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A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

kleinbottle.com

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

#81
post #2

These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new. B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Crutchfield/Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even…

I know most people here are in the US, but for anyone in Japan, check out Yodobashi as an Amazon alternative. They have more curated products and deliver most items the same day in the Tokyo area for free with no subscription.

It’s incredible you can have one tiny part delivered within hours for free. I feel bad doing that though, so I always try to cluster my orders just to be nice to their delivery people and the environment.

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

#82
post #2

These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new. B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Crutchfield/Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even…

Exactly right. Watching Ebay and Amazon converge on being "Aliexpress" has really made me sad. I understand the folks who are measuring themselves by how effectively they promise quality and deliver crap to their customers. I understand their goal is maximum profit as their best score. And I understand that enough of the market doesn't care that it is crap that they prefer this over a quality good. Back when Walmart…

>> Aliexpress

I used to buy a lot of cheap things on there, then something interesting started happening. Every time I made a purchase on there, literally a few weeks later, I would start getting fraudulent charges on my card. Thank god, my bank would call and ask, "Are you in Paris France right now? Someone just tried to purchase 3,000 euros worth of clothing on your card."

I haven't bought anything on there for about 5 years now and remarkably as soon as I stopped buying stuff off of their site, I have yet to have my cc number end up on some carders market and deal with getting a new credit card.

I also did some research and found out many, many, many people have had the same issues with bad charges showing up on their card after making purchases on that site.

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

#84
post #2

These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new. B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Crutchfield/Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even…

Exactly right. Watching Ebay and Amazon converge on being "Aliexpress" has really made me sad. I understand the folks who are measuring themselves by how effectively they promise quality and deliver crap to their customers. I understand their goal is maximum profit as their best score. And I understand that enough of the market doesn't care that it is crap that they prefer this over a quality good. Back when Walmart…

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 the relative value of two products is for the quality to be factored into the price exactly, with all externalities realized up front. But how to design such a scheme that isn't instantly gamed into oblivion is unclear to me.

It's like the value we're looking for is the depth of it's "truth", if you grant me poetic license to use that phasing, but that definition is not specific enough to be actionable.

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

#85
post #2

These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new. B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Crutchfield/Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even…

I stumbled upon an unusual policy when trying to order from B&H the first time. They are not open for business on Shabbat (NYC local time), and this includes their online checkout! I could fill up my cart, but had to come back later to do my purchase.

A friend of mine worked with some Plymouth Brethren who wouldn't use computers, but had a stationery company. They employed someone else to build them a website and run it, then print out the orders and hand them over. I've not heard of a religious order that didn't even want to allow people outside the order to "break" the rules. Although perhaps it's something about money ending up in their bank account?

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stumbled upon an unusual policy when trying to order from B&H the first time. They are not open for business on Shabbat (NYC local time), and this includes their online checkout! I could fill up my cart, but had to come back later to do my purchase.

I respect people's religions but adherence to constraints like these -- to the extent that the automatons cannot even work -- are silly.

Let's take this to extreme. Commandment "Thou shalt not kill", would it be ok to let automatons kill instead of you and this would not be considered sin? (playing devils advocate)

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect people's religions but adherence to constraints like these -- to the extent that the automatons cannot even work -- are silly.

You can't say you respect my religion and then call me silly at the same time. Perhaps you're the one that's silly.

I think respect is for people, not religions. I don’t even know what it means to respect a religion, unless you adhere to it. Respect for people includes respecting their right to practice their religion, even if you think it is silly. That respect also means you don’t go out of your way to point fingers and laugh at every opportunity, but not the obligation to keep your opinion secret either. Due respect can be a difficult balancing act sometimes.

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

#88

They're still in denial that they have a problem. Just read the thread on the previous occasion where listings got hijacked on their own fora [0] - its sad to see the sellers so powerless, helpless and just left to themselves. You really have to wonder why they even bother... Edit: also, reading that thread you can also get a feel why big brands have completely left AMZN as a platform (like Adidas, Birkenstock are a…

The one thing I don't get, and I worked for AMZN in logistics, is the co-mingling of inventory. It is so easy to solve, poses so many problems and yet the logistics benchmark company fails to do it right.

I always assumed they tracked co-mingled sourcing internally, but don't have a reason to make it public.

At least that way they could trace the people who were seriously poisoning the co-mingled well, in circumstances where they wanted to.

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do people manage to figure out such elaborate ways to manipulate Amazon results without getting banned? Getting banned has minimal cost? Poor detection? Inside information? They don't actually ban the accounts doing this. They only remove the reviews/listings, but don't take any action on the accounts (so they just re-list 24 hours later) Apparently when Amazon acts, they are just removing the fake reviews, som…

> Amazon simply do not care Why though? How does this not hurt Amazon long term? What are they gaining from attracting dodgy sellers in the short term?

Revenue.

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

#90
post #6

That sucks. Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn't aware of the details previously. Also, if anyone is unaware, this is this Clifford Stoll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll - who wrote this brilliant (and true) book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) - which is a really good read and perfect for HN.

Has anyone read his other book ‘Silicon Snake Oil’ [1] from 1995 lately? Sounds like most of his predictions in it (eg e-commerce will fail, digital books will not be viable, etc) were wildly off the mark - but were any prescient? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil

Just from skimming through the book, it seems like its central thesis is an enumeration of all the ways in which computers and the Internet are terrible, accompanied by predictions that none of those flaws are ever likely to change. So it's not really a matter of any of his predictions being "prescient", it's just that some things have improved drastically, and others less so.

For example, he complains that nobody will want to look up information from computerized databases because CD-ROMs are too slow; consumers won't shop online because they can't pay securely; retailers won't rely on e-commerce because too few customers have Internet access; nobody will want e-books because you can't read them on the subway; there's no way to effectively search for content online; digital art will never surpass clip art and crude photoshops; it's impossible for networks to be secure because data and credentials are unencrypted; and so on.

On the bright side, he thinks that at least nobody will need to worry about online privacy, because it will be too cumbersome for anyone to effectively maintain databases of personal information.

But on the other hand, with some of his observations, it's at least arguable that they still hold true 25 years later:

> Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion. Online debates of tough issues are often polarized by messages taking extreme positions.

> An original IBM PC, now over ten years old, is fully obsolete. Likely, it will still work perfectly and do everything it was build for; after all, the silicon and copper haven't deteriorated. But you can't get software for it any longer.

> A word processor may last two years before the next version. These upgrades likely add as many new bugs as are patched, and result in a bigger, more complex program. One that's less and less compatible with old files. [...] Curiously, as computer hardware gets faster, programs run slower.

> Photo retouching isn't new. Digital image processing, however, can be so extensive yet undetectable that it undermines the foundation of photojournalism -- that seeing is believing.

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