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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

#351

Post by jotm »

Fnoord wrote: post #195
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…

Ah, I saw something akin to this in like 2012 (but I guess the Ship of Theseus was a change in username only) when I used to buy WoW gold on eBay (yeah, I know..). At one point the seller quit selling WoW gold, changed their name, and started selling sunglasses.

Haha, I'll admit I did this with several accounts. It was even possible to build up a good feedback by buying cheap stuff. Then start to sell whatever you want.

Easy way to avoid the ridiculous holds on funds and limited PayPal accounts due to "not enough feedback".

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

#352

Post by noir_lord »

phatfish wrote: post #347
noir_lord wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buy from Argos too, they also have a nice network of physical locations for in-store pickups. The prices are very close to Amazon usually, which really only wins on free delivery options. If you can pickup in store that's not an issue. Argos actually pay some tax as well.

On bigger items Argos do (or did at the time) free one day delivery, I ordered a new TV for Christmas a couple of years ago at 1pm and was sat watching crap Christmas movies with my family by 9pm, I mean Amazon can’t compete with that here yet.

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

#353

Post by sek »

abakker wrote: post #314
download13 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The term for this is "Quality Fade" and is by no means unique to amazon. This is a very common thing in all low-cost manufacturing. you start with higher quality and lower margin, and gradually degrade quality to improve margin. You consistently flirt with the lowest quality possible.

I mean for software we talk about reproducability and versions down to the bit. But if a consumer products replaces one piece of metal with plastic it's apparently the same product?

Products should have versions that look like this.

2.1

* Replaces piece X with plastic. * Reduced frame width to save material costs.

This could also be positive and make it more transparent.

2.2

* Strength part X that breaks very often. * Change edges to reduce chance of injury.

I mean this opens a huge box of problems, I know apple didn't want to admit their keyboard was problematic in fear of lawsuits. This is how it should be.

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

#354

Post by Havoc »

AlexandrB wrote: post #203
Havoc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>power cables, replacement chargers and batteries being the biggest offenders. I've found Anker gear to be consistently solid on all three counts & frankly I trust it more than store bought. If I could even get it - wouldn't know where to start buying a 60W USB hub in a brick & mortar.

I wish Anker sold direct on their site (and shipped to Canada) because searching for Anker products on Amazon almost invariably turns up a sponsored, cheap knock off and an "Amazon Basics" product as the #1 and #2 results. I can't imagine they're happy about that either.

>Anker products on Amazon

Actually try RAVPower - they're Anker's main competitor & seem to have more of a footprint in the US

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

#355

Post by bluescrn »

cwp wrote: post #335
download13 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder how much of this is because Amazon started out selling books and CDs. Those things don't really have quality issues, and are pretty much fungible. Now, decades into their "everything store" strategy, they're still trying to treat everything like books.

Even books need shipping with some amount of care to arrive undamaged. Amazon isn't even good at that these days, piling items fairly loosely into oversized boxes.

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

#356

Post by wolco »

fendy3002 wrote: post #324
dv_dt wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vers…

Easier, no editing. Create a new listing for any changes. Allow create listing from.. or linking to old listing for repprting. Show new version available text instead of buy again. Solved.

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

#357

Post by bsdubernerd »

cwp wrote: post #335
download13 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder how much of this is because Amazon started out selling books and CDs. Those things don't really have quality issues, and are pretty much fungible. Now, decades into their "everything store" strategy, they're still trying to treat everything like books.

I disagree. I have about 10 books on my shelf published by various editors but which have been printed by amazon printing services. I had to return several because of poor print quality. Some had splotches, some missing or blank pages, some had horrid patterning all over the book.

I own a ton of books, and my decision process is generally:

- go to library - read/like a book - buy it for late reference

For this reason I rarely checked books as I ordered them (I assumed they were fine). After realizing a couple of books I had were unreadable (and way past the "warranty"), I now flip through the entire book just to check for glaring print problems.

Thank you amazon, I guess?

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

#358

Post by privateSFacct »

avip wrote: post #263
headmelted wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to buy from Amazon whenever I can for the pain-free returns. You’re not wrong - the reviews are utter trash and have no credibility at all anymore - so I look elsewhere for reviews on what I’m buying. I mostly avoid the counterfeiting problem by sticking to branded goods that aren’t easy to convincingly fake. Any problems and it goes back for Amazon to deal with.

>branded goods that aren’t easy to convincingly fake s.a Apple power adapters?

Haha - I got burned by this so many times in a row trying to buy genuine I bought direct from apple. Some of the fakes are terrible some ok but none genuine

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

#359

Post by privateSFacct »

AlexandrB wrote: post #223
owenmarshall wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on uploaded photos that product seems to have a past life as a cutting board, a drying rack, a canopy for a kids bed, some type of dagger (letter opener?) and a lancet. That’s incredible , and the fact that someone hasn’t seen that inside Amazon and said “we have a huge problem” makes me suspect Amazon doesn’t regard it as a problem at all.

You missed French press, kitchen utensil holder, and tupperware container. Amazing.

The fact this is so easy to spot tells me Amazon gives two craps about any of this

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

#360

Post by CrazyStat »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #292
dannyw wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because picking by Amazon is not seller specific. You get something in that tray; it can be from any seller.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to filter by this though? Surely Amazon has a history of who bought what from who - why not make it an option for consumers (apart from the obvious fact that Amazon makes money letting people sell shit on their platform)? Amazon could easily solve this problem but they've decided it's more profitable to let it fester. Whether or not it's a good decision in the long run, the same way Sea…

> Surely Amazon has a history of who bought what from who

They don't necessarily. Amazon combines items from different sellers together in their warehouses, and doesn't sort them out when picking orders to ship. So if I send them a high quality doohickey to sell with FBA, a customer who orders my doohickey might actually receive Mr. Cheapo's knock-off doohickey because as far as Amazon is concerned they're the same thing and got placed in the same bin in the warehouse.

Sellers can opt out of this but then Amazon charges them more.

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