1) Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform, whether it's inventory commingling, sketchy sellers repurposing existing, well-reviewed listings for a totally different product or those bribing customers to leave good reviews with gift cards or free stuff.
2) The tech support number could very well be provided by the seller, and you could've bought the camera from a listing from said seller instead of the real Reolink (if the "real" Reolink even sells on Amazon to begin with). Maybe tech support scammers are now using this as a new lead-generation tactic ("legitimately" sell a high-maintenance product but scam anyone that calls for support?).
I use Reolink cameras, in the admin interface there’s an option called UID. Turning that off (theoretically) disables the backdoor. I have my cameras and NVR (which is actually just a python script on an old laptop that uses ffmpeg to capture streams) on their own airgapped lan so I don’t have to worry about blackhats or the ccp using backdoors to watch my kids.
Best practice is to put your IP cameras on a separate isolated network, connected to a dual-NIC recorder/PC running trusted software (eg: not some random DVR/NVR on Amazon) for recording and viewing. This is not a perfect solution, but it at least takes you far away from the path-of-least-resistance pool of devices with weak cybersecurity that are prone to various exploits.
> a separate isolated network
Our best efforts are just kind of putting in some objectives and hoping they don't get goodharted too badly.
Bought some wireless earbuds a while back, they sent me a horrible knock off. Contacted the store, he said the delivery guy made the switch, took forever but sent me new ones. Left a review stating all of this and warning users not to buy from this sketchy store, my review never saw the light of day.
I've bought ssr relays rated at 40A, with the actual picture of the real product shown. What I got was a fake that was literally an electrical fire waiting to happen. Maybe my complaint to support actually made it to the supplier, because they Photoshop blurred the product picture listing so the real brand name was obscured. Still had phony specs though.
For everything else there’s rarely a reason to not buy directly from brands or niche specialist retailers. Customer support is typically better, warranties are often better, repair processes are better, and that’s not to mention the issue of counterfeiting.
The things I don't buy from Amazon Prime really anywhere are replacement batteries.
Then a counterfeit showed up, completely different from the spec sheet and the image on the listing.
I filed a complaint, but they wouldn't give me my money back unless I paid to ship it back to half way across the continent, where they sent it from. Despite them just sending me a piece of electronic waste rather than the real product. Nor would they do anything about the listing.
Never looked back at their scam website again.
Amazon profits so much that they're content to eat the rampant fraud and waste, than to run a proper legit market place.
The idea that a wildly successful multi-billion dollar company would actually set up such an easily-noticed system where they "get a cut" of phishing scams is outlandish.
Their support staff is that reckless and Amazon has no training and other systems in place to prevent that? Your theory doesn’t paint them in any better light.
I only purchase items that have prime shipping, and that have free returns in case something is wrong. 99% of the time their delivery estimation is accurate, usually within 48 hours of my order or less. If something is broken or I simply don't like it, I return it for free at any one of several places within a 10 minute drive of my house: Whole foods, ups store, or Kohl's. And there's no rush - I have a full month to return the items and the refund is issued before I even get back home after dropping off the item.
Out of the thousands of items I've bought through Amazon, I think maybe one set of Henckels steak knives might be counterfeit (I've ordered two sets of the same knives and they were noticeably different - both seem high quality though).
1) Co-mingle the inventory of multiple sellers in their distribution centers, so even if you buy from a good vendor you've used in the past, you still might end up with garbage from a shady vendor. 2) Allow widespread and rampant review manipulation / botting across every product category on the site, making it even more difficult to distinguish 'dodgy vendors' from so-called good ones. 3) Allow vendors to BRIBE customers with things like free items or amazon credits for 'organic' reviews, again, making it a Sisyphean task for most customers to find reputable vendors.
> and then they idiotically blame Amazon
This a callous and inane assertion. If a customer buys something from Amazon's website, and pays Amazon, and Amazon emails them a receipt, and Amazon delivers the product, the customer has every right to blame Amazon if the product they receive is crap. I'm frankly flabbergasted that you somehow think it is the fault of the customer.
> And the Amazon basic products are generally really high quality, from clothes and more high end niche items to daily necessities, Amazon basics items are best in class.
This reads like ad copy to me -- Amazon basic products are fine, but they certainly are not 'best in class' or 'very high quality'. Amazon doesn't even go that far (they items are literally called 'Basics'.). Furthermore, if the only thing a customer can feel confident purchasing on Amazon is a Amazon Basic items, it kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? There are not Amazon Basics versions for most product categories on the site, and the allure of Amazon is that you can get anything you want from one vendor, delivered quickly (A to Z).
(Not to mention, I've seen a lot of cases where Amazon Basic items are clones/knock offs of well-reviewed, high volume products designed and manufactured by third party companies. Amazon then copies these products and promotes its own listings, which isn't exactly the most ethical practice IMO)
…for the consumer’s benefit. It’s a win/win.
They are one our best companies. From the climate change perspective alone, think of how much better off we are, as a planet, thanks to Amazon. People are appallingly ungrateful. And the criticism is typically something along the lines that he allows too much freedom (“they let anyone sell stuff, even chinese vendors gasp) or oddly, they complain about logistical efficiency (“eww commingling! I would never!” as they clutch their pearls), when it’s acthually exactly what other retailers do. If people were so worried about their packets commingling we wouldn’t have the internet, the us postal service would stop functioning if mail didn’t get commingled. Commingling is good, progressive.
By that you mean overpriced dropshipping from aliexpress.
Edit: Also from manufacturers' websites.
The parts that aren't amazing is getting items that aren't representative of what I ordered. But refunding is always a breeze when that occurs.
My problem is that it shouldn't be a thing that happens so often (to me). I shouldn't be shipped shoes of the wrong size 3 times before I get shoes of the size I ordered. I shouldn't be buying open box items without being told it's open box. I shouldn't be buying things with the completely wrong thing in them.
Now, all of these can be problems with big box retailers. But the sheer frequency it happens to me on Amazon - it's never happened at this frequency to anyone I know when we would shop in store. Yes, my friend once bought a graphics card at Fry's that just contained a box of rocks. But that was one friend, one time. I've had more of these issues on Amazon, the last ~7 years, than I have for all shopping experiences everywhere else that I've ever shopped combined.
This is my exact experience in Canada so far. But they did something else weird. I wanted to buy Google Store gift card from Amazon and as soon as I made the purchase my account was suspended. It had taken me few hours including lengthy phone call to sort things out. I was told that gift cards are widely used in fraud. Sure, whatever but then why FFS they sell those?
I've also reported businesses who sneak 'give us a 5 star review and we'll give you $30' cards into their parcels and amazon did absolutely nothing.
Amazon is amazing until you realize it isn't. I got rid of prime and suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk because I wasn't incentivized to get junk by the prime membership. If I have to wait to have enough stuff for free shipping minimums I can wait enough to look locally and 1/2 the time I can find it locally for similar cost and the other 1/2 it turns out I never needed it just wanted it.
Highly recommend getting rid of prime and taking a couple months off ordering anything from them - you'll find out not only is amazon not worth it, they're easily replaced.
It is free for what I order.
>"suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk"
I do not buy "junk" just what I really need (mostly for business), so do not have this problem. I buy some things locally as well but it is not my goal to favor either.
>"Highly recommend getting rid of prime"
I am very service averse person and am trying to use as little as possible. My phone for example does not even have data plan. If I do use some however (Amazon in this case) it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.
I thought that too until suddenly it wasn't.
>it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.
Only you know your balance book I guess
I strongly prefer bol.com. No idea if they ship abroad, though.
There are a lot of fishy listings, but it's also often quite easy to detect those fishy offers, because the German text is usually full of grammar and spelling errors, and often obviously a result from Google translate, and often not even fully translated, with larger parts still in (shoddy) English. Outright counterfeit products seem to be somewhat rare still, at least from what I observed, but there is quite a number of low quality knockoffs.
Or e.g. multiple journalists reported on review-rigging operations - usually organized through whatsapp, and using regular folks for a few bucks as "mules", to get some coveted "verified buyer" reviews. Or bait-and-switch listings, where they had an original listing which gathered some good/ok reviews, and then they repurpose that listing for another product, while keeping their stars.
Or e.g. there was a report about one guy who got like 10 - 20 packets a day with junk he never ordered, every day, over months. Apparently some shady sellers got hold of his info, and were using him as a "garbage bin" for excess stock[0]. While he wasn't charged for any of the products or shipping, he still ended up in a situation where his door bell rang a few times a day, and he ended up throwing away most of the stuff, having to properly dispose of it. And when contacted, amazon just told him to throw away the stuff he doesn't want. It's unlikely he was the only involuntary garbage bin victim.
[0] It wasn't clear why they did that. Maybe to inflate sales numbers to get higher ranked in the amazon search? Or because just shipping it through amazon to some random people might be cheaper than just keeping that stuff in the amazon warehouse or disposing of it properly?
I'm also quite skeptical of most positive reviews, because it's a known problem in Germany too. I don't think most people are aware of that though and still believe high ratings still mean anything.
Towing companies appear to be a large shell game where your $200 tow is handled my one or more middlemen who eventually get some poor independent towtruck driver to tow you for $75
Amazon should do something that would allow partnering with decent brands. Customers would be happy, brands could keep their reputation, amazon could get a reasonable cut, and they would still sell stuff via flea-market brands and the made up word-salad amazon brands
Apparently especially in Ontario…
https://www.thedrive.com/news/44749/inside-the-tow-truck-maf...
His idea was: buyers don’t know if a car is good and the risk of getting “a lemon” (a bad car) reduces how much they’re willing to pay. That means sellers reduce the quality of what they’re selling or leave the market. After a while the quality degrades so much that buyers notice and want to pay even less. Eventually the market is 100% lemons.
The paper was controversial when it was published in the 1970s, but helped kick start research into “information asymmetry” and the potential for market failure.
In other news a car has infinute milage on a frictionless surface in a vacuum
As far as what you can do about it, you could start with preventing those people from interacting with markets. I leave the mechanism as an exercise for the reader.
What we are doing is the equivalent of looking at a warped mirror e.g. a non free market and declaring that the reflections are not distorted e.g. a free market.
A lot of people are scared of living on the streets or feel shame from living off welfare. There is no way these people are going to make long term decisions if their short term needs haven't been met or there is a constant risk that they won't be met tomorrow.
This is actually one of the more disgusting parts of Austrian economics. Where a low time preference is basically considered the equivalent of a high IQ. If you have a high time preference you must be some dumb consumerist animal, when the truth is that you barely earn enough money to meet your living expenses which means 100% of your spending must go to consumption. Thirst is more urgent than hunger which is more urgent than shelter which is more urgent than social needs and so on. At some point you are not longer hungry or homeless. The urgency is gone. It would be more accurate to say that time preference is a function of wealth and having your needs met, rather than some intellectual jerk off competition where stupid people are filtered out and smart people end up with all the wealth.
I honestly just see a regular capitalistic market, where a company is trying to make money at the expense of other companies. By that I don't mean Amazon is outcompeting retailers and pushing them out the market. I mean Amazon is actively causing damage to well known brands by letting scammers sell those branded products to promote their own AmazonBasics brand which is free of scammers.
Even if the scams are unintended, there is no profit incentive to get rid of them.
The big thing that changed isn't the third-party marketplace on Amazon, it's that they increasingly and intentionally blurred the lines between "third-party" and "second-party" marketplaces. Any third-party that uses "Fulfilled by Amazon" logistics (warehouses, shipping) just about gets automatically upgraded in the Amazon user experience to "second-party" even if Amazon has no deeper working relationship with the third-party than "Fulfilled by Amazon".
Some of that intentional blurring of the lines is also questionably Dark Patterns intentionally designed to confuse consumers in just exactly what categories Amazon supports directly (first-party) and which ones are third-party, and more importantly which ones are first-party usually versus third-party today (such as sold out goods). They want to give consumers the illusion of an "everything store" that is never out of stock. That's never the practical reality, and the illusion may be evil from the perspective of shadily pushing consumers to unvetted third parties due to Dark Patterns that back that illusion.
Short termisum might win out, but it is not a foregone conclusion.
And the problem is that Amazon's growth profile (retail-side anyway) is going to be pretty constrained going forwards because they own too much of the available pie right now. So the result is that managers are going to have to look for other ways to trim costs to make numbers.
If you're starting from 0.001% of the retail market and trying to grow 10x it is much easier to do that just by having really good customer service.
There are companies that have been around for 300 years, in fact prior to rise of venture capital moat companies were multi-generational family business and you would consider how a decision would reflect on your children.
Why do you believe this? Not one of the top 10 online retailers in the US doesn’t have third party sellers. It appears to be the case in practice that growing does require opening the doors to anyone and everyone, which obviously increases the scale of business a retailer can offer. There are both reasons and evidence to suggest third party sales are what it takes to grow to even one hundredth the size of Amazon.
> seeing what is happening to Amazon’s reputation, that seems like a bad long term move.
This seems like a big assumption. There is a very long list of corporations and monopolies with relatively bad reputations that are doing just fine and have for a long time. Reputation isn’t a good measure for the success or future prospects of a company, once it gets large enough.
By the time you factor in the time and frustration for that, any savings (which isn't even guaranteed) doesn't look like great ROI anyway. Plus, even Amazon often won't carry the full range of a brand's products, so I get more options shopping this way.
You can read reviews for a whole different model of headphones or kettle, for example, but what you get is another, (usually) cheaper model/revision. Which is insane!
And I trust Target's products are genuine and what you receive is what's in the product description, because they sell them in stores.
There are two time when I will use Amazon nowadays:
1) If there is an official store there
Anker is a good example of this. It seems like Amazon doesn't commingle inventory if there is an official store.
2) If I want something faster than Alibaba/Aliexpress
Quite often I can find the exact Chinesium equivalent on Amazon and I get the benefit of returnability if what is advertised is completely out of whack.
This has to be costing Amazon money, but, it's their funeral.
Is there any confirmation of this? I've seen assertions both ways.
“Is this Jordan’s Tiles?”
“No. This is Patrick. You have the wrong number.”
“It says on their website this is the number!”
“Their website is wrong, this isn’t Jordan’s Tiles.”
more argument with me just hanging up because they’re clueless (someone even had the audacity to ask me what the number was for Jordan’s Tiles like I’m their personal assistant)
And finally I went on Google and searched for Jordan’s Tiles. There my number was on the listing and on a third party source. The right number was on the lower ranking Jordan’s Tiles website. They were so argumentative about being so wrong, it was outside of their ability to understand that the internet can and does give you the wrong information.
[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggle [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggard#English
Maybe there is a business in physically verifying a given business is the actually the real thing.
I've decided I will do my searches through https://www.findalocksmith.com/ which is from the associated locksmiths of America
Last time I went to order, I looked up their name, went to the page by that name on the known third party menu site, ordered my usual order from their usual menu, only to discover after the charge went through that a scammer had copied their name and entire menu onto a new restaurant on the same site.
Called immediately to cancel the order (why doesn't the site have that option??) and the woman on the phone feigned ignorance. A few minutes later a gruff man called me back and told me I wouldn't be getting a refund. Not sure what I said to convince him, but maybe enough threats and he decided to change his tune.
The scammers are running the asylum.
Not that I don't also feel like Google search results have gone down hill.
Email said, flight departs 31st March 9pm.
Flight duration 15 hours.
Flight reaches Apr 1st. 9pm. No indication of timezones, but as super common in flights, all times are local. Both cities have about 12 hour difference.
Google thought Departure 31st March (correct);
Duration 15 hours (correct).
Arrival Apr 2nd, 12pm. (Not correct, it added 15 hours duration to Arrival city time. Apr 1 9pm + 15 hours = this).
"What do you think is more probable: that the website is wrong or that I don't know who I am?"
It's often cheaper to buy from Amazon but never go through troubleshooting support. Always return or replace.
If that doesn't work, give a 1 star review, wait for the seller to come chasing you with a gift card in return for 5 stars. Change it to 5 stars, spend the gift card, and then change it back to 1 star.
First off, its just morphed from a book store into a upper class ebay. Alibabba became the chinese ebay. I'll pay that drop shipper the money, i got no problem with the conveince they give but realistically whats the point of going through 3 middle men when i can wait an extra week and limit that to 0 or 1.
I'm not exactly rich. When I'm a millionaire I'll happily support LBS.
Until then Amazon helps me save a shitton of money.
I got a pair of Continental GatorSkin tires from Amazon for 30% less than LBS just 2 weeks ago. And yes, I called LBS and checked the price.
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/C1010429-P-Continental-Gatorskin-...
Not to mention maybe another $150 in Uber rides waiting 14 days instead of 1 day for it.
Also Amazon gives me 5% cashback too so that also needs to be factored into all prices.
But yes I think in Europe small businesses are much more of a thing. In the US it's very hard to get a better deal than from Amazon and these big companies, especially because they can super-optimize the supply chains across such a big country. Same is true in China.
The thing with bikes and bike parts is, details matter, two seemingly similar looking parts might be completely different, and there are many small parts that have many options (length, material, color, thread type etc). So unless you really know what you are doing, it's very easy to mix things up - that is true for the consumer too, of course :) Any non-bike-specific webshop is doomed for this reason, except for some special items, eg. eletronics.
One thing I noticed is that these days there are more and more small shops that are legit online, they may not be offering small parts, but I bought a bike from one such shop 2 years ago, and it was heavily discounted, the bike was exactly what they said it would be, it was in stock and was shipped within a week to another EU country no problems.
If there were some reliable meta-shopping site that aggregated trustworthy vendors, I would use that--but I can't see how to build one that wouldn't have all the problems of Amazon in the best case; and all the problems of wish.com in the more likely case.
Definitely sketchy behavior on Amazon's part, never dealt with the selling side there so no idea if this is sellers gaming Amazon or just awful market platform in general.
So...what might curtail the proliferation of scams (besides cruel and unusual punishments)? Decentralization? More factors of authentication?
Don't buy 3rd party products sold on Amazon. I always tell people this. They ignore me and then stories like yours pop up.
NOTE: This applies to prime items as well. Amazon's vetting services for 3rd party sellers is nonexistent. I could literally sell you dog shit right now; with no verification I even exist. I've had a seller account for over a decade, and I've not sold a single item. The Amazon Marketplace is an anonymous Craigslist. Please don't forget that.
So buy Amazon Basics and nothing else?
Also I tried to avoid buying from third party sellers but the Amazon website is so deceptive that you are bound to buy something from a third party seller at some point. There is obviously no option to hide third party sellers because that would solve the problem and Amazon's opinion is the problem shouldn't be solved.
You shouldn't be. The amazon store's core business model is allowing scammers to sell garbage to unsuspecting buyers.
They called me back a minute later (now without Amazon recording the conversation) and asked me for my NVR's serial number so they could connect to my NVR. I was shocked they had a backdoor into my NVR but I figured I'd let it play out. A minute later the technician said that he was having trouble connecting because "an internet virus is corrupting my firewall". I was extremely confused and thought it must be a translation problem. Until he kept insisting it was a problem and became belligerent and angry. He said I needed to pay $300 to have an on-site technician troubleshoot the problem. I got angry because he was making some weird excuse for their camera not working, and wanting to charge me rather than just ship me a replacement. I refused and he started mocking me. I demanded his manager and he ignored me. Eventually I hung up and called Amazon back.
The Amazon technician was helpful and shipped me a replacement. I contacted Reolink via email to complain about their technician. They responded that they have no on-site technicians and that it was a scam!
I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number...