31–40 of 133 posts
Disclaimer: I haven't worked at Amazon for 3 years - my info is likely stale.
I personally find that one of Amazon's main affronts is interfering with customer reviews in order to maintain artificially higher ratings. For example, my reviews stopped processing and would never post. This happened after leaving honest critical reviews. Note that +90% of my reviews are neutral or positive. Additionally, they removed my ability to search reviews, replacing it with Rufus, a completely incompetent and worthless search bot. This, I believe, cleverly prevents prospective buyers from accessing useful customer feedback or experience unless the buyer is willing to manually parse all reviews, which ain't happening.
Amazon does a lot to convolute reviews, including jumping to the wrong review after selecting a product to review from the order history.
It's an extremely useful and convenient resource, but thoroughly rotten. The algorithms are flagrantly evil and a very deliberate and specific search for a high-end product, the desired product will often be displayed below several or many more cereal-box quality products worth less than their packaging.
Where they win is shipping, variety and pricing. Hard to beat, but I never order anything serious on Amazon unless the seller is the actual company of the product, and even then...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come to the UK where Amazon offers 512GB flash drives for £15 [1] [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/512GB-High-Waterproof-Compatible-Co...
Ooof. I honestly don’t know how you can buy a usb thumb drive anymore. Even when you pay the right price you might still get a scam.
I don’t really get the argument in this article. If a consumer can’t notice the brand name in big caps letters of LEMERO or MYTONER as the first word and throughout the text instead of Epson this seems like a PEBKAC problem.
Louis Rossmann just released a video on this about Toshiba hard disks [1]. I canceled my Prime account in 2018, after my last online order for memory. Now, I only purchase in-person from large vendors with direct-from-manufacturer custody [this costs more, obviously]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUNC7z5MM0
Louis Rossmann just released a video on this about Toshiba hard disks [1]. I canceled my Prime account in 2018, after my last online order for memory. Now, I only purchase in-person from large vendors with direct-from-manufacturer custody [this costs more, obviously]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUNC7z5MM0
The only downside about canceling Prime is that you can only do it once. I canceled prime because they started putting ads in their video service, despite the fact that I was paying for it. That was a fun one. Now it’s like, well, what else can I do? I guess I’m boycotting Amazon, but is it really boycotting when their store is “here’s a random electronic device, maybe it is what you ordered,” I mean, why would I pla…
so you can sign up for the free trial every time you want some counterfeit tat shipped cheaply
then immediately cancel it
Ordered 2 flash drives both are probably counterfeit the first 1-2gb of write are at spec and then the speed drops to 1/3 of spec. Anything you order from Amazon has to be tested for counterfeit. If you can’t verify it’s not counterfeit then assume it is. Even if Amazon is listed as the seller they are clearly swapping in someone else’s fakes. Mine has a secondary retail barcode label on them. I’m going to send them…
If you're writing to them constantly, that doesn't prove they are counterfeit. They will thermally throttle. Naturally, specs don't talk so much about that part. I have an older one that throttles down to almost nothing, but it is still technically writing correctly. I don't use it much anymore, because it's like 16GB which is nothing now, but I used to "liquid cool" it... by holding it with my fingers while writing. I suppose you could call it blood cooling for some metal cred. It wouldn't recover full speed, my blood cooling rig didn't have enough heat transfer (it's got some pretty serious rate limits on how much heat it can handle), but it would noticeably speed back up.
Now, if you can't write the entire space and read it all back with the data being retained, you've got counterfeit.
Louis Rossmann just released a video on this about Toshiba hard disks [1]. I canceled my Prime account in 2018, after my last online order for memory. Now, I only purchase in-person from large vendors with direct-from-manufacturer custody [this costs more, obviously]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUNC7z5MM0
I bought 4 new N300 disks "Sold by Amazon" in a single order one was obviously a return by someone else, it was in completely different unofficial packaging and was DOA getting the bot like staff to accept that it wasn't me that had broken it was such fun I ended up deleting my 20 year amazon account and haven't bought anything since
What I hate is outright counterfeits. Especially given Amazon's commingling of product sourced by third-party "sellers". (Solely due to counterfeits, I don't buy OTC pharmaceuticals on Amazon, I mostly avoid buying flash and SSD devices on Amazon, and I've recently started buying shoes and clothing direct from the brands' DTC Web sites when possible.)
I hate counterfeits so much, I worked at an anti-counterfeiting early startup.
In our marketing and sales efforts -- analyzing many kinds of product categories, and approaching many companies (unfortunately, much of it during peak Covid panic) -- we actually didn't have much success getting brands willing to pay for an anti-counterfeiting solution.
For reasons unclear to me, we had more success by pitching the same tech&process cost as anti-gray-market-diversion, rather than for the rampant counterfeiting of their brand that we could show. (Maybe sometimes because there were always a bunch of execs charged with global distribution, and this was on their plates.)
More predictably, some brands seemed most interested in using variations on the technology for end consumer engagement. Once stakeholders brought into enterprise sales meetings started latching on, when you initially approached with anti-counterfeiting or anti-gray-market story. I can see that, but please let me end counterfeits in the process.
None of the examples given in this article are counterfeit. A counterfeit HP ink cartridge says it's HP, but it's not. None of these products claim to be HP. One bears no brand mark at all. One is "Ankink" brand. Same for Epson: we have "MYTONER" and "LEMERO". Amazon is a flea market trafficking in huge quantities of suspect goods. When I go on there I know to be on guard. But the article is wrong when it says that g…
1. went to Mitutoyo website to get list of authorized sellers
2. surprised Amazon itself is on the list
3. Purchased a number of authentic Mitutoyo calipers and micrometers from Amazon itself
4. Ran down Clough42 list of 17 signs to double check if the tool is fake:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6I2gNGVwM
5. Successfully registered equipment on Mitutoyo website
6. Checked quality on reference standards
Note, Starrett has a website with an estore, so is far easier to verify NIST certificate.
If the work is low tolerance, than accuracy and repeatability won't matter anyway. However, when it comes to metrology or PPE the high-end products set the best possible outcome for your workmanship and safety.
Mind you, I couldn't convince a golden retriever to stop obsessing over the taste of free garbage. =3