In my case, it was a fake Kingston SD Card and luckily used it only for a Rasberry pi. It cost me only a day of figuring out what I am doing wrong but easily it could have cost me my photos from a trip to a remote place.
Of course, Amazon would deal with that as if it was 20$(or whatever) issue and everything is supposed to be O.K. when you get a refund.
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1215844056091320321
For those who don't know: despite having a name that implies curation, Amazon does not choose "Amazon's Choice" at all. It simply indicates which product is most popular, based on reviews that are widely known to be faked. Yet another utterly deceptive dark pattern.
That's incorrect. "Amazon's Choice" is based on sales. If you search "flash drives" the product that has the Amazon's Choice badge is the product that is bought most often by customers using that search term. It's one of the only organic things on the Amazon platform.
It only vaguely verifies that it's in the same product category though. For the "1tb flash drive" search term, Amazon's Choice includes a 128GB flash drive, a 1TB HDD, a 2TB HDD, and a single 1TB flash drive.
It's broken down by price ranges... but it's like going to a car dealership, inquiring about a compact car, and being presented with a skateboard, a road bike, a mountain bike and a car.
The fact that they use awful metrics to make curate shitty choices doesn’t change that.
Just because your algorithm is a digitally encoded series of steps, as opposed to a a meat-encoded series of steps, doesn't mean you can wash your hands of the responsibility for its outcomes.
If an algorithm told me that the best way for me to optimize my tax bill is to commit tax fraud, I'd be just as liable for it, as if I followed the advice of an accountant to do so. I'm responsible for my outputs, not my inputs.
I don't know if perhaps there is some weird legal shenanigans going on, where Amazon are more able to get away with this in the US? Here in the UK, I've never come across such obvious deceit, or (knowingly!) ended up with a fake/counterfeit, across what must be at least hundreds of purchases, spanning 10+ years.
corrected
> This has no effect on Amazon's credibility and can't be good for the country in the long-term. Rationality has no effect on sales.
What’s the point of paying a membership fee for the privilege of sorting through garbage, scams and counterfeits yourself?
https://www.amazon.com/Metal-256GB-USB-Flash-Drive/dp/B076BD...
Very strange.
One thing that I look for to avoid junk like this, if the brand is in ALL CAPS then its almost 100% sourced from Alibaba or similar. Not many reputable brands use all caps like that.
Anyone remember that it's Amazon that pioneered the customer reviews that make it possible to identify such fakes?
Print on demand means that the book is only printed when (or shortly before) your order comes in. This reduces the risk of not being able to sell all the copies in a larger offset run and of storage but at a higher per-unit printing cost. I typically recognise these books by soft edges on letters (even dots of ink around the letters giving a fuzzy underline) and blurry diagrams. This is particularly bad for small labels or footnotes. I also saw some absolutely awful photographs that looked like they came out of an inkjet printer running low on ink (ie not great resolution and big stripes of off colours running across the image). Another sign is a sparse first page (the one listing information about the publishers and print run), or even a blank first page with a little printers name in the back.
The kind of offset printing one normally sees in books leaves much crisper edges (I think the ink is more sticky and more shiny too; perhaps sitting ever so slightly above the page rather than feathered into it). Plates also somehow look much better. I don’t know how they are made.
I wish there were a way to know whether or not you’re going to get a print-on-demand book because often the quality is very poor and I’d be willing to invest time looking elsewhere for an offset printed copy.
But perhaps I get more print on demand books than I know. Indeed I read that Amazon’s own print on demand service produces very high quality results and if thats true it would probably be a good thing for getting consistent quality books from Amazon. Certainly all the poor quality books I’ve ever gotten were print-on-demand (or digital printing which, as far as I can tell, is basically the same thing).
It’s really not excusable. Either there are no humans in the loop or some actually looked at this and decided to send it anyway.
I’ve already got a list of products I won’t buy from them but I never thought books would be on the list.
I ordered a box of 500 recently. One was an utterly different book, and one had a printing issue where some pages from some random book were in the middle of my book. It's a shame to think paying customers might get one like this, but it's easy enough to return stuff to Amazon, so I don't think it's a huge deal.
I try to buy the highest quality version of whatever product I'm looking for and this is completely impossible on Amazon. Every product is a cheap Chinese clone and the next 100 products are the same exact thing with a different color scheme.
It's a nightmare.
My typical shopping pattern is to search for whatever I want, scan several review sites (realizing many of them are paid to pimp stuff), figure out which brand/model I want, then start googling.
Amazon could require all sellers to send in their product for review to confirm it’s validity. This would add additional costs but the costs could potentially be offset from the positive response from consumers who have had issues discerning product realness.
Happened to me once with a watch strap, but the price wasn't high enough for me to go through the hassle of returning it
In my experience, Amazon will just refund cheap items without even asking for you to return anything. I have no idea how many things I've returned to Amazon over the years, but it's a lot - easily many dozens of products. I'd guess about 20% of the time, because the item is cheap, they just let me keep it and give me back my money.
Deceiving people is not okay. Ever. And especially not on the scale of Amazon. They're not tricking people to survive or feed their family, but as a multi billion dollar business modal.
Being happy to be able to send back is either ignorance or sticking your head the sand. (that's being blunt, but still meant as friendly debate)
Worrying about the fate of that watch-strap is a bit like fishing some food-soaked plastic wrap out of your garbage bin, and then feeling bad about throwing it back into the garbage bin. The plastic became non-recyclable earlier on, when it interacted with the food during packaging. It interacted with the food before you ever bought it. The standalone recovery-value of the plastic wrap was destroyed in the manufacturing facility, and would be destroyed whether or not you chose to buy the item. Just like those cheap watch straps nobody wants would have been manufactured whether or not there was demand for them. (Because there isn't demand for them, and they still clearly are manufactured.)
Only partially. Vendors will buy more to replace sold stock. If it never sells, the manufacturer will never get another order for production, and the total waste is capped at what's already been created.
One place you’ll run into this approach with higher-ticket items (i.e. not a $0.03 comb) is in the handheld emulation-console market. Some cool little device was created that everyone wants (e.g. the aluminum-alloy RetroGame 350)? Too bad, they can’t make more even if they wanted to.
Why not? I'd understand the problem if you were talking about some large appliance, but you're talking about a watch strap.
This wasn't even a direct refund, just an email making it easy for the customer claim one.
For international shipping—often something will be in a black hole on various boats + transdock facilities + customs for two months or more, before anyone knows where the package is, or whether it was received at all.
And, at that point, you often deal with carrier hand-off, such that the package immediately stops getting tracking updates from carrier A and there's potentially >4d of delay before you start getting tracking updates from carrier B.
Is that very often the case with Amazon? I've done 500+ orders and haven't seen that happen unless I go out of my way to order from outside the EU (Ok, crossing EU borders is technically international, but not the way you meant it.)
Amazon really isn’t trying to screw you here, they’re just being transparent about a likely delivery issue and offering you the opportunity to cancel the order.
If there are other legal, political, or regulatory avenues you wish to pursue, that's not mutually exclusive to taking your personal dollars elsewhere in the meantime.
As I understand it, although purchases are made through a single service (Amazon), products are sourced from a large number of sellers who list items on their marketplace. It could be useful to find out how the laws you mention are written and enforced in that kind of environment.
At the moment I'd suspect Amazon are keen to handle disputes/concerns directly which might lead to fewer regulatory complaints from customers and avoid scrutiny.
Started shopping local again.
I miss the convenience but getting too many open-boxed items was enough to push me over the edge.
Fulfilled by amazon means someone rented amazons warehouse and used their logistics services and payment services (and multiple suppliers stocks may have mixed together.)
If shipped and sold by amazon is an option around the same price, you can choose not to involve the reselling middle man.
They commingle all inventory, whether or not it is shipped and sold by Amazon.
>"Multiple times we discovered that Amazon itself had sourced counterfeit product and was selling it alongside our own product," he noted.
>He asserted that Amazon representatives would tell him over the phone: "If we don't get it, then we're going to source product from the gray market."
this applies to sold by amazon items as well.
That would be the issue the first time, but I agree with the parent down voted into the gray...You are knowingly doing business with a company that knowingly and willfully fulfills your orders with fakes.
At a certain point you have to stop saying Amazon's counterfeit practices are the problem, but the problem is customers. They will never stop advertising legit products and shipping counterfeits, because people will keep buying and even just accept it.
Not an Amazon apologist but it seems a bit ridiculous. How do they get paid? The customer first mantra is nice but do they not prefer a higher price too?
2. Anker Chargers, multiple
3. SanDisk memory cards, multiple
4. Otterbox phone case
It doesn't matter what price you pay. Even if you pay recommended retail, if Amazon co-mingles, you run the risk of counterfeits.
I buy all my electronics elsewhere now. And discourage anything that goes in or on your body from being bought from Amazon.
Actually I've had something similar. Samsung charges better with Samsung usb cables (per ATT in store and tmobile in stores ppl). But the Samsung USB cables are realllllly poorly labeled. Like suspiciously so.
Apple chargers, multiple
Lenovo/Thinkpad batteries, 2
Flash drive - Sandisk
SD card - Sandisk
MicroSD card - Sandisk
MicroSD card - Kingston
Flash drive - Kingston
I've also received expired food and drink numerous times.
Allowing counterfeits destroys the incentive for people to make quality products.
Why build a brand when someone will sell a fake for half the price and people will complain about it on your website?
Allowing a giant marketplace to willfully infringe products harms the market as a whole.
Your dis-involvement will not stop the abuse, which is why the government must step in and stop them.