By now every product listing on Amazon should be treated like SEO spam.
Plus there's now all these sellers trying to buy a 5 star review by promising a gift card. I recently saw a baby carriage with lots of 5 star reviews from teenagers who tried it out with plush toys because they didn't have kids yet.
https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/ifytxk/ysk_t...
https://themarkup.org/banned-bounty/2020/06/18/how-we-invest...
I recently just got fooled again, I needed to buy a cooking butane torch for grilling cheese. The "best seller" was quite nice looking, had great reviews, great photos.
I actually got it in my hand and it essentially fell apart. I immediately threw it in the trash as there's no way I'm putting highly flammable gas into this junk. I went to a head shop and bought one for the exact same price with amazing quality... its funny how we started out with brick and mortar, migrated to online... and now I'm going to start migrating back to brick and mortar.
Even when purchasing from "legitimate" product pages, they'll send you co-mingled counterfeits. You have absolutely no assurance that what you're buying is legitimate.
even with Amazon as the direct seller I don’t find them to be cheaper than other stores for almost anything. it’s really only when the pricing is competitive and directly from them where it makes sense to buy given convenience of fast shipping if you have Prime.
the only thing I can think of is their own private label, but even there it seems extremely hit or miss just reading some of the reviews - sounds like everything is just sourced from bottom of barrel Chinese manufacturers that slap an Amazon logo on things.
I usually find a brand name seller with a website or a specific part number.
Or if I don’t know/care about a brand I read some reviews and look at review pictures I don’t buy the cheapest item and still scrutinize best selling item.
The top results could be garbage as people are saying, but somewhere in the first page of top rated results is the best item for a great price.
In a rural place, prime is a huge time and money saver, have had good customer service. I still don’t think other online retailers have caught up to amazon, I hope they do .
Can someone link a product listing that they received a counterfeit from?
"HIFI Audio Decoder Amplifier - Aimpire AD10 MINI USB DAC CSS XMOS XU208 ES9018K2M OPA2134 Audio Amplifier Decoder"
This is a fake. Strange how the URL says TOPPING but the product is from "Aimpire". Aimpire has been photoshopped into some, but not all of the product pictures (where TOPPING is still visible in a few).
Turns out that Aimpire has had a contentious relationship with Topping (the designer and manufacturer of the real thing), started making their own (inferior and unlicensed) versions of the Topping product.
Looks like this one is "sold by amazon.com". Huh. Guess it slipped by their counterfeit checkers.
This is a strange case. The reviews seem to say people are buying the Topping product but getting the Aimpire product. But if you buy from this page, you're knowingly purchasing the Aimpire version. Are people buying Topping from another listing and getting this?
EDIT: never mind, looks like this product used to say Topping and was changed, and that's why the URL is still the original wording. That's clearly a scam then.