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Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

michaeleisen.org

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Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#71

Post by sirtastic »

anc84 wrote: post #19
acqq wrote: post #2

From the comments on the Amazon page: "What a steal! By John Taylor Kesler on April 25, 2011, Format: Paperback I was fortunate enough to buy this at the bargain price of $19,087,354 there must have been a sale because the next day it was listed at $23M. I was very pleased to find upon arrival that the book contained very useful information, however to be honest I was expecting a few more pictures for the price paid.…

I really wish Amazon reviews were useful and not a mixture of a) angry rants, b) bought reviews and c) jokes.

I wish the non-obvious joke ones could be trusted. Some product categories are effected higher than others but in a few cases I've seen something like ~80% positive reviews are fake.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#72

Post by vijayr »

anc84 wrote: post #19
acqq wrote: post #2

From the comments on the Amazon page: "What a steal! By John Taylor Kesler on April 25, 2011, Format: Paperback I was fortunate enough to buy this at the bargain price of $19,087,354 there must have been a sale because the next day it was listed at $23M. I was very pleased to find upon arrival that the book contained very useful information, however to be honest I was expecting a few more pictures for the price paid.…

I really wish Amazon reviews were useful and not a mixture of a) angry rants, b) bought reviews and c) jokes.

I really wish Amazon reviews are restricted to those who actually purchased the product - Amazon does add verified purchase tag, but why allow me to review an item if I haven't purchased it? I can understand if they were a small e-commerce platform but at their scale, restricting the number of reviews would be beneficial. It is better to have 10 good reviews than 100 reviews with jokes and rants etc.

Another thing that is really annoying is people buying wrong product and leaving angry reviews. Whose mistake is it if I buy a product thinking it is water proof, when the description of the product says in bold letters that it isn't waterproof? I feel sorry for the sellers who get idiotic/unfair reviews and they can do nothing about it

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#73

Post by BashiBazouk »

Algorithmic pricing is the main reason I rarely buy anything on Amazon anymore. On the realistic end, I've had too many situations that I was thinking of buying something, finally decide to pull the trigger only to find the price had gone significantly up. Not just a 3rd party running out of inventory and the lowest price moving to the next cheapest seller but items sold by Amazon. Once I realized I had to use a site like camelcamelcamel.com to track the price, Amazon was no longer the easy, trusted low price retailer. Make me think about a purchase, I will. On the high end, most products you look at have an insane high price, even on price fixed items that I can walk to a store and buy anytime for MSRP. This article has an extreme example but most items I look at have at least one offer that is 10 - 100x everyone else. That this is not monitored and dealt with from amazon gives the whole site an aurora of sleaze...

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#74

Post by conanbatt »

vijayr wrote: post #72
anc84 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish Amazon reviews were useful and not a mixture of a) angry rants, b) bought reviews and c) jokes.

I really wish Amazon reviews are restricted to those who actually purchased the product - Amazon does add verified purchase tag, but why allow me to review an item if I haven't purchased it? I can understand if they were a small e-commerce platform but at their scale, restricting the number of reviews would be beneficial. It is better to have 10 good reviews than 100 reviews with jokes and rants etc. Another thing th…

You might have bought the item with a different account, in real life or someone else might have bought it for you.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#75

Post by inversionOf »

ma2rten wrote: post #57
inversionOf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for years on AML systems for banks. This isn't money laundering. Indeed, I don't believe I've ever seen a "this is money laundering!" comment on a social news site that wasn't entirely and completely off the mark of real money laundering, but just seems to be a go-to for things that people don't understand.

How does real money laundering work? Do you think that the other comments about electronics being sold for money laundering are also off mark? Also how realistic was breaking bad, where they brought a carwash and put it in some fake receipts.

The other comment about electronics is completely off the mark as well -- people often see financial transactions that don't seem to make logical sense (whether pricing bots that recursively keep pricing off of each other, as in the linked story, or prices that seem too good to be true, which more likely are gray market or arbitrage) and immediately explain it as money laundering. But consider the electronics sales, where the premise is that people are selling electronics that they apparently bought from Amazon using gift cards under the market just to launder cash.

There is an enormous financial black hole that is just as vulnerable to inspection as simply depositing $1,000,000 in cash in your account. The whole point of money laundering is not only to legitimize the output, it's to make the sources untraceable and arguably viable as well.

The components of a transaction, particularly for the sales of goods, cannot simply appear out of nowhere, or they've done absolutely nothing in the way of money laundering. The people who will ever care about this (the ones who money laundering is constructed to fool) aren't so naive, and if you're selling 100,000 hard drives to justify your income, they're going to ask where you got the hard drives, and demand a financial trail.

Cash businesses that have little variable costs outside of manpower (such as carwashes, laundrymats, even some small restaurants, or selling small crafts on Etsy) are absolutely lucrative tools for money laundering, and can only really get caught if put under heavy scrutiny (e.g. car wash with 10 cars over the week claims revenue of $100,000). As are casinos, and Vegas was built on money laundering -- there are few checks on how much you spend, so whether you spent $1,000,000 in unexplained cash to leave with $950,000 in legitimate winnings, or $10 in legitimate cash to leave with $950,000 in legitimate winnings, it's almost impossible to prove.

There are many, many financial vehicles that are used for money laundering, including life insurance. Selling hard drives on Amazon is not one of them.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#76

Post by conanbatt »

ctdonath wrote: post #52
jevgeni wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a system, where I read the most negative reviews of the book. If the reviews are eloquent and make a solid point, I don't buy the book. If the negative reviews are mostly whiny,emotional rants without any valid solid arguments, then the book is most definitely worth it. A case in point: http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog...

I'll second that method. Positive reviews are uninteresting; 1-star reviews reveal whether there really is a problem/deficiency, as usually the complaint is unrelated ("product arrived damaged"), misguided (expectations were bafflingly far from what product is, "this washcloth is a lousy database manager"), or a fluke (50,000 5-star reviews and one "one page was folded, replacement was fast & free").

I directly read 2 star reviews. 1 star reviews are often super biased and pissed. Much like in yelp, it contains things like "The shoes didnt fit" , "The delivery guy was mean" and stuff like that.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#77

Post by vijayr »

conanbatt wrote: post #74
vijayr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish Amazon reviews are restricted to those who actually purchased the product - Amazon does add verified purchase tag, but why allow me to review an item if I haven't purchased it? I can understand if they were a small e-commerce platform but at their scale, restricting the number of reviews would be beneficial. It is better to have 10 good reviews than 100 reviews with jokes and rants etc. Another thing th…

You might have bought the item with a different account, in real life or someone else might have bought it for you.

sure that happens - on Amazon's scale, does it matter? As a consumer, I like a few honest reviews vs thousands of reviews that contain useless/dumb/rant type reviews. I'd have to weed through those reviews to find honest ones which takes time and energy, and ultimately I'd just give up - which defeats the purpose of reviews in the first place.

But if you still want to address this problem, just allow the buyer to say it is for someone else and allow them to put the recipient's email. If I buy something for you, I put your email, and Amazon could allow you to review the item instead of me reviewing it.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#78

Post by drzaiusapelord »

ma2rten wrote: post #57
inversionOf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for years on AML systems for banks. This isn't money laundering. Indeed, I don't believe I've ever seen a "this is money laundering!" comment on a social news site that wasn't entirely and completely off the mark of real money laundering, but just seems to be a go-to for things that people don't understand.

How does real money laundering work? Do you think that the other comments about electronics being sold for money laundering are also off mark? Also how realistic was breaking bad, where they brought a carwash and put it in some fake receipts.

Not a criminal, but someone interested in this kind of thing. From what I've read and heard, cash-based businesses are best because its really hard to prove otherwise. The IRS is going to see a car wash doing $1m a year in sales and that'll be it. It can't access any other records to prove otherwise because you're a mostly, if not all, cash business. You become your own customer and funnel your money into the company. You would easily survive an audit here.

So any cash-based business is good. Restaurants, car washes, pawn shops, bars/clubs, etc. These types of businesses can make thousands per day gross and are relatively easy to run with low capital down. That's going to be far superior than shipping hundreds of overpriced hard drives per week via e-commerce and hoping to god no one traces back all these credit cards back to you or your pals.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#80

Post by dingaling »

vijayr wrote: post #77
conanbatt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have bought the item with a different account, in real life or someone else might have bought it for you.

sure that happens - on Amazon's scale, does it matter? As a consumer, I like a few honest reviews vs thousands of reviews that contain useless/dumb/rant type reviews. I'd have to weed through those reviews to find honest ones which takes time and energy, and ultimately I'd just give up - which defeats the purpose of reviews in the first place. But if you still want to address this problem, just allow the buyer to say…

Once you take a turn off the mainstream there are thousands of products on Amazon without any reviews. People therefore appreciate any information whether it was bought from Amazon or outwith.
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