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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Considering how shopping at Amazon now feels like shopping at an electronics bazaar in Singapore with giant bins of random knock-off products of suspicious quality, tweaking the algo to push name-brand options (even if it's their own name-brand) would be a welcome move to me as a buyer.

Obviously it's grossly unfair to their vendors, but from a strictly user-centric view it's an improvement.

Otherwise, Amazon feels like AliExpress with faster shipping and better English.

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> Otherwise, Amazon feels like AliExpress with faster shipping and better English.

It literally is. All these products are cheap stuff that marketers find on aliexpress. They buy them in bulk, stamp a logo on it, import in the US/EU, stock in logistic centers and then sell on Amazon. It's the same stuff, but it comes from an English seller and a warehouse in US/EU.

It's exactly the same thing that Amazon does with its product lines though (like Amazon Basics), so not really rooting for their own name-brands either.

The one difference is that the Amazon Basics products seem to have a quality bar higher than the other random re-labeled products.

They recalled a quarter million power banks because they were catching fire.

Everybody uses the same factories and Amazon doesn't have better quality control than anyone else.

To be fair, Samsung had to scrap a whole phone model because of battery problems. The Boeing 787 suffered with problems of batteries catching fire (and according to some reports still does). It's a tricky problem to avoid.

Anecdotally I've spoken to people who compete with Amazon private label in electronics and they tell me Amazon doesn't care about quality, and that the factories they were buying from were known to be lower quality.

I've also heard the opposite about Anker - that they always get the best quality.

AmazonBasics isn't any more trustworthy than any of the junk you find on AliExpress or at Wal-Mart/Target/Best Buy. (Except that it has a good return policy backing it, I think)

Amazon is at least liable (theoretically, at least) if they sell an AmazonBasics product that winds up giving my kids lead poisoning, and will have a lot harder time disappearing into the wind to avoid a lawsuit. They disclaim any liability for third-party sellers.

Sure, but will a lawsuit unpoison your kid?

Unless Amazon is currently testing products for lead before recommending them, which somehow I doubt, then the potential of a lawsuit against Amazon isn't actually protecting your child.

There's at least someone with deep pockets to go after, which is very much not the case for some random drop shipper in China.

It makes sense- if Anker's batteries start exploding, nobody will buy Anker's batteries again, and that's a significant part of their brand.

If Amazon's batteries start exploding, it's not quite the same magnitude. People will still shop at Whole Foods.

Samsung doesn't have a problem selling phones

People buy Samsung phones because they're good phones, people buy Anker batteries because they're good batteries. If they start exploding people will find some other, better battery brand.

Admittedly a phone that explodes is a bad phone, but Samsung can still sell its "good phone" brand the same way Apple can still sell its laptops.

Samsung also has a very long track record of producing cell phones that are deemed safe which neither Anker nor Amazon can match in batteries. You either need an extensive positive record to easily bounce back or need to be willing to write it off as an auxiliary business (e.g. if Amazon had battery issues).

I’m sure Amazon’s competitors are the best source for unbiased feedback about the quality of Amazon-branded products.

Anker are difficult to gauge, I've a few products of theirs, mostly bought a few years ago, with nothing recent - those have been excellent quality and value. Yet I've also started to notice precisely identical unknown brands for most of their products on Amazon.

So I no longer have any certainty. Are Anker merely badge engineering some random white label product, or are Amazon / Anker just not caring or able to do anything about dozens of clear counterfeits?

Are those identical products being sold as Anker, or under different brands? If it's different brands then it's not counterfeit just to make a product that looks similar to another one.

There's similar and completely indistinguishable, except for brand name and logo. e.g. their desk lamps, also their mice. Seems to be the case for almost every Anker product I remember looking at recently.

Nothing illegal about that unless Anker has a design patent.

I appreciated your response but as far as I can tell, they were asking whether Anker is badge engineering generic products or is a victim of counterfeiting, which I think is a slightly different question that I'm also looking for the answer to.

The only way it would be counterfeit is if they sell it as an Anker product or print Anker on the product.

My assumption would be that the same factory that makes Anker products is also selling the same designs to competitors - it's also possible that a different factory just cloned it.

Note that even if it's the same factory, they could have different quality control for different clients. So quality can differ even on identical designs.

You don't need a patent to protect a design. There's trademark, copyright and design protections, not just patents.

So maybe Anker are uniquely incompetent in selecting suppliers. Not specifying in the contract with factories not to copy whatever widget they produce for Anker, not registering any of their designs. Yet aside from a) products within the same group ostensibly from different brands and b) same idea but clearly made by someone else, few other companies seem affected. They'll have a few products counterfeited. Not most. It's the sort of thing that might encourage you to be very careful on third, fourth and subsequent products.

I suppose it makes a case to avoid Anker and the identical copies, as clearly inept. Few other companies appear to be quite so afflicted. I'm not convinced it's the answer though. Outside the purely generic: white T shirts, tungsten light bulbs and such, you see very few precisely identical products.

You said they were not copying the brand, so it's not trademark infringement nor counterfeit.

You keep using the word counterfeit when it does not apply. Copyright is also not applicable unless there's a work of art printed on the product (like cell phone cases).

Most brands making commodity products don't get protection for the design, because the design isn't that unique. Search for "fast chargers for Samsung" and you'll see tons of chargers identical to the Samsung charger except with a different name. Same for Apple.

Examples:

https://www.amazon.com/Pantom-Adaptive-Charging-Compatible-S...

https://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Charging-Charger-Compatible-...

https://www.amazon.com/Panmy-Foldable-Portable-Charging-Comp...

https://www.amazon.com/ByCallMax-Adapter-Original-Certified-...

There are well known, widely applied design protections that are not patents.

Here's the EU's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design_rights_in_th...

Which protects "the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamentation". It applies if they are novel and/or if they have unique character.

The equivalent in the US is a design patent.

The issue, then, is how do I guarantee that the Anker branded product I'm buying through Amazon is genuinely Anker manufactured. I'm of the understanding that Amazon comingle stock from different supply chains in their warehouses so presumably I can't trust them to be supplying genuine hardware.

Most Anker stuff is sold by only Anker, so that wouldn't be a problem.

In that specific instance, Anker also sells directly from their website, so you can shop there if you're concerned about counterfeited merchandise.

Perhaps products should include a tiny circuit (e.g. challenge-response) that can prove that the product is genuine.

My understanding, and this might just be marketing PR I honestly don't know, is that Anker sends their own QA people to the factories in China, so they're able to meet a higher standard. I always rely on them for battery stuff, and now USB cables since apparently no one else can make cables that reliably work to connect my phone to my car except them. I went through half a dozen different brands before theirs finally worked and remained working.

With a power-supply it's not a hard problem to avoid. You have to hire independent engineers to evaluate the product design and establish testing procedures to verify that the product isn't unsafe. And you have to do QA and design verification during receiving on all batches of product to confirm that the manufacturer followed the design. I've never had a power supply catch fire and I've done some really dumb stuff in my lab. Frankly it's a matter of paying for UL/CE marks(including testing) and actually looking at the component layout, and Amazon doesn't strike me as the kind of company to respect that kind of QA/Verification work.

Batteries are a different story because they're basically tiny plastic bombs. Somehow Samsung managed to deliver almost 15 years of Android phones before having their batteries catch fire, and that was almost certainly a result of skipping essential QA/Verification processes because they've never had a problem before.

How is a power bank different than a battery? Isn't the power bank just several batteries crammed in a casing, with a power-out port?

jschwartzi was talking about power supplies (i.e., devices that transform mains AC power to DC power), not power banks.

Really? Do people describe chargers or power supplies as power banks? Surely the 'bank' part of it implies some kind of storage.

I do hear chargers with a large number of ports called "power banks" - I think the implication is that it's like a line of ATMs serving many customers.

No, the implication is that people don’t understand the difference. These are the people who call every photo with people in a “selfie”.

Ah, I read "power bank", as that's what ikeyboy mentioned above. And when you search (google) "power bank" the results are all about portable batteries for topping up phones and whatnot. Does Amazon even brand/re-sell power supplies like jschwartzi is talking about?

Most modern rechargeable batteries have fairly sophisticated chemistry and thus charge controllers needed -- you don't just dump electricity into them blindly and then take it out. It's not quite rocket surgery, but there's a reasonable level of engineering involved, especially if you want optimal performance with the newer standards (which increase voltage on devices which support it, etc.)

Often times that "reasonable level of engineering" only needs to be slapping a ten cent IC on a board with some manufacturer default application circuit.

>It's a tricky problem to avoid.

Its really not though, its just that between insurance and the courts its currently cheaper to enter products into the stream of commerce that will catch fire x% of times and hurt Y people costing $z, than it is to manufacture/supply/distribute/retail a product that won't catch fire in 100% of cases.

Hell even when z exceeds the cost of proper manufacturing, these companies are significantly more likely to spend money lobbying for changes to insurance and/or products liability litigation than fix the products to make the current formula work rather than spend more money on the cost of the product(s).

You’re assuming nothing bad ever happens with the “name brand” product, which is patently bullshit. Every consumer product I. The shelves is cost engineered to death.

I replied to a comment talking about defective Samsung and Boeing products...those are name brand products.

However, knock off products are usually worse, at least if you are burned by an exploding Samsung or die in a defective Boeing...you and/or your family will be compensated as these companies are identifiable and insured. If you are burned by an exploding knock off, odds are: 1) you won't even be able to identify the manufacturer or seller; 2) you won't have jurisdiction to sue the manufacturer or seller; and 3) they probably aren't insured and will just fold up shop and start anew.

To be fair, "bringing manufacturing back to America" would bring these problems back as well. Yes, it's the manufacturer's fault. It's really the company hiring the manufacturer who's at fault, though. Cash Rules Everything Around Me and all that.

If the company writing the checks can write checks to people who are going to cut corners, people will die. Full stop.

Amazon take egregious shortcuts on oversight for counterfeit goods, which they are compelled by law to not sell, so expecting them to suddenly practice due diligence on stuff coming out of a factory in China is just laughable.

Most US goods come manufactured from China. While China has a large counterfeit market, it's mostly restricted to inside the country.

>While China has a large counterfeit market, it's mostly restricted to inside the country

There are a huge number of online retailers where you can purchase chinese counterfeit items in the US. If you're in Seattle I can take you down a few streets where you can openly buy counterfeits as well, and I experienced the same in LA and New York. It definitely isn't mostly restricted to China, there is a massive market for counterfeit goods from China in the US

Compared to China, there really isn't. Literally everything in the stores in Chinese markets is counterfeit. I've been there. Fake gucci, fake airpods, fake drones, fake action figures, etc. I doubt you'll find any of this as wide spread, even in major cities, in the US.

And most of counterfeit items online are obviously from China or from Chinese sites. They aren't from the US.

And considering nearly all US clothing comes from China and is not considered fake and is largely the same with electronics and even toys, it isn't so much a quality issue when you get things from China. It more has to do with what company you get it from.

The other vendors who bought from that factory and rebranded them had the same problem did not issue a recall.

actually having an entity to do the recall is quite an improvement!

Amazon almost certainly has better quality control that most of the sellers on their platform. The vast majority of their sellers are extremely low effort, one or two person companies who take advantage of how easy it is to source and ship goods in the modern age.

If you weight all sellers equally, sure. If you weight by sales volume, I suspect they'd come out behind.

Anecdotally, all the amazon basics products I've tried have been garbage and were promptly returned

At least they recalled them! I don't think random no-name brand #12345 would have done that.

I'm not sure about Amazon Basics, but with Amazon's Choice products they're plainly not evaluating products before selecting them. LockpickingLawyer on youtube has done reviews on several Amazon's Choice locks and safes and they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.

Those two programs have nothing to do with each other.

It reflects poorly on the brand in general. If I can't trust Amazon's Choice, how can I trust anything Amazon decides to put their name on?

You can't, and you shouldn't. If this dichotomy is what raised the issue to our attention then we should be glad that it happened.

Like when prime simply meant two day shipping?

Amazon's Choice is a purely algorithmic tag decided by the computer. It's utterly meaningless. I guess they change periodically on some reason known only to the code.

Amazon Basics must have had at least a couple of humans involved to agree getting it branded Amazon.

Presumably it was humans who signed off on the premise of Amazon's Choice in the first place. If Amazon is so careless with their brand in that case, as a consumer I'd feel like a sucker if I trusted there brand to mean much when their employees are evaluating products rather than algorithms.

Maybe the algorithm seemed like a good idea at the time but later turned sour. If that's the case, why hasn't Amazon yanked the program? If they don't terminate this program when it performs poorly, I don't trust them to keep other programs in line either.

Well I might have had trust in Amazon as a brand maybe a decade ago, as it got to the brand and product I wanted to buy pretty effectively. They've intentionally diluted it by filling their site with endless marketplace shite, and dodgy searches that hide brand leaders to show no-name garbage, and littering it with adverts for other no-name garbage. It's quite often I struggle to find the listing for the market leader directly, but end up there via a few "customers also bought/looked at" links. I go to Amazon less and less as a result.

So assuming Bezos isn't a complete numpty, that's intentional. Maybe Amazon's brand is completely disposable to fund Blue Streak.

Today I got more trust in Poundshop and eBay that I will get the right product easily than I do in Amazon. The old department stores, many now failed, sank or swam on the strength of their brand being a real indicator of quality.

Amazon employees have complained to Bezos about the state of Amazon's search. Bezos' response every time I've heard it is along the lines of "meh, I think our search is pretty good, quit your complaining."

Maybe it's intentional, or maybe he's deluded. I don't know. But either way, I doubt it's going to get fixed any time soon.

Maybe an urban legend, but I thought I read somewhere that the version of Amazon that Bezos personally sees is quite different than the one you and I see, due to all his various little one-off complaints and product micromanagement. Legend has it that engineering gave up trying to make sense of the requests and just gave him his own environment that does everything he thinks it should do. If true, then the search he sees might actually be pretty good for him.

Something seems off about that story. What's the point of requesting changes to a version of the site only he uses? I can't imagine he spends a lot of time surfing amazon.com as a regular user. Plus, not seeing the regular site means he might miss issues with the public website that he would want to change. Unless the point of the story is that Bezos doesn't realize the devs made a site just for him, but that's almost impossible to believe.

> Unless the point of the story is that Bezos doesn't realize the devs made a site just for him, but that's almost impossible to believe.

Yea that was the gist of it—when you log in as Jeff you (unbeknownst) get a different frontend, with all his various special cases and bad ideas that the PMs wanted to keep out of the real Amazon. It does sound incredible so probably false, but amusing to think about. I admit to having wanted to do something like that a nonzero number of times.

It’s suggesting that Amazon literally shadowbanned him.

Like all urban legends, there is likely a core of truth in the story. Certainly Bezos is known for micromanaging and arbitrarily overruling employees' decisions on everything from strategy to product design. Now, if a leader really does have great instinct, this can work out for the better (like Jobs). And I think in some areas, Bezos does (he has done surprisingly well with their IT strategy). But I know that in others he doesn't, and he just botches stuff (like many horrible Kindle design decisions).

This sounds like a fable invented by someone familiar with the story of the phony villages that Grigory Potemkin built along the Volga to impress Empress Catherine II.

> Presumably it was humans who signed off on the premise of Amazon's Choice in the first place.

On the premise, sure. But on the individual items, I've always assumed "Amazon's Choice" meant "Best for Amazon", i.e. high margin, low number of returns (which would reduce margin).

Not necessarily what I would choose.

excellent point, it's Amazon's choice, not yours

Why do you need to trust Amazon? Just look at the reviews. Most AmazonBasics stuff has thousands of 4+ star reviews. It’s clearly distinguishable from the products with 15 questionable reviews.

Amazon reviews have become almost entirely useless once they began bundling like items. I've had cases of ordering an item only to receive a similar item from an entirely different manufacturer or seller. Looking at the reviews you'll find a number of different products being reviewed all under one product page which makes it impossible to actually gauge the quality of what you're going to receive

"Amazon's Choice" was given to products in gross violation of US health and safety regulations, as revealed by a previous WSJ article.

To be fair, they're generally around the same quality as Master locks. :D

I really enjoy the LockpickingLawyer's videos, but I'd imagine that the threat model of the average Amazon (or Walmart/Home Depot/etc.) buyer is such that any basic lock is enough deterrence for 95%+ of scenarios. It could just be that their evaluation criteria don't match his.

You are correct. Locks keep honest people honest.

That should really be the takeaway from any of his videos. Anything you buy consumer-grade can be cracked instantly by a skilled locksmith or within maybe a few tens of minutes by an average thief. The number of locks that I've ever really seen him struggle to pick can probably be counted on a single hand.

Like a safe - a lock buys you time, and hopefully the thief chooses a loud method of entry that attracts attention.

I don't think that statement makes any sense. Why do honest people need anything to keep them honest?

Probably something more like: locks marginally aid in diverting lazy / opportunistic thieves.

> Why do honest people need anything to keep them honest?

Curiosity and children.

Locks keep lock-picking ignorant and insufficiently motivated dishonest people honest too.

I get the "thieves don't pick locks" thing, but I really think it's sleazy as hell if a lock marketed as "high security" can be raked open in one second. That's a low-skill attack. In this case he didn't even have to rake it, because the locks were unshielded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ1_P5oqf6Y An unshielded padlock may as well be a warded lock like you'd find on a child's diary.

Thieves don't pick locks, if they want to get in something they either cut or pry their way in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-9vWa-C44I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjHnklj6PAs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ViUdd-2LM

> LockpickingLawyer on youtube has done reviews on several Amazon's Choice locks and safes and they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.

So basically Amazon's Choice locks are about the same as 95% of consumer locks on the market.

In fairness, very few locks can stand up to LPL for very long.

>they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.

Isn't this just a property of most locks in general? I was under the impression that there are very few consumer locks that will stand up to someone with tools and a weekend of practice.

Clearly anecdotal, but I bought Amazon Basics USB cables that were absolute garbage.

They're the only brand of USB-C cable I'm willing to buy right now for my MBP chargers. The Apple branded ones all heat up too much and do the yellow discolorment thing, the Anker branded ones didn't hold up for more than a couple of weeks, and I had bad luck with some of the random brands I found, too.

My only complaint is I charge at 65W instead of 87, but it seems to only be slightly slower in practice.

But, it's also the nylon braided stuff, so it's probably built to different quality standards and by different people than the vanilla USB cables.

Amazon Basics are white label products or specifically contract manufactured for Amazon. I am using an Amazon Basic keyboard right now, works great and was a few bucks cheaper than the Logitec Model. So far, I am a fan of them.

For most (70-80%) of the Amazon basic products I've tried, the quality and durability has been significantly lower than the product that it tried to copy. Not to mention no one wants wants their gear branded with Basic on it. I usually try to avoid Amazon basic products if possible.

> Amazon Basics products

haven't had much luck with their Amazon Basics keyboards... went through 2 and then gave up and bought an IBM one...

Then why are they fiddling with the results to favor Amazon products, instead of just ranking by quality?

Not sure about that. 2 out of 3 Amazon Basics speakers I bought (cheaper, USB powered) died within a year. And none of the Amazon Basics USB cables I've ever tried support quick charging properly.

I was told by an ex-amazon employee that amazon basics were all designed in-house. As in, they're explicitly not white-labels.

That's not the case. Take a look at amazonbasics monitor arms - they're rebadged ergotrons.

I think at one point, it was the case that they were made in-house, when they had a limited, well-tested selection of AB products, but recently (as the emphasis on profit over brand reputation has increased) they've begun also slapping it on white-labels.

OT response to a killed comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21009618)

HN seems to have had an influx of incentivised accounts (via third-party services). They're putatively gaining some sort of credits. That's been discontinued at HN's request to at least some such services.

Best response is to flag the comments/posts, and if you see egregious abuse, email the mods: hn@ycombinator.com

(I've emailed re: the earlier thread.)

It's exactly the same thing that Amazon does with its product lines though (like Amazon Basics)

That's pretty much what Monoprice does too -- it contracts out to Chinese manufacturers for it's products (sometimes copying existing products [1]), but their stuff is generally pretty decent quality.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/monoprice-a-tech-consumers-best-fr...

I used to wonder why amazon didn’t prioritize “name” brands as a proxy for quality but then I realized all they are doing is sourcing cheap crap too. So what’s the difference if it’s a one man shop or a big name if the original source is the same crap. Amazon is merely a exaggerated reflection of just how bs the retail marketplace is these days unfortunately.

Amazon analytics firms(JungleScout etc) specifically offer direct search to Alibaba from their apps, for private-labelling

I've seen Amazon prices go up while Walmart Online has been cheaper for household items. On speciality electronics, I don't think anyone would be surprised to know Amazon is more expensive.

It's an ancedote sure, but back in 2012, we shopped only at Amazon. Now they are no longer King.

I too have noticed this. I recently bought a new keyboard and mouse and got them both at best buy for cheaper.

When I spilled water on my keyboard, I actually walked into a Fry's and got a better deal than anything online, for a genuine Microsoft keyboard.

I've noticed this on many occasions in the last month. I bought a mouse that Amazon had listed for $39. I walked a block and bought it from Office De/Max for $10 cheaper.

I wanted to get a sweater shaver. Amazon had it for 22. I bought a NIB one from Ebay for $12.

As far as I am concerned, the only thing Amazon has going for it right now is that it is a a one stop shop. That's worth something… how much? I'm not sure, but I know I'm buying a hell of a lot less stuff from Amazon now than 2 years ago.

Frys is one of the few retail places that consistently beats Amazon. I recently built a PC and almost every part was cheaper in Fry's than Amazon.

> for a genuine Microsoft keyboard

Also you knew it was Genuine. I'd love Amazon to do a "Guaranteed Genuine" label or something, but I can see why they don't. I used to buy everything on Amazon, now I only buy stuff that I'm willing to accept might be counterfeit.

With Amazon, you sit your butts at home and get what you want without getting stuck in traffic and waiting in line to check out in-store just to get a $20 keyboard.

Nevertheless, it remains questionable how this change would be a fair competition for Amazon sellers, not just the Alibaba private label sellers but also all the sellers with popular products.

You missed the "Online" part of "Walmart Online".

Amazon is far from unique there. As the OP says, Walmart has a sturdy online offering, though it also relies on "marketplace" sellers. I've started ordering a lot of online stuff from Target and I've been very happy with it. Cheap shipping and reliable quality.

I think Amazon can be quickly replaced.

I was attracted to Amazon only because of lower prices. That was it and now it is no longer the case. As soon as another big player steps up and offers lower prices and simple UI there won't be a need for me to shop on Amazon.

Except its not just the lower prices that are important -- the quick order processing and shipping are a huge reason why Amazon is succeeding.

Living near a metro area, I can get items from Amazon items within 24-48 hours (with Prime). Sometimes it even arrives later the same day.

Plus the whole free shipping (as long as you're Prime) thing..

The free shipping is weird....I recently noticed that my father was looking up something he wanted me to order for him....his price was less, same item and amazon seller. I logged in and boom my price was $3 higher on a 20 dollar item. So, I'm not sure how "free" the shipping is anymore.

I do agree that fast shipping is a big part of amazon but I think another big player could match the processing speed.

Amazon has multiple sellers with different shipping options and prices for most items, and always tries to show you the best "deal". This sometimes includes the likelihood that you prefer the two-day shipping.

The listing being offered to you father probably wasn't eligible for prime (not shipped by Amazon) so the price+shipping was lower than Amazon's price+non-free-shipping (and the third party was likely intentionally undercutting Amazon to be shown first). Once you signed it, it offered you the one with prime shipping because the total was cheaper.

Same seller Amazon.

Was the shipping time the same? Perhaps the seller is closer to your father than you. Was it prime 2-day? Or was it FBA i.e. Shipped by Amazon? I think you'll need to provide more details before we can conclude Amazon is price gouging.

We are 15 mins away from each other. It said sign up for prime to receive 2 day shipping on his end I believe.

I may be wrong. I will try to take some screenshots another time, as it seems like nobody else noticed, therefore, i may be in the wrong here.

I've been told that amazon might do "personalized pricing". Friends have told me their friends come up with lower prices in other locations.

Target was caught doing this. People with location services turned on using the target app would find pricing for an item jump up as they approached their local store.

search for "The Target app price switch: What you need to know"

I am pretty positive amazon is doing "personalized pricing". It was the exactly same item, sold by amazon. I'm already at the point where I want to cancel it, so as soon as someone remotely competitive comes along I will jump ship.

Still, they are the monopoly marketplace online. They should be doing _everything_ to avoid looking like they are abusing their monopoly position to muscle into other fields. The fact that they don't seem too bothered just seems to indicate to me that regulators are not prepared to act on them.

Really the rule should simply be that if you operate a market place you can't sell on it. Full stop. Then we could simply be happy that amazon is finally improving it's search and/or the quality of its listings.

I think a lot of people are missing the point that Amazon controls so much market share now that actions that aren't anti-competitive if you have 1% market share are when you control 50%+.

How is amazon a monopoly?

Last time I checked there was a ocean of e-commerce stores on the internet all selling the same stuff

When Microsoft got busted for being anti-competitive, you could still download Netscape Navigator and use it.

Anti-competitive behavior is different than having a monopoly

Amazon still has quite a ways to go. Consider that Microsoft had:

- 96% of worldwide OS marketshare. Even Amazon doesn't come close to this level of domination in retail or cloud.

- Forcing OEMs to purchase Windows licenses for all PCs sold regardless of whether or not customers wanted a PC without Windows.

- Not only pre-installed IE, but provided IE with inaccessible and undocumented Windows OS APIs to give it functionality that just wasn't possible for Netscape to implement (like ActiveX).

It is definitely not a monopoly...I for one goes to Wallmart.com frequently depending on price.

Disclaimer: ex-Amazon employee.

I'm done with buying stuff from third party sellers on Amazon. If the seller is not amazon.com, I am not buying from Amazon. Fulfilled by Amazon is not good enough. Unfortunately, the only way to get a seller option is to pick an item department. I wonder why they would bury such a useful feature. It should be a box you can tick for the whole site.

Some advice (from a company that sells our own products on Amazon): buy only from Amazon or the manufacturer. When buying from the manufacturer, look at the 1 and 2 star ratings. They will be the best barometer of product quality.

Is there a reliable way of determining that the seller is the actual manufacturer and not a copy cat name?

In my opinion, it's pretty safe to assume that sellers misrepresenting themselves as the manufacturer won't last long on any platform. Manufacturers are all pretty aware of Amazon at this point.

I think your comment illustrates exactly why this is a win-win for Amazon: on the one hand they take a cut out of (cheap, low-quality) third-party sellers on their platform; on the other, quality-conscious consumers like yourself simply filter for "sold by Amazon" instead of leaving for a non-Amazon website. So Amazon wins either way.

Are items where the seller is Amazon immune from commingling [1]?

[1] OT: I wondered why it is "commingling" instead of "comingling" (like "cohabitation"), or "colmingling" (like "collaboration"), "conmingling" (like "concur"), or "cormingling" (like "correlation"), so looked up the rule.

The com-, co-, col-, con-, and cor- prefixes all mean "together". Which is used generally follows this rule: "Com- is used before b, m, p, also occasionally before vowels and f. The following variant forms occur: co- especially before vowels, h, and gn; col- before l; cor- before r; and con- before other consonants". See https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/com-

from the online etymology dictionary,

com-

word-forming element usually meaning "with, together," from Latin com, archaic form of classical Latin cum "together, together with, in combination," from PIE *kom- "beside, near, by, with" (compare Old English ge-, German ge-). The prefix in Latin sometimes was used as an intensive.

Before vowels and aspirates, it is reduced to co-; before -g-, it is assimilated to cog- or con-; before -l-, assimilated to col-; before -r-, assimilated to cor-; before -c-, -d-, -j-, -n-, -q-, -s-, -t-, and -v-, it is assimilated to con-, which was so frequent that it often was used as the normal form.

One thing I run into after filtering by seller is where Amazon is selling one color or size of a product, but if you change the size or color options, the seller changes.

This is going upstream against Amazon's strategy, they're trying to move more sellers to third party and FBA [0]

[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/kirimasters/2019/03/07/amazon-v...

Hence why Amazon seems to be their darndest to hide that an item is a third party seller in search results. Last I looked there was no way to filter search results to only have Amazon seller.

That's jerky.

Yeah, like I said, you have to pick a department first, before the option to filter by seller appears. (Which is extra annoying, because it is not always clear which department something is going to be in!)

They do care about the quality of their own products. I posted a negative review on an Amazon product, and they called me(!) so that I could further elaborate. It was very odd because they called within an hour of the review. At some point I must have given them my phone number.

This was a review for their TV Cube. I was trying to buy something with good voice control to allow a paralyzed person to browse YouTube, and TV Cube could not do it (maybe it will be better in the future..).

I suspect the only reason I got the call is that TV Cube is in active development.

I posted a negative review on a FBA product (~$100) that arrived super late and damaged. I got called to offer me $20 to take the review down. Didn’t respond, they somehow got my review taken down anyway. That was the first time I realized how bad Amazon was getting. Kind of surprised this is something Amazon does too though; I figured only crappy dropshippers would engage in that

I once posted a negative review on their Basics HDMI cable, which had absymal shielding. It went "under review" immediately, and a few days later the review just silently vanished without a trace.

What is wrong with Amazon (or any vendor) following up on a bad review? If they’re offering incentives to take it down, of course that’s a problem. But engaging with the customer and identifying faults in detail seems like a plainly good, consumer-friendly and win/win behavior that every brand should practice.

That said, I’m not sure a third party seller can get my contact info as easily as Amazon can, so that part seems a bit unfair.

The problem is not "following up on a bad review" the problem is "I got called to offer me $20 to take the review down. Didn’t respond, they somehow got my review taken down anyway"

If you're still looking for a good way to browse YouTube - I've made a Chrome extension that let's you browse the web using voice control - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lipsurf-voice-cont...

Hope this helps.

I was hoping from something like Roku- basically an appliance, not a computer. It should be always listening (not tap to listen), and screen should be far away for casual viewing, not in front of your face like a laptop which causes eye strain.

The TV Cube is almost there, the problem was that the voice commands are not built into its OS, instead each app has to implement them and the YouTube app didn't. It means the voice commands only work well with the Amazon native apps.

Voice is really in an abysmal state on all platforms. Pretend you can't touch anything, then read this for the fun:

https://www.techhive.com/article/3373853/how-to-use-roku-voi...

For appliances, you have the usual problem of not being able to accept terms to use institutional WiFi (lack of a good web browser).

Also for computers with a screen in front of your face, there already is a better solution: eye tracking.

But there is an annoying secondary problem with YouTube on a laptop: I can't lend my YouTube Red account (for an ad-free experience) to someone without also being fully logged into Google (they would have access to my email). With something like YouTube on Roku, this does not matter since you are only logged into only a single app. Google does have a family plan, but it's not cheap.

The extension can always listen- it has a wake-word just like Alexa, Siri et al. "hey LipSurf" in the premium version. It can be used on a media PC/TV, you would just need to setup your microphone to listen from wherever you sit or wear a wireless headset.

That's a great example of how Amazon abuses their monopoly power as a marketplace provider to boost their vendor business. "Calling you" is something that they do for their benefit, but go to great lengths to prevent 3rd party vendors from doing, by blocking vendors from getting access to your phone number and not providing a formal opt-in if you want to share it.

It’s odd to me to think that something which is user-centric could be “grossly unfair” to vendors.

If you view vendors on the platform as existing to serve the users (as I do), the contradiction evaporates. If you view users as existing to serve the vendors, then it’s possible.

Something can be unfair to vendors in a way which is bad for consumers. Amazon's own products might be, for example, more expensive or worse quality.

That would then not be user-centric.

But it also would not be begging the question. One should not assume that "good for Amazon" is always user-centric.

I'm mostly referring to established companies that have reputations as-good-or-better-than AmazonBasics and I would be more than happy to see them in the same premium position.

There are things known as two-sided marketplaces. This isn't novel; malls and similar have existed for a very long time.

I get that US culture is heavy on "the customer is always right"[1], etc. but two-sided markets don't exist without recognizing both sides.

[1] In reality, that ends up being more of an employee control mechanism than a dedication to customers, but that's a different topic.

"the customer is always right" means the customer has the money in his pockets to spend, and you can't argue with the sales figures at the end of the day. It sounds like guidance on dispute resolution but isn't exactly.

Haha.

Here in Australia AliExpress feels like Amazon with faster shipping and more honesty.

Although Amazon now has an Australian entity, though I’m not sure how popular it is, maybe as (non-) popular as Amazon...

> Otherwise, Amazon feels like AliExpress with faster shipping and better English.

I canceled prime some time ago, because I realized I was getting significantly lower quality products than Walmart. Its become a junk store.

At this point, anecdotally, it feels as though the top comment on almost every article I see on HN about Amazon is some variation of this complaint.

Has anyone done any analysis on the HN posting dataset to see if that happens to be the case?

And if that is the case, does anyone have any insight into why that might be?

Amazon used to have the best service, best quality products, and best prices, so practically every HN user loved them.

Now they're wavering on all three of those fronts, and I guess that fact really bothers most of us

> Amazon used to have the best service, best quality products, and best prices

They used to usually have the best prices on the products they had, and the widest selection of products. They didn't always have the best quality products (which were sometimes exclusive to non-Amazon channels), and outside of return policy (which was very generous, probably specifically to cover all the other glitches) their service was nothing special at its best.

Let's not view past Amazon through rose-colored glasses.

I'm not disagreeing with the premise that Amazon has issues. But I do not see a similar pattern with other companies and services. Of course, this is anecdotal, but it does seem significantly higher with Amazon itself.

It is possibly that most HN users purchase a lot via Amazon?

Is it a small but vocal group of HN users that have a grudge because they had an unsuccessful drop shipping operation that was harmed via Amazon?

Is there some competitor(ie. Walmart) that is trying to push an agenda?

It just seems high compared to other services, so I'm curious into additional insight into why Amazon, specifically, has this pattern when other services with issues do not.

I personally feel like it may just be that most HN users are, or were, heavy purchasers from Amazon. But I'm just looking to see if maybe there is a more insightful take on things.

I'm one of the naysayers. I have ... probably a north of $15k lifetime spend on Amazon? For a period of years, particularly as I got busy with my career, Amazon was where I shopped by default. And I had a pretty shocking problem with a charger with a fake Intertek (UL competitor) mark. I told Amazon; they refunded me and kept selling the product. My partner also received obviously fake makeup from Amazon.

Chargers and chemicals that go on your face and inevitably get ingested are obviously some of the most dangerous things to be fake, and Amazon clearly doesn't give the tiniest shit.

I repeat the story around here in hopes of saving someone else (potentially quite a lot!) of grief.

I used to order a ton from amazon, I now strongly dislike the company. Why is that?

-Prices used to be universally pretty good so I could pick an item and order without much outside research. Now the prices are universally bad to the point that I have to do lots of outside research before ordering which ruins the convenience that I previously enjoyed

-The review system is awful. Previously you could click a product and trust that the reviews were for that exact product, now sometimes reviews and products are bundled together under a single page (even if the products/manufacturer are not really the same) making reviews virtually useless. Again ruining the convenience and requiring more research

-Shipping used to be reliable. Towards the end probably half my prime shipments showed up a day later than the "guaranteed delivery date" and I live less than 30 minutes from their Seattle office

-I don't at all trust the people they use to ship. My last package some idiot in a complete junker filled entirely with boxes drove very quickly over the sidewalk and parked partially at an angle in my lawn and proceeded to throw the box onto my porch and then sit in the car for another 15 minutes on my lawn

-The product bundling has led to me getting items entirely different than what I actually ordered, which again ruins the convenience that I appreciated and forces me to make returns and wait even longer

-And on a personal note, based on what I've read and heard from amazon employees, I dislike bezos as a person and businessman and don't want to support his business

I wrote the comment and I agree, although in this case it's more relevant to the topic than it often is.

I mean, I prefer AmazonBasics products because I've been burned enough times (occasionally literally) by cheap off-brand "Chinesium" goods.

So putting them at the top of the search suits me.

I think the big changed needed on Amazon is the "Seller". With their commingling of all products with the same SKU, "seller" is an irrelevant term. If people could review actual sellers, it could put a dent in the knock-offs. I'm not sure if there are just enough people who can't tell the difference or don't want the trouble of returning it to make this a profitable strategy for everyone.

What does commingling mean? In real world terms?

I ask because I'm unclear if shared SKU is a physical thing, a logical implementation detail, or some mix.

Is there a bin full of white 3' USB cables of the same type, regardless of supplier?

I had the impression that fulfillment centers weren't organized by product. Everything is everywhere. The robots retrieve the bins of whatever from wherever for the pickers to grab from. If this is mostly true, I'm not clear how similar white 3' USB cables get commingled.

Correct. Fulfilment is UPC based and independent of seller, for all FBA products.

This doesn't sound right. Even if two different sellers are selling the exact same brand manufactured product (say, an Android Phone), via FBA, when a customer buys from seller1, they should get the Item1 which was actually supplied to FBA by Seller1. They cannot get Item2 which was supplied by Seller2. When the customer returns the Item1 for manufacturing defect etc reasons, it has to go back to the Seller1. This is because Item1 has "manufacturing date and batch number", may have "imported from" etc that are different from Item2 by Seller2. Seller1 may have gotten it with different pricing terms etc.

When you say "right", you need to distinguish between "accurate" and "reasonable". The OP has correctly described Amazon's approach to commingling (claimed) SKU's. And you have correctly concluded that policy is likely to lead to bad outcomes for both buyers and sellers. Whether it's a bad policy for Amazon as a corporation remains to be seen.

This is what happens though. Now you understand why counterfeits are a problem.

>Is there a bin full of white 3' USB cables of the same type, regardless of supplier?

This is my understanding, yes. If something is "fulfilled by amazon" common stock has one bin/location and is not differentiated.

Amazon's reputation is pretty damaged in my eyes. I have rarely used them for electronics anymore as you can't trust anything. Even at work we used prime to buy certain items and I stopped it.

Example: Last week two symbol barcode scanners used in the erp system died. I look up the same model on newegg and see that sold and shipped by newegg it was about $120. Amazon had multiple listing in the $60 range and checking reviews I see things like "died in two weeks", FAKE, "died and returned to symbol only for them to say it was a fake and they were refused service or replacement". How do you build trust with shenanigans like that? No thanks, Newegg got my money.

Amazon seems to be playing oblivious to all this mainly because people are STILL using them. So as long as they are making money they can afford to lose a few "picky" customers here and there. The rest are happy to buy trash because they save a buck. Capitalism at its finest.

Sadly Newegg is following in Amazon's footsteps with it's affiliate program. You have to choose Newegg as the seller or you run into the same issues.

As soon as Newegg starts mingling stock like Amazon does, then we'll have to go back to big box retailers to ensure we're getting the item we're paying for.

Small nitpick, but what you are referring to is not an affiliate program. An affiliate program is where a website gets a cut of the sales for providing links to a retailer's site. So, The Wirecutter makes money by using affiliate links to Amazon and other retailers on their product review articles.

Yeah you're right. I'm not sure what the correct term is.

I'm not sure either, tbh. Perhaps 'marketplace' or 'platform'.

"3rd-party" or "3P" sellers.

In 2016 a company called Liason Interactive bought a majority stake in Newegg, personally I think to try to turn newegg into an electronics version of amazon.

Since around then Newegg has been garbage, and continues to become worse.

I think any seller like amazon or newegg that turns into a marketplace/platform is trading their reputation for the potential of a cut from a much larger market, and they probably do this knowingly.

At least B&H and Adorama are still clean, right?

Pretty sure they're actual giant brick and mortar stores in NYC. Not proof against buying out but different. I dont buy enough from either to know.

I don't buy from Amazon simply because they've become a dump of all things crap for years. Their UI is horrid an tricks you into clicking on ads by putting them in product listings. And they treat their employees like dirt.

(I can only guess you are American) - American experiences with Amazon are so different to mine over here in the UK it's incredible. I buy tonnes of different stuff from Amazon(multiple hundred orders last year) and I have never ever gotten anything counterfeit or had any issues. In fact every time when their 1-day delivery arrives late they just extend my prime by a month, no questions asked. And yet every time I go on HN it's 100% negative, stories about unreputable sellers selling fake stuff - this is just not happening outside of US for some reason.

According to the Youtuber "serpentza", EU law requires Amazon to display the country of residence of an Amazon seller, whereas the US has no such law (and Amazon chooses not to display the information in the US). If counterfeiters are concentrated in a few countries with bad reputations among consumers, counterfeiters have an incentive to choose Amazon's US store.

US Prime member here. Never had any problems with fake stuff. One time, my order was stolen and replaced with something of similar weight. I called Amazon right away, and they refunded my purchase. When I need to return something, it's easy.

Its interesting. I bet it also has to do with what you're buying that makes you more or less likely to hit a fake.

I live in the US and buy a ton of stuff on Amazon for my business and haven’t noticed a counterfeit problem. I think there are just lots of loud voices from people that have gotten counterfeits or just in general don’t like Amazon.

Same here, have placed hundreds of orders on Amazon UK in the last few years and have never really had any problems. The rare few times i've had problems then a call to customer support has usually had the issue resolved right away and quite often with a discount voucher for the next shop.

that's just how neoliberalism works. In heterogeneous markets, lose money and bribe users to monopolize. Once you monopolized, all bets are off.

Amazon India has a counterfeit problem if you are not careful. I’ve had counterfeit batteries, chargers and skincare items. Though delivery issues have never happened.

I’ve to keep my guard up when ordering from Amazon. It’s no longer the easy convenient and cheap option.

It's likely related to

(1) US market is largest "single-language * consumer spending" market, so almost everyone outside of US/UK market puts effort in US first.

(2) USPS/UPU offers nearly 0-cost shipping for China to US. Can you ship a 2oz packet from China to the UK for under $1?

I don't know specifically about the UK, but the zero cost shipping from China isn't a US thing. It's an international agreement, and I've seen things being shipped for free from China to both Europe and the Middle East.

Woah. In this bigger picture, amazon and everybody else is doing the last mile for Fulfilled By China!

I've certainly had fake products from Amazon UK. Certain categories of products are very likely to be counterfeit, while others aren't. For example there were lots of apple replacement headphones which are much too cheap.

I don't know about Amazon UK, but pretty damn sure my Amazon DE (Germany) is similar. Degraded. I used to shop a lot on Amazon a decade ago. Now I am losing time scrolling through search results filled with garbage sellers which get promoted in the results. In the past year I went with Amazon Choice 3 times and got low quality products. I go to other online stores for electronics and other stuff. I only buy books on Amazon now.

Amazon France is filled to the brim with Chinese rubbish that makes searching for anything a chore. It's still fine when you've got a specific item in mind, though. Amazon pricing and parcel delivery is still top notch.

Amazon: fast shipping, easy returns. That's literally the beginning and end of their entire value proposition. If any other company can fill that niche, they can have my money with no regrets.

AliExpress: a massive company that somehow never bothered to observe a new user using their software.

Why the heck does the ordering window have 2 or 3 “Confirm” boxes that I have to press?

And if I haven’t, why can’t it just tell me what’s not confirmed when I hit “Submit Order”?

I've had the misfortune of needing to run some FB and Twitter ads recently, and it baffles me how completely unusable and unfriendly these platforms are for the only thing that makes them any money.

In the long term, it's not user-centric at all.

Amazon pushing its own products drive 3rd-party resellers out of business and eventually, no other choices for consumers.

Good thing people love Singaporean electronics bazaars.

Well, products which sells Amazon by yourself, not by third-party sellers, are mostly trustworthy.

Aliexpress - always been a Russian roulette.

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