About a year ago, I purchased one of the bestsellers on German Amazon (which basically look the same as the bestsellers on the US store). It is flimsy, the springs on one connector are likely to break after using them a few times. The worst thing: one of the connectors didn't retract fully when not in use and was connected to live AC. Yikes! It had tons of great reviews both on the German and on the US store, including ones were you could see the bad construction in the customer photos. After looking closely at them, one of the three-star reviews casually mentioned sparks when used in one configuration...

I called customer support and wrote to the responsible regulatory body in Germany. This specific model is not available anymore. A dozen identical looking still are.

In the end I used one that is three times as expensive made by a reputable company.

That is the problem.

Here's a list of possible solutions:

1. Ask for referral from people your trust, like your friends.

2. Buy locally in a physical store with a good return policy.

3. Buy from brands you trust.

It used to be Walmart, now it's Amazon; people will impoverish their local economy to save 50 cents.

Things I bought recently:

1. A rake. I chose the 5$ more expensive one that looked more sturdy and was made in Canada (where I live) instead of China.

2. A old generation smartphone. I chose Motorola G because it's a well-known brand and it had good reviews when it launched, two years ago. It's also got one of the longest battery time.

3. Jeans. I bought Lois Jeans at a local store because it's the last barnd I know of that is still made in Quebec.

Buying is also a political action.

The adage, "Buy a cheap car, get a cheap car," applies to everything. Or, in other words, "You get what you pay for."

It's hard to know of something is more expensive for the sake of being more expensive or because it is actually higher quality.

I once bought a higher end item because I expected it to be good quality. Ended up being one of the poorest quality items I ever bought, replaced it with something that cost 1/4th the price and is better quality.

I have a $200 phone. $600 phones also exist but the $200 does everything l need it to do perfectly. The expensive option isn't better for my needs.

Interestingly enough, it applies less to cars than it does to everything.

Even the cheapest cars sold in the last decade are remarkably durable and reliable.

What do you actually want them to do? Should Amazon forbid inexpensive products from being sold?

I don't know. Whenever I now see a few identical looking things sold by multiple brands nobody has ever heard of with a lot of positive reviews I close the tab and use some other store. It's just too much work to shift through all the potentially dangerous crap to find the one usable item they have listed. I can't be the only one.

If I actually want the cheap stuff I can go to Aliexpress on my own and pay half the price.

That 7 piece of plastic can destroy a 600$ phone. The risk might be a reasonable tradeoff, but you see vastly more junk at Amazon than say Best Buy.

This means Amazon is fine for brand name stuff (PS4), or low risk stuff (Travel Pillow, Book). But, for a huge range of things you really can't tell if something is low cost, or low quality.

>but hey it's a 7 dollar piece of plastic

Which can start a fire, destroy a phone or laptop, etc. I think we need to take these things a bit more seriously. I usually just buy something from an US brick and mortar, at least then I know the UL tag is real and someone vetted this somewhere.

Heck, this problem even extends to usb cables. There's a google engineer who reviews USB-C cables after people started complaining about them damaging Nexus phones. I think you're being flippant about a real problem here. Unregulated Chinese manufacturers gaming the system with junk is not something we should be ignoring.

> Which can start a fire, destroy a phone or laptop, etc.

And will the insurance company say when they find out that the fire started from the junk metal-and-plastic piece you shoved into the socket?

Even if they don't know or care right now, they will in the future if (or when) it becomes a problem.

> There's a google engineer who reviews USB-C cables

There's that. We clearly need some third party testing these products. UL and CE tags receive little or no verification. The results of said testing was that the majority of cables could possibly damage your phone, if I recall correctly.

Take a look at the best selling products in the "Laptop Chargers & Adapters" category. Many are obviously fakes and some fakes have better reviews than the real ones.