You need a trusted third party to collate all of the information about a product category and then filter out all the crap. I have conveniently already done this for flashlights:
http://flashlights.parametrek.com/index.html
(Yes, I run it and yes it uses affiliate links.)
Also, AAA cells are terrible for flashlights. A single AAA cells is okay for a compact penlight but many use 3xAAA cells and 95% of the time 3xAAA lights have the worst engineering of any flashlight.
Who can guarantee the third party is either trusted or impartial?
Of course that is not possible. At best you can grade someone's past behavior according to a set of criteria. Though in this case most of https://reddit.com/r/flashlight/ would probably say that I am trustworthy and impartial ^_^
This is called a "private label." You can find the exact un-branded product and order direct from China from either Alibaba or Ali-Express or eBay for like half the price of Amazon (if you don't mind waiting for something to ship from China)
and then Anker, because the cats won't chew through those.
This is a brilliant strategy on Amazon's part.
Indeed. I was recently in the market for a small mono/tripod to bring with me on vacation.
Looking at the "Best Sellers" for this category, it's blatantly obvious that Amazon is just taking the existing top 3 models, copying them almost 1:1, and then undercutting the original product price with their "Amazon Basics" branded product.
How are you supposed to survive selling a product when even Amazon is out there copying it and selling it for less?
Amazon is selling it for less, and putting their branding on the product.
I'm hardly a widget manufacturer, but to me this would be a nonsensical choice for a them to manufacture as an ODM for Amazon when they're also selling their own product through Amazon.
However if they (Amazon) are doing their job then the risk to reward ratio should be far too high on this.
At least I was pretty sure they're Apple MFI certified. I've never had any issues with them at all, they're well priced, and so far, reliable. And they have a 1 year warranty, which is nice for a cable.
the Amazon Basics line has a lot of stuff. Dishes too!
It seems to me that most stores either sell counterfeit products, or all mid-tier brands have given up and sell low-tier products for the same old prices. It's no surprise then that consumers are flocking to low-price, low-tier stores: at least they know what they get.
But you can't be sure Target hasn't asked Levis to counterfeit themselves.
Do you mean selling the same exact product made by Levis under the Target label?
Ah ha, it looks like FakeSpot is fooled when Amazon removes the bad reviews. Have a look at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B010NEW9JM/. That's obviously some low quality bullshit. Find in page for 'honest' and it has the trigger phrase.
> I received this set at a discounted price in exchange for my fair and honest review.
> My wife and I review products that we receive either free or at a discount in exchange for our honest and unbiased reviews.
> Disclaimer: I received this product at a discount in exchange for my honest/unbiased review.
I wish we could kill these products and sellers with some secondary review process.
Also, Amazon should understand that we generally don't want these reviews removed because that effectively creates an antibiotic-resistant version of fake reviewers. Much better to leave them in so I can killfile them.
I'm not sure how the average person has a snowball's chance in hell of spotting stuff like this on Amazon. It's getting very sketchy.
[1] https://www.amazon.ca/XS-Pro-Clear-Filter-Multi-Resistant-Co... [2] https://www.amazon.ca/BWND4S-Definition-FormatTVI-Vari-Focal...
And related, I've had very good luck with just going with The Wirecutter's/The Sweethome's picks when I don't feel like poring through a bunch of reviews on things. As a warning, though, I'm normally immune to the desire to buy random crap I don't really need, but they seem to break through that for some reason.
Ending up buying one directly from Leatherman's website.
https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844037804237709314
https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/844038535388823552
I'm fairly certain it started around 4 years ago with Matt Clark's "Amazon Selling Machine." A friend who paid the $1000 let me watch the course and it was a pretty simple (and old) tactic.
Buy wholesale and sell at markup. Except this time you would have it under your own "private label" (i.e a Chinese factory would slap your logo on a generic and sell it to you).
Apparently he made a killing doing the same thing with silicone spatulas.
Wow. Surely the best advice such a course could possibly give would be 'convince people you can teach them to make money, and charge a lot for it'.
Who gets rich in a goldfish, the miners or the person selling the tools?
Edit: Humorless. Sad.
I think it must be the diver because he found the treasure chest, assuming that it isn't counterfeit:
https://www.amazon.com/Bestgoo-Aquarium-Ornament-Live-Action...
So the answer to your question is the latter.
See, for example, http://www.frugalhack.me/2017/02/23/private-labeling-101-int...
There is only one way, to bring those evil-doers back to the light of justice. Tax them for whatever they stole! Oh, sorry, wrong century, wrong villain!
Anyways, I used Fakespot on a lot of these listings and it was pretty interesting to see just how many had questionable and outright blatantly fake reviews. Found the one I wanted, almost $20 and a couple of hours later. The flashlight definitely lived up to what it promised but I can't help but wonder if it would've just been easier to do this at a brick and mortar retail spot, like Fry's Electronics.