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A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

kleinbottle.com

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Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#131

Post by CliffStoll »

binarysolo wrote: post #40

Given how this is on page-1 of HN, jeff@amazon (the elite US-based seller support team who uses the email, not Bezos) is gonna tear this AMVOOM / TaroRee hijacker a new one. While this is kinda designed-as-intended (Amazon wants you to brand register with them for protection), this is a pretty shitty dark pattern they put up and sadly it happens as an annoying edge case that existing sellers and customers have to dea…

Sigh. A trademark for a common item (like a T-shirt or a voltmeter) seems to cost about $350 through the USPTO, if you do it yourself and your goods are listed in their directory. If your goods are oddball (like glass or woolen nonorientable manifolds) then you have to use a more expensive system which starts at $450 and escalates depending on how many different types of goods you're trademarking.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#132

Post by sundarurfriend »

fortran77 wrote: post #77
onion2k wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be woefully ignorant but I thought it's not possible to make a Klein bottle in the real world...? I think Cliff Stoll sells 3D models of Klein bottles rather than the impossible 4D version.

The 4D version is not impossible in 4D space.

An experimental test for N-D space string theories then!

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#133

Post by CliffStoll »

seu wrote: post #125

The pointing out that it's a 'foreign' seller seems unnecessary and xenophobic, especially given the fact that it is an American corporation the one that not only allows, but almost incentivizes this behavior.

One of the problems is that many foreign sellers have opaque addresses, through which it's impossible to contact. Specifically, a PinYin address is very difficult to reliably send mail to. Making it worse is that Amazon does not list any email address to contact for their Brand Registry. Together, this means that I have nobody to easily contact.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#134

Post by CliffStoll »

IncRnd wrote: post #27
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a customer or as a seller?

As a seller you can go to the contact us page at sellercentral, select the option on the left, then click phone in the middle and get a call back from Amazon. For live chat as a seller, follow these instructions from Amazon's Moderator: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/wheres-live-chat-s...

Yes, I posted (repeatedly) to Amazon Seller forum. Several people replied, but, alas, the suggestions were not of help. See: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/product-page-hijac...

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#135

Post by 14 »

jannes wrote: post #100
gabereiser wrote: post #99

This, and other instances of this scam make me not want to buy anything off Amazon ever again. Where is Amazon in this? Why is this even a thing ? Is there no oversight at all? Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west and it makes me sick to think the once beloved marketplace is now just scamville. I typically buy from sellers websites now and rarely buy off of Amazon but now I feel I need to completely remove A…

Amazon simply is on the same level as eBay now. (No idea about Alibaba.) It’s really sad to see.

I have always had very good experiences with eBay. Several times I’ve been screwed on Amazon. With eBay I can also add a lot of filters to my search which I like. I can immediately exclude items shipped directly from China. Or search for something within 100km so I know I can just go pick it up. eBay has just been so much better from my experience.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#136

Post by ratww »

jmkd wrote: post #114

So, appalling scam aside, everyone knows what a Klein bottle is or what it does? First I've heard of it, and neither Stoll's site or the Amazon listing shed any light on the topic...just in-jokes.

There's a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#137

Post by RobertoG »

dflock wrote: post #6

That sucks. Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn't aware of the details previously. Also, if anyone is unaware, this is this Clifford Stoll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll - who wrote this brilliant (and true) book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) - which is a really good read and perfect for HN.

>>"Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn't aware of the details previously."

I still don't understand how it works. Why can somebody owning something called "Amvoom" claim something called "Acme Klein Bottle"?

An even if they legally own the brand, how keeping the reviews when moving the brand to the new owner is the proper thing to do for the customers? By definition, the reviews are for another provider. I don't get it.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#138

Post by thanatos519 »

CliffStoll wrote: post #122
moepstar wrote: post #12

They're still in denial that they have a problem. Just read the thread on the previous occasion where listings got hijacked on their own fora [0] - its sad to see the sellers so powerless, helpless and just left to themselves. You really have to wonder why they even bother... Edit: also, reading that thread you can also get a feel why big brands have completely left AMZN as a platform (like Adidas, Birkenstock are a…

I hear you, Moe. Can't say that I'm a big brand. Indeed, I want to stay a small one-person shop.

Maybe that makes you incompatible with Amazon, because they are about unbounded growth for its own sake!

Small is beautiful! Stay small!

- from the guy who in September 2000 bought 16 klein bottles since you only charged for prime numbered bottles, and sent you his credit card number as the sum of two 16-digit numbers sent to different email addresses! I still have a beer mug and question mark; all the rest are with friends! <3

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#140

Post by CliffStoll »

gfaure wrote: post #96
dflock wrote: post #6

That sucks. Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn't aware of the details previously. Also, if anyone is unaware, this is this Clifford Stoll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll - who wrote this brilliant (and true) book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) - which is a really good read and perfect for HN.

He's also a connoisseur and collector of slide rules and the Curta mechanical calculator! Here's a video of him describing how the Curta performs arithmetic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OynMJB-2J1o — as well as the SciAm article he wrote on them: http://www.mycurta.com/Calculator.pdf

Connoisseur? Naw! Stop by my place and you'll see a messy collection of oddball things ranging from some old calculators to stacks of old books. I received a Curta Calculator from my astronomy mentor, Ernst Both, when he got an HP-35 around 1973. I was one of his students; today, I can't look at it without thinking happy thoughts using a spectrohelioscope to understand sunspot magnetic fields. But that's another story...
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