This, and other instances of this scam make me not want to buy anything off Amazon ever again. Where is Amazon in this? Why is this even a thing? Is there no oversight at all? Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west and it makes me sick to think the once beloved marketplace is now just scamville. I typically buy from sellers websites now and rarely buy off of Amazon but now I feel I need to completely remove Amazon from my options.
Alibaba is much better than Amazon about seller verification. Look up, say, "PC power supply". On Amazon, you're lucky if you get the address of the seller and a product image.
Alibaba gives you multiple detailed pictures of the object, including its data plate. You get the full address of the seller, and whether it's the manufacturer or a reseller. There's usually a picture of the factory, info about their annual sales and number of employees, whether that's been verified by a third party, how fast they usually respond to inquries. Sometimes even what production equipment they use.
What certifications they have and who does their certifications.
Many of those companies will accept an order for one unit.
Alibaba & Aliexpress _do_ have a clone problem, but the notable distinction is that they don't aggressively comingle listings like Amazon does. This means for some common consumer items (fidget spinners, etc.) you'll find a hundred listings with identical images, slightly varying descriptions, and different factories, but you can easily choose which seller to buy from.
AliExpress can be pretty brutal. I went looking for a lithium power pack and it was clear that almost all the listings were the same crap with differently inflated capacities that were physically impossible.
I think it's a lot easier in the states to find high energy chemistry than it is here in Canada. Prices are much higher because the market is much smaller.
I found a manufacturer that seemed legit and orders a suitcase of LiFePO batteries. Will take about 60 days to arrive via ship but it was a huge pain to sort through the fake sellers.
Notably, Alibaba's core business is B2B. Business customers have very little tolerance for bad shipments, and are frequently repeat customers such that they would quickly have left Alibaba if they could not get predictable quality.
Yep. You will also often immediately get connected to a sales rep via chat, and they will follow up you all the way through to shipping and for any repeat orders.
Actually, Alibaba appears to have higher standards for their product listings, because pages are never merged. So the review takeover described in this post would not be possible on Alibaba ^_^
Yup. I tried buying Qualatex twisting balloons from Amazon. From the reviews I could clearly see some sellers were offering legit Qualatex and others were offering cheap knock-offs. Since the reviews are not matched to the seller, I could not tell which sellers were offering the real product. I ended up buying from eBay without issue.
Which makes you wonder why Amazon keeps this scam-enabling "feature". Do legit sellers really need it that much that Amazon keeps it despite the scams?
Many legit sellers – big names in all sectors – use the listings merging feature, from kindle books that are almost unreadable to network equipment that has variants with very different qualities. In many cases, Amazon is the seller.
As a customer I find it infuriating, and it feels as though it has been made more difficult over time to read the reviews for just the selected product.
I suspect that many transactions on Amazon simply would not happen if customers were better informed about what they are buying. I have no doubt that this is true across retailers – just think of all the things that have been hyped and sold that end up in garage sales barely used. It's far more common to see crap with five-star reviews than something great with three- or four-star reviews.
The feature kind of makes sense for purely cosmetic changes, like color – but even then it would be useful to have information about the actual variant.
I don't think this is some UI problem. I am quite sure it could be solved very quickly by showing reviews for the selected variant first, and then making it clear that other reviews are for other variants.
There is a way of somewhat mitigating this merging feature: Don't just look at aggregate review scores. Read the lower-end reviews. If the flaws are petty or expected, then that's great. If your variant is the worst of the bunch, you'll find out. But even with all that, it doesn't sort the takeover problem in the article.
Amazon tacitly supports this scam because it only cares about sales. It doesn't really care about the sellers.
It also knows that positive reviews have a huge influence in increasing sales, and negative reviews really dampens sales. This is why Amazon also allows what I call Product Page Hijacking.
How this works is, Amazon allows multiple models or variants of a product to be listed on the same page, so that all their reviews are mixed together. This deceptive practice hoodwinks many customers. There are 2 kinds of product page hijacking - somewhat obvious ones and the really sneaky kind.
Example of a somewhat obvious one - https://imgur.com/OfZLUeL - here, one product page actually lists multiple router models that have different features and configurations. While it is a bit obvious, the buyer still has to carefully read the reviews to figure out what model the review is about.
Example of the sneaky ones are products that only partially list their model number, and list and sell slightly different variants of model under a single product page.
E.g search for "TP-Link WR841" in https://dd-wrt.com/support/router-database/ - there are 9 variants of the same model (in essence, 9 different models) that are differentiated by a version number (v9, v10, v11 etc. after their model name).
But instead of creating a product page for each variant - "TP-Link WR841N v9" or "TP-Link WR841N v11" or "TP-Link WR841N v13" - only one product page is created under "TP-Link WR841N" and all the variants are sold under it. The variations in the models are sometimes not minor - some of the variants have a higher RAM and even totally different CPU! Since all the variants are sold under one product page, the reviews posted are actually for all these different variants. But the buyer will often have no idea of that. And they may not even receive the product they think the reviews are recommending!
The router issue is even more insidious as the vendors may not even know which version they have as the manufacturer considers them all identical even though they can be entirely different.
I don't think it has reached that stage though - so far, they have been clearly labelling the full model name of the product on the box and / or on the product. (I think it may be illegal for them to do otherwise as they have to obtain various certifications when they ship the product). So the vendors do know what products they have. It is kind of deceptive advertising on Amazon - they deliberately mislabel the product model by not including the version number (which is actually part of the model name).
There is not much to wonder about, Amazon does it because it critical to their fulfillment service, one of the key ways amazon makes money and keeps it 1-2 day delivery times is inventory mixing, i.e if you order from Seller X, you may actually get Stock that Seller Y shipped in.
This is why they need to merge listings into 1. It is also why there is soo much fraud on Amazon, and I dont believe they will ever fix it, the logistic costs would make Fulfilled by Amazon unprofitable if they had to stop mixing stock
If they use the Fufilled By Amazon service, which if you want to have "Prime" shipping you have to, then yes that is possible and more common than it should
The way the service works, is that you the vendor will ship your products into a amazon warehouse, other vendors will ship the "same items" a amazon warehouse, all of these "same items" are mixed together in the inventory system, your account is has a credit of "X items" but not the specific items you shipped in to the warehouse
Example
Acme Vendor shipped to amazon 15 Logitech MX Mouses
When amazon gets the mouses it take all 30 and puts them in a big box, as the orders are filled even if you ordered from Acme, you make get one of the one Evil shipped into Amazon
I think there’s a discount if you allow commingled inventory (or a cost to keep it separate) which makes sense as Amazon has to track and potentially stock it in multiple warehouses
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.
Amazon taking action against the vendor, and consumers blaming the wrong vendor.
When you order from Amazon Marketplace you can clearly see who you are ordering from, even if Amazon shipping the item. Consumers getting a bad product will then no only review the item but the seller with negative feedback even though the seller they bought it from may have done nothing wrong
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.
The idea behind it was a good one - if you’re selling a book about cats, and you update the book to fix some typos (easy to do with Kindle for example) you don’t want to lose all your reviews.
And then they added a feature where if multiple marketplace vendors are selling the same thing it combines them.
And a third feature lets you classify items as various colors of a product (but the same product - think blue vs pink socks) and all the reviews get combined.
So if you do all three in the right order you can change anything to anything now, even taking another listing.
It's a good feature, it just needs more safeguards.
I'd also like to see a feature where established customers ($x bought over y time) can flag an entry as suspect--an entry gets enough flags and a human looks at it. If the entry turns out to be suspect everyone who flagged it gets a bit more flagging reputation, if it's wrong they get a bit less. The more flagging reputation you have the more your flag counts towards getting a human to investigate.
I don't think anyone would mind that (even the scammers) - because what the scammers want is "Five/four star" and "400 reviews" to show - they don't care what the actual reviews even say.
> And then they added a feature where if multiple marketplace vendors are selling the same thing it combines them.
It's more the other way around. Initially you could only sell something on marketplace if it was something Amazon already listed, usually a book. There would be an option on the Amazon listing to buy it elsewhere and if you selected that there would be a list of non-Amazon sellers you could buy the book from - these would normally be individuals reselling books they had finished reading.
Is there no oversight at all? Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west and it makes me sick to think the once beloved marketplace is now just scamville.
This. Most of the time now when I buy from Amazon it feels like buying from a garage sale / flea market. Some examples from my purchases -- 4 pack of AA Eneloops arrived as 2 AAs and 2 AAAs; 2 identical office chairs arrived as 2 different models; Simple Human trash can arrived with 3 softball sized dents in different places; Spigen phone case arrived with some sort of tiny worms/maggots inside a corner of the packaging; Clorox antibacterial wipes arrived in generic packaging containing dry wipes. Porter Yoshida backpack arrived as a similar looking Herschel backpack in the same color.
I remember buying from Amazon and getting solid products really really fast; not sure where that's gone. I do use Amazon for the free Whole Foods delivery and that's been OK, though there's very lax usage of temperature-safe packaging for dairy and meat products.
This has been my experience lately as well. Packaging that looked like it was broken into or returned leaving me to wonder what was left out. I recently bought a GoPro and received a shady sdcard with it (the package comes with one). When I put the microsd card in the sdcard it wouldn’t come out. I threw both away. Packages that were busted up. Packaging that looked like someone else got there first. I’m done. I’m over it. After this mess with Klein Bottles I just deleted the app from my phone. I don’t have prime so it’s not that hard for me to never shop Amazon again.
I went cold turkey on Amazon a few months back; the only thing I've kept is the TV subscription.
What I realised is that it was just a dependency because it was so easy to search for and buy stuff. Nowadays I'll buy from a smaller shop if I need something, but it's more likely that I think "do I actually need this?" and say "no."
For me their killer feature is ease and certainty of returns. If I am buying online I need to option to return items that are not as they appear, and Amazon offers that quite readily.
So I think the major hurdle for other businesses is getting a reputation for prompt and free return acceptance if they want to sell things sight unseen.
At least here in Europe, returns are painless in almost all cases. Give it a shot!
This is especially true for larger and more expensive items (like electronics) where - I can not stress this enough - it is much, much better to buy directly from the company (I'd say 95% of all companies now have d2c shops on their websites).
It used to be the case that Amazon had an advantage in customer support and returns. I feel this is no longer true. I bought an expensive electronic item from Amazon and, when it broke, I send it in under warranty (in the EU, the first six months are essentially no questions asked repairs). Amazon send it to a third-party repair shop that send it back to me without any repair.
By contrast, I had to replace an item from a large consumer electronics company, which I had bought directly with them. They sent me a new one __before__ I had sent in my old item, and the new box included the shipping label to send back the damaged one. Much easier!
Beyond all this, it's obvious that Amazon is now home to fake and faux products.
It is my view that the only product worth ordering there are cheapo China duplicates, for a price where you will be okay if they break after one week of use.
Otherwise, go with the supplier. It perhaps takes more than a day to ship, but often it doesn't. You can return any item for any reason within two weeks (in the EU), and damaged items can be returned within warranty anyway - usually with less hassle.
So folks, please stop buying stuff from Amazon if you can help it. As this - and countless other instances - has shown, Amazon is no longer worth supporting, for any reason.
I'm in Canada and recently I started getting Prime items shipped from the US, with no indication on the listing or at checkout that it was gonna be shipped internationally. It makes returns much less pain-free.
For international returns they don't have labels, you need to pay for shipping, and they supposedly reimburse up to $20 shipping fees but I have found no evidence of an actual process in place to claim it.
(I had to return a book because they sent me a hardcover loosely packed in a box, from the US to Canada. Of course it was damaged in transport. For a place that started out as a book store this is really dumb. I re-ordered it from Chapters, who packed it properly.)
I find that I'm more likely to get an item as expected from another store, and will only need to use the return policy if I change my mind or something else happens.
Whereas Amazon basically doesn't care about the inventory it ships and your only choice, really, is to use the return policy to actually get what you want.
I'm in the UK so I enjoy some solid consumer rights (at least for the time being). Plenty of online retailers ship return labels and packaging with your order, should you need to send something back.
Also, Walmart.com has similar prices and selection. Free shipping is $35 though. I’ve had much better results with Walmart packaging and shipping lately.
In the US, I prefer walmart.com over Amazon for groceries because they do their usual price vetting, whereas you can end up paying three times the normal price for something on Amazon if you're not careful.
Their return window is 90 days versus Amazon’s 30 and they actually let you schedule the return pick-up date. Also, their Prime-competitor Walmart+ service[0] ($98/year) has no order minimums.
I have their Walmart Plus. If I'm buying a major brand item I go to Walmart. 0 chance of knockoffs. I get 2 day free shipping. And - if it's in stock locally, many times they deliver directly from the store and I get it next day (no option to tip...so no pressure there).
I use their store delivery option if I'm buying certain groceries or items I need ASAP. Yeah I need to tip - but I consider it me saving gas money/time.
Walmart sources their instore shopping to door dash employees. Doordash delivers their product whether you use the Walmart.com, or Walmart Groceries (in store).
The only difference is that it's more explicit it comes from doordash when you use Walmart Groceries.
To note, buying from the sellers website can be a blessing or a curse.
It is true in sometimes unexpected ways. For instance some sellers just don't care about notifications; it might be because they usually work with professional buyers who work on a long timescale ("I need it for this quarter") and will contact the seller on a regular basis if they care.
Some sellers just don't want to deal with you. I had a "mom and pop" for who my business wasn't really a priority (well, fine), sent me random junk after misreading my order, and it was a PITA to sort the situation.
Basically, going out of Amazon (the new Alibaba as you say) is also returning to the Wild Wild West. There is no real choice than to deal with both, but god is it a pain.
Having sold Klein bottles from my website for 20 years and from Amazon from 4 or 5 years, here's my experience:
- it's way more fun through my Kleinbottle website. I've customized my checkout to what I sell. When there's a problem, it's easier to contact a buyer.
- I can show any amount of information on my website; Amazon has 5 bullet points and 1000 characters of description. This, of course, cuts both ways - a quick logical summary helps many people. Long, wordy websites (ahem) can be a problem.
- Amazon provides security that you'll get what they've ordered. Buying through my website, well, some people are scared off by its primitive style and mathematical humor. (well, attempted humor).
- My credit card processor takes a < 3% haircut. With Amazon, it's 12% plus $40/month.
- My customers are my friends. Likely, I'll meet them at a seminar, colloquium, or if they visit the East Bay. I hope they'll remember me by the good service that I try to provide. This tends to be easier when I handle an order through my website.
Oh man, you are a legend to me! I deeply appreciate you and I remember that the first purchase I ever made on the internet 20 years ago was one of your klein bottles! It was such a scary but amazing first experience. It seemed so magical at the time, to buy an object from the other side of the world! As a teenager I had to convince my dad to use his credit card. We were afraid to send the credit card number by email, and we used a fax machine by your suggestion.
The bottle arrived broken and we were dismayed. We sent you a careful report with photos of the packaging and the broken bottle (real film photos, that we had to develop and then scan into the computer to produce an email). You were so kind to send a new bottle and even said sorry. I was amazed by your reply and by the fact that people so far away could be kind to each other. It really blew my mind. At the time, in my country, the internet was seen as a really unsafe place were you were not supposed to ever say your real name.
To this day, I keep both bottles you sent as my most prized possessions. The cracked one is actually cooler, and the crack has been growing (you can make the crack grow by pressing slightly with the thumb). In a few years it will break the bottle apart in a topologically interesting way.
Of course, Enrique! I'm tickled that you remember me - and delighted that both Kleinbots have survived across the years.
I do check every item that I send out -- I hold it up to a bright light looking for cracks - but sometimes trouble sneaks through. I'll do my best to fix things - replace, refund, or solve a differential equation (ODE, not PDE's, please).
You, in turn, have a responsibility to spread the good word -- I hope you're teaching & making this too-mundane world into a better place.
You're absolutely right. but very few sellers are like you. (That's part of why we love you so much.) Outside the small "art" industry, almost none are like you.
I actually remember visiting your site at one point, and I think this is a case where going through a seller is a net advantage :)
I see it not really on the "shopping" experience, and more as you point out because as a buyer I'd need/want way more information than what Amazon will ever provide on a single page, and also because there is a context surrounding the product that is far far away from a "just buy" transaction.
I also see some hobby sites like Bricklink as something Amazon will never be a replacement of. Fundamentally I think specific seller sites are needed.
> “Executives knew this was gonna shit the bed,” this person said. “That’s actually how they put it in meetings. The only question was how much poo we wanted there to be.”
It's hard to give up the convenience and fast delivery (with Amazon Prime) though. In my experience, I haven't run into many problems with fraud or fake products (that I know of). I try to avoid third party sellers and only order from Amazon or the seller.
Fast delivery seems to have become an addiction in our fast-paced lives. Do we really need that new thing tomorrow? Probably not. Yet we can't delay the gratification.
You can often pick stuff up at a local store - e.g. certain couriers have deals with local supermarkets. It sometimes means pick ups are cheaper than the standard paid options.
I order lots of stuff I need on Amazon. Not want, need, and while it’s not life or death usually I need it sooner rather than later. If I can wait, usually I’d just order it elsewhere (including from somewhere like Taobao or Alibaba/Aliexpress and waiting months for it).
And that’s exactly where Amazon is super difficult to replace. The current competition is not other online retailers but coordinating with my wife such that she can look after the kid so I can go sit in traffic for an hour to get to the store and grab a couple of things we need for some quick home repairs, etc.
I've also found that if I am looking at a longer delivery time then I put more thought into evaluating if I really need the product, or if I could make do with something else, or if there is a better product available elsewhere. I then tend to focus on quality and other fitness for purpose instead of which item is on Prime delivery.
Well from a business stand point, I know we have shifted alot of our daily supply things for IT from a "Keep 10 of these instock at all times" to "Just order it from Amazon as needed" due to the faster delivery time
Just as Manufactures have shifted to JIT for many parts on the production line, other business processes have as well.
I can get pretty quick delivery from a few other companies in my country. What I can't get is the very very lenient warranty that Amazon gives. Other companies will work as hard as possible to make replacing something under warranty as painful as possible. Amazon basically goes 'sure, ok' and either refunds or sends a replacement.
Amazon co-mingles inventory so I have in several cases chosen 'sold by Amazon.de' or the brand name seller and gotten what seem to be fakes. This is common for anything mid-range, e.g. good brand-name pots and pans such as WMF, shoes, utensils, ...
In other cases I've gotten clearly opened/used items sold as new, e.g. woodworking tools.
While I still purchase some things from Amazon, anything that's to be ingested or involves supplying electrical current is a no. It's a sad day when GNC is a more reputable place to shop than Amazon.
I've been using it to buy car parts and it is SO MUCH better than dealing with junkyards (LKQ/Car-Parts websites suck!) and everything that I've got so far including parts from Latvia and Germany have been genuine.
eBay too is full of knock-off trash from China but you can easily tell those apart from a real listing most of the time with reviews being unique per listing/seller. And eBay allows for local pickups too!
The one exception to car parts sites being shit is rockauto. Just start typing in the search bar and it figures out what year make model and part you're looking for. Their search experience is light-years ahead of any other auto parts website and might actually be the best product search interface I've found anywhere, hiding out on a car parts site. I highly encourage anyone interested in product search ux to go check it out.
Just bought a new radiator from Rock Auto. I think it was like 3 clicks to drill down to the part. I just tried your method and was blown away. After I entered the year and make, and was halfway into typing the model, it autocompleted all the way to my trim level and I resumed typing "radia" where it suggested all the relevant things. Hitting enter, I watched it navigate the tree on the left.
Small delights like that are worth serious money.
I love sites that have such a structured categorization of their items. McMaster-Carr is the gold standard IMO, and RockAuto is pretty close.
McMaster-Carr is awesome, but I believe they are very business/professional oriented.
I needed some brass thread-ins with bolts and they got the job done but now I'm sitting on a minimum sized order of ~50 pieces that I won't be using anytime soon. Maybe I can resell them eBay. Hah.
I just bought some grade 8 hardware from them. It was cheaper than Fastenal, even with shipping, and they delivered overnight. I had to buy in higher quantities than I needed but the extras will get used at some point.
McMaster is also typically not cheap. Their claim to fame is that they deliver really quickly. We can get stuff from them same or next day about 95% of the time. For slightly slower delivery but better pricing, Zoro Tools has much of the same stuff.
For some M16-1.5 bolts I ordered last week (and received the next day), McMaster-Carr was considerably cheaper than any other source. [EDIT:] Although Zoro doesn't seem to carry that size bolt in lots smaller than 25, I'll certainly be checking them for other items in future... thanks for the reference! I just wish they sorted their filter parameters by size rather than by SKU quantity.
Interesting that people have these experiences. I use eBay a lot, mostly buying 2nd hand computer hardware and retro gaming stuff(consoles/games/accessories) and I'd say I have problems with as many as 50% of all my purchases. Some bigger problems where I want to return the item, some smaller ones where I paid extra for postage but it was ignored, that sort of thing. The complaints procedure exist but it's weak(seller sells a "mint condition" genuine PS2 controller, got the controller it's all dirty and with frayed cable, complain to seller, they say "oh it's mint for the age, nothing wrong with it", complain to ebay, seller has a week to respond, nothing, ebay sends me a label to ship it back, have to go to the post office to send it back, wait another week, nothing, ebay finally refunds me my money. You know how it would work with Amazon? I would complain in chat, they would send a courier to pick it up from me the next working day, I would have the money back 5 minutes after the courier picked up the parcel). And then I had someone send me actual expletives-filled email calling me all kinds of worst things in the world because I left a neutral(!!!) feedback on their account, after I paid extra for 1st class postage but they shipped 2nd class. And sellers in general just have no idea about consumer laws(yes, if you sold this item as brand new then you have to accept a 14 day return by law) which leads to arguments and just in general everything being so stressful.
I've had over 200 amazon orders last year, didn't have a problem with a single one of them. Few times I wanted to return something they either sent a courier to collect it from me directly, or just refunded me anyway. And few times I ordered from somewhere else(urrghhh.....Currys) the customer service was absolutely abysmal. I'm just not brave enough to order from anyone but Amazon nowadays*.
*here in the UK, understand the American Amazon is far worse for <reasons>
eBay is better as each seller gets a distinct listing Amazon letting sellers just kinda take over listings is a huge problem and has led to many scams like this and more commonly review scams where they sees the listing with positive reviews for a legit cheap product but swap it out for whatever their money grab is.
I have always had very good experiences with eBay. Several times I’ve been screwed on Amazon. With eBay I can also add a lot of filters to my search which I like. I can immediately exclude items shipped directly from China. Or search for something within 100km so I know I can just go pick it up. eBay has just been so much better from my experience.
I now buy a bunch of stuff from AliExpress because at least they don't even try to pretend that (most of) their products are crap. When I want something cheap and don't care about waiting a month, I go there to get it directly from the source.
Definitely or worse. I use Amazon as a last resort. eBay is first choice for cheap stuff. For expensive stuff I tend to go for bricks and mortar stores.
I often find things on Amazon, then go directly to the seller's webpage or search for a book on other bookstores. You can often get it cheaper, and with peace of mind that it isn't counterfeit. Only really buy on Amazon if it really doesn't exist anywhere else and really need it.
I got rid of prime and have basically stopped buying from them, and don't feel any loss. Usually if they're way cheaper on something it's over the minimum shipping requirement and I end up buying less stuff rather than paying more for stuff. highly recommend it.
Both Amazon and Aliexpress/baba follow a "this is a city" mentality. Crime and such are understood as statistics, not as a thing happening under their roof. This is a "beef up police funding next cycle" kind of problem.
Any one scam might be defeatable, but "scamming exists" seems to be true in any marketplace with enough participants.
I already stopped. I used to be a Prime subscriber, and use smile.amazon.com for charitable benefits. I don't use amazon at all now, because I don't trust that I will get what I think I am paying for.
Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. have almost completely automated customer/user service to keep costs down. Their business model depends on that.
The consumers are in the position of primitive people in front of their gods. They have to come together and pray for gods to notice them if they want wrongs to be righted.
It would be better to solve this through legislation.
