Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam • Hacker News Board

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#111

Post by newaccount74 » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 8:40 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #18

newaccount74 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a yearly subscription that makes delivery of most products free Which is great marketing trick, because you are of course paying for delivery through inflated unit prices. A lot of things on Amazon are a few Euros more expensive than in other stores because they just hide the delivery fee in the unit price. There is no such thing as "free delivery", you are paying for it one way or another.

The prices on Amazon might be "a few euros more", but where I live, the delivery fee for getting e.g. a 65" TV delivered from Best Buy or Costco, would be more like an extra $30-$50. (And I don't own a car, so I can't just go pick it up from the store, either.)

I was talking about cheap stuff, with pricier things the price difference is often a lot more.

What I'm trying to say is that often stores that don't offer free shipping are cheaper than Amazon and you should compare the total prices instead of just ordering from Amazon assuming that they are the cheapest. In my experience they sometimes are the cheapest, but in most cases they are not.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#112

Post by mosselman » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 8:42 AM UTC

RobertRies wrote: post #32

While I agree this is a problem - one which I have been the victim of as well - Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges. This, of course, is not a great consolidation, especially for a novice who doesn't understand or encounters it too late. But I strongly disagree with "Amazon runs little to no risk selling the fraudulent products, but still makes money off of them." In the next paragraph the auth…

The real Amazon and other nature is who pays the real bill of this in the costs to nature in terms of transportation impact and pure waste of this crap being created and thrown away.

So yes, you might get your $20 back, but who will restore the cost to nature?

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#113

Post by nottorp » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 8:46 AM UTC

I just had the pleasure of analyzing a "60 Tb SSD" that a friend bought without asking me.

048d:1234 Integrated Technology Express, Inc. Chipsbank CBM2199 Flash Drive

It's probably a 128 Gb usb stick chip. I didn't open it to see the chips but after copying like 150 Gb of movies to it they started to randomly not open.

It was directly off aliexpress so the proud owner said he'll keep it to copy movies to it for when he goes on holiday. I guess for him it doesn't matter which 8 of 10 movies he watches.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#114

Post by newaccount74 » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 8:48 AM UTC

up2isomorphism wrote: post #61

imwillofficial wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not selling fraudulent products. Are you saying nothing more can be done?

It can try to reduce the chance, but absolutely no fraudulent products? No, I don’t think so and I don’t think any platform can do that without significantly increasing the cost. I have using a dozen of e commerce websites and no one is doing remotely comparable to Amazon. Just return the product and write a review to help others rather than whining about something unrealistic didn’t happen.

Most electronics resellers do not sell fraudulent products. Here in the EU, if you buy from Reichelt or Alternate then there is close to zero chance you'll receive a fraudulent USB drive.

Amazon makes a lot of money from selling sketchy products without QA, it's an explicit decision they have made. Other stores just don't sell that crap.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#115

Post by matheweis » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 8:52 AM UTC

mwint wrote: post #51

matheweis wrote: post #34

A related problem I’ve encountered on Amazon is wrong quantity of items; ex, order three 8 packs and instead get three singles. Their return policy doesn’t have the ability to correct for this as far as I’ve been able to find.

Isn’t that just “I got the wrong item”? The “item” you ordered was “8-pack of widgets”, you got “1-pack of widgets”, so it’s the wrong item.

Nope, tried that, they let me return the “1-pack widgets” but sent another “1-pack widgets”

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#116

Post by jaclaz » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 9:04 AM UTC

fasthands9 wrote: post #96

jaclaz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, but do you believe this is "normal"? I mean, if you returned 287/602=48% of the items you ordered, either there is something wrong in what you order or - more likely - your supplier (Amazon) is not reliable. On the other side, if 48% of items (particularly if low value ones) are returned, the costs of shipping/returning/handling must be enormous.

I do not believe this is normal consumer behavior. The previous commenter claimed Amazon had a social score system that penalized people for concerns and you should be worried about making returns on things like USB drives. My point is that if someone like me can return almost half their items and Amazon doesn't care at all - then it's extremely unlikely the people are being banned from Amazon services for returning…

Yep, I understood your point, and it is good to know that this presumed social score system is not particularly strict, but I asked out of curiosity on the reasons why you have such a high (IMHO) return rate.

As well another question is what is actually doing (or not doing) Amazon about the USB sticks/drives issues, the return rate of that should be something like 90% assuming that 5% of buyers fail to realize that the size is much smaller and - still say - another 5% buys them "for later use" and do not test them on arrival.

In a traditional brick and mortar store there would be someone monitoring the return rate for defects on any item for sale as - besides the loss of perceived reliability - there would be objectives costs for handling the returns.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#117

Post by makeitdouble » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 9:06 AM UTC

esses wrote: post #31

I think there's one thing that should be clarified from the article. "Sponsored" does not mean that the product is "sponsored by Amazon" as italicized in the article. It means the seller paid money to be at the top of the search query. Perhaps it is a healthy dose of old aged jadedness, but I have a habit of trying to avoid Sponsored items.

The issue I'm having more and more is legit brands also paying for better placement as it just makes business sense.

It's kinda similar to apps paying to appear on their own search results' pages in the AppStore, to avoid having competitors take the spot.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#118

Post by notRobot » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 9:10 AM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #62

esses wrote: post #31

I think there's one thing that should be clarified from the article. "Sponsored" does not mean that the product is "sponsored by Amazon" as italicized in the article. It means the seller paid money to be at the top of the search query. Perhaps it is a healthy dose of old aged jadedness, but I have a habit of trying to avoid Sponsored items.

uBlock Origin blocks sponsored search results by default because like you said they're just ads. (Amazon will still return a duplicate result for the same product in the correct place further down the list so you're not missing out on anything by blocking sponsored search results)

Man I love uBO so fucking much.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#119

Post by notRobot » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 9:14 AM UTC

sandreas wrote: post #78

LeoPanthera wrote: post #7

If you still want to buy from Amazon, I often use diskprices.com (no affiliation, just a user) to sort disks on Amazon by price-per-GB. For example, here are USB flash drives sorted by price-per-GB: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=u...

While also affiliate, I prefer https://usb.userbenchmark.com , where you can also see ratings for performance and durability and a VALUE (price/quality) I hate having a cheap, big usb drive that is slow as hell and breaks after 6 months. Unfortunately, even the good rated ones are not always the same product. Recently I bought 2 Sandisk Ultra Flair USB3 (best price point / quality by far) and they both broke after 3…

This is what LTT Labs from Linus Tech Tips is trying to do, they're in initial set up stages but moving impressively fast, and I'm super excited for it.

Re: Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

#120

Post by RajT88 » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #107

RobertRies wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is arguing the scam isn't insidious and inherently difficult to detect for possibly even most customers. The argument is that Amazon is complicit because they're banking off those sweet counterfeit thumb drive profits, and that there's little risk to Amazon. I'm suggesting there is a significant risk, and anyone reasonable at Amazon would account for it. There's enough users (tech savvy, or heavy researchers a…

You frame it as just thumb drives, but I would think something similar is happening with a huge fraction of Amazon products.

It is easier to detect with thumb drives.

A fake (say) Gucci handbag is made with less premium materials, but only savvy consumers would notice once it arrived. You would not necessarily know from the product details on Amazon, but may have a clue based on price.

Whereas 1tb thumb drives have been sold for years now on Amazon and Wish and what-have-you but only recently did real 1TB thumb drives come into existence. Real Gucci bags have been around for decades.

Any 1tb drive which costs less than hundreds of dollars is fake. Full stop.