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Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

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Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#121

Post by pathartl »

kbd wrote: post #101

Happy to see this discussed on HN because I've constantly been stressing about this whenever I shop on Amazon. "All these brands are Chinese with random combinations of characters for a name" I've looked at laptop cases. Here is a sampling of brand names: Lacdo, Voova, KINGSLONG, NIDOO, tomtoc, MOSISO, INVZI, XMBFZ, Arvok, Kinmac, Londo... I've bought cases for my ipad and work laptop from Lacdo and one for my upcomi…

We absolutely need some consumer protections for things like this, but at the end of the day it takes some smart choices by the consumer. Sometimes those smart choices are to not make a purchase for that type of product, or compromise on design for reputability, etc.

Keep in mind that while Amazon is the white whale here, this absolutely happens at pretty much any retailer that has moved to an online store where they list more than any individual store has inventory of. I hate supporting Amazon, but personally Best Buy is the lesser of two evils, and at least there I can return in store.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#122

Post by rahimnathwani »

wizofaus wrote: post #84
rahimnathwani wrote: post #42

One of the posts contains a screenshot of a vendor's company name and address. The company name (and words in th address) may look really long and suspicious, but it's just because it's transliterated from Chinese. OP says these are all 'shell companies', but AFAIK it's more onerous and costly to register and maintain a company in China, than in many states in the US.

There was one that conceivably could have been a bad OCR attempt to read Chinese characters using a Latin alphabet which is weird, but some of them do also look like bad/non-standard Romanisation attempts (with an odd lack of spaces etc.). Odd because I'd think technology to accurately generate standard (pinyin) romanisation must be reasonably good by now.

I was talking about the company name, but perhaps you were talking about the brand name?

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#123

Post by bmitc »

protastus wrote: post #105

I no longer have the patience to navigate Amazon's terrible search results and have lost trust in the quality of their inventory. Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount. I've been a customer since 1997. Amazon has impressed me with their ability to play the long game, and I d…

I too have stopped buying on Amazon. I did so a while back after being concerned about counterfeits, safety issues, etc. I had this talk with my wife not too long ago about a mirror she ordered from Amazon, clearly made in China by a no-brand manufacturer. We discussed about how, yes, it looks nice, but we have no idea what quality of glass they used. So if it falls and shatters, it could be very dangerous. It also came with a bunch stuff on it that looked like pieces of fiber glass. I just don't trust anything on that platform anymore. I buy everything else from more legitimate sellers selling brand name stuff or directly from manufacturer's websites.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#124

Post by nus07 »

protastus wrote: post #105

I no longer have the patience to navigate Amazon's terrible search results and have lost trust in the quality of their inventory. Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount. I've been a customer since 1997. Amazon has impressed me with their ability to play the long game, and I d…

I wonder if Amazon has reached a point where they have eliminated all competition at least at a scale to no longer worry about this especially since their only competitor Walmart has similar cheap stuff that will require a drive to the store. And targeting volume based sale where a lot of Americans especially in rural or suburban areas don't really care about the quality-read Walmart crowd. Also targeting other countries like SE Asia, India, Brazil, Latin America, Africa where the volume of sales will be so high that again quality of inventory does not matter compared to ease of delivery.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#125

Post by wtallis »

mrguyorama wrote: post #50
Cerium wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this cheap junk follows a fairly reliable markup scheme: Factory sells for 1x Taobao sells for 2x Aliexpress sells for 3-4x (2x Taobao) Ebay sells for 8-10x. (~2x Aliexpress) I think Aliexpress is usually about 20% of the Amazon price, but depending on the item I agree that it can be 10%.

With the caveat that on ebay, you can usually find someone in the US wearhousing it for some reason with free 3 day shipping for the same price.

And quite often when ordering from an eBay seller with US stock, the package that arrives has an Amazon logo on the box.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#126

Post by derefr »

callahad wrote: post #20

The New York Times did some decent reporting into the pseudo-brands which comes closer to answering the question in the title: having a registered trademark unlocks a lot of on-platform seller tools (predictive analytics, early review program, etc.), and the easiest path to a trademark is to have an utterly unique, nonsense name. Some Chinese municipalities were also offering cash incentives for citizens who obtained…

But why are so many of these pseudo-brands exactly 1. six characters long, 2. all caps, and have 3. point-form descriptions that 4. use some particular emoji as bullet-point symbols, and 5. give each point a separate, usually-capitalized "title" part, 6. enclosed in either square brackets or the even-more-niche punctuation【 】?

To me, that reads either like these all being marques of one company; or there being some Chinese "start a turn-key Amazon business" SaaS that most of these pseudo-brands make use of, which generates a brand name for you, and for product descriptions, takes structured key-value input and formats it into text in this style.

Either way, it seems like finding that entity, and preventing it from interacting with Amazon, would stop a majority of this in its tracks.

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mofiQ7EGBH8 — all the branded "knock-off" smartphones on Wish/AliExpress with hardware meant to look like some well-known phone, but with generic software (usually with a start-up screen that says "WELCOME"), are in fact made by a single white-label manufacturer, Microhand/KST (https://www.microhand.net/english/).

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#127

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32
m463 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think amazon has jumped the shark[1] There is no practical way to buy a reputable/brand name on amazon. Some brand names are "available", but it seems not officially and people are buying them at a store and shipping them to customers. Other brand names are available, but the search results are paid (and manipulated) so they get crowded off the page by sponsored and "5 star (2)" results. and so amazon as a brand is…

A couple of weeks ago, I wanted to order a couple of pairs of Levis jeans. There was no way I'd do that on Amazon. I got them from Costco, instead.

And here's another post, I made here, about two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625376

The fake is still up for sale.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#128

Post by throwway1490 »

callahad wrote: post #20

The New York Times did some decent reporting into the pseudo-brands which comes closer to answering the question in the title: having a registered trademark unlocks a lot of on-platform seller tools (predictive analytics, early review program, etc.), and the easiest path to a trademark is to have an utterly unique, nonsense name. Some Chinese municipalities were also offering cash incentives for citizens who obtained…

The New York Times doesn't answer if this is beneficial for consumers, which is obviously the thing smart people want to know. Like why does Amazon put up with this?

Even if zero people bought these weird brand products, their existence causes prices to go down, because prices are at the margin, and that's why it pisses off our Tweeter. Because he has to sell for less profit.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#129

Post by qqqwerty »

alangibson wrote: post #112

I wonder if theres a business idea in here. Set up a site that looks better than Amazon (not hard) and only list reputable listings on Amazon. Collect affiliate revenue. Basically just filter out the crap and profit

That is basically what WireCutter is, among many others.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#130

Post by wizofaus »

ev1 wrote: post #109
wizofaus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was one that conceivably could have been a bad OCR attempt to read Chinese characters using a Latin alphabet which is weird, but some of them do also look like bad/non-standard Romanisation attempts (with an odd lack of spaces etc.). Odd because I'd think technology to accurately generate standard (pinyin) romanisation must be reasonably good by now.

The lack of spaces is somewhat normal if you assume that chinese doesn't use spaces when writing, like a name is just the glyphs combined together in one word, while in English normally there is a space between F+L.

The point of Romanisation is to make it possible to at least mentally turn it into "sounds" for those familiar with Latin alphabets, who (except German speakers) generally expect to see spaces between words too. Japanese writing doesn't use spaces either but all the standard Romaji transliterations do make use of spaces.
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