Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 234 posts

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#121

Post by TheRealPomax »

kbos87 wrote: post #8

The marketplace-ization (is there a word for that?) of every retailer feels so short sighted. I’ll throw out an example I’ve noticed lately - furniture manufacturers. Search for any item on Crate & Barrel or West Elm’s website and you’ll first see a handful of exclusive pieces that are clearly built for the brand. Keep scrolling and the search results gradually become a bunch of generic third party items that you can…

Mine is when marketplace sellers go "oh, sorry, we got your order but this is out of stock" or worse, "we mispriced it, it's actually $100 more we cancelled your order". Zero repercussions for staying a marketplace seller, no repercussions for the kind of behaviour the store itself would never accept.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#122

Post by patrickthebold »

samwillis wrote: post #25
kbos87 wrote: post #8

The marketplace-ization (is there a word for that?) of every retailer feels so short sighted. I’ll throw out an example I’ve noticed lately - furniture manufacturers. Search for any item on Crate & Barrel or West Elm’s website and you’ll first see a handful of exclusive pieces that are clearly built for the brand. Keep scrolling and the search results gradually become a bunch of generic third party items that you can…

What I find particularly annoying is that these online “marketplaces” are not curated - they literally sell anything, probably drop shipped. It used to be that you would shop at a branded store, and there was a level of expectation that they had curated their collection so that it was of a quality that matched the stores brand. Some of their wares may be under their own branding, but they would sell other bands too t…

I'll throw out my startup idea: A heavily curated amazon, with ~1 option per product type, sold at a premium, prioritizing things that are constructed well/last a long time.

Obviously you can't do everything at once, and people want choice in things like fashion. A kitchen store would be great. One toaster, one oven, one coffee grinder.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#123

Post by hattmall »

ehPReth wrote: post #104
lotsofpulp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did stop using Amazon years ago except as an Aliexpress alternative after I found out about commingling. I moved my business to Best Buy/Costco/Target/Walmart/Home Depot/Staples/etc. But the reason Amazon probably does not care about that because they have much better profit margin opportunities (AWS, Prime Video and Music, warehouse infrastructure as a service and delivery as a service).

Same here for most things. There's no way I'll buy flash (SD cards, etc) storage from Amazon anymore. That was a sad day when I learned why stuff seemed to be dying more often than usual.

I feel like Microcenter is a good example of combatting this, they have cheap house brands of components, but they are legit and not the outright scams that propagate online marketplaces like Amazon.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#124

Post by nucleardog »

shaftway wrote: post #49
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is SEO driving this. They want to surface product pages for as much stuff as possible so they contract with some third party to also be a reseller of such goods because it probably requires little overhead. And if it brings traffic then they can try to push their own "sponsored" products. I think it dilutes a brand. I don't know that Walmart has any worthwhile reputation as a brand though (at least in my e…

It has some reputation as a brand. If I buy something from Walmart I generally don't expect it to be a quality product. It will fall apart very quickly and it'll probably have some unexpected issue with it. But I do expect that it won't be an *outright* scam.

I'm at least fairly confident if I walk into Walmart and buy something it will be minimally fit for purpose and meet the legal requirements to be sold in my country.

Meanwhile, you have no problem finding devices that should have FDA/Health Canada/FCC/IC approval and do not.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#125

Post by walrus01 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #102
walrus01 wrote: post #95

If you think 30TB fake hard drives are bad, the Amazon marketplace is now selling Taliban flags printed by 3rd party sellers in China. At least there's no ISIS flags yet. I assume whatever flag factory in china is cranking out $10 flags doesn't care about the content of what's printed on them.

Good. They should be able to sell any flags they want.

sure, and people can draw their own conclusions about a "marketplace" allowing morally reprehensible products on it, and whether to purchase from them in the future.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#126

Post by hattmall »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #57
wombat-man wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I guess I need to physically go into stores now if I want to really avoid counterfeits.

Luckily, I have not seen evidence that Walmart/Target commingle inventory, so restricting searches to sold by Walmart/Target should work. But who knows what is happening behind the scenes. Amazon removed the wording that made it clear they commingled inventory, but I am sure they still do.

I don't think Walmart handles any fulfillment for 3rd parties so commingling wouldn't really be possible.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#127

Post by andrewia »

elliekelly wrote: post #103
MarkusWandel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A facebook friend posted a picture of a bangle that she'd bought off an e-commerce site in the neighbourhood of $20 that was disappointing. I simply did a google image search on the picture (the e-commerce site's listing) and sure enough, it hit on Ali Express for something in the neighbourhood of $1.80, free shipping.

So much of the "handmade" jewelry from Etsy comes directly from AliExpress now.

I've found it to be 50-50 or less in my recent experience, but there's an interesting reason why. I recently shopped for a fidget ring and found AliExpress had lots of options, but none that fit my size 14 fingers. So I checked Etsy and was pleasantly surprised to see only ~20% of their listings were rings from AliExpress. Another 70% of listings were for rings that all had similar designs but were slightly unique from each other, each with unique listing photos, and all with minor flaws from being handmade. Eventually one seller had an honest bio that describe themselves as a "jewelry making village near Jaipur, India". I believe many pieces are actually handmade to a degree, in what I presume to be a series of small rural workshops with correspondingly cheap labor. They are probably given order lists by middlemen who run their own Etsy stores and are willing to deal with the logistics and customer service.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#128

Post by nobody9999 »

I try to keep abreast of SSD prices, as I've been looking to swap out the spinning rust on my ESXi server with SSDs, but the prices are still a bit too high for my taste, and that hasn't changed much over the past few years.

Which is why I was really surprised to see this both on Vice and ArsTechnica[0].

A quick web search for "4TB external SSD" shows prices in the USD$400-600 range. So 30TB for ~USD$40 seems too good to be true. Actually, it strains credulity well past the breaking point.

And as the old saw goes, "if it seems to good to be true, it probably is."

Then again, I guess a lot of folks haven't been paying attention (as I have) to storage prices. But even so, 16TB spinning rust drives are an order of magnitude more expensive than the price quoted by Walmart for this "30TB SSD".

It just goes to show that Joe Bessemer (and/or someone else) was right[1].

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/walmart-lists-a-30tb...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_a_sucker_born_every_mi...

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#129

Post by glenstein »

patrickthebold wrote: post #122
samwillis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find particularly annoying is that these online “marketplaces” are not curated - they literally sell anything, probably drop shipped. It used to be that you would shop at a branded store, and there was a level of expectation that they had curated their collection so that it was of a quality that matched the stores brand. Some of their wares may be under their own branding, but they would sell other bands too t…

I'll throw out my startup idea: A heavily curated amazon, with ~1 option per product type, sold at a premium, prioritizing things that are constructed well/last a long time. Obviously you can't do everything at once, and people want choice in things like fashion. A kitchen store would be great. One toaster, one oven, one coffee grinder.

You've identified a genuine need and a service that would fulfill it. I think, to greater and lesser degrees, places like the wire cutter and consumer reports, and now a whole bunch of derivatives that speak in the same tone as wire cutter, are attempting to fill this need.

Of course, they themselves may be subject to quality control issues. Although perhaps the thing that you're talking about that would be different is the manner in which the curated selection is organized and the overarching purpose.

Re: Walmart Sells Fake 30TB Hard Drive That's Two Small SD Cards

#130

Post by jcpst »

patrickthebold wrote: post #122
samwillis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find particularly annoying is that these online “marketplaces” are not curated - they literally sell anything, probably drop shipped. It used to be that you would shop at a branded store, and there was a level of expectation that they had curated their collection so that it was of a quality that matched the stores brand. Some of their wares may be under their own branding, but they would sell other bands too t…

I'll throw out my startup idea: A heavily curated amazon, with ~1 option per product type, sold at a premium, prioritizing things that are constructed well/last a long time. Obviously you can't do everything at once, and people want choice in things like fashion. A kitchen store would be great. One toaster, one oven, one coffee grinder.

It would be interesting to see which categories would benefit from more granularity.

For instance, I feel like I need only one toaster, one oven. But I have 3 different high-quality coffee grinders that I use for different purposes.

Post reply on HN