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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

#281

Post by Nifty3929 »

orhmeh09 wrote: post #249
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…

And what of the time, money, and environmental resources used by the customer who must spend more time estimating the reliability of irrelevant reviews and have to make time to schedule and execute a return? Doesn't that also take from "growing food, producing shoes, building homes, providing accounting services," and consuming more products -- and with much less efficiency and predictability?

Yes, it certainly does. That's my point. Everything takes effort. One way the market might sort this out is that Amazon hires a bunch of people to do this on your behalf, freeing you up to spend more time on activities more productive than performing due diligence on your online products yourself. They would raise prices a bit, but then you'd also have a bit more income. Perhaps this would be a net win overall.

But that's not the holistic conversation and consideration I see coming through. All I'm seeing is a one-sided focus on what Amazon can (should) do about it.

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

#282

Post by illumin8 »

Recently I’ve been having trouble with a few batches of cheap LED lights that were “Amazon’s choice” and advertised as having 23 year lifespan (3 hours per day) that died within 6-12 months.

Amazon tells me I’m outside of the normal 30 day return window, but I’ve just complained and said “If I bought a bulb at Costco advertised as 23 year lifespan that died after only a year I’d return it and they’d refund me, no questions asked.” This usually gets a store credit from the customer service person.

I think Amazon is going to have a huge problem with this because they’ve clearly been selling a lot of low quality merchandise from China (it’s actually marketplace sellers listing the products so quality is a race to the bottom). Because they don’t have any quality checks in their sourcing like other big box retailers do (such as Costco and Target) they just aren’t equipped to handle the inevitable returns and class action lawsuits that are coming their way when the 23 year lifespan LEDs and other product categories fail just outside the return window.

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

#283

Post by Osiris »

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.

Changing a comic book to a USB is a pretty substantial change.

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

#284

Post by tempestn »

saalweachter wrote: post #239
tempestn wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure if you gave ChatGPT the old and new versions of the listing, it would have a 99%+ accuracy when answering the question, "are these for the same product?" So they could just run each change through something like that, and wouldn't have to write any custom heuristics.

I'm pretty sure any of a million simpler edit distances could tell you if a product listing was substantially changed.

Of course, though perhaps with slightly lower accuracy. Either way, my point was that it's far from an unsolvable problem; it can be trivially solved with existing tools.

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

#285

Post by BrotherBisquick »

criddell wrote: post #47

I bought a $50 item and a couple of weeks later I received a letter in the mail offering me a $35 Amazon gift card if I leave a 5-star review with a video or picture attached. I'm surprised Amazon allows these kinds of bribes.

I once received a postcard (as in, no envelope) with a picture of the product I bought, trying to bribe me for a 5-star review.

The product itself was totally innocuous but I can imagine if that happened with something that was even slightly sensitive or embarrassing. Like, now everyone at the post office knows you ordered a Swedish penis pump along with a hardcover instruction book written by Austin Powers himself.

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

#286

Post by Retric »

Semaphor wrote: post #279
Retric wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Products can be defective or even harmful without you noticing.

Does your multi vitamin actually contain every vitamin it says it does in the dosage it should? For many things you really depend on reputation and outside regulations as you’re hardly going to send random samples to a lab.

Even reputable companies make use of this. Look into how often SSD internals get downgrading without changing the product’s label.

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

#287

Post by [deleted] »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #104
criddell wrote: post #47

I bought a $50 item and a couple of weeks later I received a letter in the mail offering me a $35 Amazon gift card if I leave a 5-star review with a video or picture attached. I'm surprised Amazon allows these kinds of bribes.

Twice that has happened to me, so I left a review mentioning the bribe. Amazon rejected the review saying that isn't the right mechanism for that feedback. All the same, hundreds of people were ordering this five star item, unaware most of the reviews were paid for reviews.

[deleted]

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

#288

Post by s1artibartfast »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #246
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…

That’s all yet another instance of “not my problem.” Can’t prevent fraud on your e-commerce site? Maybe you should not be running one.

Couldn't Amazon just say the same thing? 'Not my problem, we offer full refund and if that isn't good enough you can take your business elsewhere'

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

#289

Post by rektide »

albrewer wrote: post #273
rektide wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"this just makes" is in general too dismissive for my tastes.

the specific suggestion that rather than just try to game Amazon scammers are all of a sudden going to start en-mass engaging in serious felonies, become a new legion of ultra-vicious hackers, to write fake negative reviews against other people's product is, specifically, not ranked on my oh no, heavens forbid we try that list.

my starting place would only be that, a starting place, but I have a hard time envisioning trying turning into the world burning, as this stance presents. philosophically i have affinity for trying engaging & learning, & yeah sometimes it can be naive or have bad Co sequences. but it feels like we've become attuned to being short, to being disbelievers, to rejecting the try, to always having some scenario in our pocket that seems so awful we scare off attempts. i hope for greater for our society, for people.

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

#290

Post by core-utility »

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'm somewhat guilty of this, but a lot of it comes down to Amazon's search. I'll search for "iPhone 13 case" and then window-shop with pictures. I get the case and realize that even though I searched for iPhone 13, it sent me to a product for the iPhone 14 and I didn't realize until I bought it.
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