A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing • Hacker News Board

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#611

Post by orangepenguin » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #443

pas wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This uncaring attitude is directly a result of lack of competition. Amazon won. (Sure, there are some other big names in the game, but the online retail market is in a pathological state. As in case of other "natural monopolies" the network effect is very large, thus barriers to entry is absurdly high, hence no real competition. The incumbents are optimizing and diversifying, participating in meta-games - eg. lobbyin…

Retail is not really a winner take all market though. It has very low barriers to entry. There are multitude of options to use as an alternative to Amazon. https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecomme... To Amazon's credit, they did move fast and bet big on online retail first. But since it is a low barrier to entry business, there is next to profit to be had in it, so they really do not have an incen…

Exactly. Once I realized I didn't like Amazon's tactics, I started switching to other sellers. For example, I now buy books on bookshop.org. For every type of product I want, I've managed to find a decent alternative either online or locally.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#612

Post by fmajid » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

stephencanon wrote: post #288

fmajid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. All my Room & Board furniture bought 10 years ago turned out to be duds, as I reviewed on Yelp 3 years ago: Don't be fooled by the glitzy showrooms and "made in America" promises of quality, this chain sells essentially disposable furniture. When we were expecting our first child 7 years ago, we moved from an apartment to a single-family home. We wanted to also upgrade from IKEA and equivalent to proper furnitu…

Yeah, Thos. Moser is lovely and rock-solid stuff, but $$$$ and a very specific aesthetic, which you either like or you don’t (we have some Moser stuff in our bedroom, but not in the rest of the house because it’s not a great fit style-wise). We have Carl Hansen & Son dining table and chairs, which is a considerably more modern look but still very solid (noticeably more so than most DWR stuff), but again, $$$$ and a s…

I did get a dresser from Stuart David Furniture in Sacramento, which was outstanding in quality. There are plenty of small furniture companies in the US that take pride in their craft and make excellent wares at reasonable prices (for the quality), no need to go to a chain like Room & Board.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#613

Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #390

LorenPechtel wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comingled inventory actually is a good idea, just flawed. Go ahead, comingle the inventory but keep track of where each item came from so when the counterfeit is discovered they know where it really came from and don't blame the innocent supplier.

That's what amuses me - what, it requires a few additional characters on the stock barcode? Of course the real problem is the counterfeiters have no problem starting a new vendor every few weeks or even days, so the damage may already be done by the time the reports come back.

Which says they need to establish trust before being allowed to use comingled inventory.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#614

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #591

heavyset_go wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are taking a broad interpretation of Section 230 and claim that the law shields tech companies from all liability for their platform[1], online and off, and not just liability for hosting user created content. Lower level courts seem to agree with them, although one such case has been fought all the way to the Supreme Court[2]. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/herrick-v-grindr-why-section-230... [2] https://…

So just having a web shop shields you for example from the consequences of selling counterfeit goods? How does that work?

They'll argue that they aren't liable for the crimes that users of their platform commit using their platform and cite Section 230 of the CDA.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#615

Post by ticviking » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #575

duxup wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And if we charge back eBay they just prevent us from using their marketplace.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#616

Post by stephencanon » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #612

stephencanon wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Thos. Moser is lovely and rock-solid stuff, but $$$$ and a very specific aesthetic, which you either like or you don’t (we have some Moser stuff in our bedroom, but not in the rest of the house because it’s not a great fit style-wise). We have Carl Hansen & Son dining table and chairs, which is a considerably more modern look but still very solid (noticeably more so than most DWR stuff), but again, $$$$ and a s…

I did get a dresser from Stuart David Furniture in Sacramento, which was outstanding in quality. There are plenty of small furniture companies in the US that take pride in their craft and make excellent wares at reasonable prices (for the quality), no need to go to a chain like Room & Board.

Agreed, we also have some stuff that was handmade for us by local folks on commission at quite reasonable prices. It’s not quite as posh as Thos. Moser, but still very nice.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#617

Post by jhgb » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 6:13 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #614

jhgb wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just having a web shop shields you for example from the consequences of selling counterfeit goods? How does that work?

They'll argue that they aren't liable for the crimes that users of their platform commit using their platform and cite Section 230 of the CDA.

Which makes no sense, since CDA's Section 230 is saying nothing about being an accomplice to crimes, only about not being treated as the publisher or speaker of some information.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#618

Post by mangamadaiyan » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #367

teh_klev wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And signalling the immanentizing of Tony the Pony.

Do not speak his name.

Arguably, they just _typed_ his name -- maybe they didn't say it out loud :)

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#619

Post by CliffStoll » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 8:51 AM UTC

belter wrote: post #609

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanna really nerd out, here's the Grateful Dead show Cliff cut out of hacker chasing to go attend: https://archive.org/details/gd86-06-21.sbd.brame.15406.sbeok...

"A bass guitar note took my attention from the hacker’s trail. The Grateful Dead were playing outdoors at the Berkeley Greek Theater, only a hundred yards downhill from the lab. The police couldn’t keep people from sitting in the field overlooking the concert, so I skipped over there, mingling with a thousand others in tie-dyed shirts. Burnt-out panhandlers, left over from the sixties, walked the crowd, begging ticke…

Complete agreement — wouldn’t miss a Dead concert for anything.

Hmmm - I seem to be agreeing with myself. I tend to do that, occasionally.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#620

Post by glenneroo » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:44 AM UTC

EricE wrote: post #458

Axien wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot one. Amazon uses seller data to target which products they will produce under their own Amazon brand. So creative entrepreneurs eventually find they are completing against Amazon directly. This is why Amazon will eventually be replaced by a company that can do things better, faster, and cheaper.

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.…

Does Walmart operate outside the US? Because Amazon is pretty much everywhere around the world. If Amazon were to die tomorrow, I'd have a real problem getting a lot of equipment for various projects, especially PC hardware, in a timely manner. As much as I hate how things have gone downhill lately, it doesn't seem to be as bad (yet) over here in Europe with getting fake items. The main issue I see here, is that there's been a huge influx of cheap Chinese items which flood out all the known brands that I usually buy from, making it hard to find actual quality items. Prime is also still 69€/year. And they offer delivery to their own containers which you can unlock with a barcode on your phone to get your package 24/7, avoiding house delivery altogether, which is a huge reason why I still use them as opposed to competition, since where I live in is a real pain to find and often delivery people just give up trying to find me and just send the items back, or drop it at some shop at the end of their shift, which is often at the opposite side of the city.

In fact it seems most of the issues I see people complaining about on HN are US-centric issues? Perhaps all this brand-hijacking is happening over there because of the market size and thus pay-off to do the "dirty" work?