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Comment by rolobio | Hacker News Reader

I nearly got taken by a scammer because Amazon transferred me to one. I purchased a set of Reolink cameras on Amazon, (they've been great) one of them failed a couple months in. I contacted Amazon customer support (via my Amazon login and in their interface) and they wanted to troubleshoot with their technical team. Eventually the (very helpful) Amazon technician suggested contacting Reolink for support and started a 3-way call. The "Reolink" technician got my phone number and then said they wanted to call me back.

They called me back a minute later (now without Amazon recording the conversation) and asked me for my NVR's serial number so they could connect to my NVR. I was shocked they had a backdoor into my NVR but I figured I'd let it play out. A minute later the technician said that he was having trouble connecting because "an internet virus is corrupting my firewall". I was extremely confused and thought it must be a translation problem. Until he kept insisting it was a problem and became belligerent and angry. He said I needed to pay $300 to have an on-site technician troubleshoot the problem. I got angry because he was making some weird excuse for their camera not working, and wanting to charge me rather than just ship me a replacement. I refused and he started mocking me. I demanded his manager and he ignored me. Eventually I hung up and called Amazon back.

The Amazon technician was helpful and shipped me a replacement. I contacted Reolink via email to complain about their technician. They responded that they have no on-site technicians and that it was a scam!

I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number...

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> I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number...

1) Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform, whether it's inventory commingling, sketchy sellers repurposing existing, well-reviewed listings for a totally different product or those bribing customers to leave good reviews with gift cards or free stuff.

2) The tech support number could very well be provided by the seller, and you could've bought the camera from a listing from said seller instead of the real Reolink (if the "real" Reolink even sells on Amazon to begin with). Maybe tech support scammers are now using this as a new lead-generation tactic ("legitimately" sell a high-maintenance product but scam anyone that calls for support?).

It’s pretty shocking but most IP cameras can be accessed with nothing more than their serial number. Here’s a somewhat recent DefCon talk about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_gKEF76oMM

I use Reolink cameras, in the admin interface there’s an option called UID. Turning that off (theoretically) disables the backdoor. I have my cameras and NVR (which is actually just a python script on an old laptop that uses ffmpeg to capture streams) on their own airgapped lan so I don’t have to worry about blackhats or the ccp using backdoors to watch my kids.

Well, most IP cameras cannot be accessed this way when you look at the global pool of IP cameras. However many on them on Amazon, particularly from OEM companies like Reolink that are more of a custom relabeller vs. a real camera manufacturer have all kinds of backdoor access methods.

Best practice is to put your IP cameras on a separate isolated network, connected to a dual-NIC recorder/PC running trusted software (eg: not some random DVR/NVR on Amazon) for recording and viewing. This is not a perfect solution, but it at least takes you far away from the path-of-least-resistance pool of devices with weak cybersecurity that are prone to various exploits.

Can't you just use VLAN tagging and firewall rules?

You sure can. And as a result you will get...

> a separate isolated network

They specifically called for dual-NIC.

As an extension of their suggestion. There’s no mystery here.

Yes, of course. Though most people who understand that are already doing things to mitigate exposing these devices to open internet access. My comment was targeted more towards anyone who might not have considered the risks, or might not be comfortable with virtual segmentation vs. physical segmentation.

And this is why my reolink cameras are on a subnet without access to the internet. The only thing it can reach is my home assistant and open source NVR.

This internet of things future is frightening. I don't feel comfortable buying any new product.

Best practice is to remember that intelligence means optimizing for some state of the world. If you have a "smart" product, it may not be optimizing for your preferred state of the world. Most commonly, it's not even optimizing for its manufacturer or vendor's preferred state of the world, because we don't truly know how to design a specific intelligence yet.

Our best efforts are just kind of putting in some objectives and hoping they don't get goodharted too badly.

> Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform

Bought some wireless earbuds a while back, they sent me a horrible knock off. Contacted the store, he said the delivery guy made the switch, took forever but sent me new ones. Left a review stating all of this and warning users not to buy from this sketchy store, my review never saw the light of day.

None of my negative reviews about scammers have ever been approved by Amazon. I have just started taking my business elsewhere.

Amazon filter out those sort of reviews "because theyre not about the product but the supplier". Of course, they don't make it easy to report the supplier.

I've bought ssr relays rated at 40A, with the actual picture of the real product shown. What I got was a fake that was literally an electrical fire waiting to happen. Maybe my complaint to support actually made it to the supplier, because they Photoshop blurred the product picture listing so the real brand name was obscured. Still had phony specs though.

At this point I only really buy things from Amazon that are essentially fungible. Cables, adapters, toiletries, tools, none of these matter enough to me to care about exactly what I get, as long as it’s roughly what’s in the picture, and to be honest they’re not even worth counterfeiting.

For everything else there’s rarely a reason to not buy directly from brands or niche specialist retailers. Customer support is typically better, warranties are often better, repair processes are better, and that’s not to mention the issue of counterfeiting.

Toiletries? You trust Amazon to not swap out your lotion with a cut-rate adulterated copycat?

These are things that don't really matter to me, the point is that I don't really care if they get switched for "cut rate", I'm practically buying the cut-rate version already. That's what Amazon is good for.

Man that annoys me so much, in my case it was a silent removal. You're not aware that your review was removed.

The things I don't buy from Amazon Prime really anywhere are replacement batteries.

I got bitten by this bundle of reviews thing. Amazon was made available in my country some time ago. I went on there to buy video capture device to help convert my parents old tapes to video. I found the device listing I was looking for, with good reviews. Placed my order.

Then a counterfeit showed up, completely different from the spec sheet and the image on the listing.

I filed a complaint, but they wouldn't give me my money back unless I paid to ship it back to half way across the continent, where they sent it from. Despite them just sending me a piece of electronic waste rather than the real product. Nor would they do anything about the listing.

Never looked back at their scam website again.

Disputing the transaction with your card issuer is the only answer companies will understand. The company wins as long as more users eat the losses (essentially giving Amazon free money) than those actively fighting for their money back.

I’ve done this before and it worked for me. Can’t say it will always go so smoothly though

Yep. Amazon gets a cut and they act like it.

Well. Not directly. But same outcome. No actual conspiracy or collusion necessary.

Amazon profits so much that they're content to eat the rampant fraud and waste, than to run a proper legit market place.

This is quite a jump to conclusions. The alternative theory of the customer service rep googling a phone number and getting the wrong one is far more likely. Or, it's possible that the company's own seller login was compromised and a scammer changed their contact number.

The idea that a wildly successful multi-billion dollar company would actually set up such an easily-noticed system where they "get a cut" of phishing scams is outlandish.

I don't think the "cut" implies they are in on some phishing scam. It's saying they take a cut of all volume, so even volume that's harmful to consumers is hardly worth Amazon's attention (as is evidenced by the obviously massive economy of systematic scamming that happens via Amazon, all of which, again, they get a cut of).

> The alternative theory of the customer service rep googling a phone number and getting the wrong one is far more likely.

Their support staff is that reckless and Amazon has no training and other systems in place to prevent that? Your theory doesn’t paint them in any better light.

it's far more believable than amazon being in cahoots with scammers. whether you think this is "better" or "worse" wasn't really part of the discussion

that number 2 is some next generation criminality there!

If you watch Jim Browning or some of the other people that investigate such scams you'll realize that it's not just a couple of idiots in a boiler room; those operations have all the hallmarks of a legitimate company including layers of management, offices, them having meetings to discuss new scam strategies/etc and the scammers being actual "employees" on a standard (low) wage + commission, so I definitely wouldn't be surprised if something like this would happen especially if they've already got a network of local accomplices to launder the stolen money that can easily be repurposed to sell products at cost (in fact that could also be used to launder money, win-win situation right there!).

It's really hard recognizing the image Amazon have in the US compared to my personal experience with amazon.de . The service is stellar, shipping both ways is free as long as you buy products covered by prime. Refunds are with no questions asked (as long as you don't start abusing it i guess). As soon as you go into 3rd party sellers the experience gets muddled, though I've had plenty of good experiences with those as well. There's simply nothing here in Europe that gets even close to what Amazon offers. I really really hope it will never be like the horror stories i see here on HN.

As a prime member in the US, your description more closely matches my experience with Amazon than the negative reviews here. I don't know if it's the way I shop or maybe I'm easier to please, but I really don't get it when people complain about counterfeits or poor quality experience with Amazon.

I only purchase items that have prime shipping, and that have free returns in case something is wrong. 99% of the time their delivery estimation is accurate, usually within 48 hours of my order or less. If something is broken or I simply don't like it, I return it for free at any one of several places within a 10 minute drive of my house: Whole foods, ups store, or Kohl's. And there's no rush - I have a full month to return the items and the refund is issued before I even get back home after dropping off the item.

I think it's selection bias. People with a bad experience with Amazon are more likely to dive into it here. And dive they do, nearly any time Amazon is mentioned. Even in a thread about Wells Fargo we somehow get sidetracked into "Amazon just sells counterfeit garbage".

Out of the thousands of items I've bought through Amazon, I think maybe one set of Henckels steak knives might be counterfeit (I've ordered two sets of the same knives and they were noticeably different - both seem high quality though).

Using this logic, you could quickly dismiss all criticisms of any company. It's not a very compelling argument, especially because no one is arguing that individual, atomic, anecdotal comments describing negative experiences with Amazon represent a statistically significant evaluation of Amazon as a company.

I try my best to not buy from third party sellers. Then I occasionally get surprised that I am buying from a third party seller. So I simply stopped because the perceived risk is too high. Amazon is overpriced anyway so why bother buying from them?

If you buy Amazon basic brand items you don’t have to worry. And the Amazon basic products are generally really high quality, from clothes and more high end niche items to daily necessities, Amazon basics items are best in class. People who complain about Amazon are usually buying crappy items from dodgy vendors, and then they idiotically blame Amazon.

Except it's almost impossible for the majority of customers to distinguish between the 'good' sellers and the 'bad' sellers, and we shouldn't pretend this isn't a deliberate effort on Amazon's behalf. Not only do Amazon often make it onerous to find out who is in fact selling an item, they also:

1) Co-mingle the inventory of multiple sellers in their distribution centers, so even if you buy from a good vendor you've used in the past, you still might end up with garbage from a shady vendor. 2) Allow widespread and rampant review manipulation / botting across every product category on the site, making it even more difficult to distinguish 'dodgy vendors' from so-called good ones. 3) Allow vendors to BRIBE customers with things like free items or amazon credits for 'organic' reviews, again, making it a Sisyphean task for most customers to find reputable vendors.

> and then they idiotically blame Amazon

This a callous and inane assertion. If a customer buys something from Amazon's website, and pays Amazon, and Amazon emails them a receipt, and Amazon delivers the product, the customer has every right to blame Amazon if the product they receive is crap. I'm frankly flabbergasted that you somehow think it is the fault of the customer.

> And the Amazon basic products are generally really high quality, from clothes and more high end niche items to daily necessities, Amazon basics items are best in class.

This reads like ad copy to me -- Amazon basic products are fine, but they certainly are not 'best in class' or 'very high quality'. Amazon doesn't even go that far (they items are literally called 'Basics'.). Furthermore, if the only thing a customer can feel confident purchasing on Amazon is a Amazon Basic items, it kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? There are not Amazon Basics versions for most product categories on the site, and the allure of Amazon is that you can get anything you want from one vendor, delivered quickly (A to Z).

(Not to mention, I've seen a lot of cases where Amazon Basic items are clones/knock offs of well-reviewed, high volume products designed and manufactured by third party companies. Amazon then copies these products and promotes its own listings, which isn't exactly the most ethical practice IMO)

“Amazon then copies these products and promotes its own listings”

…for the consumer’s benefit. It’s a win/win.

They are one our best companies. From the climate change perspective alone, think of how much better off we are, as a planet, thanks to Amazon. People are appallingly ungrateful. And the criticism is typically something along the lines that he allows too much freedom (“they let anyone sell stuff, even chinese vendors gasp) or oddly, they complain about logistical efficiency (“eww commingling! I would never!” as they clutch their pearls), when it’s acthually exactly what other retailers do. If people were so worried about their packets commingling we wouldn’t have the internet, the us postal service would stop functioning if mail didn’t get commingled. Commingling is good, progressive.

Amazon US used to be as you describe. But now its mostly just cheap knockoff stuff. I hardly purchase there anymore. Its really sad because they used to have such a wide selection.

> just cheap knockoff stuff.

By that you mean overpriced dropshipping from aliexpress.

Everything I've seen on AliExpress has a 30-60 day delivery window. Amazon gets it there within a couple days. I don't mind paying a couple extra bucks to get something in 2 days vs 60. And that's not really drop shipping anyway.

Where do you shop instead?

Locally mostly. Also, surprisingly on walmart.com.

Edit: Also from manufacturers' websites.

I dislike Amazon but yes, my experience in what you have outlined is that it's generally amazing.

The parts that aren't amazing is getting items that aren't representative of what I ordered. But refunding is always a breeze when that occurs.

My problem is that it shouldn't be a thing that happens so often (to me). I shouldn't be shipped shoes of the wrong size 3 times before I get shoes of the size I ordered. I shouldn't be buying open box items without being told it's open box. I shouldn't be buying things with the completely wrong thing in them.

Now, all of these can be problems with big box retailers. But the sheer frequency it happens to me on Amazon - it's never happened at this frequency to anyone I know when we would shop in store. Yes, my friend once bought a graphics card at Fry's that just contained a box of rocks. But that was one friend, one time. I've had more of these issues on Amazon, the last ~7 years, than I have for all shopping experiences everywhere else that I've ever shopped combined.

My US based Amazon experience is like yours with fast shipping and easy refunds/exchanges, so don't lose hope. I guess with 100e6 or so customers, there are bound to be some bad experiences.

>" The service is stellar, shipping both ways is free as long as you buy products covered by prime. Refunds are with no questions asked"

This is my exact experience in Canada so far. But they did something else weird. I wanted to buy Google Store gift card from Amazon and as soon as I made the purchase my account was suspended. It had taken me few hours including lengthy phone call to sort things out. I was told that gift cards are widely used in fraud. Sure, whatever but then why FFS they sell those?

shipping both ways is 100% not free in canada. I went to price match a power supply I had just purchased and they said they don't price match. I said no worries since it's unopened I'll return it and buy it again and they quoted me $30 shipping to return it. I had prime and it was a prime item.

I've also reported businesses who sneak 'give us a 5 star review and we'll give you $30' cards into their parcels and amazon did absolutely nothing.

Amazon is amazing until you realize it isn't. I got rid of prime and suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk because I wasn't incentivized to get junk by the prime membership. If I have to wait to have enough stuff for free shipping minimums I can wait enough to look locally and 1/2 the time I can find it locally for similar cost and the other 1/2 it turns out I never needed it just wanted it.

Highly recommend getting rid of prime and taking a couple months off ordering anything from them - you'll find out not only is amazon not worth it, they're easily replaced.

>"shipping both ways is 100% not free in Canada."

It is free for what I order.

>"suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk"

I do not buy "junk" just what I really need (mostly for business), so do not have this problem. I buy some things locally as well but it is not my goal to favor either.

>"Highly recommend getting rid of prime"

I am very service averse person and am trying to use as little as possible. My phone for example does not even have data plan. If I do use some however (Amazon in this case) it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.

>It is free for what I order.

I thought that too until suddenly it wasn't.

>it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.

Only you know your balance book I guess

> There's simply nothing here in Europe that gets even close to what Amazon offers.

I strongly prefer bol.com. No idea if they ship abroad, though.

I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is more strict in Europe because their behavior from the US would get them in legal trouble here.

Maybe that, to some degree. But amazon.de has a lot of problems, too.

There are a lot of fishy listings, but it's also often quite easy to detect those fishy offers, because the German text is usually full of grammar and spelling errors, and often obviously a result from Google translate, and often not even fully translated, with larger parts still in (shoddy) English. Outright counterfeit products seem to be somewhat rare still, at least from what I observed, but there is quite a number of low quality knockoffs.

Or e.g. multiple journalists reported on review-rigging operations - usually organized through whatsapp, and using regular folks for a few bucks as "mules", to get some coveted "verified buyer" reviews. Or bait-and-switch listings, where they had an original listing which gathered some good/ok reviews, and then they repurpose that listing for another product, while keeping their stars.

Or e.g. there was a report about one guy who got like 10 - 20 packets a day with junk he never ordered, every day, over months. Apparently some shady sellers got hold of his info, and were using him as a "garbage bin" for excess stock[0]. While he wasn't charged for any of the products or shipping, he still ended up in a situation where his door bell rang a few times a day, and he ended up throwing away most of the stuff, having to properly dispose of it. And when contacted, amazon just told him to throw away the stuff he doesn't want. It's unlikely he was the only involuntary garbage bin victim.

[0] It wasn't clear why they did that. Maybe to inflate sales numbers to get higher ranked in the amazon search? Or because just shipping it through amazon to some random people might be cheaper than just keeping that stuff in the amazon warehouse or disposing of it properly?

Honestly maybe you just have a better detector than most.

I don't agree. It's extremely obvious when a listing on Amazon.de is sketchy because the German used is quite bad compared to normal listings.

I'm also quite skeptical of most positive reviews, because it's a known problem in Germany too. I don't think most people are aware of that though and still believe high ratings still mean anything.

Not an isolated incident. My mother was transferred to an Amazon employee who tried to scam her as well. This was years ago, and I reported it to Amazon. No idea what eventually happened, but I was shocked that they'd be so brazen about committing fraud as an actual employee.

Amazon today is a street side flea market. You really don't know what you'll get. I've started ordering more stuff from traditional retailers. Their online operations these days are really good, and at most a few dollars more than Amazon. Clothes from macys.com, home goods from homedepot.com and target.com, and so on. You're not flooded with choices with these stores that are mostly garbage, instead you get only 1-3 choices that are reputable.

I think ordering on amazon has become a little like getting your car towed.

Towing companies appear to be a large shell game where your $200 tow is handled my one or more middlemen who eventually get some poor independent towtruck driver to tow you for $75

Amazon should do something that would allow partnering with decent brands. Customers would be happy, brands could keep their reputation, amazon could get a reasonable cut, and they would still sell stuff via flea-market brands and the made up word-salad amazon brands

> I think ordering on amazon has become a little like getting your car towed.

Apparently especially in Ontario…

https://www.thedrive.com/news/44749/inside-the-tow-truck-maf...

I'd like to see an economist's view on how the free market is failing here, and what we can do about it.

You might enjoy “The Market for Lemons” by the economist George Ackerlof [0]. It fits people’s descriptions of what’s happening with Amazon.

His idea was: buyers don’t know if a car is good and the risk of getting “a lemon” (a bad car) reduces how much they’re willing to pay. That means sellers reduce the quality of what they’re selling or leave the market. After a while the quality degrades so much that buyers notice and want to pay even less. Eventually the market is 100% lemons.

The paper was controversial when it was published in the 1970s, but helped kick start research into “information asymmetry” and the potential for market failure.

[0] https://www.sfu.ca/~wainwrig/Econ400/akerlof.pdf

This sounds familiar to my used car shopping experience a few years back. Went to see at least 20 private party sellers over a period of a few weeks and most were junk, bought by shady dealers at used car auctions. And their prices were well above the blue book for excellent condition, despite the cars being fair at best. I did manage to find some actual private sellers, and ended up with something I like and still drive now, but it required a lot of time and determination. I can understand why some people would just go to a lot and drive off a couple hours later

Your regular reminder that theoretical free market assumes perfectly rational and informed consumer, no lies and no misleading or withholding information

In other news a car has infinute milage on a frictionless surface in a vacuum

First imagine a spherical cow...

I'd say it's working just fine, by causing people to switch away from using Amazon. Amazon continued to lower their brand's quality and as the name becomes less and less trusted, their products are worth less and less.

Is that actually happening though? I know there's lots of anecdotes around here, but there are still many people using Amazon frequently. I wonder if their numbers have actually gone down

I mean, roughly, there's no such thing as an ideal free market, and in all real markets all the ways in which it's not an ideal free market are being exploited by people to collect the margin. The concept of an ideal free market is promulgated by the same people who are making money off those margins.

As far as what you can do about it, you could start with preventing those people from interacting with markets. I leave the mechanism as an exercise for the reader.

A free market would first require getting rid of all forms of power and so far there have been people who thought about minimizing the most impactful sources of power and pretty much all economists ignore them.

What we are doing is the equivalent of looking at a warped mirror e.g. a non free market and declaring that the reflections are not distorted e.g. a free market.

A lot of people are scared of living on the streets or feel shame from living off welfare. There is no way these people are going to make long term decisions if their short term needs haven't been met or there is a constant risk that they won't be met tomorrow.

This is actually one of the more disgusting parts of Austrian economics. Where a low time preference is basically considered the equivalent of a high IQ. If you have a high time preference you must be some dumb consumerist animal, when the truth is that you barely earn enough money to meet your living expenses which means 100% of your spending must go to consumption. Thirst is more urgent than hunger which is more urgent than shelter which is more urgent than social needs and so on. At some point you are not longer hungry or homeless. The urgency is gone. It would be more accurate to say that time preference is a function of wealth and having your needs met, rather than some intellectual jerk off competition where stupid people are filtered out and smart people end up with all the wealth.

Most people are still happy to shop with Amazon despite it's failings. I'm sure Amazon has analyzed the data and are coming out ahead.

What free market? There is no such thing.

I honestly just see a regular capitalistic market, where a company is trying to make money at the expense of other companies. By that I don't mean Amazon is outcompeting retailers and pushing them out the market. I mean Amazon is actively causing damage to well known brands by letting scammers sell those branded products to promote their own AmazonBasics brand which is free of scammers.

Even if the scams are unintended, there is no profit incentive to get rid of them.

Tow drivers make a lot of money. They do a lot of subcontracting and mutual aid type arrangements.

Towys in my country are usually connected to some kind of mafia. Never met an altruistic one like like matts offroad recovery in my travels.

The only time I had my car towed was in Devon, SW England, in 2020. I hit a pothole and blew out a tyre. The company that towed my car took it to their workshop, and took me to my hotel. The next day I spoke to them to organize getting a pair of new tyres. That was a challenge because I had winter tyres on as I was intending to return to Norway before the spring and no one stocks winter tyres in Southern England. It took them another two days to get the tyres. They charged me for the tyres and fitting and that was it, no charge for the ten mile tow.

Same here (Western Australia) and it's closer to $2500 than the $200 mentioned above.

This seems to be the classic underdog problem. The traditional retailers that you like today will become third party marketplaces tomorrow if they grow. So the issue is that we only get good service from underdogs and it is destined to fail once the underdog is not an underdog anymore.

Except Amazon started as a third-party marketplace. This isn't *new*, some of us just have really short memories. For the first several years the only first-party sales they did were in books (and not all books on the store even at the beginning). They've expanded into other first-party categories, but there are much fewer first-party categories than people assume. (And always have been.)

The big thing that changed isn't the third-party marketplace on Amazon, it's that they increasingly and intentionally blurred the lines between "third-party" and "second-party" marketplaces. Any third-party that uses "Fulfilled by Amazon" logistics (warehouses, shipping) just about gets automatically upgraded in the Amazon user experience to "second-party" even if Amazon has no deeper working relationship with the third-party than "Fulfilled by Amazon".

Some of that intentional blurring of the lines is also questionably Dark Patterns intentionally designed to confuse consumers in just exactly what categories Amazon supports directly (first-party) and which ones are third-party, and more importantly which ones are first-party usually versus third-party today (such as sold out goods). They want to give consumers the illusion of an "everything store" that is never out of stock. That's never the practical reality, and the illusion may be evil from the perspective of shadily pushing consumers to unvetted third parties due to Dark Patterns that back that illusion.

That doesn't follow. Just because an online retailer grows it doesn't mean they have to start allowing third-party sellers. In fact, seeing what is happening to Amazon's reputation, that seems like a bad long term move.

Short termisum might win out, but it is not a foregone conclusion.

The mechanism is the managers that take over at companies who focus on the short term bottom line (trimming support today, to juice profits tomorrow, to lose credibility years down the road after the bonuses have long landed in their bank account).

And the problem is that Amazon's growth profile (retail-side anyway) is going to be pretty constrained going forwards because they own too much of the available pie right now. So the result is that managers are going to have to look for other ways to trim costs to make numbers.

If you're starting from 0.001% of the retail market and trying to grow 10x it is much easier to do that just by having really good customer service.

"short term bottom line" is a comically absurd way to describe Amazon, which has been growing consistently for 25 years.

This comment is peak short-termism! It is comically absurd to refer to 25 years as a long time!

There are companies that have been around for 300 years, in fact prior to rise of venture capital moat companies were multi-generational family business and you would consider how a decision would reflect on your children.

The professional management class in America no longer remotely behaves that way.

I'm talking about the prospects for growth in the next 25 years, not the last 25 years.

> Just because an online retailer grows it doesn’t mean they have to start allowing third-party sellers.

Why do you believe this? Not one of the top 10 online retailers in the US doesn’t have third party sellers. It appears to be the case in practice that growing does require opening the doors to anyone and everyone, which obviously increases the scale of business a retailer can offer. There are both reasons and evidence to suggest third party sales are what it takes to grow to even one hundredth the size of Amazon.

> seeing what is happening to Amazon’s reputation, that seems like a bad long term move.

This seems like a big assumption. There is a very long list of corporations and monopolies with relatively bad reputations that are doing just fine and have for a long time. Reputation isn’t a good measure for the success or future prospects of a company, once it gets large enough.

I agree it's not a foregone conclusion, but it's also not far fetched. That's what happened to newegg. They tried to turn into an amazon and now I have a hard time trusting them.

Ordered some things from walmart.com, half of it was third-party sellers. They were sort of transparent about it, though, and the quality was at least what I'd expect from inside a Walmart.

Yep. I've been ordering from Target, Best Buy, and Walmart much more often these days. I just assume the product descriptions and reviews on Amazon are all lies.

Target and Wal-Mart also sell third party shit. It's easier for me to just buy directly from brands I like, or to shop for them on a couple outlet sites I trust (so far) to sell legit (overstocked or lightly damaged) top-quality stuff and not lower-quality second- or third-tier versions (as some outlet stores do), than figure out how to avoid or disable displaying third party sellers on a bunch of different sites.

By the time you factor in the time and frustration for that, any savings (which isn't even guaranteed) doesn't look like great ROI anyway. Plus, even Amazon often won't carry the full range of a brand's products, so I get more options shopping this way.

Best buy is filled with 3rd party sellers too but it's at least very easy to filter them out. If I could do the same on Amazon I wouldn't have any problem with 3rd party sellers, but they instead make it almost impossible to know even if you check manually.

That and Amazon commingles their inventory with 3rd party inventory, which can sometimes be counterfeit. And Amazon doesn't care if the counterfeit products are mixed in with the genuine products in their warehouses. As far as I know, Best Buy/Target/Walmart don't commingle their inventory with 3rd parties because they have physical stores that they can pull from.

True. But stores like Target also let you see inventory in physical stores, so it's easier to purchase an item you know is coming from a Target store/warehouse than a 3rd party.

God I wish walmart’s site was better, it is like punishment shopping there, why does home depot outclass them in every way?

I thought Jet.com acquisition would solve this. What a waste.

It is pretty bad. They're my last resort.

As someone who has contributed legitimate reviews on Amazon, I think "all lies" is a bit of an exaggeration.

Do they still allow listing different products on the same page, with the same reviews?

You can read reviews for a whole different model of headphones or kettle, for example, but what you get is another, (usually) cheaper model/revision. Which is insane!

Negative reviews are silenced. I ordered a machine with missing parts such that it couldn't be assembled. I gave a 1-star review and it never appeared on the seller's page.

Interesting. I would have lumped them all together. Why do you trust reviews on Target but not Amazon?

Target and Walmart take online returns at their stores, which no one in the supply chain likes. They will take bad suppliers to the woodshed if too many returns of an item. Hence they have skin in the game to carry quality products

I didn't say I trust reviews on Target. Paid reviews exist everywhere. But if I have to choose, I'd trust Target's first. Amazon's extensive 3rd party marketplace is set up in a way that encourages vendors to game their system. Amazon does nothing about it because it's good for business.

And I trust Target's products are genuine and what you receive is what's in the product description, because they sell them in stores.

Agreed. Last example was LED grow light I purchased and description said had a grounded plug. When it arrived there was only a 2 prong plug. I’m weary of everything I buy there now and try find a manufacturer direct order when possible. Fulfilled by Amazon should read as a warning sign.

Just FYI weary = tired … wary = suspicious.

thank you for letting me know I hate to use words incorrectly

FWIW I'm weary of everything I buy

> Amazon today is a street side flea market. You really don't know what you'll get.

There are two time when I will use Amazon nowadays:

1) If there is an official store there

Anker is a good example of this. It seems like Amazon doesn't commingle inventory if there is an official store.

2) If I want something faster than Alibaba/Aliexpress

Quite often I can find the exact Chinesium equivalent on Amazon and I get the benefit of returnability if what is advertised is completely out of whack.

This has to be costing Amazon money, but, it's their funeral.

> It seems like Amazon doesn't commingle inventory if there is an official store.

Is there any confirmation of this? I've seen assertions both ways.

No. Amazon doesn't commingle inventory when... the manufacturer doesn't sell through any other channels, so there is no one to commingle with.

Unless there are counterfeits

As I understand it, Amazon charges a fee to avoid commingling. Any seller can pay it and have their items isolated.

These days I'll order certain things from Wal Mart if I'm wary of what I see on Amazon.

Too bad Wal Mart murdered Jet.com

I bet your Amazon rep just searched for Reolink and clicked on a Google ad that happened to belong to the scammers.

Well this initiated a rant, not directly related to ads, but Google in general. This is an internet literacy issue I’ve noticed more and more. People will refer to Google listings as an authoritative source even if the data comes from some third party.

“Is this Jordan’s Tiles?”

“No. This is Patrick. You have the wrong number.”

“It says on their website this is the number!”

“Their website is wrong, this isn’t Jordan’s Tiles.”

more argument with me just hanging up because they’re clueless (someone even had the audacity to ask me what the number was for Jordan’s Tiles like I’m their personal assistant)

And finally I went on Google and searched for Jordan’s Tiles. There my number was on the listing and on a third party source. The right number was on the lower ranking Jordan’s Tiles website. They were so argumentative about being so wrong, it was outside of their ability to understand that the internet can and does give you the wrong information.

Wrong opening hours on Google is a niggle for me. And having been on the other side of the equation, changing the hours Google says a business is open is not always straightforward.

whoa, dude, language

Not sure if you're joking, but the etymology of this word does not appear to be racist. According to [0], it derives from the same root as "niggardly", which according to [1], is unrelated to the racial epithet.

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggle [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggard#English

This is a great opportunity for you to learn more English language.

Yeah, you hear about this with the people who get taken in by Grubhub or whoever that's spoofing a restaurant's phone number/ordering site. I would never take a third-party source as authoritative, but apparently people do it.

I never take restaurant phone numbers directly off of Google, I always check their (hopefully existent) website before calling, or at least crosscheck it against other sources. There is no way Grubhub or any of the other mediating greedholes will get even Caller ID data from me if I can help it.

Related. Finding real locksmiths has become so difficult that I have resorted to calling a business across the street and asking them to tell me if there is, in fact, a locksmith at the purported location.

Maybe there is a business in physically verifying a given business is the actually the real thing.

KeyMe are one of the perpetrators of this shady practice. They have vending machines for keys and put them all over the place and then their machines show up when you search for a locksmith. If you call the number their rep will act as middleman to connect you with an actual locksmith and they take a cut.

I've decided I will do my searches through https://www.findalocksmith.com/ which is from the associated locksmiths of America

Google used to send a postcard to a business address before adding a listing (in UK at least). Do they not do that now?

Wait until you find out that Grubhub and ilk have been known to prop up fake websites for places.

When a small guy does something like this it's called fraud and heavily punished. When a VC-funded company does this it's called "growth hacking" and applauded.

Grubhub et al promoting their own phone number as a restaurant's is exactly what I'm talking about.

Go to the right address in person. If you have no real-life connection with the restaurant, or any restaurants, give up and take what you get.

Honestly, how do you know what the right number is though? Everybody outsources their stuff. The real website is at jordans-eatery.outsourcedsite.com. Or maybe the guy at jordans-eatery.seo.com is taking calls and placing orders to the real site at a markup. Or maybe the real number is on jordans-eatery.com. Or maybe it's none of those.

Easy, go to the restaurant in person and order takeout or dine in if you want. On your way out ask them what their official website and phone number are. Then you can put them on your "safe to order from' list

I order all the time from a restaurant with a distinctive name and menu near me. They might have their own website, but their real website is one of these outsourced menu ordering things.

Last time I went to order, I looked up their name, went to the page by that name on the known third party menu site, ordered my usual order from their usual menu, only to discover after the charge went through that a scammer had copied their name and entire menu onto a new restaurant on the same site.

Called immediately to cancel the order (why doesn't the site have that option??) and the woman on the phone feigned ignorance. A few minutes later a gruff man called me back and told me I wouldn't be getting a refund. Not sure what I said to convince him, but maybe enough threats and he decided to change his tune.

The scammers are running the asylum.

Sure, and I agree that this is really the only way, but also isn't super practical for a lot of things.

Apple Maps from my experience is quite bad about this. I know of one city where it happily provides the locations of four DHL counter locations even though there is only one. Numerous other store locations on Apple Maps also often do not exist, so however they are sourcing their data is full of errors or outdated information.

I've had that happen to me as well - person finds a wrong number online someplace, calls me, and then is mad at me that I am not who they are looking for...go figure.

Had this happen to me when I was in IT. I got a cold transfer of an angry customer who wanted to talk to a guy who had a very similar name. I told the customer that they wanted the other guy, I was in the wrong department, and they wouldn’t believe me. They said “I know it’s you from yesterday, I recognize your voice!” How was I supposed to argue against that?? Eventually I convinced them and did a warm transfer to the correct guy. We do have similar voices…

"Call Google. Ask for Sundar."

I think this might just be a people thing? I've had the same experience (some one calling for the YMCA, I inform they have the wrong number, they proceed to argue and berate me) but they probably just misdialed.

Not that I don't also feel like Google search results have gone down hill.

My friend booked one international flight with departure and destination having 12+ hours timezones difference. The email listed the departure time & duration of journey and arrival time, all in local times (as expected). Gmail auto creates an event about flights and hotel bookings, and thus shows the correct departure time, duration & then that AI simply added that duration to departure, and showed departure city's time flight lands. Wrong. My friend, no blame, believed it; until I pointed it out.

i'm confused, what's wrong there? event starts at departure time and goes for duration. the arrival time is correct, and can be reported in any time zone.

Sorry for not being detailed in my comment. Or i might have butchered. I will simply explain with numbers.

Email said, flight departs 31st March 9pm.

Flight duration 15 hours.

Flight reaches Apr 1st. 9pm. No indication of timezones, but as super common in flights, all times are local. Both cities have about 12 hour difference.

Google thought Departure 31st March (correct);

Duration 15 hours (correct).

Arrival Apr 2nd, 12pm. (Not correct, it added 15 hours duration to Arrival city time. Apr 1 9pm + 15 hours = this).

“It says on their website this is the number!”

"What do you think is more probable: that the website is wrong or that I don't know who I am?"

That is one of those situations where the right move is to leave an uncomfortable silence so they can think about what they said.

I responded with almost that word for word once on one of these calls. They made some angry sounds and hung up!

You should have spun up gour own tile business, preferably just dropshipping from the real Jordan’s Tiles!

The SEO thing sucks, I notice it like if you're trying to find a tow truck, it'll be some call center that then directs you to an actual tow truck nearby with their cut added to your cost.

you've got caller and callee flipped

Lots of call centers get targeted with this type of scam. I think it's because call center employees are so poorly treated and compensated that it's appealing to join the scam. I've seen the same exact thing happen with QuickBooks support. The actual agent you're speaking with gives your contact info to the scammer who calls you back.

I've never seen this before but I imagine the call center employee has a lot more to lose being a part of fraud than the scammer who isn't legitimately employed and can't be found. Doesn't seem likely.

Reason #99,999 that I don't use Amazon anymore. Just buy stuff in-person, pay the shipping, wait the week, or whatever. You'll be fine I promise.

Stuff in person costs 2X the price though. Especially bike parts.

It's often cheaper to buy from Amazon but never go through troubleshooting support. Always return or replace.

If that doesn't work, give a 1 star review, wait for the seller to come chasing you with a gift card in return for 5 stars. Change it to 5 stars, spend the gift card, and then change it back to 1 star.

As someone why buys a lot of cycling parts online, there are many mom/pop bike shops with web storefronts, that are very reasonably priced and often include "free" shipping. Stop giving bezos your money, you have no excuse.

Yeah.. lots of people keep repeating "but its expensive out of amazon!" and they never tried. Sure, you can find cheaper products on Amazon, but once you start looking around, it's definitely not always the case. But people are lazy, they get multiple amazon packages a week, and love to complain about Bezos but do nothing about it.

I bought a book on Amazon in 2005, it came (weeks) late, i complained, got sent another, ended up receiving 2 books. It was my last purchase from Amazon. Since then, the only time i see Amazon is on the backend of a scammer. Amazon in my opinion, in every sense, a scam itself.

First off, its just morphed from a book store into a upper class ebay. Alibabba became the chinese ebay. I'll pay that drop shipper the money, i got no problem with the conveince they give but realistically whats the point of going through 3 middle men when i can wait an extra week and limit that to 0 or 1.

Reality check:

I'm not exactly rich. When I'm a millionaire I'll happily support LBS.

Until then Amazon helps me save a shitton of money.

I got a pair of Continental GatorSkin tires from Amazon for 30% less than LBS just 2 weeks ago. And yes, I called LBS and checked the price.

Your local shop isn't the only option. The first online retailer (above Amazon in my Google search result) is €3 cheaper than Amazon, shipping included.

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/C1010429-P-Continental-Gatorskin-...

https://www.bike24.com/p2195136.html

+19.99 EUR and 10-14 days to ship to the US. Not cheaper.

Not to mention maybe another $150 in Uber rides waiting 14 days instead of 1 day for it.

Also Amazon gives me 5% cashback too so that also needs to be factored into all prices.

I used two European sites, since my comparison was obviously for delivery to somewhere in Europe (Denmark, in my case).

Ah okay, I though it was because these particular tires are in fact made in Germany ;)

But yes I think in Europe small businesses are much more of a thing. In the US it's very hard to get a better deal than from Amazon and these big companies, especially because they can super-optimize the supply chains across such a big country. Same is true in China.

Amazon is expensive. I once got an Amazon gift card and the first thing I told the person that gave me the card is that I will spend 20-30€ more on Amazon than on any other site.

As someone in Europe, Amazon would be the last place for me to look for bike parts. We have so many great options, including huge online retailers (Bike24, bike-components, bike-discounts, just to mention a few), all of which I've ordered many times from, and was pretty much always happy. Local bike shops may be more expensive, but then you support your folks, which might come in handy later, when you need servicing for something that you don't have the tools for...

The thing with bikes and bike parts is, details matter, two seemingly similar looking parts might be completely different, and there are many small parts that have many options (length, material, color, thread type etc). So unless you really know what you are doing, it's very easy to mix things up - that is true for the consumer too, of course :) Any non-bike-specific webshop is doomed for this reason, except for some special items, eg. eletronics.

One thing I noticed is that these days there are more and more small shops that are legit online, they may not be offering small parts, but I bought a bike from one such shop 2 years ago, and it was heavily discounted, the bike was exactly what they said it would be, it was in stock and was shipped within a week to another EU country no problems.

The reason I buy on Amazon is that finding anything you wouldn't see in a typical department store from somewhere else online takes a bit of effort; and it's an additional effort to gain some confidence that the "somewhere else" won't scam me, sign me up for even more spam, etc.

If there were some reliable meta-shopping site that aggregated trustworthy vendors, I would use that--but I can't see how to build one that wouldn't have all the problems of Amazon in the best case; and all the problems of wish.com in the more likely case.

Do you know if the original order was from Reolink? If I had to guess, that may have been a questionable reseller, I've seen several cases in which it looks like you're ordering from SomeCorp as fulfilled by Amazon but once you get into the actual order process it shows up as some other seller that was in the "Buying Options" list.

Definitely sketchy behavior on Amazon's part, never dealt with the selling side there so no idea if this is sellers gaming Amazon or just awful market platform in general.

The question reduces to one of incentives. Scams are extremely easy to initiate, cheap to scale, and once they're sniffed out, extremely easy to replicate with a small variation in location/product/approach. In other words, they're like good software.

So...what might curtail the proliferation of scams (besides cruel and unusual punishments)? Decentralization? More factors of authentication?

Slightly OT but I swore off Reolink because as late as two years ago they still required a Flash plugin before you could view camera captures in a web browser. I think they've finally fixed that, but the utter cluelessness of requiring Flash in 2020 left a bad taste in my mouth.

Given how many fake products amazon sells and intermingles with legitimate products, it isn’t at all surprising that they forwarded you to a scammer. They just don’t care about protecting their customers, apparently.

They don't care about protecting third party brands. They will definitively make sure their Amazon Basics products are free of scams.

For me it’s less about them not caring about third party brands, and more about them not caring about protecting their customers from scams and fakes.

I'm blown away that Amazon has phone support! I had no idea!

They don't make it as easy to call as they did in the past though.

Apparently Amazon sells smart home lights from China that will not work if they can’t connect to their home servers in China. Be careful out there…

Amazon hasn't been usable in a long time for me. It takes more time to find non-counterfeit/trash products than it's worth.

It sounds like you bought a product not sold by Amazon and got transferred to the company in question.

Don't buy 3rd party products sold on Amazon. I always tell people this. They ignore me and then stories like yours pop up.

NOTE: This applies to prime items as well. Amazon's vetting services for 3rd party sellers is nonexistent. I could literally sell you dog shit right now; with no verification I even exist. I've had a seller account for over a decade, and I've not sold a single item. The Amazon Marketplace is an anonymous Craigslist. Please don't forget that.

>Don't buy 3rd party products sold on Amazon. I always tell people this. They ignore me and then stories like yours pop up.

So buy Amazon Basics and nothing else?

Also I tried to avoid buying from third party sellers but the Amazon website is so deceptive that you are bound to buy something from a third party seller at some point. There is obviously no option to hide third party sellers because that would solve the problem and Amazon's opinion is the problem shouldn't be solved.

Keep in mind some manager 1000% got promoted for introducing this “innovative” feature.

> I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer

You shouldn't be. The amazon store's core business model is allowing scammers to sell garbage to unsuspecting buyers.

> The Amazon technician was helpful and shipped me a replacement.

Considering they have a backdoor, why did you want a replacement instead of a refund?

Had they actually had a backdoor, I would have unplugged it from the internet. Clearly the scammer did not have a backdoor.

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