New Parents Complain Amazon Baby-Registry Ads Are Deceptive
wsj.com
wsj.com
I'm not willing to give Amazon that benefit of the doubt, however.
Fact: "the item was added to the list by the list's creator"
1. Amazon represented to the buyer that the Fact was true.
2. Amazon's representation was not true.
3. Amazon had no reasonable grounds for believing the Fact was true.
4. Amazon intended the Buyer to rely on this representation.
5. The Buyer reasonably relied on this representation.
6. The Buyer was harmed.
7. The Buyer's reliance on Amazon's representation was a substantial factor in causing the harm.
The core of the issue to puzzle over: How was the buyer of the gift harmed?
https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/1900/1903...
One might be able to argue that the buyer was reputationally harmed by being tricked into buying a gift that was neither asked for nor wanted.
The buyer demonstrated intent to purchase an item desired by the list owner, but was deceived into purchasing an article that did not meet that criterion. The buyer expended resources on this purchase that could have gone toward an actually-desired item, delivered at a socially-appropriate time (ie in time for a baby shower).
Anyways, we were surprised to see packages of Huggies showing up on our doorstep. Not only did we never add Huggies to the registry, we never added any diapers period. When we checked the registry again, we saw some Huggies ads spliced in discretely and almost imperceptibly. It speaks to our modern day lives that we simply said "wow, they put an ad in our registry... guess that's what Amazon does now" and just kicked off the return process. We've probably wound up with >$100 in Amazon credits based on returned Huggies at this point.
The net is full of terrible reviews but the whole company marketing scheme was based on pure fear mongering. They tried to argue that other diapers are dangerous for your baby. Then when that unsubstantiated fake news got popular, Honest deleted off the website related to it and redirected everyone to their home page. Slimy.
Great reading you can start here: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/honest-diapers-are-...
But the bigger thing that pissed me off was that they give you a $100 credit for diapers and wipes, but the only selection you could use it on was bottom of the barrel ones, and the wipes shipped to us were weeks/days out from expiration (we checked, same item bought at target expires 1+ year out).
Didn't buy diapers from them, cuz my sister got sketchy counterfeit pampers and boxes full of random shit. (I don't know what they saw wrong with the diapers, but all the big brands have serial numbers (for getting points or whatever), and their amazon diapers didn't show up in pampers system...
I ended up pretty happy with Babylist, which is basically a nice centralized tool for clipping item URLs and sharing them. Their business mode seems to be an in-app store, but it doesn’t seem to privilege their store too much over third parties, and there don’t appear to be any ads in the actual registry shared with folks.
It’s as close to the no-frills solution that I originally wanted as I could find. I’ve been pretty happy with it.
- A major retailer hid the actual wishlist behind an "idea list" page that visitors saw first when they clicked on someone's wishlist link. The "Idea list" was full of high margin items that had nothing to do with the wisher (sometimes even targeted to the wrong gender).
- Multiple major registries indexed your name for SEO and thus a baby registry still showed as top result on google for female founders and executives who had babies in recent years.
- Multiple wikipedia and gossip press links boosting SEO of several universal registries by showcasing the wedding or baby lists of famous people (the SEO boost was substantial too). Privacy was non-existent at that point.
- Popular new baby or wedding specialized registries that are also retailers and would push gift cards for their own stores to registry guests where you'd often find 30%+ markup on common items. Etc...
So, as I was literally nursing a baby in one arm, I wrote code for DreamList with the other. It was architected to be actually private (no lists get SEO, unless users explicitly ask for it; no ads or promotional emails; etc.). It is not tied to a retailer, so you can add the lowest price items from anywhere (and link your other wish lists and registries). It lets you manage wish lists together with your spouse or team (we've served charity and disaster recovery teams in every disaster since Hurricane Harvey). More importantly, you can add large items and dreams you are saving towards such as a big trip to Disney, or 529 plans, so on special occasions family can contribute small amounts to help little ones get there sooner.
It starts with little architectural decisions, but every detail matters in a family product, as it sets a tone for interactions and thus relationships of millions of families that live apart geographically. We've reached a time when we have to take online privacy and quality in our own hands, for the sake of our kids.
All feedback is very welcome :)
I mean, it’s nice that -you’re- not tracking me, but you’re still requiring I invite fb to track what I’m doing.
So... for those of us for whom “I absolutely don’t track you” actually matters, I don’t know if this is usable.
To the developer: please consider adding email-based login, or maybe just unique links sent by email for viewers without fb.
"Voting with your dollars" is just another way of saying to stay divided and alone, while companies unite and get ever more organized. How well has it worked so far?
r/unethical/illegal.
Which, I imagine, is the entire point. The ideal outcome, from Amazon's perspective, is that you can't simply scan a page and tune out the ads. As long as people are just "annoyed" and not "leaving the platform in droves," the ad creep will continue.
Buying from Amazon use to mean getting a legit product, quickly, and in new condition. Now it's a complete crap shoot what fake junk we're going to get.
But these days, you've gotta keep your guard up at all times. Whoops, this isn't for sale from "Amazon," it's some rando on their marketplace. Hrm, do they have lots of reviews? Okay, let's check a few and see if they look real or fake. Is this the sort of product that might be faked or be a weird, cheap knockoff? Is this the right product page for this product or a weird clone of the real one? I can still get my business done with a minimum of being taken advantage of, but it's a lot harder to do now.
Looking forwards to honey sciences New app for search aggregation
Amazon is more expensive, abusive with this kind of behavior and it’s core differentiator (speed) is irrelevant to a registry.
Aside: do people in the UK do "baby registries"? I've only ever seen it on USA media. Mind you we do seem to get USA culture eventually. My kid said he had "math" the other day ...
Gifts served a purpose in the distant past because people needed "things" to start their life, but that's no longer the case. Most people have way too many things, and most of their expenses are operating costs anyway (like mortgage, rent, education, health care, and transportation).
Personally, I don’t like to give cash because it’s impersonal and doesn’t allow me to express creativity of something relevant to my friendship or affection. I rarely get it perfect, but a gift let’s me interact with the recipient to find out how they are doing, what they need, what I think will help best.
If I don’t know someone well enough that I can’t help with an item and would only send cash, I use that as a filter for whether to send a gift.
I also don’t like receiving cash from friends, but appreciate gifts.
So now they double dip and sell the customer (ads) and the product.
Or is Amazon such a monopoly that this wasn't even considered?