I wonder if we can look forward to the end of the letter soup brands on Amazon, it's ridiculously difficult finding real brands in between them.
That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.
That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.
Surprisingly, I find I am more pleased with purchases I make outside of Amazon despite all of Amazon's perks. "Platforms" like Amazon and fake "brands" aside, online retailers that only sell "real brands" are still around; they never disappeared despite Amazon's meteoric rise. Many sell through Amazon but also sell outside Amazon, too. Some do not sell through Amazon.
Being born before the internet existed, I started ordering products delivered by mail in the catalog era. I am biased toward locating "real brands" that have built reputations for high quality. I miss these brands. I loved the transition from catalogs to websites, but it seems like in the last 10-15 years fake "brands" that can offer no promises whatsoever have been killing off the motivation for having real ones that guarantee high quality.
Americans can get a Shenzhen-only 5-day Visa on arrival (VOA) from Hong Kong through the Luohu entry at the LoWu station via the regular MTR. Don't take the HSR, they do not offer it there and you will be turned away. You Must go to the office at Louhu station, it is the only way. It's easy, just take the metro.
Anyways, at LoWu it takes about 45 minutes after doing the paper work. It was very easy. Visa approval for Americans this exact way is estimated to be north of 98%. Exchange your HKD at the government run forex up stairs in the mall after entering China, it's a 1.5% commission, best I've ever seen. Then pay in cash - your Western credit cards Will Not Work. It is a fairly easy day trip - about 45min from Kowloon by rail. The 5-day Visa is a Single Entry.
To go to the trading district take Luobao line (#1) to Huaqianglu (3 stops). It's a 10 minute train trip or a fairly uneventful hour walk if you're up to it. English at the trading district and the border mall is ok. Everywhere else, not so much.
Recommended. The place is absolutely bonkers.
They have this wildly intricate culture of price bargaining. If you're looking to actually buy stuff, you can get amazing deals. But I just went as a tourist.
The one cool thing was seeing new products at Shenzen, and then a couple months later starting to see those products in American retailers. Seeing the markup and the flow this way really opened my eyes to how the American consumer is exploited.
It's certainly a hard border, Shenzhen is as China as Tijuana is Mexico. So if you're in HK and have a day to travel around, give it a go, it's a fun adventure.
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/backnum.html
For example AMD Athlon. Official announcement June 23 1999, official shipping date August 17, 1999. A week after announcement reservations started at Akihabara https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990703/p_cpu.ht... https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990703/price.ht...
>"AMD Athlon 500-600MHz (bulk) price display. The product is scheduled to arrive in mid-July, and reservations are being accepted. However, there is no specific arrival schedule for compatible motherboards yet."
>"the K7 revised "Athlon" has been given a price and reservations have also started. The estimated price is 44,800 yen for 500MHz, 69,800 yen for 550MHz, and 89,800 yen for 600MHz."
A week before official AMD shipping date retail Athlons arrive in Japan https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813.html
>"AMD's latest CPU "Athlon" will be sold in Akihabara without waiting for the official release date on the 17th is started. All products on the market are imported products, and 3 models of 500MHz/550MHz/600MHz are on sale. The sale of compatible motherboards has also started, and it is possible to obtain it alone, including Athlon"
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813/newitem....
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813/image/at... https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990813/image/at...
US 4 days later on August 17 Alienware was merely teasing pictures of Athlon system https://www.shacknews.com/article/1019/wheres-my-athlon According to Anand "OEMs will start advertising Athlon based systems starting August 16, 1999" https://www.anandtech.com/show/355/24
You have to be careful, though. There are a shocking number of legit-looking brands with their own sites that are just drop-shipping the same stuff, at an enormous markup. My wife found a piece of clothing she liked for $60; a quick image search found it (with the exact same images) for $8 on Shein. Nice hustle, if you can make it work.
e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/owner-conservative-appa...
Chinese drop shippers aren't dumb enough to pull the scam from within the FTC's juridsiction.
Or to openly advertise it.
> And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
In-person shopping has become just as crappy as online shopping, with a lot of the same problems regarding quality and brand control. The only difference ends up being less options (which could make the experience less stressful, except the options are usually presented in some form anyway, they're just not available, which makes it frustrating). It's largely thanks to big-box stores, but it's not like someone can just up and start a small shop to sell a particular niche of product (let alone all products) with higher quality as easily as you could with a website.
As far as tools or other general hardware - the stores like mom and pop 100 year old hardware stores are amazing and have things you probably cant find online sitting on some shelf and the owner knows exactly what box its in. I love that experience.
Maybe just spoiled from the early days of Walmart and now Amazon.
Yeah, this sucks. Though the correct thing to do here is to enforce this hygiene on the platforms themselves. They have every resource and means to be able to prevent this kind of thing from happening. It’s just more profitable for them not to
I needed to make a 3/4" hole in a 1/8" thick mild steel angle to repair a cart. Didn't have a drill bit that size and quickly realized that a hole saw would be a better choice. Off to Amazon. After some browsing, found the same 3/4" carbide-tipped holesaw from a million resellers. Found a package of two for $13. Following the logic of "even if they only last for one hole, it's still cheaper than buying a good drill bit that I'll never use again", I ordered it. Item arrived and it looked as cheaply made as the photo!
But what do I have to lose? For $13, it's worth a shot.
Chucked up the holesaw, dripped some cutting oil on the metal and went to work. Fricking thing went through the steel like it wasn't even there. I was fully expecting that the teeth would chip off and go flying about halfway through, or it wouldn't do crap and the metal would work-harden, making my job even harder or worst case, the entire flimsy-looking thing would shatter (I have excellent safety glasses BTW). No, about 1 minute later I had a nice clean 3/4" hole with perfect edges that didn't even need deburring.
That led to the first Amazon review that I ever wrote: I was that shocked at how well it performed. Turned on my (Amazon-bought) stick welder and finished the repair.
Otherwise it’s often a good value, and sometimes the “brand” name is really the knockoff with a trademark on the box.
The carburetor on my leaf blower failed and needed a rebuild. The “name brand” kits were $40-60 at Home Depot and Lowe’s. I got some random kit on Amazon that was the same main part, with a different (and better) kit of tubes, etc than the retail one.
Same thing with clothes. I’ve had great luck with workout clothes, my girlfriend did well with dresses and other stuff. Just be smart about it — $10 jeans are gonna be garbage.
Its absolutely on Amazon to maintain quality. There are certain brands and types of products I'll order there because they're just harder to find otherwise, but its mostly a last resort these days given that Amazon doesn't care to curate what is on their "shelves".
This is why I still buy from Amazon.
My research, and experience with Amazon, just left me avoiding it when I can. That's not always possible and there's plenty of good stuff to buy on Amazon as well, but 2 day delivery can mean a week here and returns aren't as simple as dropping it off a block from an office in the city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU&t=1688s
I'll just return the fuses to Amazon after my family burns up I guess.
Now expand that to people buying supplements, bolts holding things in place that can harm people, etc from Amazon.
Depends how much you buy. If you end up returning too much stuff, Amazon will ban you.
I'll gladly take the cheaper alternatives instead of being charged 2 or 3 times the amount I'd pay if I import it myself.
The above is similar to recent reviews I've seen.
It's infuriating that there is a reliance on user reporting to find and report COMPLETELY OBVIOUS fake reviews on Amazon. A great example of why competition is necessary, and not just from one other entity equally interested in allowing the others existing to avoid being a "monopoly"
Amazon took my review down.
Have they removed reviews you report? I've only ever heard of them removing legitimate negative reviews.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=firewire+to+usb+adapter
It's fascinating to me that every letter-soup brand is competing on a product that is literally fraud.
There are various YouTube videos showing a daisy chain of Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 1/2 adapters connected to various Firewire cables and adapters. I was hoping to avoid all of that but the camera doesn't show at all. Fortunately, nothing seems damaged on either side.
I've only got 6 tapes so I'm sending them off to a service and sending the adapter back to Amazon.
I think the only way to avoid disappointment is to avoid Amazon altogether. Their customer experience is extremely deceptive and engineered to make you spend the most money. From the featured searches all the way to how it charges you paid shipping instead of free at checkout.
We should all feel burned enough at this point and stop rewarding them. Bezos purchased the Washington Post for all this money, and he won't stop there.
A country can't effectively have things like a minimum wage while allowing completely free trade with countries that use slave labor and don't share your values, because they can beat you on price by using human suffering as a competitive advantage, and put you entirely out of business.
Traditional retailers like Target or Costco also sell a lot of cheap Chinese stuff, but they don't have quite the same level of junk in their listings.
I bought a garden hose sprayer at Dollar General for $1, and it leaked immediately. $1 is so little now that it was basically free, but even for free it wouldn't have been worth it, and I'm not going to make a trip to get a $1 refund. At some point, "cheap" is so bad that it has negative value, as it only adds clutter and waste.
People wigged out over non-reciprocal tariffs, where we tariff at 50% what they charge the US. People wigged out at 10℅ flat rate tariffs. "Heard island penguins get charged 10%!)
I really have to wonder how important this Chinese junk is. They make so much junk for the US, that the EU, including Von der Lyon, had to make a plan to deal with Chinese companies wanting to, and I quote here, "dump" all their exports on to the EU market.
The EU is very protectionist over their countries' economic outputs and manufacturing. But if the US does that...
The "reciprocal" tariffs are based on not the tariff duties foreign countries imposed on US goods, but the trade deficit the US has with said foreign country. There's a lot of idiocy in the tariffs, but this was one of the loudest complaints people had with them.
> People wigged out at 10℅ flat rate tariffs. "Heard island penguins get charged 10%!)
Because the list of "countries" being charged made it clear that it wasn't being based on a list of countries as people understand them. Uninhabited islands and islands consisting only of US military bases being on the list were strong signs of the lack of competence in the planning for the tariffs.
And really, that's why people are complaining so hard: it is abundantly clear that tariffs are being rolled out in a botched manner by incompetent people for inane reasons, so whatever positive effect they might have is completely ruined and all of their negative effects are intensely amplified.
It does have its own customs zone, it doesn’t fall under Australia.
Some years, the World Bank has reported imports from the island: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/USA/Yea...
It's a data error. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/04/revea...
Do you know if tariffs are assessed based on the country of origin in the bill of lading? The Guardian article doesn’t answer that question. I’d suspect so since that’s how everyone is counting imports and exports, but the Guardian article isn’t clear.
The postal/shipping/logistics service will almost certainly have gone "that's not right..." and quietly fixed it.
The EU has been advocating for a free-trade agreement, the TTIP, with the USA from 2013 on. It was buried in 2016 by the 45th president of the USA, who somehow thought it unfair. The EU has proposed a free-trade agreement only a few weeks ago. [2]
You may believe what you want, but at least in dealings with the USA the EU has always promoted free trade. Even Fox News acknowledges that ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff_ra...
[2] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/european-union-ready-neg...
The EU, on the other hand, has made buying goods from the US, for consumers, horrifically expensive, including reducing the value of non-duty paid goods to essentially zero and leaving it up to EU member countries to decide if they then wanted to charge an additional "inspection fee" often more than the value of the goods themselves. Spoiler: those countries did.
So, your point isn't really relevant from a consumer point of view. The EU and its member states have tried every dirty trick in the book to make it as awful as possible to buy anything from the US.
The actual, lived experience is far different than whatever any bloc or country may claim (such as being in favor of free trade). The EU has always been economically protectionist, since its birth.
For those not in the know (and too lazy to look it up ;)), de minimis rules for customs duties set a threshold below which no import duties are applied. The de minimis threshold for the USA used to be 800 US$ (and for now continues to be for all but imports from China), the de minimis threshold of the EU is 150 EUR. In other words, if you import goods worth less than 800 US$ into the USA from the EU no duties are applied. If you import goods worth less than 150 EUR from the USA into the EU, no duties are applied.
There is also a tax de minimis, which is a threshold when you have to pay sales and possibly other taxes, e.g. luxury, alcohol and so on. Obviously those taxes differ from country to country in the USA and the EU, and, for example, importing bourbon whiskey into Denmark would be more expensive than into Germany because of the way alcohol is taxed. But the de minimis determines when those taxes even apply. The USA leverages those taxes from a threshold of 800 US$ (again, not any longer for imports from China), while most EU nations set this de minimis threshold to 0.
Merchants usually combine all these costs (duties, taxes, fees, insurances, shipping, etc.) into something called the "landed costs" [0]. Relevant taxes and fees are higher in EU nations than in the USA, which explains most of the differences, but you are quite right, the WTO considers the USA's landing costs fairer than those of most EU nations (Germany is especially bad.) I have no special insights but I guess this is because Intra-EU trading is devoid of duties, fees and taxes (it is a free trade zone after all).
If you want to poke around a little in the various trading nations of the globe, [1] has a nice database available.
So, I do not agree with your conclusion that the EU is a protective lock box, but could improve. Thank you for pointing this aspect out. It is easy to forget about nuance and how complicated and convoluted some of these things can be.
Inspection fees, duties and taxes make it so functionally no Danish consumer bothers to purchase goods shipped from the US. For Americans to then come rushing to our aid when us poor Europeans are getting a dose of what we've been giving for decades is ironic, to say the least.
I ended up trading it for a Volkswagen Jetta. unrelated, but quirky.
It wasn't that a flat 10% tariff implies that even non-populated islands have a 10% tariff.
Do you consider the tariffs to be a (tax) burden on US citizens?
Ultimately, lots of things manufactured domestically will still increase in price because of the raw materials they require.
Auto manufacturers have been doing this for decades when the US started imposing tariffs on Japanese manufacturers back in the 1970's. To get around the tariffs and still get access to the US markets, they would simply assemble the parts of the cars here and bypass the rules of the tariffs. Many companies then started doing the same.
This effectively changed the behavior of the companies to avoid the tariffs. The end result was more manufacturing and assembly plants here - even though most of the big production tasks of the vehicles were still done overseas.
Also, there's already been several announcements of companies moving their manufacturing to the US in order to avoid getting hit with tariffs:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-commits-500-billion-to...
Nvidia (NVDA) on Monday said it will produce up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the US within the next four years as the tech industry looks to bolster its domestic manufacturing footprint in the face of Trump's approach to trade policy and desire to onshore more US heavy industry.
Also, Ford made some moves to avoid both US and European tariffs:
Less than a week after the White House announced its comprehensive set of tariffs, the Dearborn automaker exclusively revealed to Ford Authority its comprehensive plan to relocate all of its assembly plants to Hawaii. The move will be made possible by state of the art 3D printing technology and has the support of the United Auto Workers.
In any event, Ford envisions Hawaii as an export hub for markets outside North America and a key pillar of the company’s domestic production capabilities. Ford will utilize an obscure maritime law from World War II as a way to get completely around European and Asian tariffs, as the original intent of the legislation enabled private companies to avoid punitive trade measures to get badly needed supplies to the Allies at the height of the conflict.
https://fordauthority.com/2025/04/ford-will-avoid-trump-tari...
> We’ll have more on this never, because this was our final April Fools’ article for 2025. We hope you enjoyed all of them!
https://fordauthority.com/2025/03/ford-taking-broad-steps-to...
In addition to scrutinizing its supply chain, Ford is also in the process of stocking up on parts that comply with the current U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and it’s also taking a second look at its operations in those countries, according to Automotive News. Ford is “strategically stockpiling components where it is cost-effective and parts that are not pending engineering changes,” supply chain chief Liz Door told suppliers in a recent memo.
This is what got me. They had this article talking about looking at its operations in those countries and then the April Fools article which essentially described them doing just that.
Although I already knew Ford does most of its manufacturing in the US, I should've known better.
Thanks for the heads up regardless.
For example, i stopped buying US wine, US orange juice and I keep an eye open for any US made thing I could remove from my environment.
I also think government spending on overcapacity so we can export food is a waste of money and bad for the economy and the environment. How many millions of acres of soy bean crops do we actually need?
If the market for exported soy suffers because of who people voted for, let's reduce the subsidies by n%, farmers will plant less won't be able to keep all their land and we can return that land to Native Americans. This is disruption we need (but won't get because murica).
This consumption tax is tax policy, not trade policy. That was evident when there was not even any discussion about excepting manufacturing inputs (neither this time nor the 45th administration).
Australia (I live there) has free trade, a high minimum wage (USD$16/hr) which is strictly enforced, no tariffs to speak of, and used to share the same values as the USA (in the last 100 days no so much). Australia has been that way for decades. In other words: your wrong, despite what "common sense" might tell you.
There are far more glaring examples, like Singapore. Almost no natural resources to exploit, no tariffs to speak of, and a median yearly income of USD$66,000. The USA's median income is USD$40,000.
Now look at countries with high tariffs, or even just "higher than the USA used to have" tariffs. All of them, and I do mean off of them, including China, have living standards well below those with very low tariffs. So you are not just wrong. Empirical evidence says you have it completely arse about.
It's always going to be cheaper to make things in places where labor costs and environmental responsibility expectations are low.
Yeah, offshoring was mostly about driving down costs by laundering labor and environmental law.
But on a more serious note, tariffs could have been used for what you are saying, and it would have been a beautiful thing, but I think we can agree that's not what's happening here, can't we?