The first one was a wireless phone charging pad I bought. Skimmed through a gazillion options in the search listing. Found one with hundreds of good reviews. When it came, it looked much cheaper built than what I'd ordered and didn't work very well. I didn't seem to be able to place the phone anywhere that would consistently charge. Could have been a counterfeit.
Returned it, which was a minor hassle (rebox it, get shipping tag, etc.). Then I went to look at the reviews, and now all the recent reviews were *BAD*. Like they had gone from 4.5 stars to 1 star. And the product was no longer for sale. I read more closely and realized all the old good reviews were for a completely different charging pad. When I searched for the item by name, I found a new listing with more great reviews. Yep, review fraud!
The second issue was a power strip I bought. Plugs would not go into it! I opened it up and one of the parts was in backward. The sodering was extremely shoddy. At this point, I canceled Prime and walked away. I'm not going to be electrocuted or have my house burn down because Amazon is unable to stand behind the products they sell. I complained, but only got an offer to return the product for a refund. Never again.
If I want to buy cheap shit, there's always eBay. It at least doesn't pretend to be something it's not.
It completely boggles my mind that Amazon lets sellers completely change the product title, description, photos, and even product category on an existing listing and keep all the reviews and everything.
I've seen weird things where the reviews for a product were talking about something completely different... like the listing being for a pet toy, but the reviews were talking about kitchen knives.
It's just so obviously fraudulent.
Amazon are aware it’s happening but ignoring it because it’s good for business. If they really cared about it they would do more than ban 600 sellers - given an afternoon I could put a big list of fraudulent products together because they are so easy to find, so it wouldn’t be difficult for Amazon to do the exact same.
I'm not saying it's the right thing to do - but it's also just how being a large Amazon seller works. If you sell LiPo batteries on Amazon and have worked for 5 years to get lots of reviews and the top spot on the listings, and then your supplier discontinues your best-selling range, starting again with fresh listings can completely destroy your business. So you change suppliers and keep the same SKU and change the description. I'm not saying it's 'right', but unfortunately if you want to be an Amazon seller it's just what you have to do.
There might be different techniques to do the same thing too though.
For the case you are listing, I would absolutely say that there should be a new SKU, because it is a new product whose quality assurance is entirely disconnected with the original product. If it is only a component rather than the entire product that has changed, I could see there being variations listed with different sub-values, but any review should then be listed with the exact ID that was being reviewed.
I'm of the opinion that any change to the product must be clearly communicated, even if it doesn't change the listed features, because there is an implicit statement that two identically described products are identical. I ran into this a few years ago, after passing down an old desktop to a family member. They needed wifi access on it, and I recommended a USB dongle that I had previously used with that computer. However, the newly-purchased dongle didn't work, because the manufacturer had switched to a new chipset without changing the listing, and that new chipset wasn't supported by the OS version I had installed.
I know that "compatibility with Linux kernel x.y.z" wasn't an explicitly listed feature, and therefore it didn't fall under the strict interpretation of false advertising, but I still consider it to be fraudulent. It was marketed as being the same as a previous model, but didn't have the same functionality as a previous model.
You are right that there should be a new SKU, the issue is just that it’s not in the sellers interest as they will lose all their history and reviews which effectively means that if you have a top selling product you have to start again from scratch (which if you are an established top seller in reality means you just lose all your sales and go to the bottom of the listings).
The issue isn't product quality in this particular instance, or buying something for $2 and selling it for $20, it's that these brands were including incentives to write fake Amazon reviews inside the packaging of the goods they manufacture.
"User" reviews are bullshit, and far too easy to game. And Amazon's system bodges together distinct products, so you can't even tell if you're reading a relevant review of the thing you want to buy or a different model/size/anything.
I sometimes wonder if an independent review site would be a business idea. Crap merchants would avoid it anyway, but anyone with a solid product would get a tear down, lab report, subjective review, and objective performance details, with a couple of follow-up purchases just to check the product hadn't been substituted.
Result would be high-value products standing out from the noise, with some objective reassurance for customers - which is the opposite of the Amazon model.
FTR I only buy sold and fulfilled by Amazon products, I don't use the marketplace, and the seller "Amazon" always obliged to my demands.
This makes it sound like there isn't a reason to shop at Amazon anymore. While it's true that there are a lot of fake reviews, fake products, and generally poor quality merchandise, I haven't personally had a big problem with it. I spend thousands on there every year and almost always get exactly what I'm after for a great price.
Now I don't buy a lot of cheap Chinese junk there, but I have(phone accessories, bluetooth devices, LEDs and lights, etc) and it's generally worked out great. If I want something Chinese I generally try to buy it for less on Aliexpress or another site, but that said, Amazon, for me, is still well worth the prime membership.