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Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

> I absolutely refuse to buy any items from their store because 7/10 times it’s garbage.

genuinely curious, what kinds of things do you order? I place 1-2 orders every month and I've never received anything that I suspected was counterfeit.

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Maybe not counterfeits, but many of the listing are very poorly made. Most of the clothing I've bought through them (even supposed name brands) have fallen apart extremely quickly. Looking through my history:

- a car battery maintainer that doens't really charge the battery

- 2 puzzles that the pieces don't fit together and many of them broke.

- a snowboard edge tuner that ended up breaking after about 5 uses.

- an iphone charging cable that fell apart after about a year even though it claimed to be kevlar braided.

- a spatula that must have been 24 gauge sheet metal stamped into a "spatula" shape.

- some glass screen protectors for my iphone that don't fit.

- an air filter for my car that doensn't fit the car it's listed for.

- a wireless charger that the micro-usb port broke within 2 months.

All of those were from 2018. Now that I look through my history I'll change the 7/10 to 5/10 but in my book that's sill absolutely unacceptable. I'm sure there's more diligence I can do to make sure that I only buy name brand products but Amazon has lost my trust.

Try to find the real manufacturer. If it's a no-name/no-brand seller from China, then you should know what to expect.

Example:

1. Search for "car battery charger"

2. "Amazon's Choice" result is a brand called Ampeak

3. Google "Ampeak trademark"

4. Ahhhh, "AMPEAK is a trademark of SHENZHEN JIADING ECOMMERCE LTD."

Exercise of trying to find any information about "Shenzhen Jiading Ecommerce LTD" left to the reader.

Also:

1. Try to find a website for both the brand and the manufacturer. "Ampeak" does have a website but lacks company information.

2. Note if the listing is dominated by gushing 5-star reviews and 1-star "what the heck did I just buy" reviews, something you can observe in the Ampeak charger listing.

If this is really the only way to successfully shop at Amazon, I wonder why so many people are still doing that. It seems to me that it would be the role of the shop I am shopping at to perform this kind of due diligence and quality assurance.

> I wonder why so many people are still doing that.

Because a lot of people kept doing that their entire life. Just now, it's becoming normal for people in America

The role of the shop you are shopping at is to get filthy rich peddling shoddy junk made with effectively slave labor, while degrading both the manufacturer and consumer societies at the same time.

Indeed. Stores are not your friend. And its not like it was better before Amazon. In fact with online shopping I learned how those brick and mortar retailers were scamming me for decades with their middleman rent seeking.

Last week I wanted to get my brother some stuff so he could try out making the electronics for a project idea he has. He’s in high school. I have a nice soldering iron from a reputable seller that has lasted several year and works well.

But I didn’t get him one of those because that would have cost more than the entire assortment of arduino, wire, power suppliers, soldering iron and other components that I got him.

If he really likes it, then I’d buy him a nice one, but here Amazon was great for the use case of I want to knowingly buy cheap stuff and risk it might break.

Many other websites are turning themselves into fairly open accrss market places as well, meaning you have to increasingly go through the same steps on them. A few examples: Newegg, Walmart, Lowes. Now, perhaps those 3 examples are better, but they seem to be determined to head the same way as fast as they can.

If this is the “correct” way to shop Amazon, then the ops point is only stronger. It makes perfect sense to take your business elsewhere when these kind of shenanigans are required.

Wow, such an improvement, I shall even walk there to take it home, after I help prepare the materials and assemble the parts. Modern times.

The trouble is that in many cases it goes a bit further. Steps 1-4 are as you say. But then

5. Keep looking down Amazon's product listings.

6. Notice that _every single thing in the list_ is a weird pseudo-brand whose products are presumably drop-shipped from China.

7. Notice that many of these things, although nominally having different manufacturers, are obviously pretty much the same thing, probably coming out of the same factory.

8. Try to find some suitable products somewhere in the list that actually come from companies you might have heard of and that aren't just reselling the same probably-low-quality Chinese products.

9. Give up and go to a bricks-and-mortar store.

(For me, looking at Amazon UK, for the particular search mentioned above there do seem to be a few real products in among the deluge of fake-brand junk. But often >90% of the products in the list are fake-brand junk. And of course then there's the possibility that the real products are actually fakes too.)

thanks for the response. it's totally reasonable to want a shopping experience where you just search for $item and the item you get is actually a decent quality. unfortunately, it seems that amazon is not this kind of service anymore.

my usual shopping workflow is 1) lookup the wirecutter article for the item I want, then 2) go to amazon and get the top or budget wirecutter pick (depending on price and how much I care). I've never been disappointed by the item I got, but I definitely understand if you don't want to work this hard for a spatula. I guess I have some sort of amazon stockholm syndrome if I never noticed the problem with my workflow. for me, it's just a warehouse full of random items with free two day shipping. the index to the items is external to the service.

Some categories are worse than others. Bluetooth anything, cables, phone accessories are often fake.

For awhile, iPhone accessories were either fake or grey market. I think that improved recently.

I place 5-20 orders a month and have never received counterfeit

Are you sure? It's not like a counterfeit broadcasts itself as a counterfeit. Totally possible you've already bought a counterfeit.

I was the same way, and then one day, got a set of completely obvious counterfeit undersink water filters that had nothing in them.

This is usually called 'survivor bias'

I recently got a counterfeit pair of socks.

you mean from a well known brand like nike, adidas, etc.? why not get it from their own website or app directly? sometimes it's even cheaper and the perks you get far out-weights what amazon has to offer.

You basically never get free shipping on a pair of socks from a brand like Nike though, right? Usually you have to spend ~$50. These were ‘Darn Tough’, a more niche hiking/active brand. Amazon had the best price. I only found out they were counterfeit by doing some research when they got a hole way too soon, but just after the return window. I mended the hole and they’re serviceable for now. In the future, I’ll only buy these from either REI or direct from the manufacturer. Lesson learned. But yeah not your typical sock-buying situation, I’m way too big of a hipster for that ;)

Darn Toughs are nice enough when I left a pair behind by mistake at my hostel after a Grand Canyon trip I prevailed upon the hostel to mail them back to me for $2 for their time + postage. Thanks for the heads up about Amazon.

I know someone who buys a LOT of shoes from them (though just for himself) and they just awarded him a free pair recently.

That's a weird question. I mean, it may totally make sense to do what you are saying, but people tend to get used to shopping in one place, not even to mention that every sane wholesaler does everything in his power to make people used to that (relevant ads, promos, personalized discounts or bonus points, unobtrusive UI...) That's kinda the whole point of being a reseller.

You get a 5% rebate if you’re using an Amazon credit card. Their return policies are predictable and fairly generous. If you’re lucky enough to be in the right place, shipping is reliably 2 days or even same-day, which, if you’re using the card, is “free” as part of prime. I have more trust in Amazon’s ability to safeguard PII and payment information than I do for other companies. Except for the first one, these reasons are some of the main reasons Amazon blew up online retail in the first place.

> I have more trust in Amazon’s ability to safeguard PII and payment information than I do for other companies.

Even though I'd preferentially avoid Amazon much of the time, this is true. I wish Apple Pay for web purchase would become ubiquitous (and my credit card issuer would add support) to sidestep this issue.

Amazons shipping. Its the only reason I still shop at amazon. Their shipping is quick and predictable, if it says it will be at your door tomorrow it is very likely that it will be. You can actually take their delivery dates seriously and plan accordingly. I made the mistake of ordering a mobile AC unit somewhere else (reputable entity, bought my first pc there decades ago) and instead of getting it last Friday or Saturday, as stated when buying, it will come some time this week when I am at work. From looking at when the item got transferred to the shipping company its clear the original delivery date was simply wrong. Further more, the company tasked with delivery doesnt even do Saturdays. I dont think i will be buying anything important from them anytime soon. I had to many bad experiences like that with too many vendors to gamble on anything other then amazon.

I think amazon is very aware of that and is working towards their own shipping service for a reason. They are still a shitty company, but at least i dont have the hassle of running after my shipments.

Ah, yes, Newegg. I stick by them and parts-express despite my dependence on amazon for so much.

I used to order seaweed snacks. The type of things I enjoy but is hard to find locally. I can't take the chance anymore, Amazon needs a perfect reputation before I'm willing to eat something from them.

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