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Comment by mhh__ | Hacker News Reader

Although they do seem to be reverting to the mean as time goes by, regardless of how much people love to hate them there's a cultural reason why Amazon have done so well - even from people who dislike him I always read that Jeff Bezos sets the standard throughout Amazon of a ruthless focus on the customer.

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I want to believe that but "the customers" hate the fake reviews, hate the counterfeit goods... Returning an item now is all over the map — it seems it depends on which 3rd party sold you the item.

Yeah, they're backsliding. They need to get their house in order.

Although I don't contend that the problem is real, is "hate the fake reviews, hate the counterfeit goods" an American thing because I have only ever seen this complaint on hackernews.

It's a big problem here in the UK too, at least for me and the people I know.

Maybe I just can't tell what's a knockoff and what's not, but I've never noticed anything wrong coming from amazon.

Maybe I just don't buy brand stuff?

I've bought stuff that turned out to be shit, but I never thought there was a "real" version of it anywhere, just a shitty product.

The 3rd party sellers in your region may not have fully realized all the arbitrage opportunities that the sellers in the US market have. Give them time, they won't leave that money on the table forever. It might just not be enough for them to get to first.

That sounds remarkably close to magical thinking. It’s easier for me to believe that the complaints about counterfeit goods are coming from a vanishingly tiny but vocal minority than that I’m the tiny minority somehow surrounded by a cloak that prevents me from seeing the counterfeit goods.

These days, it's more and more common where you see a product with 4.5-5 stars with thousands of reviews, go to the reviews, and see that all the top ones are 1-star with complaints about the product being counterfeit or breaking quickly. I don't go on Hacker News often but I do use Amazon, and I see this all the time.

Have you considered that most people can't recognise fake reviews? It's pretty common in India too where sellers even give you discount for 5 star.

Not every capitalistic market in the world is a cuthroat race to the bottom like the USA.

This isn't a naive statement - this is a reflection of other markets that have had decades longer to manifest in the various societies compared to Amazon.

Food quality is higher, waste is lower, trust in government is higher, social programs can succeed, infrastructure projects are cheaper - all of this is universally true across progressive nations from Western Europe to Canada, compared to the US.

Fake reviews are a problem here in Europe, but I haven't heard of counterfeit goods.

What I don't like of Amazon now is how it is flooded with Chinese crap. It looks like Aliexpress.

> but I haven't heard of counterfeit goods.

If you peruse some of the sneakerhead forums, you'll see a lot of complaints about counterfeit dealers on Amazon. Nike used to partner with Amazon so you were assured your Nike's were coming directly from Nike. Nike killed the deal in 2019 and so now you have no idea where those Nike's and other sneaker companies products are coming from:

And the Wall Street Journal reported this week that Nike was “disappointed the deal with Amazon didn’t eliminate counterfeits and give the brand more control over gray-market goods,” which are legitimate items that Amazon sellers buy from distributors or retailers, rather than from Nike itself.

The problem for Nike is, removing itself from the Amazon platform won’t fix that problem. In fact, it’s likely to get worse. Amazon will now look to acquire more “gray market” Nike products to fill in the inventory gaps Nike’s departure will leave behind.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/14/20965434/nike-amazon-p...

Now Chinese Nike knockoffs are showing up under dubious brands like "fashion" or "Vitike":

https://sneakerhistory.com/2019/11/14/8-unbelievably-fake-sn...

You're replying to a question about Amazon in Europe with stories about Amazon in America.

The question wasn't whether it happens in America. The question was whether it also happens in Europe (personally I've always assumed it does but my point is your articles don't address that despite being in response to that question).

> gray-market goods, which are legitimate items that Amazon sellers buy from distributors or retailers, rather than from Nike itself.

Nike trying to cast distributors and retailers as "gray market" is a little gross.

Nike wants to make sure that if a shoe store goes out of business, they can only throw out any Nike shoes they had, rather than sell their inventory to another retailer.

Similarly if you bought a pair and they didn't fit, your only option is to throw them out and buy a new pair. No reselling.

Gray market is very far from chinese knockoffs though.

This is not what gray market is. The issue is with distributors in low price markets braking their contracts by exporting products to high price markets. This hurts the manufacturer as well as customers in low price markets.

Is it typical to refer to legitimate third-party sale of goods as "gray-market?" If I buy a used pair of Nikes from the person that owned them, or a third-party consignment organization, or Nike themselves, they're still the same pair of Nikes and their legitimacy doesn't change one way or the other. Gray-market to me implies you can't be 100% sure if they're counterfeit or not.

I don’t know too much about sneakers, but that is how the nomenclature is used with watches, at least. There, a gray-market purchase is a purchase of a legitimate item from somewhere other than the manufacturer or an authorized retailer. Notably, gray-market goods are sold at a discount but lack the OEM’s warranty.

The counterfeit good, I believe, come mostly when you buy something way under the normal price.

It's a problem here in India as well.. and trigger same Ali express said with a mark up as well

There's been plenty of articles about it:

Jessica — not her real name — has spent well over $15,000 on Amazon this year, buying everything from Halloween decorations to a queen-size inflatable mattress. She's purchased over 700 products, including three vacuum cleaners, six desk chairs, and no fewer than 26 pairs of earbuds. And even though most of the products are cheaply made, she’s given each a 5-star review. The twentysomething who lives on the East Coast isn’t a bad judge of quality — the companies that sell these products on Amazon reimburse her for the purchases.

Third-party sellers know what it takes to make it on Amazon: Get good reviews and a high search ranking. But attracting genuine customers is tough, so some sellers use a reliable cheat — bribes. Because of Amazon’s vast scale, inscrutable algorithms, and capricious enforcement of its own rules, unscrupulous sellers and paid shills largely get away with it.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon...

The GP wasn't denying it happens in America (as your article demonstrates). He was asking how wide spread it is outside of America (which your article does not demonstrate). Not saying I disagree with your post, just saying that it doesn't actually address the comment you're replying to.

In fairness to the GP, it does seem less prevalent in the UK (either that or the reports about fake reviews are greatly exaggerated in general) but there's definitely been a few reviews here that have "smelt off" -- either before purchasing or after having received the product. And I definitely know these bribes do happen too as I know of a few people who have been contacted. All of which refused to take the money.... but please do take this anecdotal sampling with a pinch of salt.

Are there any forums for Amazon users? Would they be English?

Because Amazon has exactly the same problems in the UK, Germany, and Spain.

Delivery and logistics are outstanding. But the rating/review/counterfeit/duplicate issues are a complete dumpster fire, and have made me pull back from using the site.

I suspect that most of these problems are being actively worked on.

Unfortunately, while it's relatively straightforward to e.g. detect fake reviews in a static dataset, it's a constant arms race when you're doing so in an online adversarial setup. Same goes for counterfeit 3P goods.

Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not anywhere near the retail side.

This seems a little hollow when there are third party sites who detect fake reviews on Amazons platform

My point is that if Amazon e.g. directly integrated with any one of those solutions you'd enter an adversarial scenario, and all of the scammers would try (and almost definitely succeed, even if just by brute force chasing false negatives) in finding a way around it.

The same would happen if e.g. half of Amazon customers would use one of these solutions.

The difference between being online versus being in an adversarial scenario largely depends on how / to what degree you're visibly impacting the bottom line of the scammers.

And hate how poorly warehouse and other non-office employees are treated. Other than that, I like the business model. But it's difficult for me to shop with Amazon knowing how the employees are treated, so it is a last resort for me.

Not in defence of Amazon,but how do you know how other retailers,the ones you use, treat their warehouse staff?

Are you sure they hate fake reviews and counterfeit goods?

If those things didn't work reliably, I don't imagine the bad sellers would keep doing it

yes, a customer hates fake reviews and counterfeit goods, the problem is you don't know its fake and counterfeit before buying. So it works reliably to get the buyer to buy, but it does not work reliably to make the buyer happy with what they bought. As a general the exact opposite.

>a ruthless focus on the customer.

If by that we mean "token goodwill gestures where it doesn't hurt our bottom line", then yes.

I've heard it described as a focus on the customer in aggregate, as opposed to a focus on individual customers.

I work at Amazon and all the disclaimers apply. The key difference I see with Amazon is that it is actually focus on individual customers. The general idea is to go from anecdote to generalized solution. They call it "peculiar" inside. There are several stories inside that kinda exemplify these qualities - When kindle first launched in UK, they realized they need to do something different for folks in Isle of Man. There were something like 12 customers there at that point. The launch was delayed/additional people were added to make sure those 12 customers also got it at the same time. Jeff Bezos's famous question mark emails are mostly start with a single customer complaint. My biggest learning is that you have to focus on individual customers, but should learn to do it at scale.

Doesn't this exactly fit the "token goodwill gestures where it doesn't hurt our bottom line" thing?

If they cared for the customers they'll have improved things that affect hundreds of thousands or millions or all of them (tons of such long-standing, including for the Kindle, which has languished as hardware in neglect-land).

Doing a fuss to make the release day the same for 12 customers (or 100) in the Isle of Man is not "caring for invididual customers". It's either a token empty feel-good gesture within the company, a whim of some superior, or a "nice story" empty marketing stunt.

This video from 1999 clearly shows how customer obsessed he was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o

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