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Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

latimes.com

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Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#71

Post by toofy »

jonhohle wrote: post #18
smallerfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AliExpress is less shady. If only they had customer service and a decent UI.

I recently dealt with a merchant in Aliexpress who was intentionally selling things well below market price, not to build their storefront reputation, but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel. I forced them to cancel the order, which harms their rep. Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice…

> Literally every unmanaged…

> This is why we can’t have nice things.

i think you’ve hit the nail on the head. it’s the unmanaged part. it isn’t clear to me how We collectively are shocked when these marketing and execs convince us “oh, there’s nothing we can do. having customer service would be cost prohibitive. making sure there are no scams would be cost prohibitive. etc… etc…”

how about you get some customer service and protect us from scams and don’t buy your third private island and fourth mega yacht and have net worth larger than a lot of countries?

oh, that’s asking too much. you’re right, “nothing” can be done.

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#72

Post by Scoundreller »

OJFord wrote: post #61
smallerfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AliExpress is less shady. If only they had customer service and a decent UI.

If only they would sort out their language / shipping country / currency model and make it so I can actually select what I want rather than their wrong assumption. (And that's me having that problem in English / England / GBP, not a weird combination.)

As a Canadian with a no forex credit card, I’ve found it cheaper to pay in USD, so it is.

I also get a lot of “Dear CA Customer” type emails.

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#73

Post by supertroop »

I can’t believe Nekhala managed to gross $6million on a bed scrunchy on Amazon without Chinese competitors pirating the design, even with a US patent. That in itself is a major accomplishment. At some point when progressives finally take the house perhaps we can get some real regulations in place so that someone banned from the system like this has recourse other than call tree AI.

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#74

Post by lotsofpulp »

jonhohle wrote: post #19
JKCalhoun wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't allow 3rd party sellers?

But then how could you skim off the top of other people’s work?

But then how could you compete for customers when they are all visiting the other websites to save a few dollars?

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#75

Post by ryandrake »

toofy wrote: post #71
jonhohle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently dealt with a merchant in Aliexpress who was intentionally selling things well below market price, not to build their storefront reputation, but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel. I forced them to cancel the order, which harms their rep. Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice…

> Literally every unmanaged… > This is why we can’t have nice things. i think you’ve hit the nail on the head. it’s the unmanaged part. it isn’t clear to me how We collectively are shocked when these marketing and execs convince us “oh, there’s nothing we can do. having customer service would be cost prohibitive. making sure there are no scams would be cost prohibitive. etc… etc…” how about you get some customer serv…

I don't think anything can be done, without regulation, which the USA is allergic to.

Why have customer service when the market doesn't seem to care and still buys your shit? Why crack down on scams when the market just does chargebacks, and yet keeps buying your shit?

So, we just deal with scammers, counterfeiters, drop shippers, fake brands, fake companies, fake products, all because regulation is seen as the worst thing that you could ever do to a business.

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#76

Post by pigeons »

theplumber wrote: post #53
gertrunde wrote: post #10

I tend to find ebay less shady than Amazon these days, which is a bit disapointing really.

EBay is the worst website someone can use for shopping…they just got it all wrong. Seems lead by people who don’t use it

Worst except for Amazon.

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#77

Post by grogenaut »

alexpotato wrote: post #64
topgrain2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has pushed me to high levels of brand loyalty with direct ordering from the brands I like and trust, plus a lot of buying used… also mostly products from a handful of trusted brands (this is largely clothes, nearly all of which I buy used except socks, underwear, and most sweaters)

Thermoworks (which makes excellent thermometers) no longer sells on Amazon b/c there were too many counterfeits/people selling broken items etc. You can now only order from their website which I am more than happy to do as their customer service is excellent. https://www.thermoworks.com

https://www.amazon.com/stores/ThermoWorks

actually... they gave up a while ago and have an amazon store.. it's been a few years IIRC

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#78

Post by grogenaut »

hex4def6 wrote: post #67
buzer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2022 I got physical mail about leaving a review for something I bought from Amazon (sold by company X, shipped by Amazon) in exchange for Amazon Gift Card. It contained the name of the product I bought. When I tried to report it to Amazon: * there was no obvious way to do it. Closest thing was by reporting issue on product. * there was no way to show the customer service agent a picture of the mail. Chat did not s…

Yep -- I've gotten multiple postcards in the mail and/or product box after ordering something telling me I'd get ~$5-$10 if I left a 5 star review. They thoughtfully included exact screenshots of how to submit the review. I also went looking for a way to report it. Eventually opened up a chat, didn't really get anywhere. (I also didn't appreciate getting junk mail for ordering something).

you go to account -> customer support -> click the order -> chat... or fraud or somthing else

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#79

Post by grogenaut »

jonhohle wrote: post #20
cmiles8 wrote: post #2

Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.” If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!

10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal. I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within the…

talking to several of the catalog unification projects and doing promo reviews for people, it turns out it wasn't as easy to do as people thought. there's places it worked well (media) and others where it's a lot harder.

Re: Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market

#80

Post by steve-atx-7600 »

jonhohle wrote: post #20
cmiles8 wrote: post #2

Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.” If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!

10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal. I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within the…

You'd think this trend would be obvious to product folks at Amazon unless they're living under a rock. And, you'd think they'd care about lowering conversion rates. I don't think name brand products will stop existing. In the long term, Amazon will lose out on business as people that can afford higher quality products will use Amazon less or just when they already know which brand/model they want to buy before hand.
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