It's worse than that, the authentic name-brand listing can still ship scammy clones instead because Amazon aggregates the listing from multiple sellers and pretends they're all the same thing

Previous discussion including some firsthand experience from sellers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13926015

Yep. Just a couple weeks ago we bought Chemex coffee filters - the "Amazon's Choice" ones! We got a counterfeit that didn't even try to replicate the actual product (it was just sheets of tissue paper in the completely wrong shape). Looking at the reviews, we weren't the only ones who got these either.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017OFOP68/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_c_Yo...

They've apparently since taken off the "Amazon's Choice" label here.

> It's worse than that, the authentic name-brand listing can still ship scammy clones instead because Amazon aggregates the listing from multiple sellers and pretends they're all the same thing

It's called fraud. Some people here call it "scaling" but it's just good old fraud at scale.

Me and the wife had this conversation last night about whether or not buying things online is really saving time since the means of evaluation is all mental/reading. Confronted with a product in the physical world one can mobilize all sorts of senses at once to evaluate quality simultaneously. Online we're stuck reading reviews and gauging authenticity/quality. The sad part that's become the reality too is that once the thing arrives we're spending extra time scrutinizing the product for signs of being a counterfeit, even when sold directly from Amazon.

Yeah, I've drastically scaled back my Amazon shopping and scaled up my shopping at physical retailers like Best Buy and Barnes and Noble or specialized competitors like Newegg. My reasoning is:

1. Amazon Logistics delivery sucks and I hate them so much.

2. When you actually look, Amazon is no longer price competitive with big box retailers on a lot of products in a lot of areas.

3. I can get my stuff today rather than in ??? + 2 days.

4. I can actually see the stuff in person, and assess quality and size.

5. Much smaller counterfeit problem.

6. I'm afraid of Amazon getting too dominant in the retail space, so I feel good about sending business to its competitors.

I try to only go to Amazon when I'm buying something weird that I don't know how to buy elsewhere.

Interestingly enough, I find Amazon often has worse prices for the relatively-niche books I used to swear by Amazon for - art and critical theory, mainly. They used to have the convenience aspect as well, but now I generally feel like I can get better service by buying from the publisher and I feel better about it for the anti-monopoly reason you touched on

It depends, amazon quality is still good when compared to third world.

I travel frequntly to China/Philippines/SG and you need to go in person to buy random crap. I hate it. Lazada is the Asian Amazon and it is a total crapshoot.

I never complained about Amazon, whenever I have a issue it's always remedied correctly, returns are absolute and money is refunded.

Lazada tries to play games, tries to say "change of mind is not a valid reason of excuse" or worse it's bait and switch. A picture of a bookshelf with pictures by a palm tree, what's delivered is a doll house toy.

I hate online shopping in Asia. Japan is the only exception because of Amazon and Japan commitment to customer service.

Check out this solution from Bosch, I always wondered about generating unique codes per product instance. It would need to be a subset of a very large space, in this case 3418

http://www.protect.bosch.com

I've stopped purchasing from Amazon nearly entirely now directly because of the decline in quality of their products and issues with counterfeits.

When there's something I want, I might research it on Amazon, then I go to the manufacturer's site and find an authorized reseller to buy it from.

It’s really terrible lately. When Wal-Mart has better quality products you know something’s up.

I’ve been using Fake Spot to get any non name brand item[1]. The only issue is now there are straight counterfeits instead of reply cheap knock offs. I recently learned of the all the counterfeit SD cards when I bought some for my Pis. A google search brings up examples on many forums and blogs.

[1]https://www.fakespot.com