i hate chinese sellers
A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
571–580 of 628 posts
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#572Somewhat amusingly, Amazon doesn't let you include HN URLs in abuse reports, it errors out with "Please don't include personal info": https://i.imgur.com/7nFbL3l.png
I'm guessing because it contains the string "ID".
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plot twist: the root cause is greed
Allowing trusted sellers to be hijacked is not greedy behavior. Keeping 3rd sellers happy will result in less returns, happier resellers, and greater platform usage. The root cause here is organizational failure from disempowered employees. At one point Amazon had great customer service with empowered represenatives. That's not Amazon today.
> Allowing trusted sellers to be hijacked is not greedy behavior
Depends entirely on how much the sellers are selling. It’s entirely possible they like the idea of making a ton of sales for a bit. It’s not their reputation that gets destroyed.
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
Walmart was correlating credit card information in the 80's. My mind still boggles at how poorly they have handled the Internet. If there is a company that can best Amazon and provide unique experiences with their tens of thousands of local warehouses (their retail stores!) it should be them. It's utterly mystifying that instead of leveraging their strengths they ran off and created a less functional clone of Amazon.…
The Walton family that owns Walmart has a higher net worth than Bezos, according to google ($235B Walton vs $196B Bezos), so the owners of Walmart are still more wealthy than the owners of Amazon. And whatever they are doing in brick and mortar is orthogonal to Amazon, Amazon can't do B&M at the same scale, and Walmart can't do online sales at the same scale.
How is that metric relevant? If any, market cap is the one that would show what the market thinks each company is capable of.
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#575Guess I'd better say a few things. First, I deeply appreciate that so many on Hacker News have come out for this. Enough to awaken me from a sound sleep on a Tuesday evening! I don't really care that much about selling Klein bottles over Amazon - it's mainly to reach parents over the holidays. But I do wish that Amazon would do something about this kind of thing. Finally, I"m very low on stocks of glass Klein bottles…
There was a story about a guy who had a self published book. He was the only person printing / selling his book. Until someone showed up on amazon and sold it too, they just copied it and printed it themselves. The copied book is identical, cover and all, images in the Amazon listing too ... Amazon chose to do nothing.
I have ordered 2 service manuals on eBay, and both times I got some shitty photocopies of the official manual, yet paid full price for the official manuals. You email the vendors and ask why you got this shitty copy, and they claim it's official, and that they're licensed by the company to reproduce them. So eBay won't do shit.
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
> These bad actors don't contribute to the Amazon market. There's little reason not to ban them for ToS violations. These bad actors are optimizing for sales, and Amazon benefits from each sale on their marketplace. Their actions result in more money for the bad actors and for Amazon alike. It's a similar situation to VC-funded social media platforms turning a blind eye to bots and automation early on because bot act…
That's gotta be a very short term thing though hasn't it? Honestly Amazon is two, maybe three, knockoffs away from me never using them again (currently: 0). I can't be arsed with faff.. that's why I use Amazon. It'd be daft for them to not be curbing this!
I believe that they assume they've bought enough goodwill from segments of consumers that things like this don't really matter.
My older relatives generally assume that Amazon will have the best prices online for everything despite that not being the case for 5+ years now.
They're counting on customers like my relatives and yourself not changing their assumptions or habits.
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#577It amazes how much raw ingenuity goes into scams and hustles.
This kind of scam was happening on Amazon for at least couple years if not more. So it is not even new/original.
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#578Guess I'd better say a few things. First, I deeply appreciate that so many on Hacker News have come out for this. Enough to awaken me from a sound sleep on a Tuesday evening! I don't really care that much about selling Klein bottles over Amazon - it's mainly to reach parents over the holidays. But I do wish that Amazon would do something about this kind of thing. Finally, I"m very low on stocks of glass Klein bottles…
Hi Cliff, I'm an independent amazon consultant. Your Amazon problems would be solved with a regular USPTO trademark. They don't recognize common-law trademarks because they are heavily arguable in litigation. USPTO is a database of trademarks already scrutinized by trademark attorneys and government. It's not perfect, but it is a collection that Amazon recognizes. You can do this for $2000-ish and never think about i…
I have felt for awhile that fees for Trademarks, and Patents should be tied to 1040 income level.
A wealthy corporation (person) should pay more than the poor, or little enterprise.
I looked into a patent a few years ago, and couldn't justify even the fee at the time. When I had disposable income I was ready to patent, but I was too late. A corporation with over 60 patents beat me to it.
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know how this can be solved with regulation though. What is "superior" about the better product? Tolerances? Documentation? Customer service? The ineffable reflection of the divine? (...) As soon as you put a target on any of those measures Goodhart's law rears its ugly head. This strategy is like trying to grab a greased ball bearing with a pair of tweezers. The most efficient way for the customer to compare…
Regulating warranties and 'fitness for purpose' are both ways in which the state can enforce a level of quality/reliability on the manufacture of goods. As an example, let's say your jurisdiction decides to make the following requirements on the manufacturers of food refrigerators; 1) The refrigerator must have a working lifetime of no less than 10 years from the date of sale, when maintained per the manual. 2) Repai…
I agree that improvements to general serviceability and guarantees of availability of information and parts for repair would go a long ways to making better products. Perhaps "time" is a good metric that is more difficult to game.
I like your example. So lets consider a refrigerator manufacturer that builds a great refrigerator design, with all the investment in R&D, documentation & service manuals, parts reliability, supply chain and inventory procurement, customer service, continued improvements due to to market and long-term customer feedback, etc that one would expect if they were aiming to make a reliable long-term product as you describe. The business produces a good product and provides good service for a fair price, and they grow a reputable brand and loyalty from their customers as a result.
Consider some scenarios:
Scenario 1: After some time the owners come to retirement age and sell the business to the highest bidder at, for example, $100 million. The new owners promptly 'reorganize' the business, slashing costs, selling assets, eliminating continued investments, and generally cheapening the product. Meanwhile the outside world is none the wiser, and thanks to a buffer of brand loyalty they keep selling the cheaper product but at a massive comparative margin. In 2 years they made back $300 million which they smuggle away by cutting dividend checks or paying themselves for some bogus "consulting" services or something else just as tepidly but still technically justifiable. Another year later the consumer protection agencies finally come knocking (the government isn't fast) and find the whole place either liquidated or dilapidated, clearly unable to fulfill their warranties, resulting in being sued or fined into bankruptcy. The supply chain of parts even for the original product, some only 3 years into their 10 year warranty dries up. The newer cheaper product is in an even worse state. The purchasers are long gone but doing great, having milked the reputation of the business and its customers of a neat, net $200 million in 3 years. Customers get a $10 check in the mail thanks to a class-action. Remaining employees have to find a new job.
How would you describe what happened? And how could it be avoided? I'm skeptical that the regulations you mentioned or similar could help here.
Scenario 2: Using the professionally produced and well-maintained specifications, service manuals, and product design, an international company reproduces the same refrigerator design, but since they can skip all the overhead of creating such a great design and documentation they sell the product with a razor thin or even negative margin at an overall 30% lower price. This drives the original refrigerator manufacturer out of business, enabling the international company to capture the market and raise the price again to extract value out of it. Perhaps they maintain parts inventories but they invest nothing into continued evolution of the design and cut corners on customer service and it dies slowly. Customers of the original design are out of luck, and the new company's product is just slightly incompatible enough with the original design that parts don't work and customers are instructed to just buy a new one.
What happened in this case? Is this even a negative story that we should try to avoid? If so, how?
Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing
#580What is ironic is that there is an annual Award given to an AWS employee called the Cliff Stoll Award: For those individuals who see something suspicious, not working as expected, show ownership and drive it to resolution. As Cliff did to find a KGB spy, and documented in "The Cuckoo's Egg". I wonder what would happen if someone at Amazon pulled on this thread and not only solved Cliff's problem but also the root cau…
If there really is a Cliff Stoll award, I'd be happy to contribute a Klein bottle for its continuation. (seriously!)
Apparently this individual works on AWS and won a Amazon's Cliff Stoll Award: