Amazon has a vastly different experience with thousands of indistinguishable Chinese knockoffs. I can only ask Alexa for a very specific product, otherwise I don't trust what I'll get. I use Alexa to add products to my cart, which serves as a reminder that I need to do a little more shopping from my phone or PC.

I'm about 85% sure it was a decommissioned Backblaze drive based on the logs I could see. This was probably 10 years ago, though.

This is blatant behavior on the part of sellers and Amazon turns a blind-eye to it.

I didn’t learn my lesson either.

I ordered seat covers, and what came was a misspelled Chinese knockoff brand instead of the name brand I thought I was ordering.

I can’t trust purchases made on Amazon and I have an eye for detail. They got me twice. I don’t know how non-detail oriented folks keep from it happening.

I have to admit that's hilarious, but I'm pretty sure HoneyGuarDIan (correct spelling) too is a Chinese company, based in Shenzhen.[1] Edit: Actually I'm increasingly convinced HoneyGuarDIan and HoneyGuarIDan are the exact same company: take a closer look at the URL https://www.honeyguardian.com/pages/honeyguaridan-app and compare the second-level domain name with the last part of the URL pathname! Maybe it wasn't a knockoff after all :-D

[1] Go to https://www.honeyguardian.com/pages/honeyguaridan-app and click either of the appstore links to see the company name (Shenzhen Hailong Zhizao, whose corporate website is at https://www.pdpets.com/)

People will buy something from a store, buy a fake version of that thing on AliExpress, swap the fake into the box, re-shrinkwrap the box, return the shrinkwrapped fake to the store, and sell the real one on eBay.

The store will often put the thing back on the shelf, because it's still shrinkwrapped, weighs the same, and even looks the same under an x-ray.

And then someone buys it and gets a dud.

This is why, except for a few high-margin categories, Amazon itself will never put returned stock back into inventory, instead always selling it off through bulk channels. It's effectively impossible to authenticate a return as legitimate these days, without converting the "BNIB" device into a "NIB" device.

Why not just sell the AliExpress one on ebay?

Amazon put tons of stuff back on the shelf. It’s not quite as bad as Fry’s Electronics where every single thing they sold had obviously been opened and shrink up, but it’s getting close.

But to your point, Amazon actually bait-and-switched their own batteries. They had basics batteries that were confirmed rebranded Panasonic eneloop, then changed them out to Chinese batteries while keeping the product page and reviews.

Amazon did that. So good luck getting them to crack down on reputation fraud.

Is it possible to ask Alexa to add generic items to a list, then be able to iterate said list as Amazon searches? That seems kinda useful, if it exists.

Maybe I'm not the every man, but I price shop. If All free is on sale half of Tide free, I'm ordering that, and so on.

Hand tools variously came from many OEMs like SK, Plumb, Knipex, and Williams{2}. I suppose they still do, now at Lowes, but the OEM is Chinese.

{1}https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/How_to_identify_who_made_your_Ke...

{2}https://forum.toolsinaction.com/topic/2118-craftsman-date-co...

If I want to return a product to Costco, I have really strong confidence that they will take it back.

Sears would exchange any broken craftsman tool for a new one even decades after purchase. Costco is much the same. Used, year old stuff with missing parts will gladly be refunded in full.

I hadn't been to a Costco since I was a kid so I had completely forgotten that the only stock (maybe) a few versions of specific items. I went a year or two ago thinking I'd come home with months worth of groceries and I was shocked that it STILL looked like the inside of a 1990s fridge and cabinet with such incredibly healthy options as (only) Sunny Delite and Tropicana for orange juice, massive boxes of Lays chips and cheezits and popcorn. I saw so few items that weren't basically boxes of corn syrup and sugar in some form. There's so many healthier snacks nowadays.

I didn't expect a complete grocery experience but I was expecting it to have far more healthy options these days, or even just more options in general.

I don't eat any of this stuff. I guess you're a costco family or not. I was a costco family as a kid and had to learn how to eat healthy after shoving soda down all day long my entire childhood.

edit: Yeah I'm looking just at their juice section here and there's not a single less-sugar option just as an example https://www.costco.com/juice.html.

Although, damn, $18.99 for 24 ojs is good. But both options are so disgustingly sweet. I had a single OJ for $7 from einsteins yesterday.

edit: Go down the orange juice flavor pack "Why do they all taste different" rabbit hole with me.... https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mpdop/e...

It is worth mentioning that Costco.com does not stock the same things that the physical stores sell, more-so than any other retailer I know of. And different stores have a lot of latitude in what they stock.

My nearest store has tons of things like sugar free sodas, pro-biotic soda, kombucha, no sugar added juices, and juice shots, etc... It might just be the local Costco catering to their market.

Yep found it https://old.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1e0t9u6/costco_june...

I can’t eat that healthy via other grocery stores because it’s too expensive typically.

I was chatting up a hotel chef recently and he told me the lil 8oz of 'proper' orange juice he gave me cost more to put on the table than the entire rest of the breakfast combined.

I never found one.

Fruit juices consist of fructose. It's bad for you in high quantities, just like sugar. Eating a piece of fruit is healthy for you - fructose in small quantities, and the rest of the fruit slows down its digestion. Fruit juice is a fructose bomb.

I was just hoping for healthier, zero/low sugar options of a lot more things at Costco. If I ever have a zero/low sugar option, I usually get it. I haven't drank a full sugar soda in a decade and avoid all sugar so my tolerance to sweet things is super low. Black coffee, etc.

Plus, if you're drinking fruit juice to help stay hydrated, you literally need sugars and salts to actually instigate the hydration process.

Most of the time in the juice space, anything that is designed to be shelf-stable in a warehouse is not. at. all. healthy. It's packed with preservatives and other stabilizers that are not good for you to consume. Or it has been pasteurized, which kills the vast majority of the nutrients in the liquid itself.

I will say as a caveat, that the Kirkland Signature Organic Coconut Water is quite good.

The Vitamix is easy to clean, so that's the winner for me.

Costco sells a lot of junk food because Americans, as a whole, eat a lot of junk food. They also stock a lot of staples (rice, beans, flour, cooking oils, canned/frozen fruits/veggies, &c), and decent quality raw fruit/veggies/meat. Not liking the Costco shopping experience is a pretty reasonable point of view (it forces you to plan/structure your shopping and food storage in weird ways IMO), but it seems like a strange complaint to zero in on the selection of processed foods when they really do seem to try and accommodate a wide variety of needs and preferences the best they can.

The question is would it make people shop more? If you buy one set of paper towels a week, and Costco rolls out a voice interface, would you now start ordering 2 or 3? If not, what return are they getting on the billions of dollars in additional spending?

In reality people would use it for a day, go "neat", and switch right back to the website or app.

No, that's not the question.

The question is would it make me shop more AT COSTCO.

And yes, it would make me shift some of my purchasing from my local grocery store to Costco. Costco is a long drive that's only worth it for large trips.

But if I could voice order for shipping or (even better) delivery? My local grocery with its god-awful parking lot full of blind 90-year-olds stuck in reverse would be in serious trouble.

I increasingly use specific companies for purchases, because I can't guarantee that what I order through Amazon will actually be the product I wanted, or be at the quality level I'd expect. It's getting to be absolutely awful.

Checking now, I placed 83 orders last year. I've placed 3 so far this year.

Until they figure out price stability for staple goods then nobody will use this. Hell I don't even use Subscribe and Save for the same reason.