Amazon won't sell you a Chromecast, but they will sell a counterfeit
amazon.com
amazon.com
Does it ever! I refuse to buy expensive electronics or equipment on Amazon after getting burned with a knockoff Bose headphones and SWISSGEAR luggage. You don't even get the benefit of cheap prices as those things were within reasonable range of their typical retail price (and with luggage the price fluctuation is always high). It's insane.
It's pretty clear here that the person didn't intend to import a counterfeit bag (why pay full price for it?)
For the SWISSGEAR luggage, I went to a retail location and inspected the same model ... also, couldn't register the serial number.
Both knockoffs were of pretty good quality, but not at the same level as the originals.
1. Items sold by Amazon. 2. Items sold by 3rd parties and fulfilled by Amazon. 3. Items sold by 3rd parties and shipped by 3rd parties.
The problem is that items in their fulfillment centers, (1) and (2) are mixed together. Just because you buy something sold by Amazon doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be sent a counterfeit item that a 3rd party sent to amazon to use for fulfillment.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p...
Everything except for topical/consumable items and items with an expiration date can be conmingled.
Just a few days ago this was on the front page, an article by a small business owner selling their product on Amazon complaining both in the article and the comments that even when a product is in the brand registry they are woefully ineffective about dealing with counterfeits.
This not-Chromecast is a really bad example because it's not actually claiming to be a Chromecast, but I have certainly ordered products on Amazon and received knockoffs before. Inventory comingling makes it basically impossible to ensure you're getting what you order because even if you order from a reputable seller it might come from somebody else entirely.
I recently bought a Hario coffee grinder. I looked at what I thought was the official page for the item on Amazon (not a third party seller) yet 10-15% of the reviews all complained about receiving a counterfeit. That's when I gave up and bought it at Williams Sonoma.
The translation is by Constance Garnett. They only mention the book in passing. If I wouldn't have been wanting to read the book since years and called Russ Roberts highly the podcast wouldn't have made me want to read the book. It was in no way the topic of the episode or even close.
My anecdotal case was buying a lamp for a DLP TV. The seller claimed to provide a 1 year warranty and mine burn out after 11 months. However, there was absolutely no means to contact the seller. I tried reached out to Amazon to get it, but to no avail. Finally, I resorted to leaving a negative review about the product and seller. Within a day I was sent an email saying my review violated some rules that state I’m not allowed to be critical of the seller, only the product. I was flabbergasted. So I rewrote it without any direct mention of the seller and the same thing happened. At that point, I just gave up. The seller is still there, selling non-existing one year warranties.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=aw/...
No, don't buy name brands from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers (including Amazon itself) on Amazon, only from known-good third-party non-FBA sellers (exception, Amazon is okay if there are no FBA sellers for a product), since Amazon commingles inventory from FBA sellers (including themselves), so you never know which seller actually sourced a good purchased from an FBA seller.
No, it is, or at least it was. When online shopping got big, up until a few years ago, the prices were usually better than physical retail (but with higher latency due to shipping). It only got popular because you were getting a deal (if only dodging sales tax), and most people were conditioned to think that online shopping = good deal (compared to physical retail).
But you're right, in 2018 Amazon's for paying retail and gambling that you didn't get a counterfeit (the chance of which varys depending on the kind of product), and then waiting for it to arrive.
For me that doesn't make any sense, so I've stopped shopping there for anything I can find locally in a retail store.
People often say that media like CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays are on the way out and it's all online downloads now, but at least here in the UK I still buy probably 90% of the films I watch at home and maybe half of the TV shows on disc, because the likes of Netflix simply don't have a big range of big name titles, or don't get them until several years after they come out.
Sadly, most of the good local stores where I used to buy discs have closed down, in large part thanks to online sellers undercutting them and driving them out of the market. The likes of Silver Screen, where you could go in and browse for almost any film or TV show you liked on disc and probably pick up something new to try on an offer while you were there, have gone the way of the dinosaur. All that's left is a few of the recent blockbusters in the big stores. I'm not convinced this is progress!
We do at least still have one decent bookshop in town, which is a blessing because Amazon's handling of books is apparently so careless that I was returning a crazy number of them just because they arrived marked, ripped or otherwise not in brand new condition. I've gone back to buying the majority of my books, and anything I possibly can if it will be a gift, in bricks and mortar stores so I can see it's in good condition before I buy it, and where I can also browse for related material that I might also like to pick up while I'm there.
Tech-wise, I wouldn't trust Amazon for anything more sophisticated than a network cable or USB hub. This is a merchant that ships hard drives in over-sized boxes with a bit of tissue paper for padding, and then seems to have trouble understanding why we decline the delivery. There are plenty of specialist tech merchants who will supply more serious gear packaged properly, from reputable sources, and typically at about the same price anyway.
Fast forward to last week I was given a budget of about $6,000 to purchase company equipment and I looked at Amazon for 2 minutes and went right to B&H. After I submitted my order to my company I looked up everything on Amazon to see what I was missing. Well everything was bundles or weird price ranges with only 1 or 2 items left for sale. After 45 minutes I realized that it was a mess and I couldn't come up with a clear answer of how much anything was going to cost unless I had a credit card (We do purchase orders) and just looking things up it was a whole $50 less. Glad I went to a single seller.
now I have not see the issue in food products, I tend to buy certain condiments and garnish type items via Amazon as they are not locally available but given time and Amazon's looking the other way with the marketplace I expect it
(I could imagine you still have problems with products that just "happen" to look almost - but not quite - like the original, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The link shows products that look exactly like a Chromecast, even though the actual Chromecast is blocked.)
If they signed products with a cryptographic key, might actually be worth something as proof of who they are.
Manufacturer has a keypair. They include a QR code that's the digital signature of the combination of your name & the product's serial number. You use their public key to verify
A solution like this would also limit alienability of property. I buy a DSLR and register it with the manufacturer. Two years later I want to resell it to someone else and discover my manufacturer either refuses to issue the new QR code to the buyer, or wants to charge a "reasonable" or "nominal" fee of 25% of the fair market value of the good to effect the transfer.
This is why a distributed-trust solution like blockchain actually might not be overkill, in spite of its buzzwordiness these days.
Or to return to your idea, instead of the person's name, transfer to an ID that's backed by another keypair. The buyer now has the authority to sign away full ownership without asking the manufacturer for cooperation. Of course, this means the manufacturer and each seller in the chain now has to have a tech-support department for people who lost their private keys or forgot the keychain password....
Nope
https://medium.com/@alitech_2017/blockchain-based-qa-the-end...
Excerpt: "The way it works is roughly like a serialization or UPC code. The brand buys the codes from Amazon and puts a unique code on every unit it creates for sale on Marketplace. All the codes are serialized; Amazon will not accept items without codes."
It's reasonable to expect that they won't even allow other pharmacies on the platform.
The next day, the product was listed as no longer available.
N=1, but there does seem to be an effort.
But having said all that - this is such a poor example to start complaining about. Nothing in the product description sounds like a counterfeit; it's simply yet-another possibly poor-quality competitor to the chrome cast. And sure, the supplier made the really dubious decision to include a chrome-logo-shape in the actual device. But the seller isn't amazon; and the description doesn't use anything to hint at it being a chromecast - so it's unlikely people looking for a chromecast will be mislead (or indeed even manage to find this thing).
All in all: this sounds like the seller is possibly counterfeiting, but it's not a great example of amazon tolerating counterfeiting, because it's easy to imagine a reasonable middleman might never have noticed.
My new strategy with Amazon is simple: If it's a book, sure. Otherwise no way, I can't trust anything there. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit against them by now for all the counterfeit / poor quality goods / spyware.
Less than ideal example? Possibly. But still valid.
Amazon. One of the few 800 lb tech terrors. And they're doing what to solve this problem? Tolerate is being too kind. When you're making the choices they're making you're an enabler.
All the revenue. All those resources and...that gets them a free pass? That's disturbing.
If they're going to comingle goods, then they need to put their own tracking onto the goods so that it is possible to know who provided the goods to which buyers. Either that or require that each item has a unique rfid or other identifier. This would allow tracing of counterfeit goods back to the supplier.
As it is, when you buy something that turns out to not be legit, you have no real recourse, and often the wrong supplier gets dinged.
Are you suggesting Jeff The Genius - who has aspirations to put a man on the moon - can't figure something out? Somehow?
The better question: Why are they doing nothing?
The answer is obvious.
1. Only stock counterfeit-prone items verifiably sourced from the real manufacturer, e.g. Apple, LV, Bose, etc.
2. Stop commingling inventory from multiple sources, which totally prevents any crowd-sourced detection of counterfeit sellers.
3. Increase manpower devoted counterfeit detection and enforcement. This could even include randomly pulling items from inventory and testing/inspecting them.
4. Detect obviously fake items, such as 1 TB microSD cards priced at $10. This can done through pre-listing manual reviews plus automation.
5. Give users obvious ways to signal the mothership about counterfeits, and take action on the signals.
6. etc.
In short there's all kinds of stuff a company with the resources of Amazon can do to solve this problem. The fact that they're doing nothing is telling.
Perhaps Google hasn’t registered their products with Amazon? It could even be intentional on their part.
In Amazon, I know to try to do this, but I don’t quite trust that what I bought came from who it claims to be. My mother has no concept of a “third party seller.” She just knows “it’s on Prime!”
IMHO the Amazon user experience tries to explicitly bury the 3rd party “bazaar” inside the “store,” and (some time ago) successfully managed to mingle them both into a single “marketplace.”
When I’m shopping for a 1978 printing of a book, I want the bazaar. When I’m shopping for a Chromecast, I want a “store.”
In an ideal world with no counterfeits, product commingling is an efficient thing to do, and if a product is commingled, there is no point in giving the 3rd-party seller top billing, the customer should feel like they're buying from Amazon.
The other day I found myself needing printer toner. Amazon has a much better price, even when they sell it themselves, than local stores. But then I see that along with the "sold and shipped by amazon", which is still quite cheap, there are dozens of even cheaper options, some of which are fulfilled by Amazon anyway. So how do I know I am buying a new, original cartridge, an honest, quality refurb, or something that might print badly, or even damage my printer? Even the sold by Amazon merchandise, which I'd hope is original, could be comingled with a refilled knock off that might be indistinguishable out of the box, but will be very different in operations.
For something like this, as a consumer, I absolutely need to know the provenance of what I am purchasing, and the chance that there is commingling means I cannot buy something like this from Amazon, as I won't even be able to tell for a while.
Amazon has a tool to make it very easy for any idea anyone has to be patented. If I think it some crazy idea today, I can fill in a form describing it and lawyers will see if it's a valid patentable idea, then file the needed paperwork. Half the ideas may never be thought about again. That's where this came from, almost certainly.
Just because Amazon patents an idea doesn't mean it becomes real. It just means that if they ever decide to do it, they can't be sued by someone else who patented it.
We left a bad review of the seller. I challenge you to find that - and even better - who’s to say it was that seller or another bad actor that polluted the stock?
Yep. This is how you get the attention of regulators. They should ask Microsoft how fun it was to be hounded by them for a decade.
> it's an illegitimate business practice when you are in the business of selling pretty much everything else.
Google is a predatory monopoly that is leveraging their existing power in search to move directly into consumer goods.
Amazon is also a predatory monopoly that is leveraging their existing power in shopping logistics to move directly into consumer goods.
This is tit for tat.
https://www.recode.net/2017/10/12/16464132/google-target-ret...
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2975731/software-games/youtu...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16371292/google-youtube-a...
These companies are moving into the same market, and if they don't fight as hard as possible, they're letting their shareholders down.
I don't know if it's illegal and the DOJ is asleep at the wheel, but Google isn't going to stop: They're not content with selling people's personal data and even that they're losing to ad blockers. They're getting desperate.
Amazon isn't going to stop either, fuelling consumerism is their bread and butter, so they need to be in the middle of every shopping transaction. No market is out of bounds, but they're really struggling with media and product. These were big investments and Amazon is simply not very good at either, so they too are desperate.
We consumers are surely the collateral damage in the meantime, but besides "voting with our wallet", what else could we do? Regulation would be likely required to even allow Google and Amazon to cooperate without violating their obligations their shareholders, but what shape would that take?
Edit: I did some googling and it appears that amazon pulled both Apple TV and Chromecast because they didn't offer Amazon Prime. Which is clearly abuse of their position in the market to me but I'm just a layperson.
Then int 2017 they were slated to come back but now in 2018 I can't find chromecasts anymore. Only peripherals for it and clones.
Edit: Lol I just noticed they're selling the "fire tv stick" instead. What a stupid name.
A chacun son gout.
Amazon pulled Prime Video off of Chromecast themselves to sell the Fire TV (stick). Google did not remove Amazon's apps.
There’s a lot of fuckery there, and those of us that tried to build open source chromecast clones got fucked by Google as well.
If you wish to argue against this, please offer me a way to implement the Chromecast protocol on a raspberry pi, reliably, without it constantly being broken by Google’s updates.
How can they do that without also kicking out Netflix, Twitch, Hulu, etc.?
There were three groups working on such a receiver, Google with their Chromecast, Amazon wanted to support receiving chromecasts with the fire TV, and open source projects trying to receive chromecasts on the raspberry pi.
Google changed that protocol a few times, only Google's products can receive chromecast streams today.
And that was already after Google's anticompetitive actions against the Kindle Fire devices.
Your argument that Cast is hard on unsupported platforms is irrelevant. They are, by definition, unsupported, and Google is under no obligation to support them.
Google provides an SDK that people are free to use on the platforms Google chooses to support.
The point is not about sending, but about receiving, as was possible with miracast, and which would have made the fire stick a killer product (by having immediate compatibility with all Google apps' casting feature)
There's a separate protocol app → Google and Google → Chromecast. Or at least, there was, after countless changes, I gave up attempting to build a raspberry pi with chromecast support.
And of course, Chromecast replaced the dlna protocols and Miracast support in Android. I lost the ability to stream the screen on my nexus devices to open source receivers back then, because Google had to go proprietary.
But that's normal, still, amazon tried a one-up on a shitty way.
But those are just because they made products consumers want to use. There is no opportunity cost to switching search engine or store website. It takes a line of text to move to duckduckgo, bing, startpage, etc from Google. It takes a moment to move over to walmart, target, ebay, overstock, newegg, etc from Amazon. Neither can be overtly predatory towards the consumers of their platforms because they have no way to lock them in without taking over the whole Internet (and yeah, Google is trying that with AMP, but I doubt they will ever have enough of the Internet under their control to start restricting / banning non-AMP sites in Chrome - if they ever did that its the most blatant monopoly abuse case since Comcast).
Speaking of Comcast, they are the other side of the coin. Comcast has sheer market dominance, uses their size to buy out and kill competition and bribe politicians, and leaves their "customers" with no alternatives while they abuse them. For about 95% of Comcasts market base your options are Comcast or move somewhere without Comcast. That is a blatant, consumer harming monopoly.
Online, Facebook is damn close to that. You cannot easily switch to Facebook competitors because social networking is defined by network effects - Facebook is infrastructure as much as search is, but one requires the people you want to be on it while the other just needs to index the sites you want to find. Anyone can index websites, only Facebook can have everyone in your extended family on it. And Facebook surely uses its monopoly position to exploit and abuse its consumers.
I just like making the distinction between the two. Both are dangerous, but for most of us the threat of Google and Amazon isn't direct, its to the businesses and services we want to use that we access through them. But it remains our choice to give Google and Amazon that power, choices you don't have with Comcast or even Facebook. As long as I can have a voice in the efficacy of their monopolies I simply feel less threatened by them.
How is their search dominance coming into play here? I see leverage of youtube, and leverage of android. Plus plain-old mass media advertising campaigns. Not search.
No vendor should be forced to sell the products of its direct competitor.
Amazon Fire Stick is a direct competitor to Google Chromecast.
Because Google operated an online shopping portal, which is also Walmart-like (perhaps moreso than Amazon, since you can actually buy from Walmart on it.)
"Store X has come up with their own Macaroni and Cheese that market tests show to be extremely successful, so they stop carrying Kraft"
In that scenario, should Store X be forced to carry Kraft? Of course not, people who want craft will go to any other myriad of different stores. Amazon doesn't even close to resemble a monopoly on online shopping.
With all the mishaps lately like sending out stones and bricks [1] instead of cameras I am worried this will carry over into other Amazon owned companies like Whole Foods.
[1] https://fstoppers.com/gear/buyer-orders-6000-camera-amazon-s...
A lot depends on where it's made. Does Google have patents on the form factor in that country, either by treaties or by actually registering in the country? It can shut down the reselling by American companies at least.
As for food, counterfeits are unnecessary. There are already store brands which offer mostly or entirely the same food stuffs but with a derivative name (like Miracast vs. Chromecast, or Crunchy Nuts vs. Grape Nuts) and knock-off packaging.
There's also the bit where 3rd-party sellers don't exist in grocery stores.
I'm certain it doesn't work that way in the UK.
Small suppliers get _all_ their product confiscated in raids by Trading Standards when they sell knock-off Nike, or whatever.
Everyone knows it's knock-off (counterfeit, branded sports wear, like trainers and tracksuits). The sellers don't get let off for admitting it's fake; sometimes they go to prison, always they have goods confiscated.
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8034060.Counterfe...
This seems analogous to the Amazon situation.
By rule of law Amazon warehouses should be shut by the police until all inventory that's counterfeit can be removed by Trading Standards. Presumably they lack resources to effectively police traders larger than market stalls.
And harm the economy? Fat chance. Perhaps their size isn't as massive there, but in the US Amazon is certainly "too big to fail" at this point.
I think if it were up to me I'd issue an ultimatum. Remove all counterfeit goods from your marketplace/supply chain or your warehouse in South Yorkshire is shutdown until the 3 people working in the local Trading Standards office can process the full inventory and confiscate counterfeit goods; that would include all goods in transit, eg by post, with an Amazon label or biking performed through Amazon. That would be lenient compared to how small "businesses" are treated.
Then choose one warehouse to assess, do a raid, check compliance and act appropriately. Note, advertisement of counterfeits is non-compliance.
That will definitely never happen this side of the greens getting in to power.
> Special note:
> this isn't a Chromecast
If that logo's not fooling anyone, well, it's definitely not black and white.
There are usually wider issues of public safety that come along for the ride; tortuous malfeasants are prone to criminal actions - like goods that don't meet fire safety standards (or RF interference requirements, etc., but has the requisite marks), etc..
They can get away with selling internationally either by selling directly from China, or just playing whack-a-mole. Often companies in the west will pop up to sell the products to domestic markets, and by the time the law comes chasing after them they've already disappeared. Usually the law isn't interested in what they are selling, but only bothers to chase after them when they don't pay their sales taxes.
Top result is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
Second result is Amazon's Fire TV stick.
Third result is Roku Express.
4-7 are counterfeits with logos on them that don't precisely match the Chrome logo, but are clearly designed to falsely evoke Google's brand.
8 is a generic with no Google-related logo on it.
9-11 are counterfeits with almost-but-not-quite Google logos on them. 12 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
13-14 are accessories "for Chromecast.
15 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
Amazon correctly identifies which product category Chromecast is, and puts an add for Fire TV above the search results, indicating that they exercised some amount of direct (non-algorithmic) control over that page. I'd say Google has a pretty open-and-shut case for trademark infringement here.
In the larger picture, this whole affair is nasty and wouldn't have to have happened if everyone supported the standard: Miracast.
Miracast support was “dropped” only in that it, like Chromecast support, was provided by the Google Cast (now Google Home) app, not the base OS.
That's a weird business model
Well, more money to German merchants (and amazon.de). Many German merchants even provide English UI for Nordic customers these days. (Amazon.de provides hit-and-miss machine translation to English.)
- searching for something
- selecting the most applicable category on the left, next to the results
- selecting Amazon.(de|fr|it|es|co.uk) on the bottom left (under Seller)
What is sold by Amazon generally gets shipped anywhere (within Europe?).
As a company, before Amazon Business, this also made sure you'd be able to shop without VAT.
The most probable reason why you can't get packages from EU Amazon to Switzerland is because they are not in EU.
The same reason applies to why you can't get packages to EU if you're trying to get them from US.
Yes, some big sellers don't mind but small ones do, and EU Amazon does have a huge variety of sellers.
For example, I've lived in Croatia before and after EU membership. The Amazon situation changed completely and now I can get packages from any EU Amazon.
In contrast, most non-EU stores (except Amazon again) happily ship here, even if the shipping fees may be extremely high and border control is left to buyer's problem.
Could be that Swiss customs takes ages to clear parcels. Could be that tax or import duties are complicated or simply just so high that it's not worth it. I knew a lot of people in Switzerland near the German border used to go shopping in Germany because was significantly cheaper, probably still the case today.
The most obvious gap for a traveler is that the EEA mobile roaming price regulation doesn't apply if you are on an EEA operator and roam to Switzerland.
I usually just search for "Amazon Prime" items, but sometimes those items can't be shipped or aren't even available with Amazon prime! It's a total mess.
History here: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/03/02/amazon-still-isnt-s...
This is why all the pi-cast projects died down, after all. Google constantly eradicating third-party implementations to hurt Amazon.
That’s what started this fight.
If you wish to argue against this, please offer me a way to implement the Chromecast protocol on a raspberry pi, reliably, without it constantly being broken by Google’s updates.
It's core is chromecast-player https://github.com/thibauts/node-castv2-client
V2 suggests there was 1 revision over time...
The FAQ mentioned issues with Chromecast ultra and it seemed to be ipv6. Your reasoning ( Google changes a protocol to block Amazon), seems to be quite extreme.
Yes, Google does opensource a lot. But that doesn't mean they should open source one of their "few" hardware projects.
And continuing to repeatedly change the receiving protocol until everyone stopped trying to reverse it was very anticompetitive.
Amazon has spent years to get binary compatibility with almost every Google SDK and API, and Google has responded by continuing to obfuscating these even further, and preventing them entirely.
And that's in addition to Google's illegal threats (EU antitrust case is almost over) to OEMs to prevent them from building Kindle devices.
Amazon cloned an open source operating system, and used it. And attempted to achieve binary compatibility with Google's version. Google did all they could to prevent that from succeeding.
It's a very twisted view to see Amazon as having started that fight.
Personally, I dislike Google's proprietary Android versions as much as Amazon's, but it's been Google that's been fighting third party implementations all along the way here, and not Amazon. It was Google spending lots of effort to destroy open source implementations utterly and entirely.
They couldn't know that Amazon would fail miserably.. If I look at business tactics, that was a very mean move from Amazon and they earn everything that's coming ( the url's that were posted to "defend" them).
PS. I suppose you have Prime?
Trying to prevent competitors from providing compatibility with your products is anticompetitive.
In an ideal market, products are compatible, and you have multiple competitors to choose from. You could buy phones from multiple manufacturers, with different operating systems, that would be able to run the same apps. And you could stream YouTube to FireTV and Chromecast, and your FireTV could receive streams from Kindle and Google Android devices.
Amazon actively works towards providing intercompatibility whenever they can. Amazon added the same APIs to their Android version that Google closed off in Android.
Google, on the other hand, has in the past years every time they had a chance to, actively worked to prevent intercompatibility, kill standards, and limit the usefulness of open source.
I’m not sure there’s any way to see Google’s actions as a positive.
Amazon also didn't open-source anything of their changes, something Google did.
Their compatibility was a requirement for getting apps in their Amazon app store ( business decision)
Where is Google killing standards? If it is what I think you mean, they are changing the whole Android system slowly to adjust app/system updates. Balancing between open source and proprietary source is difficult and it's probably a business decision to close it more. If Amazon was successfull in taking over Android, they would have lost a lot.
Walmart has its own phone cell phone service, yet it still sells other phone brands.
I guess maybe because Amazon is getting more into hardware is maybe why they are dropping certain products. Like I wouldn't expect Apple to sell me a Dell laptop. However I view Apple more of a electronics company than a general electronics store. I view Amazon more like the online version of Walmart.
Walmart has their own store brand - Great Value. Costco probably wouldn't sell that either. I'm not a expert on store brands but I suspect they are using a private labeler company that makes products with their logos or minor tweaks.
You can buy Great Value Ultra Strong Toilet Paper or Cottonelle Ultra Comfort Care Toilet Paper at Walmart. Just because Walmart sells their own brand of toilet paper, doesn't mean they can't carry the other brands too. I think of Walmart as a general shop and not a toilet paper only shop. Probably being a "toilet paper company" isn't their main focus either.
If the margin in toilet paper was high enough where they had dedicated toilet paper stores, then at the Cottonelle Stores, then I'd expect only Cottonelle products - sotra like the Apple Store example.
Actually kinda surprised Amazon carries Roku though, but some reason they don't like Chromecast...
Presumably if I had more control I could rewrite the UA and Google would not punish me because they're having a tantrum over Amazon.
Many users will type, for example, "facebook" into their address bar. The browser searches Google, and whoever bought the ads will be on top.
Facebook can't allow any other company to come up first, and so they pay.
Many, many ad clicks work this way, and I consider it to be a dark pattern at best, but similar to fraud at worst.
I think facebook feeling the "need" to buy those ad slots is their own problem.
I'm not suggesting a solution to this. The core issue is that most ads are bad for users, and an ad business can never be truly harmless to its "product" -- the users.
Not much difference in my mind.
> The core issue is that most ads are bad for users
That's true even if the ad is for "potato", though.
I'm not ready to call the very concept of ads a racket, even if it's generally negative.
http://indianexpress.com/article/business/companies/abuse-of...
But yeah I can't believe how much of a crapshow buying this kind of equipment is on Amazon
Try to buy a Firestick if you're not on their "approved country" list and you can't
Now this, I hope Amzn enjoys all the returns and bad publicity
That, and the rest of the fonts are not the typical Chinese Times Roman(tm)
The bit that caught my eye was the Just Dance channel (I assume its a twitch stream)
- Lots of assorted complaints about Amazon
- Very few "I'll never shop there again..."
Seems to me that even when Amazon is wrong things still work out for them. Why should they change?
Ironically, Wal-Mart may finally provide Amazon with some serious competition, they seem serious about Jet. I don't know if having two mediocre retail platforms is that much better than one, but presumably they'll both try harder.
Perhaps it’s still a net positive for them, especially if most customers are oblivious to their counterfeiting problems.
1. When abusive buyers damage and return product, Amazon releases refund. We had one instance where one buyer was buying and returning same product for 3 times (2 times received in "customer damaged" condition) and irrespective of us escalating the issue, Amazon kept issuing refund. Also, it didn't reimburse for "customer damaged" as product was not under reimbursement category.
2. We have a strong feeling that few abusive buyers use FBA to create counterfeit absolutely free of cost.
3. Another nightmare is with Amazon seller support. Seems they are allocating good people for buyers, but seems to keep completely juniors who don't have any idea about seller concerns.
4. Their system is full of bugs. For instance, system will charge wrong fee and getting reimbursement is a tedious process. They will ask for certain details that we can't pull from seller central.
5. Even hiring dedicated account management from Amazon wouldn't help as they will only pitch and nag for ads
> So when i first received this product i thought it would be just another dongle like chrome cast. But oh boy was i wrong!!! This is such an amazing product and the video quality is extremely clear and work all around my house.
I purchased a similar (but cheaper) knockoff from China for the simple purpose of watching videos on an older TV:
https://www.banggood.com/AnyCast-M3-Plus-2_4G-Miracast-DLNA-...
On a side note, I'm still unsure about how well Micracast is supported in Linux - seems a lot of projects start and end up dying:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/318298/ubuntu-as-miracast-se...
- opening up 3rd party marketplace to dodgy sellers from Asia shipping stuff to US (likely to counter Alibaba)
- increasing false positives rate in counterfeit detection beyond reasonable levels, kicking out legitimate sellers upon mere unfounded suspicion (e.g. you just list an item, you immediately get banned without any sale and they don't easily accept a certificate proving you could sell it)
So in order to counter the threat from Alibaba, they are making even the life of good but small-medium sellers a hell in sense of "guilty by default".
This approval process slows down Jet and Walmart in terms of growing their sellers' base, but it actually may be their strongest point in the war with Amazon.
I'm disappointed in them for choosing to not sell their competitors, it prevents me from wanting to use their services.
It is fine if Amazon does not want to sell but banning everyone else on their market place is anti competitive.
To be honest, his picture now comes more like a 21st century version of Don Corleone. Sure Bezoz didnt kill anyone but I bet Don would love to know the key to his success which in case of Amazon seems to be very simple recipie:
- setup website making sure everything goes legal. - grow big and fast. Hire enough people to cover 80% of your HQ town's business district - because now you hire 40,000 people in one city, those people have voting power. Congratulation! You become too big to jail - at this stage, fuck legality. Allow counterfits in an open unmonitored market. - wait for lawsuit that will come. Those Chineese knockoffs of corridor night-lights? Yeah they dont have any certification and thats why your house burned down when you were vacationing with family. - sue Bezos but make sure you know the law, at least in Seattle (40,000 workers) where judges seems to agree that he only provides platform to sell and is not responsible for content. Know that many people are rotting in jail for similar behavior, including Sill Road website owner who never dealt drugs on his own but just provide platform to do so (although arguebly he was behaving much darker than that) to any torrent or music website ever existed and died on internet. - basically at this point with such huge workforce in Seattle and owning a mouth piece to say anything he wants via Washington post, this guy is a hard core mobster, breaking rules he knows he can break and wreacking billions in process. Please - until you hire few thausands in your city, do not attempt to try what he does - you will spent lifetime in jail for counterfitting.
Also, I don't know if the description has changed in the last couple months, but the top review (2 out of 5 stars) focuses on the fact that it's not 5GHz capable, but it never claims that it can. Again, it's possible that they changed the description since the review was posted, but I can't see anything on this product that is an outright lie. This company is staying on the right side of shady behavior and not straying into criminal territory.
Crappy product? Probably. Trademark infringement? Almost definitely. Counterfeit? Not quite. It's just MegaBlocks vs. Legos.
If you pay less money you can't expect to get the same thing. Situations where you get a better product for less money are pretty rare when the product is sold in large quantities- manufacturers won't give up free profit margin. If someone knowingly buys an inferior product, they don't get to complain when it isn't as good as the original. "Oh, man my $50k Hyundai Equus isn't as nice as a $70k Mercedes, I thought they'd be exactly the same."
*I'll accept that a few old grandmas bought these thinking they were the real deal, but most people knew they weren't getting real Chromecasts in the first place.
And once Amazon replaces the "buy now with one click" button with "please read every word on this page before purchasing" button we can talk. Amazon wants fast and brainless purchasing.
Yes, technically it doesn't say it's a Chromecast, and most of the 5 star reviews are barely coherent or obviously shills, so it doesn't take a genius. But still it's a shitty experience, especially if you aren't a technical person. Even as a technical person, it's a shitty experience, you can't get what you wanted, and might spend 10 minutes looking, sifting through shite knockoffs, wondering why there aren't any real Chromecasts (like I did).
This is how you ruin the reputation of your business very, very quickly.
I think it's hard to argue that Amazon has prima facie done anything malicious here, unless they have made special accommodations for the product, and/or have changed their search algorithm for the word "Chromecast."
At worst, they are allowing someone else to sell a misleading product with the Chrome logo. But even if the logo were different, I suspect people would still be complaining.
Are you familiar with Amazon's search? Most searches have items in the completely wrong category on the first page. It being wrong is expected, not evidence of fakery.
Is it an attempt to rip people off who expect to get an actual Chromecast or is it just intended to make it look like a bad product you shouldn't really be buying?
I'm getting kind of tired of this war between amazon and google that's not serving anyone's interests.
How's it gonna end - organic search results with no amazon listings?
How can you judge intentions based on the fact that the product shows up second in a search for Chromecast? Given that there is no actual Chromecast on Amazon, what would you expect to see for that search?
Nothing.
For example, if I search "Nissan GTR bumper," here is what I get in the search results:
1. tow hook
2. 350z bumper
3. lip spoiler
4. NISMO emblems
5. license plate bracket
You don't get zero search results, you generally get the most relevant ones. You only get zero results when your search is so specific that no products are at all relevant.
I get that it's OK to return a result with similar items but surfacing a blatant fake so prominently, you really think that's just an algorithmic glitch?