterfeit items etc.

But counterfeit products on AliExpress are commonplace as well. This is about getting bad products (which counterfeit ones not necessarily are)

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

#280

Post by etempleton » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 10:56 PM UTC

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...

Certain things I will just not buy on Amazon because I have had either nothing be delivered, but a charge held in my card for months, or a product I suspect is counterfeit or somehow made cheaper(and worse) for Amazon. Clothing and shoes are particularly susceptible.

It is worth it for me to buy direct and pay a bit more to not have to deal with the hassle.