Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality.
There's still a lot to be said for established brands. Brands can afford widespread advertising because they have thriving businesses that generate lots of cash. Brands can get stocked in major retailers because you need decent products to make it through Walmart's buying process.
These are signals that are harder to fake, and they're kind of the best we've got right now.
He observed that with the internet we're returning to what was this "normal" state with anybody being able to post something and gain widespread recognition, the difference of course being the rate at which this non-objective information travels and the better ability to weaponize it.
I think, after looking into it a bit more, I agree with him and that our period of fairly objective news and political information and the general consensus that brought was the anomaly. This raises the question then how do we as society re-learn to cope with that and filter out non objective information because clearly we're not doing so well with it now.
So, I don't think so much as it will die out as much as I think we need to develop abilities to separate wheat from chaff, stronger societal bullshit filters because truth will have a weaker signal.
I don't know the answer, but my opinion is that we need to stop optimizing for views. I.e. kill the online advertising market. You can do your part by installing an ad blocker and paying for services you like with real money.
I don't have much to add here, but economists call this perfect information.
And this is the strength that the major retailers have against Amazon - if Amazon won't police (and they have problems with commingling counterfeit brands, too) then Walmart and Target will jump ahead.
Batteries, for example.
Amazon is throwing away money.
For something like an SD card or a battery your chance of getting a counterfeit or unreliable product is pretty high. I prefer not to think too much about how that maps to food. There was an article (I think here on HN) a few years ago where a bookseller who was forced to buy Amazon ads for his own book just so the counterfeits wouldn't outrank him on Amazon.
I think they are solving this differently. Amazon introduced their own brands for almost all daily necessities. Amazon basic, amazon pharmacy, amazon fashion, amazon elements, amazon pantry, amazon echo and few more. They generally have average or above average products at an affordable price and good support.
You can buy AC, fridge, vacuum cleaner, clothes, baby food, dog food, dog bed, multi-vitamin, ramen, TWS, carpet, blanket, swiss army knife, solder machine, and a lot more from amazon itself now.
I remember buying a charger for my phone, only for the plastic shell of the charger to break in half a few months later
My impression is they did not have the item they were selling, and were relying on some presumably "trusted" reseller to provide it.
I ended up purchasing a used one in much better condition on eBay for several hundred dollars less where the condition at least matched the sale entry.
I'm frankly surprised they want to put their name on what appears to be dollar store crap that might be fine, might not, who knows. You can almost see the flickering neon and smell the cleaning fluid.
2020 brick and mortar's new motto
I ended up buying we webcam from BestBuy.com, because a webcam I got from Amazon was pay-for-review and was utter garbage.
Just more evidence, to me, that the era of internet business models being "get everything online" (Amazon, Spotify, Steam) is closing, and the era of online aggregation as a product is just beginning.
Though they don’t seem to have many yet, I did run across it recently. In-store pickup items are still seemingly safe though.
(I smell a market opportunity for a retailer that sells only quality products...)
Additionally, no one gives a crap about long-term anymore. Scorched earth, grab what you can, screw everyone else and all that.
I still buy from NewEgg, but the first thing I do when I hit the search results is to click the Sold by Newegg button. Might be a few bucks more, but at least I'm getting the real deal ... at least so far.
Multiple complaints (including contacting the CEO of NewEgg) haven't removed this bad actor. So I just assume that this practice of retaining terrible 3rd parties reflects NewEgg's true* extent of their caring for customers, and I don't buy stuff from them anymore.
I figure if Netgear sends me a fake switch when ordering directly from them it's time to give up on capitalism.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/4...
That sounds like an interesting history. Do you have any recommendations for reading on it?
Actually, I think it's D2C that will jump ahead. The problem with Walmart and Target is they either (a) have limited brand selection (target) or (b) they dilute themselves so much to compete with Amazon that they eventually become Amazon (Walmart).
It's one thing if the brand has an ongoing relationship with its customers, but nobody wants the burden of dealing with 1,000 slightly different processes for ordering toilet paper.
That's the inherent value of Paypal et al. -- abstracting diversity on one side into a standard interface on the customer side.
I guess you've never ordered something from a Shopify based store then?
Point being: D2C doesn't solve the trust problem in a scaleable way, except for repeat purchases
What on earth does their payment processor and tech choice have to do with a direct to consumer model? I'm talking about the features for the consumer when they shop on a shopify based store.
Trust doesn't scale naturally. That's the point that the GP comment was making. What we saw with Amazon is that bundling[0] works and can scale, but once it reaches that point and trust erodes, then unbundling becomes more appealing to the consumer.
Shopify has struck an interesting middle ground. Lots of the features that make the bundle attractive (one login, saved CC/details, etc.) are baked into Shopify stores. It'll be interesting to see if Shopify rolls out some sort of "Fulfilled by Shopify" and then a "Prime" because then the consumer can ensure quick/free delivery without dealing with the bazaar that is Amazon.
[0] - https://a16z.com/2014/08/15/a16z-podcast-the-topic-thats-las...
1,000,000 stores using Shopify are effectively the same as 1,000,000 products on Amazon, only less convenient.
I think the overall takeaway is that trust doesn't scale to Amazon-now-size: i.e. one of the biggest retail companies on the planet.
What it did scale to (and very well) was Amazon-1995-2010-size (eg Etsy or eBay), and there's a lot of size between D2C and those variants of Amazon.
I'm open for convincing, but I don't see a path to "D2C eats the world," when for relatively modest amounts of capital one could create a smaller, right-size Amazon that could bundle and dominate.
Simple. I know I'm going to get a genuine product. That's the problem with Amazon, people regularly get cheap imitations.
From reading back through their statements over the years it seemed to have shifted from (initial) 'we're a store platform, and take no responsibility for the content of the store' to (now) 'we have [unspecified] teams dedicated to IP infringement and fraudulent stores.'
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/24/i-feel-ch...
It does help to be a bit sceptical about some listings. For example, a webcam by "GREETBUAY" for $25 is probably not going to be of high quality. So I don't buy those kinds of things. But in cases where the nature of the item is that it's a single piece of plastic that just needs to be the right shape, I've bought them from sellers with bizarre machine-generated names and received exactly what I wanted.
The product page for one item that my partner was looking to buy for her Mom's birthday said something like "Free 2-day shipping, receive it by the 4th". Well when she went to check out the only option to get it by that date cost $30+ dollars. I ended up getting on the phone with a support person who fully acknowledged that the shipping info was wrong but to my shock completely dismissed it as not being a problem.
I said that people were putting items into their cart based on false information and the response was basically a dismissive shrug. We went back and forth a few times to make sure I really understood his response and there's no doubt that he did not care that they were displaying false shipping info.
Since then I've been wary of buying anything else from Walmart.
You have as much agency and incentive to fix the problem as the support person. Most arguments for why the support person should spend their time and energy trying to fix a problem outside their authority, and their reasons for not doing so, could equally be applied to you.
The reason for that: we're being DDoSed with brands on e-commerce sites. For an increasing amount of product categories, you're going to find 10+ "brands" on Amazon that are selling the same white-label garbage class product, just with a different sticker and box/ad art. I've seen that in electronics, clothing, consumables. And while multiple brands under one company was a thing for a long time now (see e.g. how many stuff you eat is made by Nestlé or Unilever), there seems to be a qualitative difference here: white label goods meet e-commerce. "Brands" proliferate at the speed of computing.
These do emerge.
Some of them come from the ashes of Alibaba rebrands, but a few start making decent products and are at least at what I'd consider "Belkin-level" but at a better price point.
But you could still build up a brand the old-fashioned way, by buying advertising (including forms that can't be targeted, like billboards) to create broad name recognition. It's hard to do and it takes lots of capital, but that's the same as it has always been.
And then any white-label product you sell is a reflection of the brand you've built up, so it's in your interest to only sell high-quality stuff.
Look at a company like Anker. They operate in spaces filled with garbage but they have managed to become trustworthy.
I'd say Aliexpress is probably a better way to find somewhat established (or trying, which is what matters) brands than Amazon.
I’m afraid for when monoprice stops being an awesome brand and starts coasting.
Is there a community which tackles this sort of problem alone? The best I have found so far is to find the community surrounding a type of product, especially on Reddit - there is a community around almost every interest imaginable - and figure out which brands they recommend, via search or just asking.
Often they even have advice in a stickied thread or wiki article.
Same with "gl.inet" (weird name, yes).
They operate in the most trashed-up market on earth: cheap internet-connected widgets. But I will buy from them every single time because all their products run a modified OpenWRT and all of them let you replace it with vanilla upstream OpenWRT. And all of their recent products have a physical "unbrick this device" button you hold down to boot to a slick reflash-the-firmware-over-the-network ROM.
I will not hesitate to pay twice as much for a gl.inet widget because of this.
Not for long. How many dependable long-lived brands have been mopped up by hedge funds and private equity and subsequently slapped on the cheapest crap you can make? Remember when Craftsman tools used to be top notch?
(Then there are brands spanning great many product categories - like Phillips. I'm having trouble keeping track which product categories they do well, and which they don't.)
If that margin gaming process gets too greedy, the cycle kicks back and people start looking for other brands. The real strategy is to ride just above the stable point of adoption and keep an eye out for competitors that are offering better value, then gobble them up before they unseat your nice comfortable market position.
The end result is you get a bunch of medicore products and services in the marketplace as well as terrible products/services. The high quality stuff tends to die quickly, undercut by those dominant in the market through anticompetitive forces while the poor quality stuff survives because their brand will be short-lived anyways. Few seem to be able to hold onto the ideals of putting and maintaining high quality first over increasing profit margins, that just isn't the goal.
It gets more difficult. Tefal produces great pans in France, and really terrible pans in China and they are almost the same product and have the same price.
What I try to do is to buy D2C if possible, from brands where I know what is produced where. That's only a small subset of needed things, and its expensive, but it usually works out for me. I now know household, electronics and clothing brands that genuinely produce here in this country, for example, and the quality is simply better. I also know that no child labour was involved. So, I feel good about supporting such efforts.
Any brand I see on Amazon I assume to be one more variation of the same rebranded product. If I buy it, I buy it under the assumption that it could break the next day.
I also check whether the established brand name has been bought up, which happens a lot. Most of the eminent electronic brands are merely licensed labels nowadays.
Anyways, very easy to use, fast, and looking indestructible, while the washing drums look space age from the inside(materials wise, and the shape/structuring of it).
YouTube is stuffed with videos on drop shipping. Many drop-shippers have no interest in the product they are selling or it's quality. They're only interested in whether they have picked a profitable niche. When that niche gets too crowded, they move to another product space before the wider drop shopping crowd swarm to the same product. And so the cycle continues. Rinse and repeat.
Btw. Moulinex isn't what it once was anymore. Just sayin'.
Maybe not as extreme as the "Chinesium Shockers" which I learned about in this thread, but the tendency is there.
I was trying to buy simple USB cables... After a pair of tablets were destroyed by a bad USB cable, I'm picky about usb micro cables. So I tried to search on Amazon for usb a to micro cables...
And the brand filter didn't list many of the brands I was seeing in the resultset. Like, I know you have Monoprice and Belkin cables, I'm looking right at them! Why can I only filter to Chinese no-name brands and Amazonbasics?
[1] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFLICGQRF6...
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/225719-amazon-bans-che...
Basically I had a usb cable where the metal of the connector bent in just the right way that it scraped off the contacts inside the tablets' female port.
The same is true of Arc'teryx, Jaguar, and many other well known brands that have been sold off to companies with terrible reputations for quality.
Ultimately the only way to guarantee quality would be to vote for politicians who support strong regulations and a strong regulatory apparatus.
Speaking as a socialist-leaning libertarian, I'mma have to take a hard disagree on this. Let the companies have a mix of terrible quality and great quality as they wish, and let the market itself decide which products and companies succeed or fail
Let a private company, say, Consumer Reports or Vegan International, give their imprimatures to quality.
A government, in this specific case of toy drones, is a bit heavy-handed, in my opinion. Would "quality specs" work? Would they be subject to political whims? Would a connected company be able to overwhelm the governmental department dedicated to the quality control of toy drones?
Edit: I promise, despite the proximity of "socialist" to "libertarian" in my preamble, this is not an ideological stance. If you have a better idea, I will change my mind! I'm fine with a downvote, but don't just smash it because you disagree. Tell us why :)
Kind of a non-sequitur, no? I was talking about toy drones.
Batteries are regulated, as is the type of paint used in kids toys.
Even with regulation companies still try to sneak in lead paint(!) and batteries occasionally burst into flame.
No regulation would mean parents would have to carry around lead paint test kits...
Review sites cannot keep up with the deluge of brands, and some aspects of product quality, such as longevity, are impossible for reviewers to adequately test in a reasonable amount of time. (A review that certifies a dish washer model last sold 10 years ago will indeed last 10 years isn't of much use!)
And in regards to a comment below, those toy drones likely charge with USB!
Toy drones are literally painted plastic, some spinning painted plastic, a battery, a USB port, a micro-controller, and some motors.
i sure don't want the usb charger market to sort itself out by the metric of which products burn my house down faster.
Rather than argue against that specific point, people began arguing against another easier point: that government regulation protects us from dangerous things
While true, it's a distracting non-sequitur. Argue against what I said, not against a stupider argument that I did not say
In China. From what I've heard the products are also still completely on the same level because it's not like Geely just started selling their cars with the Volvo brand, but they keep the company doing what it's good at.
A counter-example is the German car brand Opel that was recently sold from GM to french PSA. Because the car manufacturer attached to the brand was already largely dismantled all Opel cars are now PSA models - which is rather well known by people who care and also affects the brand.
Can you expound on this? The same parent company (Amer Sports) also owns Salomon/Atomic and several other well regarded brands. I wasn't aware that something had changed recently. Are you talking about the Anta Sports buyout? People use these brands for life-critical applications in the backcountry, so this is certainly concerning to hear.
I bought two Delta Lt Zip microfleeces from them in 2018. They were expensive (over $100 each) but incredibly high quality, fit me like a glove, still wearable today after umpteen washes.
In early 2020 I ordered another one -- exact same product name, exact same brand, same size, shipped-from-and-sold-by "Arc'Teryx". It was like wearing a garbage bag; the proportions were all wrong, like it was tailored for an obese person my height. Lower quality material and all sorts of silly zippers and patches tacked onto it in weird unnecessary places.
Something went seriously down the drain in terms of quality with them in the interim. I'd probably bought over $1,000 worth of clothes from them up through 2018, all of it was first rate. Since 2020 I haven't bought anything else from them.
Can you point out specific examples of how changing ownership has affected quality of their cars?
When I filtered for Walmart only my experience was great. No searching for ps5 and seeing Xbox ads, just stuff that matched my search.
Also Walmart shipping was 1-2 days and free. So I guess logistics is getting figured out when Walmart free is beating Amazon prime.
They're pretty good at filtering out the absolute junk, because having customers return products is really expensive for brick+mortar retailers.
I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else besides Amazon because I have had bad experiences in the past, but this was the only place I could find the niche keyboard because it's an older model. I now have a firm rule that I will never order from Amazon again.
Target, or occasionally Walmart, gets what used to be Amazon's business from me.
Have you seen what they do in China too get those rare earth minerals needed for electronics and batteries?
Adorama is also good and, like B&H, you can't do any business with them on Saturday.
By the way the remnants of Toys R Us are now owned by Tru Toys and they are looking to make a comeback.
What does that mean in practice?
Buy the company with loans, strip the tangible assets for cash, burden the company with the loan repayments and bail out.
Basically use the company as leverage to buy it, and then make it pay for having been bought out. It will seldom be able to do so, and eventually will stagger into bankruptcy. Both the company and the creditors lose, but not the 'investors'.
If anyone never quite "got" the rancor directed at Mitt Romney for his association with Bain Capital, this should clear it up.
After a few months of lackadaisically making sporadic attempts to order an RTX 3080, I finally threw in the towel and ordered a prebuilt machine which will come with whatever brand 3080 card is in stock at the time from Newegg. I could really use the CPU upgrade anyway, and the markup on the parts isn't at all bad compared to the markup from scalpers, who I refuse to do business with on principle.
The reviews on Newegg at least seem not-gamed. They're largely, "Quality parts slapped together and shipped unprotected, so I received the box with cards and RAM modules unseated and case parts bent due to being thrown around during shipping." I'm going to end up merging parts from two systems to produce a watercooled variant anyway, so all I really care about is just getting the parts, in particular the 3080, at this point.
Fwiw you still run a risk that the CPU heatsink or something similar will come dislodged during shipping, and tumble around inside like a wrecking ball, smashing up the CPU, 3080 and the other parts you want to keep.
I learned this the hard way. There's a difference between how computers like Dells that are designed for mail order are made, vs modular DIY ones. The interior parts of the former are more strongly locked down inside. They're more likely to be non-standard and difficult or impossible to upgrade, but that's the cost of making them UPS-proof (United Package Smashers).
Also if you're looking for Chinese knockoffs.. go directly to the source and go with Aliexpress.
Getting something in two days instead of two months and being able to get a refund if it was completely misrepresented is easily worth, say (as an example from today), paying $50 for an IP cam instead of $40 from Aliexpress for something with firmware so butchered from upstream it doesn’t even fulfill basic requirements or provide listed functionality anymore. And being stuck with it.
At least the firmware is so full of security holes I can probably find some use for the device one day when I feel like spending another evening with it.
That's it. Instacart, Shipt, Seamless (yes, I've bought groceries through Seamless in NYC...), this is all I want from you: let me know what I'm getting.
Obviously it isn't perfect but it does help.
However, I think there are some instances where Amazon probably rearranged large numbers of reviews because they found out the reviews were for a different item. It's likely that Fakespot can't tell the difference between mass censorship and legitimate removal. So you do have to take the results with a grain of salt and read recent reviews.
It's tiring using Fakespot just to find dozens of D and Fs. For the most part, I use other retailers or just don't buy the item (surprisingly it's a zen option to not buy stuff you don't pressingly need).
Whereas since Fakespot etc are less popular, there's less reason to evade their detection algorithms.
That said, yeah, it sure seems like amazon's doing an awful job for consumers in this area.
In essence, I don't care that much about the reviews. There are fewer of them, and they usually talk more about factual aspects of the item. There are very few "1 star, this is total garbage" type reviews because the retailer has filtered much more of the crap out.
What’s this then?
[a]: Complaints. Reviews. Etc.
[b]: Not excusing their bad behavior. Just stating the reality.
For instance, Goodthreads is one step above Amazon Essentials for clothing.
If you don't get support while they're still actively selling YOUR widget, good luck.
I got a shirt from Macy's with sewn in stripes that started to unravel before long, this was many years ago, but I never bought clothes from there again.
And more recently, I got pillow cases from bed bath & beyond, that were very expensive, but otherwise exactly what I wanted, and the seams started coming undone.
Amazon is not a reliable brand, but on the other hand, one can justify trying it again and again, because it is not a single (tainted) brand.
I've said before and will say it again, I read the reviews starting with the worst, as if all the five star reviews were always all fake. I don't know what they might have been for your products, but usually I see no connection between the best reviews and the useful information in the worst.
If I order from Amazon, from Amazon, I tend to have good experiences. If I order third party from Amazon it’s a crap shoot.
Sometimes it's easier to just make a list and physically go to a store so I don't need to question whether or not what I'm buying is legit and deal with that stuff.
Both Amazon and Walmart are not reliable vendors. Costco does still vet all it's products, I will probably just use them from now on.
Also there is text on the page showing you who the item is sold by, and who it ships from.
They answered questions by phone before we purchased. I received a keyboard for my daughter, then we had a change of heart and decided we had gotten the wrong one, they handled everything for shipping it back and sending a new one, and called a week later to see if we were happy.
This Christmas I even got an echo show from them when Amazon itself was back ordered past the holidays.
IMO buying the cheapest products on Amazon is like using disposable plates and utensils, sure the one time purchase is cheaper than buying dishes and real utensils, but over time it's way more expensive.
Honestly, opening a package from Amazon for a 5 star recommended item that you had high hopes for only to find a cheap piece of garbage is infuriating.
I’ve noticed this too, except it’s mostly with health and skin care brands that are trying to use Amazon for free advert / discovery and then push users to their site with lower prices and no Amazon take. I view this as a scumbag move by the vendor myself and find a new product from a vendor not doing this.
What they are doing much better at now is the hybrid e-commerce/brick and mortar that Amazon is struggling with. Whole Foods helped give them a platform, but Whole Foods are nowhere near as prolific as Target/Walmart/Best Buy.
For all the reasons mentioned throughout this post, Amazon has gone from my first stop to far down on the list when looking to buy something.
Between late deliveries, bait & switch 5-star reviews, and being able to find cheaper prices elsewhere, I now only use Amazon if I can't find a product anywhere else.
Established brands can do one other thing -- enforce on-ground quality assurance in China / manufacturing outsourcer
Chinese factories are amazing. But they produce what you let them produce. 1000-units-of-X, only QA'd when they hit receiving port, are going to trend to crap.
On the other hand, established brands have the financial and relationship muscle to actually inspect and cut things out earlier, and therefore can maintain a higher quality level on shelves
Based on what? Are people investing less in marketing than before?
I think the problem is that places like Amazon distort information (eg, tolerate crappy reviews) because it makes them more money. The bazaar model is supposed to have some positive feedback loops to incentivize positive events, but that’s drifting away.
So I used to think that effective marketplaces would replace brands with disintermediation and perfect info. But not so much now.
This is sort of a tl;dr for why I buy Apple. They have a huge markup for brand name, but it’s exhausting to me to try to evaluate what’s the best laptop this year and I can trust Apple to probably be pretty good.
In the end, the information that helped me make up my mind was from video reviews by mostly well-known photography vloggers on YouTube.
This is also something that could be messed with by unscrupulous marketers, but there is a strong counterbalance to those anti-patterns: the vloggers themselves are trying to build reputations, because "top photography vlogger" presumably pays better than 99% of all other work that involves photography.
I'm not sure how much this counts as "better objective information" -- other than seeing an object move around in someone's hands you're mostly getting an opinion -- but I found it super helpful and could easily imagine this being the "future of purchase-decision influence" or something like it.
For example here are three channels I used, with radically different styles:
1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCknMR7NOY6ZKcVbyzOxQPhw
Just to be clear though (I work in a field that relies heavily on niche-specifc YouTubers for marketing) - the reason that being a "top niche blogger" pays so well is because companies pay them a lot to encourage favorable opinions of their product lines.
I've seen amounts that are several multiples of my annual salary for fairly small market segment channels - and it's not explicit like "We are hiring you to post positive reviews of our products" because that would need to be disclosed. It's more along the lines of "We are nominally hiring you as a brand ambassador, you will visit our HQ and make a collaboration video". But of course, YouTubers aren't stupid, they're not going to post negative content about brands that are paying them even if it's theoretically for something else.
This is the same problem that PC hardware review magazines had back in the day - companies that purchased a lot of advertising from the parent company just happened to never get negative coverage in review articles. You can't bite the hand that feeds you.
Canon says "make us look better than Sony" and Sony says "make us look better than Canon" but at least in the stuff I watched, for photography, the really successful people were quite obviously prickly opinionated photo nerds who were not likely to risk their ever-increasing reputation and influence for a bit of payola.
I guess it probably varies a lot based on subject. Travel vloggers are pretty openly corrupt in that sense. And I have long dreamed of being a corrupt restaurant critic...
It's only when working photographers get their hands on the product and use it that the real story emerges, but it requires someone to take that risk for the benefit of others.
People believe (speaking of photography / video YouTubers) that Apple generally doesn't give pre-release or demo units to users (except the "inner circle", shall we say - Daring Fireball, etc.).
Odd, then, how a whole bunch of photography vloggers, the vast majority of whom made absolutely no mention of loaner / demo units, promotional consideration, etc, all got launch day Mac Pros.
"Much anticipated", people might argue, so of course they pre-ordered.
Odd. They must have all got together and talked. Because on my YT subscriptions list I counted no less than eight photography vloggers who somehow, coincidentally, managed to get the EXACT same configuration:
The 24 core, 384GB, 4TB, Vega Pro II Duo, with a Pro Display XDR, nano coated.
Now, not only is this an overkill for ANY photography editing, even 100mp medium format, it's also a $25,000 (33 when you count the display).
I'm willing to guarantee that these were all Apple loaner units and that at some point they bought their own with the specs they really wanted, and "subbed it in" to their setup, later.
Neither would I. I _would_ be skeptical of the motivations, be they vanity or otherwise, of a review that _does not disclose_ it as a loaner.
Thus the loop comes full circle.
Originally the idea of a brand ("burned" -- burned into the hide of an animal or a piece of wood) was a way to label the provider in the hope that people would learn which providers were trustworthy and had high quality. This extended into manufactured products once printed packaging become popular (logos and labels, starting with low-input goods like tea).
Then sometime in the 20th century people figured out that they could use mass advertising to build the brand (by then just a label) itself, sometimes even rendering the product itself almost irrelevant. I remember articles in the paper (80s I think) expressing shock and/or bemusement that someone would wear a shirt with "Tommy Hilfinger" printed boldly across the front. At that point such brands become an expression of stance rather than product quality, or perhaps the product was merely a way to broadcast the brand. For example Diesel jeans which can only be worn a small number of times, compared to levis which last much longer.
And now it's come back to the starting point: seeking the brand, but for some level of quality assurance rather than lifestyle adherence.
This is effectively being debated by proxy is most apple threads - i.e. It's easy to forget that we're debating this on HN, where even the least informed still have some idea what's going on whereas most consumers only information about a product is from very few sources and mostly advertising.
I've fallen back on a combination of brand, country of manufacture, price, and to some extent if the company has its own retail presence outside of Amazon and other online or meatspace big box stores. For example...
If the brand is good, the item is expensive, but it's made in China and sold on Amazon, I try to avoid. There's some risk it will be money wasted on something that will last just 3-6 months.
Conversely if all of the above are true but the item is cheap, I'll buy it from Amazon, enjoy their fast delivery, and simply build into my expectations and budget that it will need to be replaced in 3-6months. This is what I've come to with headphones, for example.
On the other hand, if the item is made in (not just designed in, but made in) the US, Japan, Korea, Germany, or some other Western European countries, then it matters less what the brand or retail venue is. For example, buying a room fan, power tool, or similar, I'll look for one with a motor made in US/Japan/Germany/etc.
These are the best signals I've found to be available atm.
Not only this - brands that get stocked at Walmart need to have considerable production capacity. I was involved in a manufacturing business that did great as long as we stayed b2c - but when we started doing b2b sales, even in small local shops, we got swamped rather quickly because we didn't have enough capacity.
It's not much use finding a quality product if you can't buy it.
One of my areas to watch: solid state relays.
Here we have yet another fake Fotek solid state relay on Amazon.[1] Note the "Made in China".
Here's the real thing.[2] Note the "Taiwan made" from the real Fotek. Costs a lot more. That's because it will actually handle the rated current. The fakes are notorious for overheating and burning out. The real thing has overheat and surge protection, will shut off if it overheats, and can stand a big short term overload for motor starting or when a short is in the process of tripping the circuit breaker upstream.
Here's a similar solid state relay from China, from the actual manufacturer.
They actually provide a table which shows how much they exaggerate the ratings. They're over-rated by 2X for a resistive load, and 6x for an inductive load. "For a motor with rated current of 15A and the motor is inductive load, the formula is 15A x 6 = 90A, so you should choose to buy 100A solid state relay".
For a little extra, you can have your own fake label. Minimum order 200 pcs.
Here's a fake Fotek.[4] What's amusing is that this is the actual manufacturer in China selling the fakes. They're in Guangdong, and they're selling under their own name, but with a fake label. No shame.
There are legit manufacturers in China selling solid state relays.[5] They put their own name on the product, show pictures of the inside their rather grubby factory, and have realistic numbers on their data sheets, along with pictures of UL certification documents. About 4x more expensive than the fakes. If you're in China and are building industrial equipment which needs these components, you need ones that won't fail and shut down a manufacturing line.
Here's a teardown of a fake. [6] The fakes are just solid state switches with power ratings way beyond what their components are good for. UL warning notice about fake Fotek solid state relays.[7] UL issued that notice six years ago, and they're still on Amazon and eBay.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/SSR-25-DC-AC-Solid-State-Relay/dp/B07...
[2] https://www.fotek.com.tw/en-gb/product-category/143
[3] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1PCS-SSR-10-DA-DC-Con...
[4] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-quality-SSR-25DA...
[5] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SSR-S25DA-H-DC-TO-AC_...
[6] https://youtu.be/DxEhxjvifyY
[7] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ul-warns-of-solid-s...
Contrast to China/AliExpress, where it may take them 3-4 weeks for the product to reach me. At that point, my interest may have fizzled out or I get busy with real life.
The disadvantage is since you're paying for shipping you need to do planning and get your final BOM established. If you make a mistake it's $0.20 for the right part and $5 shipping... Which isn't bad, but feels bad.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/dmrri4...
* Amazon
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* Amazon.com LLC
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I want to support manufacturers more directly, but their customer service has continued to be lacking.
Amazon has lost my trust this year, when my prime runs out I wont be renewing.
I made an online purchase for some oral-b toothbrush heads from Target. The item that arrived did not resemble what was on their website. I figure since it's a big retailer, it's probably legit. I checked the official manufacturer's website and the product was also different. Digging a bit deeper into the product images, I finally found one that looked like the version I had.
Amazon is really muddying the waters by combining products too. They seem to be merging comments and products that shouldn't be merged and are different SKUs and that is definitely a problem, but its also participating in the fraudulent sale of knock off products and passing them off as the real thing.
You're not the only one. Depending on the item and it's use I would probably pay upwards of a 20% premium just so I know there's a far less chance of the received item being fraudulent.
Pandemic aside, these issues also have made me much more likely in the last 4 to 5 years to purposefully go shopping in-person at stores since they seem to have a higher chance of having a proper supply chain established.
I was looking for dashcams and came across this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/iiwey-Channels-included-Dashboard-D...
91% 5-star reviews, a lot of the reviews are from "Top XXX reviewer", and almost every one seems to be reading off a script.
If you check out all the profiles of these "Top XX" reviewers, they all seem to be non-stop purchasers of chinese tat... curiously all rated 5 starts.
I'm sure Amazon is perfectly capable of detecting and handling this, what incentive do they have to allow all these fake reviews?
People buy the tat from Amazon instead of buying a name brand from a competitor.
You can return stuff back when bought online in 14days, I think this part remains after the 1st of Jan.
As for why I thought it was ABS. It's glossy and if it was nylon or polycarbonate (esp. glass/carbon fiber composite, or even PC+ABS), it'd be written a major pro in the marketing materials.
[0]: http://www.kelco.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/abs-chemi...
[1]: https://www.calpaclab.com/nylon-chemical-compatibility-chart...
But they might have an interest in not having a lot of products which don't sell at all because of mostly bad reviews (they are the Nr1 platforms for cheap "Chinese" products, they would lose a lot of sellers if they are no longer suited for selling low quality products) .
They also might have some interest into a erosion of trust into non "sold by Amazon", "shipped by Amazone" and "Amazone Choice" products. But that supper speculative.
I don't trust Amazon reviews without a review checker anymore, they used to be much better. The highest reviewed products are often some of the worst. Any product with a 4.8 or better is immediately suspect (though some are fine, especially if they don't have as many reviews).
So not only will the reviews be for the wrong product, there is also a good chance that the reviews were bought and are fake.
In the box was an offer for a $15 amazon gift card to give them a 5 star rating. I wrote a review on amazon, stating this. I got an email from amazon that my review had not been accepted this morning. I called amazon the previous night and the first person told me to "contact the seller". It took a second person to tell me that blatantly bribing customers for reviews was against their policy. Clearly nothing will happen.
All I can think of is that the end user is no longer the customer for Amazon. They're a platform for sellers, so the sellers are the new customers. Shame they never told the end users.
I very much fail to see how this is supposed to fit in with their "customer obsession".
What is this mess !? And how is this not Amazon's top priority?
Devil advocate: Could it be that the problem is actually quite complex due to whatever reason?
That being said, the problem is not very complex to solve, but the motivation is fairly low: they get a percentage of everything is sold, at some point that income can be a lot larger than the damage a few news articles usually do.
If everybody's incentives are geared towards quarterly results no way in hell they're going to be the ones to fix the fraud in their area if it's actually making their division $$$.
There's almost certainly a tragedy of the commons effect going on here (where the commons is trust in Amazon).
But on Amazon that meant creating new listings for new SKUs, abandoning hundreds of positive comments/ratings on each 12 pack flavor SKU, which would crush sales for a while.
So instead we let inventory run out for each 12 pack SKU, then shipped replacement 8 pack SKUs, and renamed the SKUs from 12 packs to eight packs.
They still had some reviews praising them for having a dozen packs, which was weird but the ratings were still there.
The line should be somewhere in-between:
1- changing the package size from 12 to 8
2- changing a german car oil listing, to a horse accessory and then a toy drone
Also the fact you were able to do this for something (I am assuming) was relatively innocent shows someone could do this for more nefarious purposes.
That's what happened with GGP, scammers get high ratings on some cheap product, then switch it with crap while keeping the high ratings.
https://www.fakespot.com/product/taktoppy-drones-for-kids-uf...
And the example from the article also got an A, but looks like Amazon may have fixed it? Only 54 reviews now:
https://www.fakespot.com/product/shwd-ufo-drones-for-kids-ha...
Though, looks like there's only 1 review now, so I dunno what it would've done earlier.
Amazon has gotten complacent due to its quasi-monopoly. I think now it is the time for a serious competition to take business out from them. One of those brick-and-mortar ex-giants, the ones who were displaced could make a comeback. If I buy online I want to deal with recognized companies who have a track record of shipping real products and honoring the warranties, not with some randoms hidden behind not recognizable names.
I've taken to finding as much as I can at places that DO NOT have a "marketplace" such as Target or Home Depot.
I also use ebay for various antique/vintage stuff (only <$100). Seems like overall a positive experience and the few times I've had issues I've always got my money back and the scammers account was closed, although I'm sure they just pop up again under a new name.
I liked Newegg too for PC parts and other stuff so I am dismayed to see they are going Amazon's way too.
I think this is Walmart nowadays. They bought Jet in 2016 and seem to have scaled Jet up and everywhere. Jet was the last company I know of to go up against Amazon.
I think it’s a real opportunity for a Chinese or Korean brand. Or if Aldi/IKEA want to go into retail space.
(Mostly a problem when also trying to figure out linux support!)
What Amazon is doing is just outright dishonest and ought to be against the law. They are certainly intentionally utilising this to sell products with dishonest reviews and star ratings.
Since a 3 or 4 star review was pointless given their SKU grouping, I left a 1 star review. If 10% of users started punishing companies and Amazon with 1 star reviews they would change pretty quickly.
After you've selected the color/model, go to the reviews section, and click to see all reviews, which brings you to a new page. There, you can filter to select reviews that are only for the single color/model.
It's annoying, and it's even dumber that the filter dropdown only lets you toggle between all reviews and reviews for the single color/model (when I'd like to compare reviews easily for different colors/models), but at least it is there if you hunt for it.
A twist on bait and switch is another manufacturer or reseller taking over the "buy box". This is how pirated items or used items sold as new get dumped on customers, with Amazon's full encouragement (lower prices for customers!) and non-enforcement/honor system for sellers. Legitimate manufacturers and brands can scream to the high heavens that they and customers are being ripped off, but Amazon does next to nothing to stop the bad guys let alone compensate customers and brands who were cheated.
Case in point: Bill Pollock's experience having his Python books repeatedly pirated (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199135)
Now on Amazon everything is a race to the bottom on price and quality and, it is really hard to find something that is good quality and if you do ... someone is probably willing to sell you a fake.
I've gotten a few items I thought were fakes, and when I post a less than glowing review (not even mentioning my fake suspicions) I'm often contacted and offered a free product for removing my review.... I refuse to take these offers, but I wonder how many people do.
Rather than what I sort of expected, Wal-Mart trying to be Amazon... Amazon seems desperate to BE Wal-Mart...
That google managed to improve them so much is likely their biggest achievement I can think of in many years.
Photos and videos in reviews are extremely helpful.
There are also many in-depth reviews that are trustworthy.
I’ve been reading book reviews on Amazon before buying, on-site or somewhere else, for ~15 years.
I’ve almost never seen an item with unhelpful reviews.
Fwiw, I completely agree!
I still trust 1-star reviews more than 5-star, but I don't take them as gospel. As you said, if there is a consistent message across all the negative reviews from a mix of reviewer types, then it strengthens the signal quality.
Buying online sucks :(
1) The reviews are low-quality and not indicative of much, so there are few legitimate complaints, or
2) The reviews showcase a significant problem with the product alongside proof, and/or are often made by intelligent consumers
After enough time doing this with success, I've started to see many more 1-star reviews on products that get highly upvoted until they're the 'top review(s)', which don't really contain anything useful at all. They try to appear like they are an instance of 2), but often offer little evidence or quality argumentation.
I imagine it's easy to upvote 1/-star reviews on competitors' products to drive a lot of their traffic elsewhere instead. At this point I would love having a review system that is curated to only be from people I like/trust, but that is another whole story and ecosystem of course.
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a Mag-Safe stand for my new iPhone 12 Mini. When I searched for it on Amazon, look at what the search returned[0]. Now, scroll down, until you get to the "Cheetah" pop stand.
Keep scrolling.
But don't touch that dial! It goes on for 400 pages![1]
Note they raise the price slightly, so they "sort."
I ended up giving up, and getting one straight from the manufacturer.
Oh...BTW. Those stands have this little gem in their description:
> (Not compatible with Apple MagSafe wireless charger or MagSafe wallet.)
Great that they overwhelm a search that is, explicitly:
magsafe iPhone stand
[0] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=magsafe+iPhone+stand&i=mobile&s=p...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=magsafe+iPhone+stand&i=mobile&s=p...
Interestingly, they are all sold by amazon directly and are printed on demand so it doesn't seem to be a case of a 3rd party trying to game the site.
Eek. I didn't even notice.
That makes it even worse.
I think Amazon needs to get a handle on their sellers and reviews ASAP because I am rapidly losing faith in the store.
I fear that they’ve done the math and decided that they make more money this way than a quality way.
they shipped me a used one where the paste was already partially applied on the socket.
it works but still payed full price for a "new" item when it was a returned item.
it's just scummy all around
Swapping the details completely triggers AI based flags and often causes the change to be manually reviewed.
But the seller can add a variant of the product (like size or color). But the seller instead adds a completely different product he intends to swap the original product with. Now the listing will show two completely different products as variants on a single product listing. Then the seller removes the old variant. Nothing gets flagged. No manual review.
This has been around for long and a very popular trick with shady sellers on Amazon in India. I don't think Amazon never figured it out. For whatever reason, Amazon turns a blind eye to this practice.
[1] Example: https://smile.amazon.com/Double-Sided-Tape-Walls-Decoration/...
I just outright refuse to buy from these sellers but it is clearly a successful model.
The result of blatant fraud and manipulation is simply removing the fraud? Why is Amazon continuing business with this shady company as if nothing happened?
I consider their "corrective" action far worse and damming than their inaction on other pages. Inaction could be from an inability to police everything. But merely covering up fraud when it happens is nearly as bad as taking no action.
Years ago I quit buying things at staples and started buying at AMZN because staples only stocked crap brands like vtech. Now the crap product listings on AMZN really stink.
Yes, someone makes a $23 drone. It is cheap plastic shit from China. Do you really need to buy it, and then throw it in landfill a week (or two days) later after it breaks?
Did OP reeeeeally expect a $23 drone to be on the up-and-up and NOT end up as landfill? OP is a bit oblivious to his impact on the environment.
This race to the bottom for the cheapest crap is what inspires these tactics.
There are lots of problems with Amazon, but in hindsight, perhaps my original comment was a bit offtopic...
A few years ago my New Year's resolution was to stop buying cheap crap, and to consciously save up for nice things. This had a few unexpected consequences:
1. I accumulate less junk and produce less waste.
2. I buy less stuff and end up spending less money in the long run, since there's only so much you can save up for at once.
3. My purchases bring me much more pleasure; the anticipation and research heightens the joy of actually getting the thing.
Number 3 was the most surprising to me, most likely because I have a rather strong anti-materialism streak. I'm not the kind of person who "goes shopping", but even I must admit that deliberately saving up for something makes its purchase a bit more meaningful, and loads more satisfying.
Oh, and I basically don't experience buyer's remorse anymore, which is nice.
> the anticipation and research heightens the joy of actually getting the thing
I've found that the research and thinking process is often the most fun part, and that I can replace that little dopamine hit from buying a bunch of cheap crap by window shopping for nicer, more expensive things for the future.
Then when I am finally ready to buy something nice, I've already done most of the research to know exactly what I want/need.
It also helps filter out stuff I don't really need or care about, since I tend to forget about that junk if I don't impulse buy it. Put junk in your cart but don't buy it until you sleep on it, and 9 times out of 10 you realize you don't really need it or even care about it once the novelty is gone.
I end up buying less throwaway crap, and I end up mostly very pleased with the nicer things I do buy.
Trusted reviews and recommendations can solve this but they are hard to come by.
Look at the title. It's just restating generic "drone" SEO nonsense over and over. There's not even a real name of the product.
The photos of the item are pretty clearly photoshopped stock imagery.
The description is full of grammatical and punctuation errors.
The brand has no online presence beyond its Amazon listings. It doesn't even have its own Amazon brand page.
It may be asking too much of the general consumer to look at these signals, but they seem pretty obvious to me.
The thinking that people shouldn’t pay low amounts leads to companies selling the same junk but for $100 instead.
Cheap things should be cheap, I think.
A wacky wall walker [0] is less than a dollar? Does that amaze you? Should it cost more? Should it not exist?
Same with a spinning top. Or a book. Or colored pencils.
I’m certainly concerned with externalities and make my children’s toy purchases accordingly. I am curious and would like to know why you think a $23 plastic drone isn’t very good.
I ended up relying on brand trust: I looked up reputable brands and bought some Tripp Lite power strips.
This in particular bugs me quite a bit on Amazon. The link for the 'brand' appears as if you can click it and then see information about who you are buying from, but instead it just performs a search for the word and you often get zero useful results.
Instead I'd like to see basic information about the seller: what items do they sell, how many have they sold, what country are they based in, what is their average review, and so on.
The negative reviews far more often will tell me where the weaknesses and problems are so I can determine if they are things that matter to me.
It marks the death of high quality reviews however because professional reviews can be done in context weighing things up better, where as most customers just don't have the experience with alternatives to say if its a good example or not.
It's an OK scope, nothing special, and I have no idea how much the giver paid.
Amazon doesn’t do this. Many of the seller pages are bogus or hard to see what they sell. I assume that since it sucks so much Amazon doesn’t care or they specifically don’t want me associating sellers with their own brands.
One of many, many examples. I wanted to buy a 10k lux light to see whether it improves my winter health. I spent well over an hour on Amazon going through reviews and products. When I found something I liked, on several occasions, Fakespot rated the product a C or D and noted it saw tons of reviews being removed and other heuristics. Then I personally noticed some products from different brands looked almost identical. And sometimes I noticed the same product from the same brand with separate entries. Also, when I wanted to read 3 or lower star reviews, I was told there were some, but I'd click the filter and it'd find no reviews lower than 4 or 5.
The other month I posted a review on Amazon for six canning jars where 5 spontaneously cracked in the fridge by themselves, unmolested. My review got removed and Amazon said it failed some guideline. This never used to happen.
Look, I'm happy to pay a little more here and there, I rarely look for the cheapest thing or budget item. But why is lying and deception so commonplace and lackadaisically accepted? It's grating.
Someone should invent an Honest Amazon competition. Honestly, Ebay vendors are often more trustworthy.
Their AI systems can’t detect when sellers bait and switch because there’s no way to detect this that doesn’t have a massive false positive rate, and they aren’t willing to spend a single dollar on ‘app store’ reviewing product changes by third parties.
Another demonstration of this chasm can be found by searching for ‘claritin’. There are pages of duplicates, terrible and missing product photos, and a wide array of metadata errors due to human inconsistency by the sellers listing the product on the marketplace. Fixing this would require human curation, since their AI curation is incapable of doing it, and so Amazon simply allows the rot to spread unchecked.
Using this field could then at least provide a control for us poor customers to filter only reviews for the current version/category of the product
And if they really wanted to do it right, they'd scan headlines/categories and reviews for substantial changes. Just a bit of good logic or AI pattern recognition should be able to sift this down to a manageable set of changes for human review and appropriate action, such as demanding a re-listing as a new product, weeding out repeat offenders, etc.
The article's point about Amazon failing to show a focus on "customer obsession" in this area is key - Amazon used to be a great place to search for products, and it is now a miserable, long slog to find anything good in the sea of crap with bogus listings & reviews.
In my experience they go out of their way to hide info on who the company really is and especially where it is located. Including deleting reviews that point this out. I suspect they make the most money selling in a position of maximum information asymmetry. If you built up any loyalty to the brand they could sell to you outside amazon.
Without 230, social media sites like Facebook would cease to exist.
I'm doubtful about this.
Recently I have often seen FAQ answers and similar for other products of the same vendor listed below the product.
Reviews are for Soda and the storage capacity is much less than 1TB so you will lose data if you film it.
The real site is manufactum.de nowadays a daughter of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_GmbH , the last remaining general catalog/online retailer, like Sears once was in the US.
Amazon in the US sells similar things for under $20, which seems reasonable given the local logistics costs.
I wouldn't recommend a toy like that for anyone under 6 years old. You're meant to hold it steady on your outstretched palm, then pull your hand away swiftly. Younger kids can find this too hard, which causes them to resort to tossing it up in the air. The resulting collisions (which are much harder than the collisions during flight) could easily cause the type of damage described.
Had to go directly to Apple to buy one.
I'm definitely going to use this sort-by-date trick for future product research adventures.
I do miss the good old days when Amazon reviews were an amazing product research tool.
Aside: I have no idea why they bury the "search reviews" feature. It's essential for discovering, say, real-world Linux compatibility for random pieces of hardware.
There really is little reason they all need to be together.
Putting a discovery engine in place that won't make a profit unless the right and decent thing arrives surely suggests they will have incentives aligned with the customers?
Oh, you can also buy suppressors and silencers for guns there too. Except they're usually branded as "lawn mower mufflers". Reviews are ... amusing ... "Makes my 9mm mower sound just like a pop gun".
Amazon prime makes it the most convenient but if you stop for a minute and break the cycle you'll find better prices at a higher quality else where.
In the same year, they'll publish a story about how requiring manufacturing information enables them to steal secrets from sellers.
You can't have it both ways.
1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its...
Clearly you have to be a megacorp to get it both ways. Amazon shouldn't be able to evade liability for products sold on their website if they compete against their "sellers" as well.
Now I'm on the brink of closing my Prime account. So yeah.
I guess if they expect that the products are worse than they appear then making reviews useless would be helpful. But if they have some good products and good reviews I would be more inclined to buy.
It seems that there is the a low area what bad quality reviews help more purchases but for the middle quality and good quality products I would expect low review quality to drive sales elsewhere.
Spending a third of the price of something cheap to get it NOW is peak Veruca Salt.
They sell $50 watches there too. Do you think they compare to a Rolex?
If Amazon is at fault here it's for destroying the concept of value in and of itself.