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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

#291

Post by evo_9 »

chin7an wrote: post #154
tylerrobinson wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So Amazon introduced an 'Andon button' Maybe my brain is just having trouble parsing it, but what does “Andon” mean?

It's a term borrowed from assembly lines(0), where if the andon cord is pulled, the entire line stops until some manager or the likes inspects and restarts it. For amazon, the equivalent would be pulling the listing immediately from the website, blocking orders and flagging the item for immediate review. (0): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)

Ah but not an acronym like SCRAM for example in the early nuclear reactor days. Meaning: Start Cutting Right Away Man, because back then, you had to cut the ropes holding up the control rods, which basically mean, shut it down as fast as possible by dropping those rods.

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

#292

Post by preinheimer »

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 really think Shopify should lean in on their offerings here. The checkout experience across merchants who use Shopify is great. There's a "Shop Pay" button, you click it, and you're either at the "Confirm Purchase" page or maybe get an SMS to enter, then you're at the "Confirm Purchase" page. You've skipped entering your address and credit card number.

Buy from a board game store one week, a tea maker the next, and some niche youtuber the third, all without re-entering your data.

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

#293

Post by meragrin_ »

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.

I'm totally baffled by this. What would one order off of those sites? How does one even find it? The filtering either doesn't exist or is totally worthless. Even when there is some sort of sensible filtering, the results are still far worse than Amazon. Just showing a bunch of pictures and prices is not helpful. Trying to force me to create an account to just browse the site is not helpful. Wish seems like it is setup completely for impulse buyers buying random junk they see. Aliexpress is a wee bit better than Wish, but is still trash compared to Amazon. I don't understand who would subject themselves to that sort of torture. The prices don't seem any better.

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

#294

Post by novembermike »

ethbr0 wrote: post #274
krferriter wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

This clearly falls into "fraud waiting to happen" rather than "minimal risk" though. It's fairly simple to treat Amazon as the actual seller and just hold them liable if there is false advertising. There's a difference for a Shopify type system that gives individual sellers their own storefront or Ebay where the seller is clearly communicated, but Amazon often obscures the seller info and represents itself as the seller so it seems fair and reasonable.

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

#295

Post by Blackthorn »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #269
tfourb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It's an interesting question though on whether that allowing everyone to upload as much as they like is a sufficient benefit for society at large though, to change the equation where the argument that it's too big to moderate properly makes sense and is a valid defense.

(I personally come down on the side of "it is valid").

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

#296

Post by qball »

meragrin_ wrote: post #293
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. I'm totally baffled by this. What would one order off of those sites? How does one even find it? The filtering either doesn't exist or is totally worthless. Even when there is some sort of sensible filtering, the results are still far worse than Amazon. Just showing a bunch of pictures and prices is not helpful. Trying to force me to create an account to jus…

>The filtering either doesn't exist or is totally worthless.

Funny; I've always found that about Amazon. And not only is their search garbage, but so are their prices- they're usually higher than if you bought directly.

6 figure starting salaries and their recommender routine still prompts me to buy stuff I just bought. Clearly those DSA interview questions are doing them a lot of good.

>I don't understand who would subject themselves to that sort of torture.

Well, it's not like you really have any other option.

Once upon a time, we had Sears, whose business model was in no small part identical to Amazon's... except it was curated. Everything that needed a picture had one, they had their own delivery fleet and mail-order warehouses, and so on and so forth. And this model was good, though their house brands had some ups and downs over the years.

But then Sears went belly up, so now we're stuck with the discount alternative that's merely an online platform with a few extra bits. Sure, it's easier to get your product in there than it was to get it into Sears back in the early 1900s, but then again that's true for general website eCommerce platforms in general and turnkey examples of that go back nearly as far as Amazon's been popular (and Etsy exists for the lower volume and handmade items).

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

#297

Post by actually_a_dog »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #288
actually_a_dog wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

No. You can’t “not my problem” your way out of being an accessory to fraud.

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

#298

Post by wampwampwhat »

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.

Its aggressively simple to solve. Sell Bezos yacht. pay people.

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

#299

Post by brutusurp »

ridgered4 wrote: post #19
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've noticed several products recently that used an old product entry where the bulk of the older reviews were written in Spanish or German. Once translated you find they are gushing about a comic book they loved rather than the computer interface adapters I was looking at. Pretty sneaky since Amazon puts foreign reviews in a different bucket that you have to drill down into, I usually only do so myself when there ar…

I wonder if this is ASIN-recycling (where ASIN is the product id), or simply a bad indexer. For instance, is it that an ASIN in location A is reused in location B? Is it that the ASIN is recycled by the lister/Amazon to maintain positive review percent on a new product? Or is it that the column(s) used to map the international comment thread to the product are incorrectly specified?

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

#300

Post by s1artibartfast »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #297
s1artibartfast wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

No. You can’t “not my problem” your way out of being an accessory to fraud.

Why not? It seems like getting a full refund is a pretty big mitigation.
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