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Amazon without the knockoffs

knockoff.shopping

11–20 of 273 posts

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#12
post #6
post #3

I'd be interested to know how this works. Whitelist? Blacklist? Something else? Edit: appears to be using blacklists.

Going by the "How it works" section of the GitHub page (not the web site), it appears to be both whitelists and blacklists, plus heuristics for unknown brands to flag the keyboard-mash brands that are almost certainly junk.

I wonder why in the age of LLMs these brand names continue to exist. I just prompted deepseek in Chinese to give me some novel brand names in english for a lighted dog collar (something I recently searched for and saw the crazy brands), and it gave me a bunch of plausible sounding names. Granted, not particular inspired, but names that an English speaker would recognize as reasonable brand names

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#13
post #8

Cuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier. The real knockoff problem I see is that you buy what you think is BigBrand and get shipped Knockoff because someone is mingling inventory.

> We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier We don't know that. Look at Project Farm's review videos, he tests a lot of knock off and brand name products and it's almost always a get what you pay for situation. Knockoffs look similar, but use cheaper materials almost always. The question is almost always, do you need the quality that you get from name brand. Not "why can I get name brand quality of hal…

He also routinely tests three or four identical products with nothing distinguishing beyond different paint jobs.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#14

Even better, buy direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon. I've found most of the time you get the same price and free shipping without giving Jeff Bezos a dime.

I'd rather not spread out personal info like credit cards to more parties than necessary while Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#15

Even better, buy direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon. I've found most of the time you get the same price and free shipping without giving Jeff Bezos a dime.

And do the same for knockoffs as well.

If you see something that looks like obvious dropshipping, chances are you can find it for a fraction of the price without the middleman on Temu, AliExpress or DHGate.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#16
post #8

Cuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier. The real knockoff problem I see is that you buy what you think is BigBrand and get shipped Knockoff because someone is mingling inventory.

> We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier We don't know that. Look at Project Farm's review videos, he tests a lot of knock off and brand name products and it's almost always a get what you pay for situation. Knockoffs look similar, but use cheaper materials almost always. The question is almost always, do you need the quality that you get from name brand. Not "why can I get name brand quality of hal…

Are we talking knockoffs like actively pretending to be the brand, or knockoffs like an off-brand copy of the exact same product? It's rare to find quality that can only be found with one brand—and then, it's mostly extremely expensive consumer electronics.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#17

Even better, buy direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon. I've found most of the time you get the same price and free shipping without giving Jeff Bezos a dime.

I'd rather not spread out personal info like credit cards to more parties than necessary while Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support.

Most of the time you’re giving that info to stripe or Shopify. But also credit cards are protected - you can dispute charges - so it’s not a huge risk IMO

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#18
post #7
post #4

Reality: A few years ago this would have been relevant. Most people can only afford the knockoffs now. My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. The $9 difference is going to come out of my budget to buy authentic brands and buy local stuff. If you don't like it, make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary, reduce my taxes, and don't pull random geopolitical shit that crashes the S&P500 every ot…

Make your burrito or bowl at home, and it'll cost $4 or less.

Do you enjoy eating just rice wrapped in a tortilla or something? Burritos are a harsh illustration of the economy of scale. Doing a quick tally with sale prices, and I'd think buying all the ingredients to make one single burrito would be upwards of $20-25, at least. Never mind the time to cook each ingredient that needs to be cooked. And most of these supplies and prep are going to last what, ~4 days before they spoil?

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#19

Even better, buy direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon. I've found most of the time you get the same price and free shipping without giving Jeff Bezos a dime.

I'd rather not spread out personal info like credit cards to more parties than necessary while Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support.

> Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support

We've been dealing with different Amazons. Also, credit cards in my experience are built to deal with that stuff. Have you encountered protection issues by using your credit card? The only chargeback I've initiated was against Amazon and my credit card company handled it swimmingly.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#20

Even better, buy direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon. I've found most of the time you get the same price and free shipping without giving Jeff Bezos a dime.

I'd rather not spread out personal info like credit cards to more parties than necessary while Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support.

Many CC let you generate one time use CC numbers if you’re actually concerned about manufactures information security.
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