The New York Times did some decent reporting into the pseudo-brands which comes closer to answering the question in the title: having a registered trademark unlocks a lot of on-platform seller tools (predictive analytics, early review program, etc.), and the easiest path to a trademark is to have an utterly unique, nonsense name. Some Chinese municipalities were also offering cash incentives for citizens who obtained foreign intellectual property registrations, further exacerbating the problem.
But why are so many of these pseudo-brands exactly 1. six characters long, 2. all caps, and have 3. point-form descriptions that 4. use some particular emoji as bullet-point symbols, and 5. give each point a separate, usually-capitalized "title" part, 6. enclosed in either square brackets or the even-more-niche punctuation【 】?
To me, that reads either like these all being marques of one company; or there being some Chinese "start a turn-key Amazon business" SaaS that most of these pseudo-brands make use of, which generates a brand name for you, and for product descriptions, takes structured key-value input and formats it into text in this style.
Either way, it seems like finding that entity, and preventing it from interacting with Amazon, would stop a majority of this in its tracks.
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mofiQ7EGBH8 — all the branded "knock-off" smartphones on Wish/AliExpress with hardware meant to look like some well-known phone, but with generic software (usually with a start-up screen that says "WELCOME"), are in fact made by a single white-label manufacturer, Microhand/KST (https://www.microhand.net/english/).
Your guess that this is driven by a SaaS is built around assumptions of how process and repetition is structured in the West and its labor markets but this doesn't hold in China.
In reality, there's no SaaS to automate this because labor is still too cheap in China to build tooling for this. Rather there's a cottage industry of "design" contractors built around selling to Aliexpress/Taobao/FBA brands. These contractors have an evolving, but largely standardized set of practices and aesthetic principles that they use to offer a basket of products — logo, product descriptions, brand collateral — resulting in this uniform weirdness across every NeoProduct.
There's no centralized entity or product for Amazon to smack down. If it updates its merchant requirements to prevent this specific aesthetic from proliferating across the platform, the "design" hive in China will update its practices, go through a period of discovery where things will look a little different from each other, before settling back into a new standardized form.
edit: while I believe my comment above to be generally true, the parent actually explores my argument with other people and makes a convincing rebuttal. I'm leaving my comment up but I encourage folks to go down and read about the specific formatting choices that don't appear elsewhere on the Western or Chinese internet.
#6: These are full-width brackets. Most Chinese input method editors will output full-width characters by default instead of the half-width ones that you're accustomed to.
For example: ，。；：【】
If you ever see an Amazon listing have full-width characters, they're almost certainly either Chinese sellers or sellers that are really good a copying and pasting from Chinese sellers.
Because it's not just the big things that are the same; it's the little points of style that a "marketplace of ideas" wouldn't think to share or copy.
You'd expect, if you allowed someone to study your notes before a test, that they'd possibly end up using similar turns-of-phrase to yours on the test. You wouldn't expect that they'd end up learning to perfectly duplicate your handwriting. It'd both be too hard, and not worth it, to do so; and they already have their own handwriting style. So why would they?
Ah, but if you both learned to write from the same person, then you would expect the handwriting to look similar (even if you didn't let them see your notes).
And I think that might be going on here. Take a look at a Chinese-language web site, like http://news.baidu.com
You'll see that it has the "niche" punctuation you mentioned, lots of point form descriptions with emoji bullets, and nearly all the latin script on the page is composed of short strings of all-caps text (many of which are acronyms like "IPO" or "AEX" that would be nonsensical if you didn't already know what they meant).
Some of these stylistic elements are naturally going to bleed over into Amazon listings too.
That's certainly an alternative possibility; more likely, IMHO, than sellers copying one-another perfectly. However...
> You'll see that it has the "niche" punctuation you mentioned
It does, but there are only two examples of it on the page right now. (It is a thing common to Chinese text generally, but it's not the first thing you'd reach for.)【】gets used on this page as a sort of "tag" or "section" for a story. In Amazon product descriptions, meanwhile, it's being used to form a sort of two-tier "【title】body" text; as if compressing a slide-deck slide onto a single line. That's not what those characters are "for", in Chinese. It's a misuse. A Chinese reader would be confused.
> lots of point form descriptions with emoji bullets,
There are no emoji bullets on Baidu; there are styled bullets. But also, when I say "emoji bullets", I don't mean that they use emoji as bullets; I mean that they use regular bullets, and then use emojis as additional "decorations" for each point. Like this: https://i.imgur.com/xW3uPEP.png . AFAIK, nobody does this, anywhere on the Internet, Chinese or otherwise, other than on these brands' Amazon product pages. Because it's silly.
Consider also: if this was just "the way Chinese people write product descriptions on marketplace websites", then you'd expect to see it happening on e.g. AliExpress, or among Chinese sellers on Wish.com. But you don't. On both of those sites, product listings (from Chinese sellers) just use regular, random+inconsistent styling, with a diffusion of different stylistic techniques spreading via natural selection of sellers; with none of these particular techniques being among them. It's only a certain implicit web of a few thousand Amazon product brands, that have this extremely-consistent style.
Can't believe "【Title tags】body text" notation is washing up here. This has to be, to describe in a William-Gibsonian description, an old Japanese practice in email titles heavily used in 2ch/5ch later became popular in Rakuten listings mimicked by Chinese listings on Amazon JP that ultimately leaked into Amazon US via machine translations.
I have never seen it done in anything other than in Japanese text, and translations of. Not sure about double bullet points, but this usage of 【】 is distinctly Japanese.
> You'd expect, if you allowed someone to study your notes before a test, that they'd possibly end up using similar turns-of-phrase to yours on the test. You wouldn't expect that they'd end up learning to perfectly duplicate your handwriting.
Consider a foreign seller who perhaps doesn't have a great grasp of the English language or the cultural context of the US. When you add your own spin to someone else's idea you are leveraging a lot of implicit knowledge to be able to spin it in a way that makes sense. If you don't have that implicit knowledge (and are not going to be penalized for verbatim copying) why try something different from what you have seen be successful already?
What I'm saying is that it would take an immense amount of effort, looking at literally tens of thousands of Amazon listings, to even realize that "this is what everyone else is doing." I noticed these patterns because I personally went through the top 100 items in every leaf-node category of the Amazon store a few months back (because I treat "finding obscure solutions to problems I didn't know I had" as a hobby.) No new Amazon seller is going to do that; and so no new Amazon seller is going to notice every detail of the pattern.
Or, to put that another way: if this were a "marketplace of ideas", there'd be a certain amount of mutation, of copying error, to be expected, from individual sellers not noticing all of the stylistic quirks other sellers use; and instead substituting something random.
But instead, what you see is perfect copying of style, with no mutation or variation, among what are ostensibly thousands of distinct sellers/brands. That's implausible.
(Also, for a bit of a knock-down argument I maybe should have pulled out sooner: when there's an update to the "optimal style" used by these brands? They all change. All at once. Thousands of different brands got rid of the 【】 — replacing it with [] — on the same day, some time last year. Real independent sellers, even if they notice tiny changes in popular style like that, can't react that fast, and don't have time to be constantly updating all their product listings. But a SaaS sales platform with a post-maintenance bot sure does!)
> What I'm saying is that it would take an immense amount of effort, looking at literally tens of thousands of Amazon listings, to even realize that "this is what everyone else is doing."
You're assuming cause & effect here.
To this point, imagine:
- The crowd following the leader / a particular success story
- Most individual sellers are not actually "individual": Same owner or network
- "Educational" boot camps to "get rich". There are towns where people gathered to learn from "the pros" (search for related documentaries)
- Learning from the same person, e.g. via tiktok-esque platform
- Subscribed to update packages
- Generator to fill forms
> That's implausible.
'thousands' is tiny in terms of scale at China.
Imagine yourself as a seller within a network of an extremely competitive network, with a "succeed or hunger" mindset, would you follow and immediately implement any changes that can improve your chance of success?
e.g. New gossip of the day: "Amazon is going to ban any seller using the characters 【】"
Try to relate why being on the first page on HN can bring certain websites down?
I think you are also underestimating what 'travem' mentioned about language and literacy.
Again, imagine you have a limited or zero grasp of the English language. The alphabetical letters are just gibberish to your eyes, but you know you can copy them as your native language characters on your PC/smartphone. Would you attempt to be creative or play it safe?
> Most individual sellers are not actually "individual": Same owner or network
> Subscribed to update packages
> Generator to fill forms
...are fully in line with my argument. My hypothesis wasn't specifically that this was a SaaS system doing this. Rather, my hypothesis was that there's a Single-Point-of-Failure entity or platform that these listings go through — a Borg Queen that could be taken down; and that doing so would stop thousands of sellers in their tracks. I'm agnostic to what form that entity or platform takes.
You might be interested to hear my own guess as to a possible mechanism for this, though, as it's not listed among your alternatives. That guess is that there are a very small number of Chinese companies that advertise their services as writing/managing English-language Amazon product listings, for companies that have no English speakers. These companies use human labor, not automation, but they have a strict style guide, which both informs the format of their output, and the type of input they require from their clients. The network of sellers whose listings look the same, are all the work of one such English-language post-localization company (the largest/most popular one), and so all adhere to one uniform style guide. This company, at least, has the seller themselves register with Amazon; but from there, takes over responsibility for creating products in their account, managing returns claims, etc. They promise to "take care of" every interaction with Amazon FBA that requires English knowledge, and to only bother the seller for things that are really important.
This would explain the reluctance of these sellers to engage through Amazon customer service (instead sending cards with their products that say "please report any issues to <email address>") — they don't manage their own product listings (rather, the contractor does); and they don't trust the English-language-product-listings contractor to know enough about their product to do customer service; and it's hard to coordinate their separate English-language customer-support contractor (the one you reach via the email on the card) to be able to receive + respond to messages on postings managed by the product-listings contractor.
It would also make an interesting prediction: that you'll only see the particular style I described in my top post, in Amazon's English-language product listings, because each contract company would likely focus on selling product-listing localization services for a particular language, so different language ⇒ different company ⇒ different style guide.
> e.g. New gossip of the day: "Amazon is going to ban any seller using the characters 【】"
You'd expect some people to miss that news. And even for people who see the update — no matter how "hungry" they are — you'd expect some sellers to let the news slip past them. For every such disseminated "Amazon Seller pro tip", you'd expect less than perfect 100% engagement. And yet engagement with these changes is 100% — at least within this network of sellers where engagement has historically been 100%.
(Just to beat this point to death, consider the ultimate in centralized top-down "do it exactly one way" skill dissemination: driving. Does every 16-year-old who is highly motivated and hungry to get out on the road, learn every rule of the road + constantly execute their learned driving skills perfectly? Sadly, no. Humans are not good at perfectly absorbing skills, and are also fallible at executing them.)
> a possible mechanism for this [...] They promise to "take care of" every interaction with Amazon FBA that requires English knowledge, and to only bother the seller for things that are really important.
Very likely.
In my previous comment, I focused on the perspective of individual sellers (i.e. entrepreneurial) who have bulk contracts with the local manufacturers. They are the group who are unlikely to commit to "all-inclusive" packages, as they value financial cost overwhelmingly more than personal time, relative to other groups. Think college students, retirees, unemployed, people from poorer areas, etc. They are ubiquitously known as 'wang dai', literally online retailer or agent. These are the first wave of significant online retailing in China. As they want to expand abroad, those who gained some first experience are packaging courses at minimal entry fee (~10USD!). There were a long period where these courses are bombarded via WeChat. (There still are, but the trend has shifted to other topics)
Naturally, the manufacturers want a bigger piece of the cake and now dominates their own online presence in China. To further expand beyond abroad, as they probably do not have adequate language/platform in-house expertise. This is a perfect match to the services you described - outsourcing to e.g. Amazon/eBay specialists.
In either case the point still stands. There's a snowball effect of following the lead of whoever is known to be successful and became the 'authority'.
> you'd expect less than perfect 100% engagement
I agree imperfect engagement is expected on the whole, but how the 100% metric is derived can be misleading. Is it 100% of the top 100 items i.e. the cream of the crop? How different would it be if the procrastinators or failures or one-offs are also included?
Also, I don't think analogue activities like driving is, analogous. Probably closer to Pride Day / French Flag photo overlay across various social platforms. Or SEO.
> a Borg Queen that could be taken down
I think we are aligned that there's a Borg Queen, but not on the rigidness of the hierarchy.
I believe it's weakly/organically structured, unless there's a monopoly, that I'm not aware of, happened.
Not so: the change happened across all these thousands of brands that had the exact style; but it didn't happen to the minority of posts that were from "real" independent Chinese marketplace-of-ideas sellers, who had copied the style with errors, or independently reinvented it. Those other listings still use the dictionary-headword brackets. So no Amazon-side canonicalization was performed.
This must be something that materializes out of the seller interaction with Amazon, because the same aesthetic does not appear on eBay, or for that matter Aliexpress.
I wonder if the telltale signs are much the same as in spam emails: a tool to filter out customers who are more discerning and thus liable to cause problems with Amazon if they get ripped off (demanding refunds, reporting seller misconduct, etc).
> Either way, it seems like finding that entity, and preventing it from interacting with Amazon, would stop a majority of this in its tracks.
From the comments I was expecting a flood of knock-offs or really problematic products, but it seems the main argument is they’re cheap and delivery takes a boat trip across the globe.
Is there any solid reasons these vendors shouldn’t be on Amazon ?
The knock-offs on AliExpress look to me like a different problem.
There's nothing inherent to these vendors (as people) and/or
(most of) their products that would mean that they shouldn't be allowed on Amazon, no.
The problem is instead with the shell game these vendors are playing — creating thousands of temporary brands, pumping them or "brushing" them with fake reviews, and then discarding those brands at a moment's notice when things go sour for them, only to replace them with another brand selling the same shitty products the next day, with the same people behind it.
Amazon's seller reputation system was designed to function under an assumption of "one persistent brand per group of people who work to sell a thing." But people noticed that Amazon uses "one legal company with a trademark" as a proxy for "one group of people"; and so have created thousands of distinct "legal companies with trademarks" with the same group of people behind them. Which Amazon's reputation system has no way of coping with.
If Amazon could deduplicate brands — i.e. require that the same group-of-people sticks to selling stuff under the same company/brand — then there'd be no problem, because then their reputation system would work: if the stuff was crap, the company/brand would get a bad reputation, and then nobody would buy their stuff any more.
The “hit and run” aspect, coupled with fake reviews are indeed problematic when they occur. It’s also baked into Amazon’s model: their whole goal was to make it more accessible to small and upcoming entities to go sell globally.
The only info is about the last 12 months, and we don’t get much clues about the business behind it, even as it has a full store page in Amazon. And of course Amazon wouldn’t want you to get too involved in a any specific shop, as it would strongly lower their leverage as a marketplace (shops stop being replaceable)
The OA mentioned someone who lost an eye due to improper product design and the vendor was safely hidden behind several layers of false-front entities.
I don't know how common that is, but buyers should be aware that many Amazon sellers, including domestic ones, operate in the way the OA explains.
Biggest annoyance IMO is that they clog up the search results and make it harder to find products you'd actually buy. Many sell the exact same item, which you then have to skip over, over and over again. Someone at Amazon must be bonus'd on adding new vendors.
I wonder if it wouldn’t put them in a problematic position as a marketplace operator, especially as they’re already abusing their position with their “Amazon basics” lineup.
“We listened to customer demand” wouldn’t as a defense for filtering for goods that go through their warehouse (which also doesn’t guarantee you get what you expected)
From the very limited research I've done, it is something relatively similar to this. There's a market in China of selling e-books which teach you various ways to make money on the English-speaking web without having to know much English yourself.
I mean it makes sense, if you go to BlackHatWorld or HackForums there are loads of people selling guides teaching you to do similar stuff, they're just in English. I imagine that given China's position in the marketplace, it's probably fairly lucrative for an individual or small company to make nonsense brands and sell stamped tech-junk for 10x markups to Americans.
>From the very limited research I've done, it is something relatively similar to this. There's a market in China of selling e-books which teach you various ways to make money on the English-speaking web without having to know much English yourself.
From what I've seen on the Amazon Seller forums, Turkey and Pakistan are two other such countries.
But these are the kind of properties where it takes a lot of staring at many different examples to even spot the pattern.
I don't expect that someone deciding to do their own spin on this would bother to notice these little things. It'd be like someone setting out to make their own mass-manufactured chicken nuggets, and accidentally recreating the exact set of nugget shapes McDonald's uses.
There are some alleged frauds in the UK that rely on lots of small ephemeral businesses, one after the other, I could see that being an valid strategy here too
I've listed a few things on Amazon. This is very much true. If you don't have a registered trademark youre a second class citizen. You can't upload a video, for example.
Amazon isn't eBay. In theory, for us punters: we should be flogged goods by Amazon that conform to local standards. Beyond that all bets are off. eBay doesn't even bother with ... anything - it's all caveat emptor.
So even in the wild west of Amazon at least there are a few standards. Sorry if you feel aggrieved but I'd rather buy stuff that had to follow a few standards that I nominally trust. By registering a trademark/incorporating/etc you are declaring your intention to work within the rules or at least some rules.
You are not a second class citizen at all. You are actually trying to avoid being a citizen at all if you don't want to abide by rules designed to protect customers.
Amazon is pretty horrendous already if you are not careful but you seem to imply that you want to use it for ad hoc sales. That is what eBay and the like is for. Amazon is for shop style sales ie vendors with product lines and inventory.
> So even in the wild west of Amazon at least there are a few standards.
Getting a trademark isn't an "Amazon standard." It's a requirement to use A+ Content, among many other things.
However, you can ship product into their warehouses all day long without one. So clearly not a "standard."
> I'd rather buy stuff that had to follow a few standards that I nominally trust.
The standards, like food safety, that people really care about have nothing to do with trademarks. You can say that it stops unsafe knockoffs, but this is factually wrong based on the amount of counterfeit stuff that comes out of Amazon.
> By registering a trademark/incorporating/etc you are declaring your intention to work within the rules or at least some rules.
Registering a trademark only guarantees you are willing to follow the rules of getting a trademark. Nothing else.
> You are actually trying to avoid being a citizen at all if you don't want to abide by rules designed to protect customers.
Non sequitur. Trademarks don't exist to protect customers. They exist to protect businesses from knockoffs.
> you seem to imply that you want to use it for ad hoc sales.
Nope. I just don't want to spend 850 Euro to register a trademark for a low volume product.
> Amazon is for shop style sales ie vendors with product lines and inventory.
There's a "have one to sell? Sell on Amazon" link on every product page.
I doubt many Amazon goods from those sellers legitimately adhere to local standards. For example, I outright refuse to purchase silicone for food use from Amazon.
You are kind of deciding Amazon's business model for them, or describing what you would like them to be. But your description doesn't fit well with their "Do you have one of these to sell?" links etc. It seems fair to say they send out mixed signals.
That's the problem: Amazon gives the false sense of brand identity and quality, forcing these problems, whereas eBay is transparently honest. The latter approach is simply better.
It depends, for parts the only place to reliably find name brand is on eBay. Parts on amazon is mainly just a domestic arm of of Aliexpress and Alibaba.
It's easier to sniff out legitimate items on ebay than it is amazon. That is the only metric that matters and amazon is failing horribly, despite whatever security theatre they put on.
There was an amazing radio piece a while back about an outfit in NYC of a guy who had a very lucrative Aamazon copy-cat service: it was run by a family of Hassidic(sp?) Jews in (brooklyn?) -- and what they did was have a bunch of them scour Amazon for top rated items - then have their connections do quick knock-off and sell them. it was a fascinating story... Ill see if I can find it.
They were on the early side of this phenom as it was a few years ago...
But this model is with pretty much everything these days Etsy, Amazon, Alibabba-importers etc...
After a couple really bad experiences with product quality (think clothing items that don't last after a couple washes) I no longer buy Amazon branded items. It's going to play against them over time if they keep messing up on quality.
I'm not sure what the family's religion has to do with anything, but I was curious about the spelling and put it in my search bar and it's spelled, 'Hasidic'.
Well, I distrust Amazon for anything electrical or buy my electronics and optics from the fine folks at B&H Photo, which is owned by a (Satmar) Hasidic family. Sure, that means I can’t shop on Saturdays and have a much deeper knowledge of the Jewish high holidays calendar than I’d normally care to develop, but I don’t worry about a counterfeit battery blowing up in my face or a SSD upgrade for my computer being a 16GB flash card fraudulently reprogrammed to advertise itself to my computer as a 1TB one.
I learned this the hard way when I received a counterfeit playstation controller, straight from the "Sony" store. For some reason, none of my reviews, even the positive ones, have posted since that one, which included pictures of a teardown.
It was wireless and never connected to the machine, so I'm not sure it was capable of damage. But it also didn't have much of a chance since it would only stay connected for about 30 seconds, after pairing.
Even B&H was susceptible to knock-off batteries. Somewhere in the supply chain, fake batteries were introduced, but not found until sold to customers. B&H actually handled this in the only sane way vs the Amazon shrug of the shoulders.
Supply chain attacks are real and even reputable vendors are susceptible. The difference is how the vendors react with their customers that separates the good vendor from the bad vendor.
The difference is Amazon only pretends to care, and only cares about enough plausible deniability to deflect lawsuits (the courts are catching on and this no longer works). Their practice of stickerless commingled inventory ensures that even buying from Amazon itself is no guarantee of not getting a counterfeit product.
> what the family's religion has to do with anything,
Back in the 1980s, NYC shops noticeably run by Hasidic jewish folk were famous for having the best deals in cameras and hifi.
It was not just local, there was a good amount of mail order business, and a large advertising footprint. I think it faded out in internet e-commerce boom, but for older shoppers the association may be relevant.
Some of it still exists. B&H photo is a very large jewish owned electronics business out of New York. They have some of the best high end electronics selection available online and last time I checked they are closed on the sabbath.
I KNEW people would ask this ; it was a major aspect of the story for some reason. They kept making reference to how these "ultra orthodox jews in brooklyn" were doing some revolutionary marketing/profiteering on the interenet/amazon specifically and how they were making a fortune doing so...
It was _fundamental_ to whomever wrote the piece...
So I mentioned it here.
Sorry I failed your "anti-semetic triggers" - FFS.
Well, to be fair, if "these scammers are ultra orthodox Jews" was central to the piece "for some reason", the author might've been a tad on the antisemitic side. At least your (in this context overstated and seemingly unnecessary) mention of their religion makes it sound like it.
>At least your (in this context overstated and seemingly unnecessary) mention of their religion makes it sound like it.
I interpreted the comment differently to you. To me, it appeared that the GP was merely trying to give all the details he remembered from the story. Each additional detail helps when trying to find a decade(s) old story on google or similar.
When reporting descriptions of people, the more detail, the better. Withholding things like race, religion, etc in an effort to be more PC results in a less accurate description.
SET THE SCENE: "What you may think of sleepy hassidic brooklyn as a religious enclave -check out these guys with curls making a killing on amazon knock-offs.!"
I am pretty sure I remember the article was about Adorama and B&H selling gray-market import photography goods over mail order and having racist practices or something, not about selling on Amazon.
If you failed to clarify in your original post, it really does look like it's not material to the story: we don't have the context so reasonably people are going to ask why you even brought it up. No need to get so indignant about it.
No it’s not and the GP is being a overly sensitive for no good reason. It’s a relatively recent sect of Judaism with a well known insular “ultra-orthodox” (more formally Haredi Judaism) Jewish community in New York, primarily Brooklyn and Israel. This is similar to something like the Amish, and pointing out something about Amish furniture or dairy businesses doesn’t make it automatically racist.
Because they are an insular group they are known culturally in the US for their retail enterprises. B&H Photo-Video being the most famous one. Go there now (bhphotovideo.com), you can’t even order during Shabbat.
Sorry mate - it sounds like I called you out too soon.
Ideally, keep race or skin colour or religion etc out of any discussion. As a rule of thumb I try to avoid noting any difference beyond M:F and even then - advisadly.
I don't think there is any reason to note Jew or Hasidic in your post. I have no idea whether a Jew might be offended by that because I would not even get to that point - no need to pontificate about something you don't know about.
People are people, regardless of race, creed or colour.
Let us embrace similarity and not disparity: Us not Them.
I had a similar interpretation of the wording. I’ll take your response in good faith once because I do get the impression you’re asking sincerely, but be warned that should you have further questions you’ll likely fare better taking some time to familiarize yourself with how antisemitism often proliferates:
Noting a person’s Jewish heritage or faith or membership (or that of a business’s proprietor, or some noted portion of their clientele) when their Jewishness is not directly related to the rest of the point is often a signal, like a dog whistle (which is a term often used for this kind of signal). Particularly taking such notice in reference to New York is a strong signal, and often “New York” is used as a substitute for the signal when similar connections might be expected. The first thing it signals to antisemites is identification of a target—either for immediate ridicule, harassment, some other form of abuse… or for identification which places a longer term target on them. The next thing it signals is that like minds are present.
This was all somewhat obscure for even a lot of Americans, and easy to dismiss as an honest mistake rather than an intentional signal in a comment like yours, only a few years ago. Unfortunately a lot of white supremacist movements latched on to these kinds of dog whistles in the course of an election and ultimately an administration which both directly fostered these kinds of dog whistles and indirectly invited them into the mainstream by dismissively reacting to them (and sometimes rehabilitating them on the spot as “very fine people”).
Even so, when it was so obscure, it was a way for fellow travelers to target victims and find compatriots. It’s just a lot more visible now and a lot harder to take comments like [edit: not yours, sorry!] as in good faith.
I appreciate the explanation, thank you. In my neck of the woods you'll often hear "chinese" used in that way. And yes, it's not always obvious that it's meant negatively.
Ok, now the flood of pseudo-"brand" names that you encounter when searching for electronics on Amazon makes much more sense. I searched for a USB-C dock recently and got a wide selection of items from "brands" such as Lemorele, Sitecom, GIISSMO, Probuk, Baseus, Hulier, Inateck etc. etc. etc.
The New York Times doesn't answer if this is beneficial for consumers, which is obviously the thing smart people want to know. Like why does Amazon put up with this?
Even if zero people bought these weird brand products, their existence causes prices to go down, because prices are at the margin, and that's why it pisses off our Tweeter. Because he has to sell for less profit.
Obviously it wasn't good for the person that went blind.
You can debate, of course, where one should draw the line in terms of a race to the bottom of the quality barrel crosses from "good" to "bad" but intentionally avoiding liability and responsibility through lies and shell companies is a pretty clear case.
There's plenty of foreign-brand stuff available for good prices at equal-to-or-higher-quality domestic US brand stuff. But then there's also complete garbage scam trash, and Amazon should absolutely deal with that.
At least the stupid-ass brand names make it easy so far to avoid this stuff.
The only reason it causes prices to go down is because they don't follow regulations or are outright fraud. If they were legitimate businesses they wouldn't be playing Amazon Ban Whack-a-Mole
My n=1 observation is that these bogus listings cause me to either find a well-known brand and/or go somewhere else that has more trustworthy listings.
I’ve drastically reduced the amount of shopping I do on Amazon, mostly due to my perception that it’s become a toxic waste dump. Amazon is good at getting stuff to you quickly, but the prices are nothing special and the shopping experience is trash. It’s much more satisfying to order directly from the manufacturer (usually with free, reasonably fast shipping) and know that what you’re getting is genuine.
The scam is enormously profitable for Amazon and the Chinese black hats. You can tell it is really profitable because Amazon will compensate you for up to $1000 for damages caused by this junk. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58163915
I believe that Amazon probably could not turn the screws on these companies even if it wanted to. It would be a massive loss to their revenue and share holders would revolt. It would bring prices up in aggregate if these companies could not sell junk on the platform.
The best they can do is play coy and hope the US government or EU does not crack down hard on them. Caveat Emptor my friends!
> 3. Smaller brands whose market share and item appeal are not worth cloning (e.g., a mechanical keyboard breadboard kit).
Even things you might think are niche enough not to attract copycats (ham radio DIY kits requiring soldering and multimeter use) absolutely do, and a lot of it ends up on Amazon, though eBay is by far a worse offender.
I went out of my way to buy direct from a small vendor, Sewell Direct, instead of buying their product through Amazon.
When it turned out that I couldn't use the product in my application, I canceled my order before it was shipped. They ignored that and shipped it anyway. Then I had to pay return shipping. If I had bought through Amazon, I could have returned it free.
Moral: When customers seek you out to help you out, don't be assholes.
Amazon's one click, customer service, shipping infrastructure, and return policy simply embarrass all their competition. Decades of investing in these things is paying off. No wonder it's physically painful to visit a new site: forms, typing, janky shipping, janky returns...
These things seem so easy once you see them all working, but companies don't have the resources or the interest in catching up.
I disagree. Their return policy average at best. Returns are only free if the item is damaged, defective, or incorrect. At Costco or Best Buy, I can return an item because I didn't like it. Even when returning items for "incorrect description", for example, it's super obnoxious when you have to return things over half the time because everything is shit.
I can go to Walmart and get a higher-quality product. I can buy tons of things at Walmart that I can't from Amazon due to their self-sabotoged supply chain. Food, kitchen products, personal care products, batteries, electronics, clothing, tools, etc etc. (How pitiful a time we live in when I am writing praises about Walmart. Sigh.)
The only reason Amazon charges you to return is to cover shipping. A brick and mortar does not accept returns via mail so you have to stand in line at the customer service counter forever. If you’re comparing apples to apples, Amazon returns are accepted in person at several retailers which eliminates the return shipping fee.
For 4 it's always a better value proposition to get from eBay, when cost with shipping is all accounted. And you'd be surprised about 3, e.g. check out the standing desks.
I posit that we're sliding back to the 1990's Amazon: only good for books. But it doesn't matter because they are interested in being a Google with customer service and making a profit that way.
I was looking for a copy of "Just So Stories" by Rudyard Kipling. Knew I wasn't going to get anything like the original publication of a 115 year old book, but the counterfeiter exceeded my expectations and sent me a badly photocopied, horribly cropped, freshly printed, piece of crap.
I don’t buy anything edible/consumable on Amazon because of counterfeits. No vitamins. No granola bars. No protein powder. I don’t trust Amazon at all and it’s just not worth the risk. I’d rather spend a few more bucks and buy those items from a place I trust.
Is it correct to say that when you get something "shipped and sold by Amazon.com", it really comes from them? It's the "fulfilled by Amazon" (the infamous FBA) that you need to watch out for.
It's a bit screwy, but you can filter by seller by clicking into a specific product category, and then selecting Amazon.com in the bar on the left. Then all the items should be "shipped and sold by Amazon.com".
But I've been sort of shocked to find recently that Amazon's prices, even with free shipping, are often not competitive with buying first-party, even with paying the shipping. For a lot of products these days, if there's a recognizable name brand associated with it, I just by first-party. You get it slower, but you know what you're getting, and probably end up giving more money to the seller too.
I would not have seen myself doing this ten years ago.
I’m actually not sure that’s a safe assumption. I could be wrong but I believe Amazon co-mingles products of the same SKU. So if Amazon is selling a book and other sellers have listed the same item as “new” and sent it to Amazon’s warehouse I don’t believe there is any distinction between the two at the warehouse. So the stock picker might grab Amazon’s (presumably authentic) item from the bin when they pack your order but there’s also a chance they’ll grab the third-party-seller “shipped by Amazon” item. My understanding is that it’s all kind of a crapshoot no matter how careful & deliberate you are when ordering.
> I could be wrong but I believe Amazon co-mingles products of the same SKU.
They do, and we have seen people get fake items. this is a huge problem for things like tourniquets. We tell people to go right to North American Rescue for example but so many people instinctively go to Amazon now and order things that it's a problem.
the fakes look almost like the real thing but have no quality control and break easily.
My understanding is that the items have different uuids, but there are no markings on the physical item. They’re identified by bin location.
There are lots of bins in the warehouse. They contain up to around five items each. There is a theoretical possibility that two of the same thing from different sellers could end up in the same bin. At that point the picker wouldn’t know which is which.
> There is a theoretical possibility that two of the same thing from different sellers could end up in the same bin. At that point the picker wouldn’t know which is which.
Amazon's seller-side stickerless inventory documentation specifically says that identical items from different sellers are never put into same physical bin so that the original source can be traced.
>Amazon's seller-side stickerless inventory documentation specifically says that identical items from different sellers are never put into same physical bin so that the original source can be traced.
Irrelevant to the discussion. Keep reading the link that cj provided, starting at the "Example", and you'll see that there is nothing preventing a counterfeit item being sold on behalf of a FBA seller even if the seller shipped genuine items to Amazon. All virtual tracking does is (theoretically) allow *tracing* of the counterfeit item should it be detected and reported.
Not same SKU — same ASIN. I believe that brands that sell through Amazon (not FBA sellers), who are worried about comingled inventory, can get their official product moved over to a new ASIN, leaving the fakes behind in the old ASIN bin.
OP here - no. "Shipped and sold by Amazon.com" items can be sent to Amazon's fulfillment centers by anyone with a Vendor Central account. There is still plenty of fraud going on there.
In general I would say it is safer than an FBA or FBM offer, but not totally safe.
Vendor accounts are highly sought after by black-hatters because:
1. It's much harder to track down shenanigans you run on them (since as you said the only public seller info is "Amazon")
2. They generally have higher authority for editing listings, so if you want to change a competitor's images it's more likely to stick from a vendor account
Recently I bought a hard drive that was "shipped and sold by amazon" and it was not only completely DOA, but the serial number was fake. It did not verify using the manufacturer's lookup page. It had also arrived practically loose inside a way-too-large box with almost no padding inside.
I returned that and simultaneously ordered the exact same item again from the same page, still "shipped and sold by amazon", and this time the properly packaged product arrived, with a valid serial number, and it worked just fine.
Pro tip: If you absolutely must buy the junk being sold by MOFFBUZW and other randomly generated drop-shipper brands, the exact same product is usually available on AliExpress for 10% the price.
You've answered a question I've been asking myself for the past couple of years: Why is Amazon trying to become AliExpress? AliExpress already does a good job of being AliExpress.
The answer is that Amazon has quietly pivoted: Their new business model is
1. Buy stuff from AliExpress.
2. Mark it up 5x-10x.
3. Profit!
Amazon probably hopes their customers don't notice they can get the same stuff from AliExpress much cheaper. Which they won't because only about 1% of Amazon's customers have even heard of AliExpress.
Even with speedy free delivery, Amazon's profit margin by marking up AliExpress stuff is probably quite a bit higher than it was for the old Amazon.
From the limited searching I did when I first noticed this, it seems to actually be a more or less flat $10 markup, regardless of whether that works out to 10x or 10%.
I've got good impulse control and planning. Still, I needed some TNC connectors for a surveying project and didn't want to wait the month for Aliexpress/eBayDirect to show up, so I ordered them off Amazon which had the best compromise of price vs shipping time. Of course I did a visual quality check when they showed up, as required for all direct Chineseum.
It's not surprising this niche has developed. What's surprising is that Amazon seems dead set on undermining their business to support it. It's also surprising that people write these amazed posts like they've just discovered this problem, when it has been going on for a decade.
I read a HN comment a while back that framed the topic of declining quality plus free returns as companies outsourcing their QC to the customers and that really stuck with me. This is really the natural progression of wanton consumerism - so much stuff is sold and never actually used that it's profitable to only worry about the case where the buyer actually uses it and finds it lacking.
It's also due to mismatched expectations. In the west, a supplier has teething troubles, and then masters the process so quality improves over time. In China, the phenomenon of "quality fade" in a culture of "chabuduo" ("close enough") means over time the supplier will make unauthorized substitutions of inferior materials to pad their profit margins, and quality decreases over time. The only solution is to implement draconian quality control as Apple does, or not outsource and set up your own local affiliates as many Japanese companies do.
Amazon can launch a new brand to distance themselves from the current form once they have firmly established themselves as a local cache of Aliexpress wares with fast shipping. It will be like an upmarket shopping mall located right next to a giant bazaar.
Because all the profit is in being a platform. Otherwise, their retail operations would be looking at the sub 5% profit margins of every other retail business in the US.
All this cheap junk follows a fairly reliable markup scheme:
Factory sells for 1x
Taobao sells for 2x
Aliexpress sells for 3-4x (2x Taobao)
Ebay sells for 8-10x. (~2x Aliexpress)
I think Aliexpress is usually about 20% of the Amazon price, but depending on the item I agree that it can be 10%.
This happened to me: I ordered a cheap UV EPROM eraser on eBay with three-day delivery. It was literally drop-shipped from Amazon, on an Amazon truck, in an Amazon bag. I could have gotten the same (crappy, simple) product on Amazon a day earlier for about a dollar less. But I was trying to avoid buying on Amazon, because of all the reasons posted in this comments section!
Same thing happened to me. I've been trying to avoid ordering work stuff on Amazon since they're technically a competitor, so I ordered a part on eBay. Coworkers commented on the Amazon package when it arrived, much to my confusion. It's happened a few times since then, I think they call it 'fulfilled by Amazon' or something like that.
Happened also to me with some products when shopping online either from Ebay or directly from some seller's web shop (I don't have a Amazon account): items came in a Amazon box with all their markings. No problems whatsoever, but the sellers were reliable.
That's just someone doing retail arbitrage: they take your eBay order and immediately have a bot (i.e. https://zincapi.com/) place an Amazon gift order to your address. Amazon does shut down buyer accounts for this but it's so rampant that it's more or less whack-a-mole.
i think the scam here is that amazon or amazon sellers will pay people to warehouse product in the US, because when you're selling aliexpress goods at a 90% markup, you can afford the warehousing. and the people they're paying to run those warehouses list the product on ebay at 20% markup, on the assumption that if it sells they can make an aliexpress order and restock before the amazon seller notices their product is missing.
Isn't this kinda exactly the retail model that have been around since cheap overseas manufacturing. The products themselves are cheap, margin goes to shipping, warehousing and inventory. Potentially even risks involved on not selling all of the inventory.
The margins look huge, but actually many steps like carrying that inventory or even the shipping from near warehouse is pretty expensive. Like more than the product itself.
I bought an espresso machine via Taobao last year and had to jump through SO many hoops to get it. But even with the hoops it ended up being an absolute steal - 1/10 the price of a US-based purchase.
Any idea why Taobao goes through such great effort to prevent American buyers from using the platform? (Or was I doing it wrong…? I used one of the Taobao forwarding services)
Something 'generic' anyway, or is it something 'branded' as it were but sold unbadged/not through the intended channels?
Just curious because I've never had any luck finding something specific, just slightly different knock-offs. Which can be fine of course, it's just less obvious to me that should exist than under-the-table selling of extra output, or rogue employees/company or whatever. Higher effort and more enterprising.
I do tend to prefer eBay/Amazon though, unless I'm really sure about it (bought it before, say) since the experience when it goes wrong is so much better. Amazon will refund/replace no questions asked, eBay will be a bit more hassle (MOFFBUZW type sellers tend to want to appease you with a partial refund or random plastic toy for some reason) but nothing a negative rating or such doesn't sort out.
AliExpress.. by the time it arrives I've probably forgotten I've ordered it, and if they won't offer a refund if it's no good/wrong somehow then bank might say the transaction's too old to do anything about (not sure about a time limit on credit card protections, maybe that's a better option), just generally more hassle. Not to mention the janky UX of ordering in the first place. (Why can it never guess both currency and delivery country correctly? UK & GBP isn't an oddball combination...)
I've found many items on ali-express are within %10 of the ebay or even amazon price. The ali-express discount is not as major as you think for many items.
Competition has driven it down to "cost of item + warehousing + shipping + tiny profit" in many cases.
The one advantage you still get via indirect ordering is often smaller lot sizes. I'd rather pay $1 for a bolt than $50 for 5000 bolts, even if the piece cost is much higher.
In my experience, I ordered a fake USB3 capture card (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001773724519.html, check the 1-star reviews, also debunked by Marcan at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906127), filled out comprehensive documentation of it being fake USB3 and unable to capture stable footage at 1080p60, and AliExpress sided with the seller. I had to file a chargeback to get money back for the fraudulent product. Unfortunately the product maintains a 4.8 star rating, either because of fake 5-star reviews, or because most buyers did not actually evaluate that the product is truly USB 3 or captures stable 1080p60 footage.
Is Amazon better at compensating customers or removing fraudulent product listings?
That is likely luck: if your order makes a nice round truck full, and that truck full makes a nice round container full at the next stage, and the container is one of the last loaded onto a ship that is due to leave soon, you'll get the best delivery time. The next order will get the worst or close to.
As some of the recent supply chain issues are easing off things will be feeling better when they are in fact moving back in the direction of what was normal.
It depends on location and how often people in your area order from China. I used to get ePacket orders from Shenzhen to San Jose within 10 days every time. Now that ePacket is dead, AliExpress standard shipping takes 14 days.
Yup, excellent way to save money if you’re looking for a product that just seems to be cloned to death and without any big reputable brands having a superior version. I bought 3 automatic cat feeders from Ali for the same price as 1 from Amazon. Exact same product besides the logo being different.
Good point, its not just Amazon though. One time I ordered a case for my wife's new smartphone and it took more than a month till it arrived. Which sucks with the 2 weeks we got to send orders back in EU. I knew the case was more expensive than directly from China but I wanted to receive it quickly hence I ordered from a local shop. So we had to wait a month till she could use her new smartphone.
After nearly month (and I emailed the guy twice already without reply) I ordered a leather case from UK which cost twice the amount of money. I got it within 2 days. I put a claim with PayPal (he wasn't responding) for the case I didn't receive. It was accepted quickly.
A few days after that the guy emailed me claiming it was due to illness at his company, and that he'd send ut ASAP. A few days after I got it in the mail. Its still rotting somewhere in my house. I wonder if he saw or cared about my claim. Given it only cost him a couple of USD I figure he'd just write it off instead of asking for return.
At least here in Germany the 2 weeks for returns of items sold online only starts when you receive the item. Are you sure you couln't return it or did you just accept that blindly?
Its funny how much less online shopping Im doing these days specifically because of my bad experiences ordering from Amazon.
I feel super old school going into stores, and even my girlfriend complains about it, but I no longer will risk the annoyance of delivery times and returns processes - nor the risky health effects of buying food online or clothing or kitchen ware that I'll interact with often.
Yes, I've switched almost entirely to B&M shopping, and I haven't ordered from Amazon specifically since 2019. Physical stores have limited retail space, so they have a good reason to be choosy about what they stock. It's worth a few extra bucks to me to not have to sort through online flea markets like Amazon (plus, it gets me out of the house).
I find it more and more difficult to return items to stores in the US because they keep their returns deparments so short-staffed. Home Depot and Target are 2 places where I have stood in line for 45min to 1hr just to return something.
My experience is the opposite - at least with HD. I come in, wait 5 minutes max, and return my item and the money is back on my card within the day. Never had a hassle either returning even more expensive, even custom-fit orders (window blinds).
I don't know about target as I don't shop there too often.
Yep, my local Home Depot has no line for returns and they don’t ask questions. Example: They gave me a full refund when I returned an empty box of wooden dowels after I used them for a project and realized the box had fewer dowels than advertised (likely because someone opened it and stole a few).
Target is currently filling that niche in the US; Walmart has the "marketplace" sellers which you have to watch out for. Best Buy is also decent for now; hopefully they don't try to "marketplace".
Pretty interesting. Its odd Amazon allows this to happen, but I guess they have no incentives not to. Reminds me of this video from the Pitch Meeting YouTube guy: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30
One of the posts contains a screenshot of a vendor's company name and address.
The company name (and words in th address) may look really long and suspicious, but it's just because it's transliterated from Chinese.
OP says these are all 'shell companies', but AFAIK it's more onerous and costly to register and maintain a company in China, than in many states in the US.
This is pretty much it. People always say it's random mess or fake, but "youxian gongsi" is literally "limited company" and based on Shenzhen. I do a lot of hardware ordering and speak none of the language and picked this up over time.
Chinese company names are generally [location] [selected name] [what they do], like Baidu is Beijing + Baidu + Netcom Science Technology.
The transliteration in the tweet: "shenzhenshizhengshunzidianziyouxiangongsi"
"wu long da sha b dong" seems like it's Five Dragons Building (https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.... ;some kind of office park?), Building B, and a suite number. The first line is something like "Longhuan 1st Road, Jinglong Community, Longhua Street, Longhua District".
It just looks like a mess because people are not used to it, and in chinese writing you don't separate the characters - it's "有限公司" for limited company, not "有限 公司"
Same goes for brand names that are completely unpronounceable in English and the fondness for ALLCAPS. Of course people accustomed to a completely unrelated language and writing system are likely to come up with transliterated or synthetic brandnames or acronyms that seem bizarre to English speakers. Buyers make one-time-only purchases based on search result order, price and star ratings, so localising brandname to the market is well down the list of priorities below keyword stuffing and trimming the Alibaba images. Names which look as bizarre in ASCII as Huawei and Xiaomi have actually succeeded in becoming brands in the West anyway.
(Your comment should probably be the top comment for the thread)
There was one that conceivably could have been a bad OCR attempt to read Chinese characters using a Latin alphabet which is weird, but some of them do also look like bad/non-standard Romanisation attempts (with an odd lack of spaces etc.). Odd because I'd think technology to accurately generate standard (pinyin) romanisation must be reasonably good by now.
The lack of spaces is somewhat normal if you assume that chinese doesn't use spaces when writing, like a name is just the glyphs combined together in one word, while in English normally there is a space between F+L.
The point of Romanisation is to make it possible to at least mentally turn it into "sounds" for those familiar with Latin alphabets, who (except German speakers) generally expect to see spaces between words too. Japanese writing doesn't use spaces either but all the standard Romaji transliterations do make use of spaces.
It's like we're repeating an old era of the early United States when every guy on a street corner would be copying reputable wares and selling them without regulation, patent protections, brand / trademark protections, and people were hawking quack snake oil under any name.
I'm all for reducing useless regulation, but sometimes you understand where it originally came from as a legitimate need.
I've gotten to the point that if it's a nonsense all-caps name or has an item description in broken English, I just don't bother. It's gonna be trash. It'll fail in 3 weeks, there will be no way to get it returned or repaired, the company won't exist, and the product listing will be gone next time you come back to it.
I bought a bunch of underwear from a nonsense brand name on Amazon once and it actually turned out to be both high quality and have the nonsense brand name printed in big letters on the elastic bands.
So some of them are proud of it.
(EYUSHIJIA, which sounds Chinese but doesn’t mean anything according to the trademark application.)
> It'll fail in 3 weeks, there will be no way to get it returned or repaired, the company won't exist, and the product listing will be gone next time you come back to it.
We're talking about Amazon though right? You can definitely return that, that's even inside the official return window (one month).
In my non-Business experience, it doesn't matter, just chat to support. (I'm not suggesting taking the piss, but I've had genuine issues ranging from slightly to very out of their one month return window, and I've had full refunds or replacements without at all unreasonable exertion on my part.)
(Except one actually, very recently, it was a relatively high value Warehouse order that wasn't as described and I returned - no problems accepting/arranging that, but some tardniness on the actual refund coming through. Probably it would have been fine, but I did chase it several times before eventually getting someone willing/with the power to override whatever was making it take weeks to refund after having shown as delivered to their facility. I still think even that experience was better than I get elsewhere, and certainly on the whole it is, that was my worst ever, and it was fine in the end.)
> despite all of this, i still mostly love Amazon as a customer. it played a big role in getting my e-commerce business off of the ground and i'm grateful for that.
"It's a flea market full of cheap (and sometimes dangerous) junk, but I still love it!"
Flea Markets are great. You can find obscure stuff you didn't even know existed or that you needed. Amazon is a flea market shoved into a Costco with bots stocking shelves with whatever shows up at the loading dock. You think you're walking into a reputable retailer, it has all the signs and signals of one, but you're not.
And that's why Amazon isn't working to fix this problem -- because they don't see it as a problem. Despite the complaining, people still sell stuff on Amazon, and people still buy stuff on Amazon, and presumably Amazon is happy with their revenue numbers. So why change anything?
It's a hostage situation. This is how you can tell Amazon is a dangerous monopoly: when even the people they fuck over have no choice but to smile and say, "But we still love 'em!"
That really depends how often it happens. You can't expect 100% reliability, especially for any processes that involve humans or physical items. And even if 100% reliability was attainable the cost would probably be astronomical so you have to make the tradeoff somewhere.
I’ll be the odd person out and say that whatever it’s faults as a company, my shopping experience on Amazon has been great. Not perfect, but nearly so. Certainly better than most other online retail channels, plus the convenience of Prime, and being a “one stop shop” certainly is super useful.
I don’t know what everyone is shopping for, But I’ve bought tons of items across a wide variety of categories. I usually avoid the obvious Chinese knockoff stuff (unless it’s some trivially unimportant thing), and don’t find it hard to do so at all.
Same here. The only time I had anything approaching a problem was buying a plastic shed (~$400) from a sketchy seller. It was cheaper, though not ridiculously so, than the other sellers, and I had a feeling it was some kind of scam. Needless to say, it didn't arrive after a few weeks, and a quick chat with an Amazon rep refunded my money.
On another hand, I ordered something (~$80) from Home Depot online, shipped to my house. The box arrived, without the item inside. HD phone and chat support both claimed the ship weight was correct, and that I'd need to file a dispute with my credit card to resolve it. What kind of crap service is that!? Why would they not ship another one, considering their cost is probably much less than $80 rather than lose the entire $80, product, and piss off someone who spends thousands there every year?
Amazon didn't get to be the #1 online retailer and 3rd largest company in the world by ripping people off. Clearly, they have online figured out much better than all of their large competition.
Same here. As long as you buy known stuff like GoPro or Garmin etc, it is perfect and fast. Anytime you buy a brand you never heard of, that's when the problem begins. I'd say 95% of my purchases were happy purchases from Amazon.
Other than getting a knockoff sheet pan once (which was still great quality, but missing the vendor's stamp on the bottom), everything I've gotten has been more or less what I expected. I don't know if it is because I deal with Chinese companies often, but the bad stuff is painfully obvious to me and easy to avoid.
That kind of unimportant stuff is usually found on ebay for much cheaper. Usually things that cost no more than $10 or $20 on Amazon sell for much less on eBay. The trinkets category. I make a point of not engaging with that category on Amazon. It's the least I can do to feed the monster less.
Seriously. If it has that Prime mark on it, I know I'm getting it at a ridiculous speed, plus that 5% cash back on thus ugly old metal card that I used to like. Well, the cash back reward is still very nice.
I really wish I could switch to other online or brick and mortar vendors, but nothing executes as well as Amazon in my experience. I even tried ordering some computer parts from newegg and it was fine, but it felt like I was back in 2002 or so.
The long twitter message list doesn't contain an actual answer to the question. Just a rant everyone likes to agree with and would like to see solved and that's why this is on the top 3 front page, no actual interesting content (stay for the discussion, though, but save some time reading the OP).
It’s disappointing. I’m all too familiar with the phenomenon of marketplace spam by seemingly nonsense all-caps brand names, and have been curious about the reasoning behind the names. How are they chosen? Is it really nonsense or just a language I don’t know? Are there patterns to it? Plausible influences?
I waded through Twitter’s hostile interface only to be made a fool of by hostile content.
Update: At least the title here has been changed now to remove the trick lede.
I thought the takeaway was ‘any suitable dictionary word would likely have been taken, or make as much sense as random nonsense anyway, and they’re creating so so many of these pump-and-dump brands hawking junk that it’s easier to just use a literal random character string’
Everyone who does anything online should be required to hang out on some black hat internet forums and marketplaces.
It really opens up your eyes to the sheer size of the fake account and bot traffic, market. It makes you skeptical of everything you see online.
You can buy verified Twitter accounts, blue check mark accounts, Facebook ad accounts, Google AdSense/AdWords accounts, Amazon accounts, and more bot traffic than you can imagine. All for a few hundred dollars at most.
I wonder what the internet would really look like if there was no bot traffic, fake clicks, and fake accounts.
Everyone who does anything online should be required to hang out on some black hat internet forums and marketplaces.
It really opens up your eyes to the sheer size of the fake account and bot traffic, market. It makes you skeptical of everything you see online.
You can buy verified Twitter accounts, blue check mark accounts, Facebook ad accounts, Google AdSense/AdWords accounts, Amazon accounts, and more bot traffic than you can imagine. All for a few hundred dollars at most.
I wonder what the internet would really look like if there was no bot traffic, fake clicks, and fake accounts.
I used to hang out on that forum many years ago during my school lunch breaks, before I found the light. Never thought I’d see the day it’s linked to from HN.
> I wonder what the internet would really look like if there was no bot traffic, fake clicks, and fake accounts.
In an economy where the only thing that matters is actual money there wouldn't be any bots - after all I don't see bots queuing up to buy stuff. This is a problem the bullshit advertising and "growth & engagement" industry brought on themselves. If you pay people to click on stuff, they're gonna click it, tell others to click or build machines to click.
There are definitely bots to buy things. Finance alone does a fuck ton of automation to buy things at far faster reaction speeds than possible and then there’s the eBay/Amazon/whatever online retail bots that exist to scoop up in demand items to then flip
Bots that buy things only do so to address a temporary inefficiency in the market - they won't work perpetually and you can argue their actions do provide value.
If the bots continually outpace the majority of humanity’s purchasing ability does that mean they don’t exist or do they pass some capitalist Turing test? I asked on behalf of all the bots checking for semantic values on social media and then drop shipping unique /s shirts.
I’d link things like this[1] but I can’t be sure you’ll see the same thing I’m linking because they are constantly mutating.
We have to accept the fact that algorithms have reached the tech level of convincing a double digit percentage of humanity to do what the algorithm wants because that is what is current reality
It's in the actual-money economy as well. That was the point of the article.
Anytime you have thousands of versions of things to sell (Amazon) you're going to need a ranking mechanism. And ranking mechanisms can be gamed by bots and other tricks.
Bots don't buy stuff, but bots can push human persuasion triggers. Something with 10,000 positive reviews on Amazon feels like a much better buy than something with 2 reviews.
The idea is that these names are generated pseudo-randomly or arbitrarily because they have no brand value. Sellers that use them run through "companies" quickly as they get banned for forbidden practice or because their reputation tanks. Then they create the next seller account with another name.
I've been wondering why I do like Twitter for long form content. At first, I hated it. But then I got caught up in several long threads, and invariably at the end someone would link the threadreader collection of the whole thing. I kept thinking, I'm just going to start going to the bottom and looking for that link, but I never did.
Instead, I learned to love it. It's almost a way of being reminded again and again about who is speaking, and it gives you a little feedback of how interesting other Twitter users found that particular section.
I don't really like that I learned to love it. I think it might be unhealthy. But that's a different issue.
That article was a bit of a bait-and-switch: instead of explaining why the Chinese resellers all use similar patterns, the author just spent 30 twitter posts complaining about being undercut by cheap Chinese crap
Amazon "... is turning their marketplace into a flea market of total junk."
Man if this isn't the dead-on honest truth. Amazon is so garbage now that Walmart.com is a trusted supplier by comparison.
I can't believe Amazon gets away with the crap they do. They so obviously turn a blind eye to constant, serious anti-consumer crap from Chinese sellers. Why? And why doesn't the FTC or any other department do anything?
Half of the Twitter thread is just talking about literal bribes paid to Amazon staff to conveniently change things in the system in the black-hat sellers' favor.
This is not a "why don't they fight the spam harder" problem. That's Google's problem. Amazon's problem is, apparently, that their corporate culture is so toxic and broken as to make any kind of internal controls or moderation outright useless.
Just recently Amazon allowed me to buy a kindle book for my specific kindle device, which turned out to not be supported. But they still allowed me to purchase and deliver it to this kindle. Only once I went to the device to sync it did I learn that it was incompatible. I was not allowed a refund.
The reasonable behaviour would of course be to give a pop-up like "hey, you're trying to buy a book that doesn't work for your Kindle, are you sure this is what you want?" I bet they have some sort of disclaimer hidden away in some giant heap of legalese making it "legal" but the whole flow was clearly designed to trick people this way. And I'm a programmer, I don't get tricked as easily as the average person in this context(I hope).
Amazon is full of minor counts of fraud like this and at their scale I bet it adds up to real money.
Beats me. It's even a Paperwhite, not like it's completely prehistoric either. The book was Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. Hell it's even freely available in html format, but I wanted to buy it anyway because I like to support authors of great books whenever possible. I've not yet tried to sideload the free version, but I bet it would work...
I've never seen anything like that. I was able to request a refund, and I did, but it was denied. I then contacted support with no luck there either. Maybe you have consumer protections I don't in your country?
Nevertheless, why on earth would it allow the purchase to happen when it was set to deliver to a specific unsupported kindle, my only one? It just makes no sense other than as a scam.
FWIW a few years ago I found the my-country-Amazon is not another-country-Amazon.
I had a problem with a phone after 6-12 months and they just sent me a replacement. A similar thing happened a couple of years later, I contacted support like at 1am from another European country and apparently I was sent to Amazon US support, which were useless... On the way back to the UK (still in the EU), I contacted support again (at a normal time) and this time they gave me a refund.
> Man if this isn't the dead-on honest truth. Amazon is so garbage now that Walmart.com is a trusted supplier by comparison.
I would have agreed with this sentiment six months ago, but now Walmart allows third-party sellers. I could consolidate to "At least BRICK-AND-MORTAR Walmart stores should have reliable products", but physical Walmart seems to have gotten in bed with this Chinese brand "onn." Their products are absolute garbage, and they seem to have jettisoned everything else from their store. I've had to tell my parents to please stop buying any electronics stuff from Wal-Mart and go to a Target or something when their iPhone cable breaks so that they can at least get a proper Anker cable.
It's really tiring how much time I have to spend protecting my family from junk products these days.
I think "onn" is just Walmart's "store brand" for generic electronics[1]. Kind of like "Insignia" and BestBuy. The design and manufacturing is all outsourced and these are usually quite crappy as one would expect.
> Walmart is Onn’s parent company. Onn is Walmart’s generic brand electronics label, and Onn products, including Onn TVs, are only available in Walmart stores.
Regardless, the last time I went into a Wal-Mart where my parents live, it wasn't just that they were prioritizing the onn brand stuff: it was literally all they had. Reliable third-party brands like Anker weren't even on the shelves anymore.
I have a hunch this might be Walmart's finely tuned supply chain figuring out that Onn is what sells best at that location so they overstock that particular store with them.
Last time I was in Walmart (2 days ago) I picked up a SanDisk SD card specifically because I've had good luck with them. All the other brands were there and Onn was just the stuff on the bottom shelves.
They're literally the same - I see the same product sold by shady third parties being sold on both sites. At least with Walmart you can select "Available for pickup" and get products that Walmart themselves sell and stand behind.
> Amazon courting overseas manufacturers and sellers at all costs.
Why though? How does it benefit Amazon to have endless, no-name, bad quality listings? It makes the consumer experience awful & dangerous, not to mention the continued lowering trust in the marketplace.
As others have mentioned, it's often better to go to Target/Walmart/Costco/etc to buy from a reputable supply chain (instead of risking getting counterfeit goods from Amazon).
Amazon excels on shipping speed (logistics), but why bother when it's mostly garbage that sometimes gets returned?
Yeah I wish he had elaborated on that point. What are they doing to court those sellers and most importantly, why? Surely they know that their reputation is going down the tubes. Are they just so dominant now that they don't care?
As long as Amazon has their fulfillment and delivery network, I don't think they'll ever be replaced by AliExpress (in the US, at least). I've never seen anyone delivering packages in an AliExpress van :)
It really seems like they want to be a shipping and warehouse service and get out of retail entirely. Maybe better profit margins, or an easier way out of looking like a monopoly. I'm sure they've got some metric to quantify how much profit they're getting for each ounce of reputation lost and they're #winning.
Imagine if Amazon dedicated some human effort and time to curate their catalog and reviews instead of their legion of engineers trying to automate the solution and continually failing. Hire a bunch of college interns every semester and they'd have this problem solved.
EDIT: I actually forgot they have this already in Amazon Mechanical Turk!
my wife and I have been increasingly buy on Target, HomeDepot and other sites to buy things because the brands are much more likely to have a legit business backing them up.
Generally too one of the causes of this craziness is that we keep outsourcing our manufacturing to China. China is only making these items because a much larger American company like OXO has them making really awesome kitchen items (for example) So it's not that hard for the same factory to create a series of shell companies that also sell the OXO stuff. I mean how hard is it to copy and paste the ads that the legit companies make and sell directly?
If we didn't outsource everything then it wouldn't be happening.
I recently moved to the US from the UK. In the UK, we have Argos that sells a few versions of each product at different price points. If you pay more, you get better quality and you aren't sifting through hundreds of fake brands of similar products.
Target is definitely the closest we've found over here.
I’ve been making a conscious effort to buy things manufactured in the USA. Made in USA still exists for a lot of things and the quality and design is superb compared to all the Chinese junk. What really surprises me is the prices are also very reasonable.
Right now buying home goods online is a nightmare: Search engines don’t help, the big retailer websites are full of junk, prices are unbelievable. But I’ve had great success identifying the handful of companies that make X in the USA and ordering directly from them.
Well, you could also use newegg, bhphoto, alibris, discogs and etsy (gifts) - which are all, like Amazon, purely online retailers. Each of the alternatives beats Amazon in its particular niche, and pretty much always has. But Amazon is convenient because it sells everything.
Looking at the name of the company, reading recent reviews, and ensuring there is a non-obviously-fake address associated with the business doesn't sound like a tedious list of hoops to jump through to me. You should do all this stuff on any marketplace, Amazon or elsewhere.
Honestly, if we're talking about convenience, Amazon is pretty much the best game in town. They have many documented failings and faults, but being inconvenient isn't one of them.
if Amazon just wants to be the market, that's one thing. but they're also trying to position themselves as a brand name with notion of value attached (e.g. amazon basics).
I value my time and don't want a 'caveat emptor' market experience, so I've largely given up on Amazon as a reliable market browser.
I wonder if theres a business idea in here. Set up a site that looks better than Amazon (not hard) and only list reputable listings on Amazon. Collect affiliate revenue.
I've been less trusting of WireCutter reviews lately. Still see so many of these strange brands listed when I go in to read a review, combined with no real long term testing. Lack of long term testing makes me not trust Consumer Reports as much either.
I still use their reviews as a reference point, but for a lot of things I don't really go for their top selections.
If you’re buying something that Lee Valley sells, and you typically go for the higher-end rather than the budget pick, you can basically skip the Wirecutter guide and just buy whatever Lee Valley stocks. (Not much in the way of electronics, but lots of tools and home stuff.) Extra benefit if you’re Canadian; lots of Wirecutter stuff isn’t available in Canada, and Lee Valley is Canadian. The Lee Valley curation is incredible, probably the best of any store I’m aware of.
It would violate their terms-of-service and they'd unplug you in a heartbeat - or after you'd sold a million dollar of stuff, and they'd keep your affiliate cut
Right? I had the same idea when I read this. If you're serious about it, reach out to my email in profile. I tried you at your @landshark.io email but it bounced back to me.
I've also mulled different iterations of this idea, specifically with some kind of "on-the-ground" verification of sellers / quality. I lived and worked in China for 8 years, with a small spell of that time in manufacturing QC. I know the country well and speak fluently. Feel free to reach out, email in profile, and GP is also welcome to get in touch if you read this!
Happy to see this discussed on HN because I've constantly been stressing about this whenever I shop on Amazon. "All these brands are Chinese with random combinations of characters for a name"
I've looked at laptop cases. Here is a sampling of brand names: Lacdo, Voova, KINGSLONG, NIDOO, tomtoc, MOSISO, INVZI, XMBFZ, Arvok, Kinmac, Londo...
I've bought cases for my ipad and work laptop from Lacdo and one for my upcoming MBA from Voova. They're actually great, but I worry they're made with Uighur slave labor or toxic materials or something.
I'd prefer not to support Amazon, but where else am I supposed to find stuff like this? Do I buy my electronics (eg. Hue lights recently) from Best Buy instead, which has a worse return policy and whose Geek Squad worked with the FBI to violate customers' rights?
Edit: Also, a few days ago I went on a search for a desktop organizer. Here are some brand names: DALTACK, ARCOBIS, DEZZIE, Hossejoy, Greenco, AMERIERGO, SONGMICS, X-cosrack, Marbrasse, Citmage, Samstar, Beiz. It goes on forever.
I checked Walmart and Target too, but wound up buying this one from "Lavatino" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PL59RL6 The product is actually awesome. The compartments are the perfect size to hold my coasters and I organized everything that was loose on my desk with room to spare.
So, it feels great to get something I needed, but the whole process still feels bad somehow.
We absolutely need some consumer protections for things like this, but at the end of the day it takes some smart choices by the consumer. Sometimes those smart choices are to not make a purchase for that type of product, or compromise on design for reputability, etc.
Keep in mind that while Amazon is the white whale here, this absolutely happens at pretty much any retailer that has moved to an online store where they list more than any individual store has inventory of. I hate supporting Amazon, but personally Best Buy is the lesser of two evils, and at least there I can return in store.
Someone in the postings wonders what would happen if Retail was split from AWS.
Good question. Supposedly Retail is not profitable and AWS carries all the weight for the company. I don't know if that's true or not (?)
Anyhow, I don't think it would make that much difference. The reputational hit that Retail takes every day probably does not carry over much to AWS, nor does AWS good will (if there is any) help Retail at all.
This is the second time I've seen someone complain about "obviously" illegitimate business information that appears to be the vendor's own home address. I don't see how they could be more open or informative than that. Want to get in touch with them? Send a letter to that address; they'll see it.
Picking a small online business in the UK, I can verify their company number with Companies House, verify that the street address listed is the same as the one on that registration and that the Nature of Business of the registration matches what I would expect for said business. I know that they were founded around ten years ago. I can then use Google Street View to look at the building they operate out of, and see the name of the business printed on the side. I can see that they have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts, and that they own the .co.uk DNS entry for their company name. I can see that those social media accounts have followers and that they interact with customers on them. I know the full name of their director. I also know that they have a landline telephone number, and that telephone number has an area code appropriate for their street address, and that it's registered under their name in the telephone directory. Their website links to their Trustpilot listing, and that they're verified on Trustpilot. This communicates that they have some kind of a reputation, and it would be very costly for them to throw away all of those accounts and registrations should they want to throw away said reputation.
Compare that with that string of garbled pinyin: it returns zero google results, refers to an area of China with no Street View access, and I wouldn't even know where to begin to verify if they are actually a registered company, who owns that address or how long the company has existed, and there's nothing I could cross-reference with other sources. If they wanted to throw away that identity, they could probably get a dozen like it in under a week with minimal effort. So yes, there's definitely many ways they could be more open or informative to communicate their status as a legitimate business that values their identity.
Yeah, if that's the first thing that comes to their mind, then they need to look themselves in the mirror real hard and wonder whether they're the ones perpetuating xenophobia.
I’ve been slowly trying to de-amazon my life, even more aggressively than trying to de-google (which is easy once you accept that search result quality is still good elsewhere). I got a Shoprunner account and Walmart plus from AMEX and recently started using it. I also found that VISA gets you a shipt account.
Shoprunner let’s you buy direct from brand with 2 day shipping, so you don’t need to lose that benefit, while avoid “mass marketplace” mis-incentives of amazon like fake products. It has the benefit of being good on clothing, which amazon was never a great destination for.
I haven’t used the Walmart “prime-equivilent” benefit, but it seems pretty comparable to amazon prime but at a retailer that has quality control (of some basic level). I’m just not much of a Walmart user.
Shipt gets you “Same day” delivery from stores like target, which is a good counter to the growing same day delivery amazon has been rolling out. I found that its way worse than amazon though, since Shipt is “gig workers” and doesn’t connect to the store’s inventory very well, so you never really know if your order will be fulfilled in full. I use this for last-minute target orders when I don’t have time to visit the store.
Shopify is rolling out a bunch of competing features, but the most useful one is that they’ll provide a single app to track your purchases, which means you don’t need 20 apps on your phone for each retailer just to track that one package a month you order (or more if that’s you).
Oh and now you have a bunch of accounts that you have to give your data to and hope they don’t get breached.
TLDR: It’s really hard to de-amazon if you’re a regular and hooked on the convenience BUT capitalism at work is providing alternatives slowly…
Case in point I recently got an iPad and I was looking for a rugged case, an alternative to OtterBox. It's a mess, with no real winners, and lots of questionable brands/products.
It was suggested before, the time is ripe for a disruptor search engine, The Innovator's Dilemma style; starting with some segment of search.
Unfortunately, I suspect such a search engine would start getting lawsuits about being uncompetitive once they start excluding sellers/spammers. Even if bogus, it's gonna bog things down real bad. They're good at abuse, it'd not be surprising.
I wish there was some way to force the "sold by Amazon" filter to be on all the time; I think that would resolve most of the issues I have with browsing on Amazon.
There's still the inventory co-mingling issue that people have mentioned in other comments. Solving this would mean I'd start to consider using Amazon more frequently.
After a spate of bad cables (mostly where their internal circuitry overheats)
I've stopped buying most electronics on Amazon and instead use bestbuy's insignia brand.
For me it's worth $5 to not have to buy a replacement every 3 months.
Maybe just my sample but it seems these things always fail _just_ after the return window.
Anecdotally: Amazon Canada has gotten really really bad in the past months.
My standards are low but woof. You can’t even get a marble run that’s not that super thin brittle plastic. The marble run at Walmart was half the price.
I’m the laziest, least ethics-motivated consumer and I think my time with Amazon is wrapping up.
I have a friend who works as a category manager at Amazon global and she gets frequent offers from shady people for "mutually beneficial partnership".
Even the suspensions don't have alot of affect for these shady sellers.
I have worked with a company that provides listing services on Amazon in the past. The owner once casually mentioned how they help these companies get out of suspensions for long enough to withdraw their balance(I have seen screenshots with over $200k in balance) with the help of an amazon employee. The listing company and amazon employee are both paid via Bitcoin.
So is your friend contacted through LinkedIn or something similar? Because it would be terrible if these shady sellers bribed someone who had just set there company to Amazon but didn't really work there ...
Amazon has set a low bar and now there are unsafe, toxic products out there.
Including: toxic toys for children, toxic cooking utensils, toxic water filters, toxic birthday cake decorations, toxic furniture, toxic plumbing, toxic rugs, etc.
Buying on Amazon in 2022 is like walking on a minefield.
Some companies go out of their way to emulate being non-chinese. But you can tell due to the aesthetics they use, punctuation, color palette, fonts, and sometimes DNS information that they are chinese shell companies as nobody in the west uses Alibaba cloud to host their stuff.
The case that is mentioned is Oberdorf vs Amazon. Here's an article from 2019. https://www.courthousenews.com/amazon-back-on-the-hook-for-d... I can't find anything more recent. The case is interesting as it needs to make a decision if Amazon has the same responsibility for Amazon marketplace as it has for its own listings.
Amazon carved a good niche for themselves by pretending you're not buying from them but rather some "vendor".
That's not right IMHO. The seller is Amazon; where they source their stuff and what subcontractors they have is their business.
It's like EBay takes more responsibility for products you buy, even though that is explicitly a site for matching random buyers and random sellers. Not that i use ebay much either.
And in contrast to the focus of the (but alluded to), getting a legit seller account can be very tough. I tried and failed a year ago for my electronics business. I tried for about 2 months, with ~50 appeals. Ended up unable to get my account verified. I'll spare you the details since it's the typical FAANG tech support story that shows here regularly.
I still end up using Amazon for a lot of things, but I do find the gibberish chinesium crap somewhat amusing. I won't buy anything that isn't sold by Amazon, brand name, and not a battery or other really common counterfeiting target.
I also use eBay sometimes, but the prices are 9/10 times higher than Amazon for brand name items.
Amazon employees have a "perk" of a 10% off multi-use coupon, up to $1000. It applies to anything whose seller is Amazon (sold by amazon.com).
In the last few years it's been extremely difficult to make full use of the "perk", simply because there aren't a lot of things that are sold by amazon.com anymore.
Maybe it’s different in each country? I’ve used Amazon in the UK and several European countries, and you can get tons of major brands sold by Amazon (Apple, Dell, Samsung, Gardena, Bosch etc)
Most buyers are savvy though and buy reputable brands. Search for ‘USB flash drive’ and invariably you will get cheap Chinese muck that will break within a day. Then just filter by respectable brands like SanDisk and case closed, all the cheap stuff is filtered out!
I’ve stopped buying most things at Amazon for this reason. Surely they realise that long term this is going to be an existential threat for their retail business? Much like how Netflix is now having issues after pumping out sub-par content for too long.
Amazon won't refund your lost time though. Unless I'm feeling particularly generous, or have some other reason to believe it was a freak occurrence, getting shipped a bobcat and getting a 100% refund on a $1 widget is an instant negative feedback and low-scoring seller review. That $1 widget being Chinesium garbage has set back whatever was working on by at least a full day, probably more like a week, and wasted all the initial time I spent selecting the item, plus the time I spend determining that the item was indeed faulty, and it wasn't my fault obviously costs way more than a dollar.
These companies couldn't afford a "no risk no questions asked refunds" policy, since there's no way they'd ever pay for that wasted time.
I'm not asking for a genuine Rolex, but fakery is so bad at the moment that I'm not even confident I'd get a genuine Casio.
I have a tip for Amazon shopping related to these weird brand names: Do not buy anything that will go in or on your body. Doing this significantly reduces the likelihood of counterfeit or poorly packaged goods.
It's a shame how Amazon is bloated of Chinese off-brand products with mediocre quality. Some of them are simply products from AliExpress, DealExtreme, or similar Chinese websites but sold more expensive.
I no longer have the patience to navigate Amazon's terrible search results and have lost trust in the quality of their inventory.
Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount.
I've been a customer since 1997. Amazon has impressed me with their ability to play the long game, and I don't understand the long term incentives favoring Amazon here.
I too have stopped buying on Amazon. I did so a while back after being concerned about counterfeits, safety issues, etc. I had this talk with my wife not too long ago about a mirror she ordered from Amazon, clearly made in China by a no-brand manufacturer. We discussed about how, yes, it looks nice, but we have no idea what quality of glass they used. So if it falls and shatters, it could be very dangerous. It also came with a bunch stuff on it that looked like pieces of fiber glass. I just don't trust anything on that platform anymore. I buy everything else from more legitimate sellers selling brand name stuff or directly from manufacturer's websites.
The example given of silicone spatulas could be particularly egregious - are they even RoHS or REACH compliant? They could be chock full of SVHCs that you serve to your family every supper.
I might send some of our Amazon stuff for testing for phthalates and find out.
I have definitely made it a rule that we don't purchase products that touch food from Amazon. I honestly have no idea how the products there are passing regulations. Are regulations even enforced anymore?
This doesn't sound like an Amazon issue though, but an issue with that specific product. You're the one who chose to purchase it. You would likely have the same experience with that product in other marketplaces like EBay, Walmart or Alibaba.
I don't buy this for a millisecond. Amazon ushered in this behavior and made it the "norm". It's throwaway, cheap, non-branded junk... and dangerous. There is value in discussion of the manipulation of the market and not just "Shop somewhere else". It's predatory.
If a marketplace lets itself get so dodgy that this kind of thing's normal, that's absolutely the marketplace's fault.
There's a big, shady flea market in a bad part of my city. Barbed-wire protecting the roof. Heavy bars on all the windows. Armed guards. Half or more of the vendors are plainly fences, or have a close relationship with one or more. Tons of stuff that "fell of the back of the truck". Entire booths carrying counterfeits of luxury goods, sold under the luxury brand name. It's kinda crazy it's allowed to exist.
You don't go there with the same expectations you do when you go to Wal-Mart or Costco.
Amazon tries to look like, and even started out as, a place like Wal-Mart or Costco. Now they're the "how have the cops not shut this place down?" shady flea market. It's 100% their fault that they're like that, and to the degree that they present themselves as anything else, that's deception.
Your comment implies we desire no product segregation from Amazon, nor any quality control from them, which is not something most people think of when they think of what Amazon ought to be. Most people think of Amazon like they think of a physical Walmart location; as a store that vouches every product it sells. You put Alibaba or Ebay in the same category as Walmart, but that's more akin to Walmart.com, the thing that will kill that brand. People go to Alibaba, eBay or Walmart.com for the dangerous Chinese knockoffs.
I want Amazon to be far more selective of the product it sells.
Walmart stores actually do very carful inventory control, and carefully manages the products it sells. The standard may be lower than you expect, but they are real.
Walmart marketplace is 3rd party sellers, but Walmart doesn’t commingle inventory so it doesn’t infect the rest of their products.
> I don't understand the long term incentives favoring Amazon here
Possibly there’s nothing to understand. It’s easily been long enough that it’s plausible that people are playing Chesterton’s Fence games, getting promoted for increasing revenue by .05% while making the experience 0.2% worse.
> Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount.
Funny that’s about 50% of my purchases because I’m terribly impatient and don’t (often) have a car so it’s way easier than going to the store and Canadas e-commerce options aren’t nearly as good as the US.
I wonder if Amazon has reached a point where they have eliminated all competition at least at a scale to no longer worry about this especially since their only competitor Walmart has similar cheap stuff that will require a drive to the store.
And targeting volume based sale where a lot of Americans especially in rural or suburban areas don't really care about the quality-read Walmart crowd.
Also targeting other countries like SE Asia, India, Brazil, Latin America, Africa where the volume of sales will be so high that again quality of inventory does not matter compared to ease of delivery.
> a lot of Americans especially in rural or suburban areas don't really care about the quality-read Walmart crowd
Please don't insinuate that rural or suburban Americans are somehow "less than" or don't care about quality. There are price-sensitive people everywhere.
> don't really care about the quality-read Walmart crowd.
I mean, in 2000, Walmart was where you got junk for cheap. In 2022, Walmart is where you know the supply chain is vetted. Everything on their shelves has been cost reduced to an inch of its life, but they also have a good handle on where it came from. It's a little bit easier to stay away from the marketplace garbage on walmart.com than on Amazon, IMHO, but I'd still rather shop somewhere without a marketplace. Unless I'm looking for stuff you can only find in a marketplace, and then you may as well go to ebay or aliexpress.
Shopping on amazon is really an awful experience nowdays. I really do not want to search through 40 pages of water kettles of really dubious brands. It is so anxiety inducing and unpleasant.
There is no practical way to buy a reputable/brand name on amazon.
Some brand names are "available", but it seems not officially and people are buying them at a store and shipping them to customers.
Other brand names are available, but the search results are paid (and manipulated) so they get crowded off the page by sponsored and "5 star (2)" results.
You sometimes can't even get the right thing from official brand stores. I bought a thermal paste product from the official Amazon ThermalGrizzly store (I did check) but Amazon delivered me a fake. Amazon co-mingles inventory.
The only reason I could quickly tell it was fake is because ThermalGrizzly provides an online serial number verification system, which isn't very common among most products. I'm not sure I'd trust Amazon for anything.
You have to evaluate if a product is worth counterfeiting. For many goods the clone factories aren't going to bother. Amazon is also a convenient onshore gateway to Aliexpress resellers with less shipping ambiguity.
>You have to evaluate if a product is worth counterfeiting.
this does not seem to be worthwhile for someone wanting to purchase something, my estimates as to if something is worth counterfeiting requires me to have a rather deep understanding of the brand's importance in the world that I would not have for any but the most notable brands, aside from that I have to know something about how easy/costly it is to counterfeit and get things on Amazon to make a model in my mind if the brand was important enough for someone to fake it.
So, for example, if it becomes significantly cheaper to counterfeit things the importance of brands counterfeited (in consumer reach etc.) should drop.
That's a lot of variables. Think I'll just go to the store.
With all the hand-wringing about how Amazon has completely monopolized online ordering, I'd think that having a true "honest broker" storefront would be a fairly natural way to compete.
Amazon has become a truly awful storefront, and this has accelerated markedly, in just the last couple of years.
Yes, because Amazon has created perverse incentives for anonymous manufacturers to fabricate as many "brands" as possible, there are now so many of them that they crowd out actual brands. The original purpose of a brand name was to give a reputable seller a recognizable way to differentiate a quality product or service from anonymous competitors. But search and recommendation on Amazon favors the anonymous sellers.
Amazon today is less about selling things to consumers and more about selling consumers to anonymous Chinese suppliers.
The problem I’m having in Germany ist that only Amazon reliable delivers to my door, usually next day.
Every other store ships with DHL, which after several days pretends that they ring you, when they don’t, and then u can go pick it up at the DHL store a day later.
In the Netherlands they seem to ship exclusively with DHL. And all products arrive in the evening slot. Which means that next day delivery is usually around 21:00-22:00 which is typically too late to be useful.
PostNL is the most reisje local carrier here. Ups is the best but almost never used, so far only by Apple. Dpd, GLs, etc, are all rubbish.
Weird, DHL is for me the best and most professional of all. The experience you mentioned happens to me with DPD and very often with GLS. Hermes is also pretty good and professional.
Maybe it does depend on the location, maybe you're lucky. But the complains process with DHL is impossible, so if you have bad delivery ppl in your area (in my case downtown Berlin), there's nothing you can do.
I always wonder what products are so important that they need to be delivered next day? The few times I realised I need something urgently it typically means today and even next day delivery is not enough, so I go to a store and possibly pay a slightly higher price. For everything else it doesn't really matter if it is one or 5 days. Is the next day delivery really necessary or does it just appeal to our impulse of needing to have it in our hands right now?
For many people, going to a store the same day is completely impossible (not having a store within reasonable distance that stocks any similar product).
This is not just rural areas, either: even in major cities items can be delivered faster than the time it would take to find a store that carried the item, go to the store, get it, and come home again. It's really only suburban areas with a high density of big-box retail that even have the option to "go out and get something" immediately.
Amusingly, it's also only in these suburban areas where next day delivery even exists to compete. As an anecdote, living in the downtown of a major American city (population > 1million), the average Amazon delivery time is roughly 3 days, and last mile deliveries are all delegated to the USPS which adds significant time.
For me it's more about the certainty than the rush. I hardly ever need anything next day, but "next day" is a concrete day, while for example "in 3-5 days" isn't. As someone who is often not at home, I'd rather not have to be at home or arrange for someone to be there several consecutive days in case a package arrives.
I think most of the complaints are directed at the amazon.com. They do not at all reflect my experience with amazon.fr - yes there's no name crap but there's also lots of legit stuff, and it's the majority that comes up in search results (confirmed through third parties recommending the same legit stuff with amazon links).
If you just want to buy chinese consumer junk of middling quality or you are buying industrial widgets based on part number or specification those things mostly aren't an issue.
I think part of the problem is that on that page there is no obvious way to see any information about the seller. I just see a single brand name “TIKROUND”, which looks like one of those fake Chinese names mentioned in the article.
How can I get more information about the seller!? I scrolled through the listing twice and couldn’t see any way to get more information!
I feel this in my soul. I wanted a new french press. I tried three from Amazon, two of the same model arrived broken, the third arrived appearing intact but broke on first use. I ended up just refunding and buying one from le creuset from their website. It arrived safe and is still alive and kicking.
I wanted some weight sensors for an arduino project, Arrow had them but Amazon also listed them but in bags of 4 for about the price 2 would have cost from Arrow, plus they'd arrive faster. They ended up being varying weight sensors ripped directly out of various electronic scales and 3/4 didn't work. Had to order from Arrow anyway.
My wife wanted one of those percussive massage guns for post workout, Amazon had the best price but then I saw in some of the reviews people showing that the items they received from Amazon weren't legit and the company (hypervolt iirc) wouldn't honor any warranty from one purchased from Amazon. I was pretty much done at that point. We ended up picking a different model but when we did we went straight through the manufacturer.
Yeah I haven't bought anything on Amazon for a couple of years now. Got burned once too many times. I went back to buying mostly in local stores. If they don't have what I want, I go online to manufacturers' websites if possible, or to reputable sellers.
In The Netherlands we have 2 big mainstream shops for electronics, this is Bol.com and Coolblue.nl. Bol.com started out as a webshop and moved into a marketplace idea (like Amazon does). I know a lot of people that prefer Coolblue over Bol because of this exact reason. Every product that Coolblue is selling has at least some kind of guarantee of quality, because if it is bad, they will have to replace it.
Sadly enough, at this point Amazon.nl is overshadowing this by giving insane discounts and refunds to customers, so I hope they do not win over Bol.com, but I am anxious about it.
Bol.com has put themselves in a bit of an awkward position by being at the mercy of third party resellers, but all Amazon just seems to sell the stuff you can get in the German Amazon with slightly shorter delivery times (for some things).
And at least with Bol.com you only need to deal with (sometimes dodgy) companies in the Netherlands, whereas with amazon you haven't got a clue where it's coming from, and a lot of it just seems to be stuff from alibaba at a big markup.
Their cables were the only ones that consistently delivered full promised bandwidth and stable connection even at long cable lengths. Plus, their email support has been very helpful, and had the same “quality cables, no bullshit” attitude as the rest of the website.
No affiliation, just a happy customer of 5+ years.
Is there an opportunity to create a marketplace that does meaningful validation and testing of the items on it, such that when you buy a product, you can be guaranteed to be getting the real thing?
Amazon is the last place I go if I need to purchase something. Sometimes I'll use it like a search engine and then go off-site and make the purchase elsewhere.
I am the same as you. Although the only difference is:
1. Amazon is the never the cheapest.
2. Their search is absolutely garbage and I can't use it. I'd need to go elsewhere, find a specific product, then search to compare.
I just logged into Amazon and the last thing I bought was 2021 "Leuko Tape" for hiking since it was the only seller that had it at a reasonable price.
I am genuinely always amazed by the responses on HackerNews. It might be because amazon.com is just cheaper in general than amazon.co.uk?
Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
I was excited to know where the names come from, and after reading all of the tweets I still don't know. If the answer is just: it's a random collection of letters because it's not a brand they want to build, then that's a very predictable and uninteresting answer.
I stopped shopping at Amazon when they kicked Parler off of AWS. I don't understand how any self respecting liberal could celebrate a mega corp censoring the internet along idealogical lines, even those who drank the insurrection kool-aid.
This is why you have an issue with Amazon retail? Really? Sure, you can dislike a parent company, but the issues being discussed in TFA and this HN thread is about the shopping experience. Your desire to have a chat about your right wing beliefs have no place here.
Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...