Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

Re:Amazon Ruined Online Shopping by Bluestrike2 on Sunday January 20, 2019 @05:38PM (#18956067)

The scarier aspect (though the thought of the number of ways counterfeit ski bindings can fail and kill you is...alarming enough in itself) of counterfeit outdoors equipment is that it's probably more likely that beginners new to a sport are going to be buying equipment off Amazon. These are the people who don't yet have the specific knowledge to spot countefeits (unless they're blatantly obvious). And they may not know enough to realize the possible risks.

Amazon's counterfeit problem is only getting worse, and there's no reason to expect anything to change anytime soon.

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Re:Amazon Ruined Online Shopping by bartread on Monday January 21, 2019 @03:08AM (#18958621)

> it's probably more likely that beginners new to a sport are going to be buying equipment off Amazon. These are the people who don't yet have the specific knowledge to spot countefeits (unless they're blatantly obvious).

This is very true although, to be honest, even as a reasonably decent skier I'm not sure I could spot a counterfeit. In fact, except in the worst cases, I'm pretty sure I couldn't because I'm not enough of a gear-head in that arena.

I'm more confident with watches but, even then, it's only certain brands and models, and I'd have to do quite a bit of research and comparison to images of the real deal to spot a fake. For example, I'm not at all sure I could easily identify a fake G-Shock because there are so many different models, whereas I might do better on something like an SKX.

The sloppiness of a lot of counterfeits gives them away though: for example, I bought a Gamecube controller that turned up unbranded and (worse) with a USB connector. Of course, my old Wii - which I use for Gamecube games - was having none of it.

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