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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

#251

Post by squarefoot »

krallja wrote: post #213
wtallis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This happened to me: I ordered a cheap UV EPROM eraser on eBay with three-day delivery. It was literally drop-shipped from Amazon, on an Amazon truck, in an Amazon bag. I could have gotten the same (crappy, simple) product on Amazon a day earlier for about a dollar less. But I was trying to avoid buying on Amazon, because of all the reasons posted in this comments section!

Happened also to me with some products when shopping online either from Ebay or directly from some seller's web shop (I don't have a Amazon account): items came in a Amazon box with all their markings. No problems whatsoever, but the sellers were reliable.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#253

Post by nlh »

Cerium wrote: post #36
lph wrote: post #10

Pro tip: If you absolutely must buy the junk being sold by MOFFBUZW and other randomly generated drop-shipper brands, the exact same product is usually available on AliExpress for 10% the price.

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%.

I bought an espresso machine via Taobao last year and had to jump through SO many hoops to get it. But even with the hoops it ended up being an absolute steal - 1/10 the price of a US-based purchase.

Any idea why Taobao goes through such great effort to prevent American buyers from using the platform? (Or was I doing it wrong…? I used one of the Taobao forwarding services)

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#254

Post by Bellend »

Fargoan wrote: post #236

Amazon is the last place I go if I need to purchase something. Sometimes I'll use it like a search engine and then go off-site and make the purchase elsewhere.

I am the same as you. Although the only difference is:

1. Amazon is the never the cheapest. 2. Their search is absolutely garbage and I can't use it. I'd need to go elsewhere, find a specific product, then search to compare.

I just logged into Amazon and the last thing I bought was 2021 "Leuko Tape" for hiking since it was the only seller that had it at a reasonable price.

I am genuinely always amazed by the responses on HackerNews. It might be because amazon.com is just cheaper in general than amazon.co.uk?

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#257

Post by coldpie »

Ancalagon wrote: post #34

Its funny how much less online shopping Im doing these days specifically because of my bad experiences ordering from Amazon. I feel super old school going into stores, and even my girlfriend complains about it, but I no longer will risk the annoyance of delivery times and returns processes - nor the risky health effects of buying food online or clothing or kitchen ware that I'll interact with often.

Yes, I've switched almost entirely to B&M shopping, and I haven't ordered from Amazon specifically since 2019. Physical stores have limited retail space, so they have a good reason to be choosy about what they stock. It's worth a few extra bucks to me to not have to sort through online flea markets like Amazon (plus, it gets me out of the house).

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#258

Post by notatoad »

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.

>for some reason

i think the scam here is that amazon or amazon sellers will pay people to warehouse product in the US, because when you're selling aliexpress goods at a 90% markup, you can afford the warehousing. and the people they're paying to run those warehouses list the product on ebay at 20% markup, on the assumption that if it sells they can make an aliexpress order and restock before the amazon seller notices their product is missing.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#259

Post by redler »

derefr wrote: post #226
travem wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd expect, if you allowed someone to study your notes before a test, that they'd possibly end up using similar turns-of-phrase to yours on the test. You wouldn't expect that they'd end up learning to perfectly duplicate your handwriting. Consider a foreign seller who perhaps doesn't have a great grasp of the English language or the cultural context of the US. When you add your own spin to someone else's idea you…

What I'm saying is that it would take an immense amount of effort, looking at literally tens of thousands of Amazon listings, to even realize that "this is what everyone else is doing." I noticed these patterns because I personally went through the top 100 items in every leaf-node category of the Amazon store a few months back (because I treat "finding obscure solutions to problems I didn't know I had" as a hobby.) N…

That sort of bulk change, all at once, might just be Amazon deciding to canonicalize the bracket menagerie.

Re: Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW

#260

Post by afro88 »

notahacker wrote: post #230
ev1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much it. People always say it's random mess or fake, but "youxian gongsi" is literally "limited company" and based on Shenzhen. I do a lot of hardware ordering and speak none of the language and picked this up over time. Chinese company names are generally [location] [selected name] [what they do], like Baidu is Beijing + Baidu + Netcom Science Technology. The transliteration in the tweet: "shenzhenshi…

Same goes for brand names that are completely unpronounceable in English and the fondness for ALLCAPS. Of course people accustomed to a completely unrelated language and writing system are likely to come up with transliterated or synthetic brandnames or acronyms that seem bizarre to English speakers. Buyers make one-time-only purchases based on search result order, price and star ratings, so localising brandname to t…

Funnily enough some of them looked like Ikea product names
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