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Comment by verelo | Hacker News Reader

Good. Today i called Amazon to complain something i ordered never arrived. No questions asked refunded. Needed it urgently so went to a brick and mortar store down the road to buy it. 3x the price, and they took 15 minutes to process my sale. If anyone wants to match the amazon experience anywhere else in my life, take my money!

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Hopefully you don't buy anything that goes on or in your body from Amazon.

Fake Dove Soap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17217290

Fake Diapers: https://jenniferlabit.com/2016/07/21/counterfeit-baby-produc...

Fake Eclipse Glasses: Tons of stories

Amazon has a bad counterfeit problem. The way they co-mingle stock is crazy. You can't even trust reviews because the review might be describing a completely different product.

EDIT: Counterfeit books! http://davidgaughran.com/2017/06/03/amazon-has-a-fake-book-p...

Doesn’t happen enough to stop using Amazon. Sorry.

If I could get back every block of 15 minutes I've spent on Amazon scrolling through the endless amount of options in order to avoid buying some crappy Chinese knock-off version, I'd be happy.

For home decor it is kind of amazing. Some of the higher quality knock off brands have become good products in their own right.

My floor lamp is a knock off of a famous designer lamp. The particular knock off I have is rather desirable, to the point that other companies are making inferior knock offs of it!

Searching through the gunk is incredibly time consuming though.

If you don't mind waiting for shipping... Aliexpress is your friend for knockoffs at a better price. Buyer beware though, since you are dealing with Chinese sellers.

Like you are not already dealing with them on Amazon and Ebay?

I always pick the sellers that ship within the USA. It costs a few dollars more, but easier refunds and faster arrival.

I don't think I ever got a counterfeit item on Amazon. The fact that there are news stories about specific counterfeit items (and not the problem in general), indicates to me that it's not as widespread.

>I don't think I ever got a counterfeit item on Amazon.

Well you wouldn't, if the counterfeit's were any good.

Fair point, but if I can't tell that the good is fake, even after using it, I don't care that much.

It could be I'll order Dove soap, get counterfeit, and incorrectly assume Dove soap sucks, but mostly I'm ordering brands too obscure to bother faking, or brands I'm familiar enough with to realize the bad counterfeit isn't the real thing. (But like ma2rten, I don't think I've ever gotten a counterfeit.)

If you're slathering it all over your body but you have no idea where or how it was made, do you suppose that you might suffer from deferred regret at some point in the future?

(cf. today's talcum powder news item)

> Fair point, but if I can't tell that the good is fake, even after using it, I don't care that much.

Heavy metal poisoning may take years to show effects.

Shoddily made laptop chargers may be a fire/shock hazard that kill in 100/1,000,000 instead of 1/1,000,000 cases.

Not every dangerous counterfeit is immediately obvious as such.

I've gotten counterfeits of other products (for example, I once got a counterfeit DVD boxed set), and a lot of products I look at will have reviews noting that they received a counterfeit and what to look for to make sure you're actually getting the product listed. It seems to be reasonably common.

More often than not, electronics stuff I've bought on Amazon have been unsatisfactory in some way, such as: counterfeit, was obviously returned by someone else, parts missing, obviously broken, etc.

Their return policy helps with this, but I don't have anywhere near this level of problem at Best Buy or Newegg. So I don't buy electronics on Amazon anymore, even if they're cheaper.

I can't understate how disappointed I am that NewEgg is offering 3rd party sellers access now...

I utterly loathe the horrible photocopied books which sometimes turn up in place of proper printed editions. Have become better at spotting them, but it's a really unpleasant situation which dissuades proper publishers from reissuing out-of-print public domain works.

I've never seen an avalanche. The fact that people talk about specific mountains where avalanches happen (and not the avalanches in general), indicates to me that it's not as widespread.

This is what your argument looks like when put through reductio ab asurdum. It's certainly fine for you to be weary of these claims since your experience has been different, but to say this is indicative of anything when it's your 1 anecdote vs all of the other anecdotes is a claim with little force behind it

Based on the number of reactions I was completely wrong, but my point was: You are not going to see a news article about avalanches. News is always about infrequent events.

And don't forget resellers stealthily jacking up the price of commodities.

I used to buy indiscriminately from Amazon. If Amazon had it, it was the best price. Why bother shopping around?

I've been bitten multiple times now with ordering something only to realize some reseller has jacked up the price and I didn't notice.

(e.g. buy baby wipes for $10, later re-order same baby wipes and think "hm, $18.50 seems higher than I remembered. Oh well, I need baby wipes!")

So now I shop around for everything. Since Amazon is "forcing me" to shop around, I've started to exclude them out of spite.

I get it, it's capitalism. If some Amazon reseller (including the "fulfilled by Amazon!" resellers) dupes me, I'm the sucker. Amazon's not to blame for capitalism. But... I still blame them. :)

There are a few browser extensions that automatically compare prices from some major retailers based on whether they ship to you.

Give one of them a try, sometimes they find you nicer prices.

I like the idea, but the privacy implications scare me away. My Amazon activity and data says everything personal about me, including medical conditions.

Amazon keeps constantly increasing fees in their marketplaces or warehouses, then there is a brutal competition on price via algorithmic repricers, so resellers try to compensate wherever they could. Increased price could be also a consequence of Amazon kicking out cheaper sellers and the remaining ones without doing anything by using a repricer would set a higher price, not mentioning some advanced repricers using game theory to find equilibrium as well.

I get my diabetes supplies through Amazon– generic glucose test strips and pen needles I use for insulin. The price is a fraction of what they cost at the pharmacy (even with insurance).

I have no problem recommending them to anyone. Quality is acceptable and more importantly it's the only option at a price point I'm willing to pay.

Edit: Thanks to whoever downvoted this.

How do you know the quality is acceptable on something like test strips? I don't know anything about the specific here, but I would have thought that you especially would care about brand for single-use test supplies, because you just have to trust the manufacturer regarding their false positive/negative rates.

(this sounds more combative than I mean because internet text is hard - i'm genuinely curious)

There is a solution of known "sweetness" you can put on test strips. If the result comes up in a set range, they're acceptable. Basically my assumption is that if a random strip or 2 from a container is good, they're all good. Also, knowing blood sugar EXACTLY isn't really something I'm interested in. I want to know trends and where I'm roughly at.

Do any independent websites sell counterfeit? If so, then we're just comparing isolated cases on a large ecommerce site with what?

Independent (non-aggregator) web sites generally have some control over what suppliers they draw from. So of course there are counterfeits out there, but they’re the exception, unless selling counterfeits was the seller’s intention. You can generally judge based on how reputable the seller is.

Amazon sources indiscriminately, because they’re not a seller in the traditional sense; they’re basically a flea market with warehousing and logistics. So you have no guarantees one way or another whether the thing they’re selling is genuine or not.

A friend of ours gave us a painting of Cú Chulain for our wedding. That painting was her specialty that went through many prototypes. She put prints of it on Amazon and within a few weeks hand made copies were being sold from far eastern sellers. She spent two year battling to get those sales taken down. In the end it only stopped because the sellers moved onto other pictures and not because Amazon took any action.

So has the dept of commerce, or homeland security, or whoever is responsible in gov't for suppressing counterfeit goods ever raided an Amazon warehouse? Does there need to be complaint by the manufacturer first?

I would imagine Mr. Bezos figured out how to navigate Washington successfully long ago.

For stuff being sold domestic you go through the FBI, for stuff being imported you go through CBP and the USITC. For intellectual property it's OIPR. (I clear international freight through Customs for a living)

Or razor blades. Bought some Gillette Fusion 5 blades on Amazon a few years ago for a good price.

Didn't take long to realize that no way were they the real thing. First shave was horrible and it was downhill fast from there.

Bought something from Amazon, delivery status said was delivered on a Wed. but no such delivery. Got busy and forgot about it, two days later, bam! Delivery from who else, On-Track. On track is deceitful for some reason falsely announcing a delivery that won’t be made for a day or two in the future, I’m guessing to meet delivery SLOs.

Amazon is better than brick and mortar because Amazon fails to deliver after a week, but a brick and mortar store fulfilled in 15 minutes?

15 minutes of synchronous time waiting at the store versus 1 week of asynchronous time while you live your life though.

For most random things, getting there and back aside, find the item in a huge store is a pain in the ass. On amazon, it's literally a 10s search query.

Also, for more common items such as shampoo or litter, grocery stores have literally 30 different types of them, which can make it hard to choose. By having ratings, reviews, information and q&a right there, it makes choosing the right product much easier.

>>15 minutes of synchronous time waiting at the store versus

Uhh, what about traveling to and from the store? Or have you invented teleportation?

And on top of that, what happens when the bricks and mortar store goes out of business and you have nowhere to go when Amazon is not sending it to you and "need it urgently".

Sometimes I shop at the local BestBuy to delay that inevitable day when Amazon is the only thing available.

Amazon Prime Now, while not available everywhere, has worked fairly well for me, and maybe soon we'll have drone deliveries too.

Same, but with Amazon, I've been on hold on the chat now for at least half an hour. The rep can't say if the order will be cancelled if I press the cancel button myself. It will never be delivered, that's for sure. Amazon's delivery service simply doesn't even attempt delivery. I'm pretty sure this kind of experience is hard to replicate simply because it's so bad. Even cancelling an order is hellish nowadays requiring a supervisor. What a shitty fucking company. And worse, it's the only place to buy a ton of stuff.

> Today I called Amazon

Please share the phone number you used to call Amazon. Thanks!

Mmmh. On boxing day I ordered some wifi-extenders, which was in stock. It was a good deal. When I received the order confirmation, it wasn't in stock anymore, they said they'd get it to me as soon as possible. Six months went by and occasionally I got updates they're still trying to get the item.

After six months I tried to tell them that I waited enough, and that they should actually deliver the item. They told me they cannot offer me the item, because it's not available. I told them it's actually available on their own store, at double the price. They told me that's different sellers, so even though they're selling it on their website, it's not actually their website or something. They graciously offered that I could cancel so that I could order it from them again at double price.

I tried to explain to them that I we've made a sales contract, and that it seems they want to unilaterally cancel it by simply not doing anything about it. I also tried to explain to them the issues of bait-and-switch sellling, and even cited from the government website (I'm in Canada, consumer protection is slightly stronger in the states). (Note that six months after boxing day, I can't get boxing day specials from competitors anymore)

In the end I spoke to several people who went around in circles over and over. Eventually somebody offered to give me store-credit that would cover the difference when cancelling the order and making it again immediately.

...I don't get why everybody thinks Amazon has great customer service. They don't even seem to believe in following basic consumer protection laws.

Was the item shipped and sold from Amazon? I admit they don't make this distinction very clear on their product page, and they make it way too easy to be a third-party seller on their site, but it makes a huge difference. Chances are you were talking directly to a third-party seller and not Amazon. I have had nothing but great experiences dealing with Amazon directly.

Sold and (never) shipped from Amazon. I only spoke to Amazon reps.

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