So you might see older reviews for a pair of boots that say they're made from sturdy materials with good stitching, followed by later reviews saying that they didn't match the advertised sizing and pictures, or that they just fell apart after a couple weeks of use.
Products should have versions that look like this.
2.1
* Replaces piece X with plastic. * Reduced frame width to save material costs.
This could also be positive and make it more transparent.
2.2
* Strength part X that breaks very often. * Change edges to reduce chance of injury.
I mean this opens a huge box of problems, I know apple didn't want to admit their keyboard was problematic in fear of lawsuits. This is how it should be.
If I started using FBA and supplying an item, it’ll go in the same box and chances are more likely an “sold by amazon.com” will sell my product, and I’ll sell an “amazon.com” product.
See the problem?
No they don't. Google 'random stow' and you'll find articles about how Amazon stores incoming items. They are stowed somewhat randomly, but scanned as they are stowed. So the system knows where to find each unit again, and can use that to optimize picking paths.
I was commenting only because most people make the same false assumption (that all units of X in warehouse Y are stored together) and find the random stow model interesting when told about it.
You are referring to mingled inventory which the seller has to opt into explicitly when they decide how to sell their product.
This is not the default, and in my experience, very few sellers choose this option. Most of the inventory is labeled with Amazon-proprietary bar codes that identify the seller.
Amazon could easily solve this problem but they've decided it's more profitable to let it fester. Whether or not it's a good decision in the long run, the same way Sears permanently ruined their reputation by selling shit through their established in-house brands, remains to be seen.
They don't necessarily. Amazon combines items from different sellers together in their warehouses, and doesn't sort them out when picking orders to ship. So if I send them a high quality doohickey to sell with FBA, a customer who orders my doohickey might actually receive Mr. Cheapo's knock-off doohickey because as far as Amazon is concerned they're the same thing and got placed in the same bin in the warehouse.
Sellers can opt out of this but then Amazon charges them more.
The fact that Joe Q Public can make a marketplace account, ship a crate of counterfeit stuff, and have that be sold to buyers of “amazon.com” is absurd and explains the counterfeit problem.
And it's insidious. I've flat stopped patronizing those retailers. Shopping is not an enjoyable experience. I'm wiling to pay modest premiums for quality (bargain-hunting is sifting through tons of junk for exceptionally rare gems), but I won't pay premium for junk.
The long-term cost has to be considerable, I would think.
The biggest issue is that there isn't any way to really know if it's a counterfeit unless you send them to the publisher. Many are so good, you can't really tell the difference unless you really know what to look for.
I tried this once and in response they sent me a cease and desist letter claiming I was knowingly selling counterfeits.
They went away after I got my attorney involved, but it isn't really helping the publishers because I still don't really know how to spot counterfeits, besides the obvious signs.
The publishers really want to get rid of the secondary markets because they don't make any money on it...so they are using attorneys to squash it instead.
I own a ton of books, and my decision process is generally:
- go to library - read/like a book - buy it for late reference
For this reason I rarely checked books as I ordered them (I assumed they were fine). After realizing a couple of books I had were unreadable (and way past the "warranty"), I now flip through the entire book just to check for glaring print problems.
Thank you amazon, I guess?
https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225
and of course, nobody buys CDs anymore, but I do remember people complaining of unauthorized copies/burns of various quality.
I would love to have "that much" Mike and Ike's, but it's never in there.
"No way, that would never work!" he typed under the sultry cast of his Bell & Howell lantern.
I found it hard to believe that Amazon would allow this to stand, but here we are.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NN07IMW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
EDIT: It does appear they finally removed swaths of old reviews. Finally.
The silver lining, for me, is that I was so fucking annoyed with ASUS support that I angrily shipped it back to Amazon, bought Ubiquiti equipment, and experienced such quality whiplash that I bought a bunch of UBNT (now UI) stock. +160% since I bought.
I once bought a router off of them specifically because it supported WPA2 Enterprise, but when I tried to tie it into my RADIUS server I kept running into weird issues. When I contacted support they said they only supported WPA2 Enterprise on the 2.4ghz band, not the 5ghz one. I pointed out that this wasn't said anywhere, but they claimed they were truthful because it does support the feature.
I have found Mikrotik to make nice hardware with a full set of enterprise features, and mostly cost less than even the "prosumer" stuff from the big brands.
https://www.amazon.com/Accuracy-Measuring-Household-Drinking...
If you can find any listings with real reviews, it turns out that these are pretty terrible, usually floating around 2-3 stars. Magically, there are consistently listings with 4.5+ stars and thousands of reviews for a relatively niche, barely functional product.
That’s incredible, and the fact that someone hasn’t seen that inside Amazon and said “we have a huge problem” makes me suspect Amazon doesn’t regard it as a problem at all.
Situations where you're fighting against financially-motivated human adversaries are always difficult.
Amazon is complicit in the fraud committed by their sellers. They restrict critical reviews by people who bought fraudulent products under the guise of a tos violation. They should be retroactively contacting customers who purchased products they have removed for fraud reasons.
This makes me wonder if the algorithmic blacklisting of customers with frequent returns takes the reason for return into account.
Any traditional retailer employs people to maintain the quality of their supply chain.
I'd like to, at a bare minimum, report the abusive listings that have nailed me, personally.
However it's always reasonable to contact customer service for issues that one isn't sure how to handle otherwise: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/contact-us - they can refer to the right reporting method or pass on the report.
If you get stuck or don't get traction, feel free to send the information to me and I'll pass it on; I'd suggest giving the normal channels several business days first however. In this case, I've submitted an incorrect product info report via the website for each of the problematic pages I've come across today. I plan to follow up on the pages and escalate if necessary.
lmaoooooo and all the photos are for cutting boards or some strange hanging thing I can't describe.
It is $120 a year and I'm tired of it. I have seen cases where my pricing was higher than non-prime members for the same item/seller, going to same address.
It's like Amazon has spent their savings from having relatively no infrastructure expenses (stores, parking lots) on an inventory of pure crap, like Nieman-Marcus selling their stores and moving completely online, only to start selling cheap underwear and Ed Hardy tees.
I pretty much only rely on Amazon for Kindle purchases now or to read reviews on big ticket items that I'm curious about.
I buy very little from Amazon, enough that I'm going to cancel prime since the only thing of theirs I still use is is Amazon Prime TV and well..its OK but not enough to justify it.
Argos actually pay some tax as well.
More than once I've had missing components from what I purchased. And they won't accept refunds or replacements unless all parts are included.
Amazon takes nearly anything back, from my attempts.
> what the hell are these brands?
This is what 1-man-brands are. I myself used to run a sunglasses brand in my student years :)
Most are just dropshippers, or people working out of home.
Recipe was simple: order cheapest 1 dollar sunglasses on Alibaba, have them put into fancy packaging and silkscreened with something Italian sounding. Then you make up a generic website with stock photos for your "brand"
I was surprised with the amount of people keen to buy $100 to $200 sunglasses with nothing more than an Italian sounding brand name.
Fk. That's possible? How has Amazon not done anything about that?
Like I can get keeping fake stuff out is a losing battle, but that seems like a rather significant design flaw if you can "transfer" reviews like that.
Well that's next level depressing.
It's weird. All these amazon complaints - they ring true to me...yet I've thus far escaped the negatives thus far despite heavy amazon use (say package every 48hrs).
The point is that each of these types of teams has no insight into the underlying structure of how Amazon actually works. As a business you are forced to buy into the racket in the hopes that you are not accused of being an IP infringer...try hiring a decent law firm to help you get out of this debacle....oh wait they all can’t help because they work for Amazon already.
That they don't already have such a thing to dissuade the gaming going on to dissuade the sketchy practices essentially means to me Amazon condones the behavior.
Additionally, each customer review should tied to specific change version, that they can easily compare with current one.
Like "Over a 3 month period this product reviewed at 3.7 and the next 2.1" maybe look into why.
I have no idea why it's so hard, but I don't think Amazon is being as complacent as it seems from the outside.
Sellers have reviews and ratings just like products. You can leave public feedback and a star rating for sellers you've purchased from [1]. On the 'Your Orders' page click on 'Leave Seller Feedback'. This page also describes how to do it [2].
You can see these ratings while selecting which seller's offer to buy from. For example, many 3Ps are selling '5 Hour Energy Shot Berry - 24 count' [3]. Alongside each seller's offer, you can see their star rating and positive feedback percentage. For the first seller I see a 5-star rating and "96% positive over the past 12 months (1,122 total ratings)". You can click on that to see individual feedback.
It's my understanding that these ratings influence whether a seller's offer will be chosen for the 'Buy Box', which is the default offer that's shown on the product detail page. When an offer appears in the BuyBox, underneath it will say something like: "Sold by 7-Eleven, Inc and Fulfilled by Amazon". The seller name is a hyperlink to the seller's profile page where you can see their ratings and reviews [4].
Amazon also has a slightly different problem than Ebay, as I understand it, because Amazon is trying to have a single product detail page for each "product". There should be in theory exactly one page for "24-pack of 5 Hour Energy Berry". I'm not experienced with Ebay, but it looks like every Ebay listing is completely separate and independent. Doesn't that make it harder to comparison-shop for the best offer for a specific product among multiple sellers? Is there an easy way to see all offers for one specific product? I couldn't see an easy way to do this while experimenting with Ebay search right now. Amazon is trying to make this comparison shopping easy by consolidating all offers for the same product into one page, and then selecting a recommended offer based on various factors (including seller rating, shipping speed/reliability, etc.) that matter to customers.
(However, because there is a single page for each product, and sellers have some ability to create and modify pages, that occasionally leads to abuse, like the kind being discussed elsewhere in this thread.)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/feedback [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... [3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0021L9XK4 [4] https://www.amazon.com/sp?_encoding=UTF8&asin=&isAmazonFulfi...
Welcome to Day Two
As annoying as scams like these are, they really speak to the ingenuity that folks bring to software and their attacks of it. I already know to not trust most things on the internet, but I can't help but admire them either.
How is this happening so much for you?
Do you have screenshots or examples?
USB C 3.0 cable is now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0119EIHTG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
Other USB C cable is now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0119OI9XU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
What's interesting is that both were originally sold by Anker's merchant account (relatively respectable brand), but now each listing is linking to a different merchant...
I wonder if there's some shady marketplace where positive-review Amazon product pages are bought and sold, so that the scammer can grab a bunch of them all ready to go (say, from a merchant closing up shop), rather than having to play the long game upfront.
This appears to be listing abuse and I'd encourage people to report it: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200444420
I wouldn't be surprised it's eventually become a business in and of itself, like some shady companies in eg China farm games to sell accounts and items to rich players who'd rather pay money than time.
Easy way to avoid the ridiculous holds on funds and limited PayPal accounts due to "not enough feedback".
*Former employee at company that exclusively sold on Amazon.
You’re not wrong - the reviews are utter trash and have no credibility at all anymore - so I look elsewhere for reviews on what I’m buying. I mostly avoid the counterfeiting problem by sticking to branded goods that aren’t easy to convincingly fake. Any problems and it goes back for Amazon to deal with.
s.a Apple power adapters?
With chargers, it's a real possibility that you mean this literally. People's houses have burned down due to fake chargers that don't comply with CE (or foreign equivalent) regulations.
It's not perfect but it's useful
I see this all the time. If I go back in my order history and click on old products often the same "id" now maps to a totally different thing.
For this reason I have basically stopped ordering from Amazon. I find that Walmart has like 99% of the inventory but none of it is fake (some is junk, but it's the junk I asked for). Same prices, same ship speed, no fake shit.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus