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Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

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Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#321

Post by shaklee3 »

dmix wrote: post #294
habosa wrote: post #77

My favorite Amazon scam is the Amazon Ship of Theseus[0]. You sell a product, normally a cheap electronic, and build up a decent corpus of positive reviews. A good example is a USB-C cable or something. Then you decide you want to sell a new product in a more competitive subcategory, like Bluetooth Headphones. You then take the _existing_ listing and change it piece by piece. First the pictures, then the title, then…

The Fakeslot chrome extension is pretty good at spotting fake reviews. I’m curious if it can detect transferred reviews...

Fakespot, I think you mean...

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#322

Post by rasz »

wufufufu wrote: post #123
rasz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one side of the equation, the other is people ordering the real thing, repackaging it with fake from aliexpress and returning for full refund. More enterprising folks sign up as Amazon supplier, register for some expensive products, ship real thing once or twice and then start throwing more and more fakes into their shipments, all nicely co-mingled by Amazon.

> ... the other is people ordering the real thing, repackaging it with fake from aliexpress and returning for full refund. Can't you do this to a retailer? > More enterprising folks sign up as Amazon supplier, register for some expensive products, ship real thing once or twice and then start throwing more and more fakes into their shipments, all nicely co-mingled by Amazon Seems like a fast track to getting your acco…

Other retailers usually pay better wages and care at least a little about the returns. They catch on $370000 quicker https://www.newsweek.com/22-year-old-allegedly-scammed-amazo...

Selling fakes is not skimming off the top, you get at least 1000% margins and Amazon doesnt seem to care all that much as evidenced by above link.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#323

Post by trashface »

download13 wrote: post #210
habosa wrote: post #77

My favorite Amazon scam is the Amazon Ship of Theseus[0]. You sell a product, normally a cheap electronic, and build up a decent corpus of positive reviews. A good example is a USB-C cable or something. Then you decide you want to sell a new product in a more competitive subcategory, like Bluetooth Headphones. You then take the _existing_ listing and change it piece by piece. First the pictures, then the title, then…

There's also a more subtle version of this, where the seller leaves the listing the same, but once enough positive reviews have accumulated they move production to a cheaper factory and use cheaper materials. So you might see older reviews for a pair of boots that say they're made from sturdy materials with good stitching, followed by later reviews saying that they didn't match the advertised sizing and pictures, or…

Also known as "decontenting" and widely practiced in many industries.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#324

Post by fendy3002 »

dv_dt wrote: post #228
Havoc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Until you have a listing for your headphones that comes with 5,000 pre-made positive reviews! Fk. That's possible? How has Amazon not done anything about that? Like I can get keeping fake stuff out is a losing battle, but that seems like a rather significant design flaw if you can "transfer" reviews like that.

Think about all the AI/Machine learning work going on. I really think it's not a losing battle, that if Amazon really cared, they could train and maintain a "product listing integrity" AI fairly easily. That they don't already have such a thing to dissuade the gaming going on to dissuade the sketchy practices essentially means to me Amazon condones the behavior.

This is actually rather easy to solve without ML/AI. They need to track the change delta (ex: with jsondiffpatch) and weight each part, presumably using levenshtein or text mining with weighted dictionary, and limit changes to 2 or 4 in 24 hours period. Then weekly compare those changes and treat the highest one as need to be reviewed by customer.

Additionally, each customer review should tied to specific change version, that they can easily compare with current one.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#325

Post by friendlybus »

dv_dt wrote: post #43
benologist wrote: post #16

Amazon's decision to employ lawyers and lobbyists instead of oversight resulted in a public black market they openly run but are not responsible for profiting from. I am excited to see which state will have the first Amazon fulfillment center crawling with feds. They have to raid one eventually to get to the bottom of the lead, the counterfeits etc. How is Amazon preventing the EPA or the FTC from doing their job and…

Inequality is back to the time of robber barons of industry, and so too is the lawlessness of many of the industry practices, where we are in the same state where technology and scale of organization are outrunning the philosophical theories of government operation to regulate them.

Amazon/Alibaba is making money pulling millions of chinese people out of poverty. The inequality equation is the same as normal, we're just not the focus of economic production at the moment. Comparing a normal western job to a chinese wage & lifestyle makes us look like the 1%. Comparing the average westerner who sells to 10k customers to bezos who sells to hundreds of millions makes him look like the bourgeoisie.

Technology and orgs always outpace regulation. The government is terrified of front-running business. It can't, the point of being a king is to control resources for the sake of generating prosperity. It can't then go and do all the work and be on the bleeding edge as well, it pays people to do that.

For all the control the tech companies have tried to exert in the world they are reigned in by the banks and then government. At the end of the day amazon hasn't made a big difference in my life for all of the $x bezo has. I don't shop there, his lack of quality control is sinking his company. What's there to worry about?

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#326

Post by dylan-m »

Groxx wrote: post #291
jarjoura wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I use Best Buy for all electronic purchases now. They have a great return policy and I enjoy that most things I could want are available same day. I pretty much only rely on Amazon for Kindle purchases now or to read reviews on big ticket items that I'm curious about.

Ironically, I stopped using Best Buy at all due to their return policies. More than once I've had missing components from what I purchased. And they won't accept refunds or replacements unless all parts are included. Amazon takes nearly anything back, from my attempts.

For me this has had the side-effect that their warehouse deals thing will ship literally anything back out :b It's worth it if you're okay processing returns for them, but when they started to send me broken cameras full of sand, and then film which had been aggressively ripped out of the cartridge and exposed, I really started to wonder…

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#327

Post by refurb »

dv_dt wrote: post #111
compiler-guy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality goes back far beyond that. The slaves who built the pyramids in Egypt were pretty unequal from the Pharaoh. And even that wasn't the first society with inequality. It goes back far beyond recorded history.

But gini coefficient measurements show the magnitude of inequality, and the magnitude today has returned to that of the 1920's robber baron era. And the magnitude is important because there is a correlation between higher economic growth and a gini value showing lower inequality than today.

Couldn’t find Gini going back that far, but other measures of inequality show we’re below that of the 1930’s.

And interestingly, the poverty rate is near a century low.

https://www.chartbookofeconomicinequality.com/inequality-by-...

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#328

Post by LoSboccacc »

noir_lord wrote: post #238
jarjoura wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I use Best Buy for all electronic purchases now. They have a great return policy and I enjoy that most things I could want are available same day. I pretty much only rely on Amazon for Kindle purchases now or to read reviews on big ticket items that I'm curious about.

I went back to argos (UK retailer) for small stuff and ebuyer/aria for everything else tech related - they have the same range as amazon (in their domains), the same returns ease (better in the case of ebuyer in practive). I buy very little from Amazon, enough that I'm going to cancel prime since the only thing of theirs I still use is is Amazon Prime TV and well..its OK but not enough to justify it.

i left Amazon too, now I either go to the manufacturer itself if I need the quality or cut the middleman and go directly on AliExpress if quality is not a concern.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#329

Post by dmix »

shaklee3 wrote: post #321
dmix wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fakeslot chrome extension is pretty good at spotting fake reviews. I’m curious if it can detect transferred reviews...

Fakespot, I think you mean...

Correct https://www.fakespot.com/

It's not perfect but it's useful

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#330

Post by LoSboccacc »

Glyptodon wrote: post #134
heavyset_go wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart partners with their suppliers because they have a direct liability for selling dangerous or counterfeit goods. Amazon's lawyers try their best to shift all liability from themselves to their suppliers. If I buy a product from Walmart that is faulty and injures me, liability falls on Walmart.

They still sell tons of stuff from the infinite dictionary of random import brand names that nobody's ever heard of like "Amplim," "Kootion," "Ktaxon," "Yosoo," "Zimtown," "Zokop," etc.

yeah but they test and QC it and take care of the certification required to sell it.
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