7 ms·

It's really an awful process buying a lot of items nowadays. It seems like the exact same item will be sold under 30 different brands with different star level

It's really an awful process buying a lot of items nowadays. It seems like the exact same item will be sold under 30 different brands with different star levels, with many reviews full of the "free product" in for honest (usually 5 star) reviews. I wish Jeff Bezos would try buying a travel adapter (among many other items I've tried to buy recently) and tell me that it's a customer friendly process: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Atravel+adapter&keywords=travel+adapter https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Atravel... There are approximately 5 actually different adapters sold under maybe 50+ brands, and all the reviews are so padded with 5* free reviews, it's tough to know which ones are crap and which are good. Reviews aren't as important for retailers like Wal-Mart that curate their products. But for a marketplace like Amazon, reviews are absolutely critical to prevent scams. I hope Amazon realizes the enormity of this issue and is working on it. I believe Amazon should: 1. Fix the reviews. Disallow giving items for free or reduced prices in exchange for reviews. This may have worked originally for books, but any benefit received now is far out shadowed by the negatives. Alternatively, just limit it to 5 total free / reduced reviews per product to limit the negative effect. Police this policy heavily. 2. For the duplicate products (where one identical product is sold under 10 different brands, like in the travel adapter example above): Group the products together, and choose the brand like you might choose the color or size on a t-shirt. I recognize that there isn't a UPC numbering system that makes this easy - but there are probably only a few thousand items required to group together to make the buying process a lot easier for a large percentage of purchases.

kordless 10y ago
I work at Data Alchemy. We're an Amazon Merchant who runs our system on a search engine, built by search engineers who used to be at Looksmart and Loggly. Amazon does merge ASINs occasionally to help improve quality of listings (and merging comments), but we've found focusing the algos on the listings that both sell well and get a lot of good comments and support work really well. Our store on Amazon is the result of this search algorithm running on about 1.7 million listings: https://www.amazon.com/s?me=AZHZ102UTKBMA https://www.amazon.com/s?me=AZHZ102UTKBMA
- martincmartin 10y ago
  That's very cool! How do you get the inventory? Do you buy from the original sellers and re-sell on Amazon? I notice your listings have "sold by DataAlchemy, fulfilled by Amazon."
  - kordless 10y ago
    Our software allows us to order, track and pack high velocity items which are then sent to Amazon fulfillment centers. We also do a fair amount of direct shipping to customers. Inventory comes in via a variety of ways, including API feeds, FTP uploads, etc. We buy from manufacturers and distributors and are adding new ones all the time!
- vkjv 10y ago
  I think something might not be working. The very first thing I noticed as a pack of 10 CR2032 batteries for $75 when there is also a pack of 5 for $5. Along with other ridiculous prices, like $40 for a standard tape measure.
  - kordless 10y ago
    In my experience, most pricing "errors" come from the listing owner/creator changing the SKU or quantity set on the listing. When this happens, it takes us a few days to catch up with the listing or remove it entirely if we think it's low quality (meaning we think it's a pack of 100 and it's really a pack of 10). This can become even further complicated when a listing changes right as velocity comes on for it as well. We basically have to forget what the listing did before so we can price it accordingly moving forward. Pricing can also be a direct result of a velocity + stock calculation. If we are running low on FBA stock and don't have a good supply for the item ATM, the system may use a not-so-great source price on the item to calculate what it will cost us to refill stock. Sometimes items move around, or we lose suppliers for items, which cause the system to adjust the price accordingly. If you are searching from Amazon proper (not our store) for those items in question, it is very likely Amazon won't show you our listings on them because of the price delta. I would note we definitely utilize customer feedback to constantly improve our system's accuracy.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
The brand thing - Amazon/Alibaba combo makes it very trivial for the average Joe to sell their own private label product with only a few hundred dollar startup costs. That leads to a ton of market saturation and the paradox of choice when grown unchecked. I guess they really love saying that they have however million products or whatever.
- tuna-piano 10y ago
  Yes, exactly. And combined with the review padding this has grown out of control - and makes buying simple products endlessly complex. I hope that Amazon recognizes this, but yet I have yet to see them address the issue in any way.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
brianwawok 10y ago
2 doesn't work because the sellers work to stop it. They add logos and ad ons and all kinds of things. Like it or not white label is a large part of Amazon.
- tuna-piano 10y ago
  I'm proposing that Amazon merges the products, and for new products the sellers would be forced to tie it to the existing product. Amazon can enforce this without too much work, I'd think. Just do some image comparisons, have a "report duplicate" button, and a small team of people monitoring.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Yep, this is why I get lots of stuff from Anker. They originally seemed to be selling white label Chinese commodity stuff where it's not worth it to buy a 10x priced version from BigBox down the street, but I actually found that they have good versions of whatever cable or USB hub or backup battery I need. I found this basically by accident, and now I swear by their products, but it was tough to find on Amazon with the hundreds of look-a likes which don't function the same.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Exactly... Anker is generally pretty good, I've had a couple issues. After the report of a Google employeee reviewing various USB3 cables, I actually tested (just via an app on my phone at the time) all the cables/chargers I had... Amazing how much difference a cable can make... wound up getting a bunch of new cables, and replacing half my chargers. To this day I'm amazed at how relatively badly the "Amazon Basics" usb cables worked.
    - hexane360 10y ago
      Aukey is also very good. Whenever I need hubs/chargers/power packs/etc. I go to them or Amazon Basics.
  - vidarh 10y ago
marklgr 10y ago
> any benefit received now is far out shadowed by the negatives. Is it backed up by numbers? As a customer, I agree with you, but our annoyance could be less important than all the customers that quickly pick some product they neeed as long as it got enough stars, without going much into the reviews.
deanCommie 10y ago
Sorry I don't understand your point about travel adapters. 1. I go to your link 2. "Oh cool, there's a lot of travel adapters" 3. Filter by free shipping 4 (optional). See the top 2 are Sponsored, which makes me less likely to trust them, so ignore them. [NOTE: This is similar behaviour to using ANY search engine] 5. Open the top 3 links (https://www.amazon.com/MX-UC1-Protector-Universal-Charger-Adapter/dp/B00E0FZSQC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-4&keywords=travel+adapter https://www.amazon.com/MX-UC1-Protector-Universal-Charger-Ad..., https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Worldwide-Universal-Converters-Charging/dp/B01DJ140LQ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-5&keywords=travel+adapter https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Worldwide-Universal-Converter..., https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Universal-Schuko-Adapter-Germany/dp/B004SY5O5K/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-6&keywords=travel+adapter https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Universal-Schuko-Adapter-Ger...) 6. Dismiss #2 because it's twice the cost of the other ones and has lower reviews 7A. Pick #3 because it's a "best seller" - which means it has been vetted by other customers 7B. Pick #1 because it looks the nicest Both have mostly good reviews with some bad ones, but hey it's a 7 dollar piece of plastic that tries to work in 150 different countries, it's not going to be perfect. What is so customer unfriendly about this process? Oh and by the way, this is a POWER user process who really wants to get the best one. A layperson could have just as easily just went straight for the "Best seller" and been satisfied.
- Retric 10y ago
  That 7 piece of plastic can destroy a 600$ phone. The risk might be a reasonable tradeoff, but you see vastly more junk at Amazon than say Best Buy. This means Amazon is fine for brand name stuff (PS4), or low risk stuff (Travel Pillow, Book). But, for a huge range of things you really can't tell if something is low cost, or low quality.
- germanier 10y ago
  About a year ago, I purchased one of the bestsellers on German Amazon (which basically look the same as the bestsellers on the US store). It is flimsy, the springs on one connector are likely to break after using them a few times. The worst thing: one of the connectors didn't retract fully when not in use and was connected to live AC. Yikes! It had tons of great reviews both on the German and on the US store, including ones were you could see the bad construction in the customer photos. After looking closely at them, one of the three-star reviews casually mentioned sparks when used in one configuration... I called customer support and wrote to the responsible regulatory body in Germany. This specific model is not available anymore. A dozen identical looking still are. In the end I used one that is three times as expensive made by a reputable company. That is the problem.
revelation 10y ago
Some of these travel adapters are outright deadly. As in "pop out a second set of plugs while plugged in" deadly. They are even shipped by Amazon. These products should never enter any western market. If a kid electrocutes himself thats going to be very bad news for Amazon.
- AJ007 10y ago
  My friend's wife told him to order a cheap barbell from Amazon. I pointed out that reviews said it have broken in half during use. They bought it, and it broke in half on the first use. Based on the kind of crazy dangerous shit that ends up on Amazon and stays on Amazon, I wonder what kinds of things they are catching and blocking from being sold? The number of verticals of items I won't buy off Amazon has increased. Between spending a lot of time looking at the search results, ordering something that sucks, sometimes its easier, faster, and cheaper to go to Target.
devit 10y ago
Would it be too costly for Amazon to just employ people to review most or all of their products, and maybe even rebrand the best products under its own brand where the seller agrees? It would dramatically increase the quality of their store and brand, and it benefits from economies of scale. Assuming they pay $100 for an high quality review, then a $10 item would increase by only 1 cent if at least 10000 are sold, which seem reasonable conditions. For categories with many very similar items, reviews should be cheaper since a standard review procedure could be designed and applied quickly, offsetting the lower sales per items.
- corobo 10y ago
  They do. Sort of. Amazon Vine is the system you're looking for, I don't believe the reviewer gets paid directly but they do get the thing they've reviewed for free (presumably they could then go on to sell on Ebay or indeed Amazon itself). Amazon also points out it was a Vine review when you're scrolling through which is great as it means you can more easily ignore the biased reviews. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/vine/help https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/vine/help
  - hexane360 10y ago
    Oh, I always assumed those were funded by the seller. It's good to know they're a third party to the whole exchange. I'll pay attention to these next time.
SonicSoul 10y ago
have you tried emailing Jeff? http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-if-you-have-a-problem-with-amazon-email-me-1724561248 http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-if-you-have-a-problem-with-ama... I say this because I heard through someone that works there that Jeff does read complains and will often forward it to a department head with "?" body content. At that point that manager drops everything to come up with an explanation for what happened. Can't confirm this, but the source was pretty solid.
killface 10y ago
my first world anarchy is always voting 'no' for if a review helped if it's a vine voice or indicated that they got the product for free.

kordless 10y ago

I work at Data Alchemy. We're an Amazon Merchant who runs our system on a search engine, built by search engineers who used to be at Looksmart and Loggly. Amazon does merge ASINs occasionally to help improve quality of listings (and merging comments), but we've found focusing the algos on the listings that both sell well and get a lot of good comments and support work really well. Our store on Amazon is the result of this search algorithm running on about 1.7 million listings: https://www.amazon.com/s?me=AZHZ102UTKBMA https://www.amazon.com/s?me=AZHZ102UTKBMA

martincmartin 10y ago
That's very cool! How do you get the inventory? Do you buy from the original sellers and re-sell on Amazon? I notice your listings have "sold by DataAlchemy, fulfilled by Amazon."
- kordless 10y ago
  Our software allows us to order, track and pack high velocity items which are then sent to Amazon fulfillment centers. We also do a fair amount of direct shipping to customers. Inventory comes in via a variety of ways, including API feeds, FTP uploads, etc. We buy from manufacturers and distributors and are adding new ones all the time!
vkjv 10y ago
I think something might not be working. The very first thing I noticed as a pack of 10 CR2032 batteries for $75 when there is also a pack of 5 for $5. Along with other ridiculous prices, like $40 for a standard tape measure.
- kordless 10y ago
  In my experience, most pricing "errors" come from the listing owner/creator changing the SKU or quantity set on the listing. When this happens, it takes us a few days to catch up with the listing or remove it entirely if we think it's low quality (meaning we think it's a pack of 100 and it's really a pack of 10). This can become even further complicated when a listing changes right as velocity comes on for it as well. We basically have to forget what the listing did before so we can price it accordingly moving forward. Pricing can also be a direct result of a velocity + stock calculation. If we are running low on FBA stock and don't have a good supply for the item ATM, the system may use a not-so-great source price on the item to calculate what it will cost us to refill stock. Sometimes items move around, or we lose suppliers for items, which cause the system to adjust the price accordingly. If you are searching from Amazon proper (not our store) for those items in question, it is very likely Amazon won't show you our listings on them because of the price delta. I would note we definitely utilize customer feedback to constantly improve our system's accuracy.

nommm-nommm 10y ago

The brand thing - Amazon/Alibaba combo makes it very trivial for the average Joe to sell their own private label product with only a few hundred dollar startup costs. That leads to a ton of market saturation and the paradox of choice when grown unchecked. I guess they really love saying that they have however million products or whatever.

tuna-piano 10y ago
Yes, exactly. And combined with the review padding this has grown out of control - and makes buying simple products endlessly complex. I hope that Amazon recognizes this, but yet I have yet to see them address the issue in any way.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

brianwawok 10y ago

2 doesn't work because the sellers work to stop it. They add logos and ad ons and all kinds of things. Like it or not white label is a large part of Amazon.

tuna-piano 10y ago
I'm proposing that Amazon merges the products, and for new products the sellers would be forced to tie it to the existing product. Amazon can enforce this without too much work, I'd think. Just do some image comparisons, have a "report duplicate" button, and a small team of people monitoring.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Yep, this is why I get lots of stuff from Anker. They originally seemed to be selling white label Chinese commodity stuff where it's not worth it to buy a 10x priced version from BigBox down the street, but I actually found that they have good versions of whatever cable or USB hub or backup battery I need. I found this basically by accident, and now I swear by their products, but it was tough to find on Amazon with the hundreds of look-a likes which don't function the same.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Exactly... Anker is generally pretty good, I've had a couple issues. After the report of a Google employeee reviewing various USB3 cables, I actually tested (just via an app on my phone at the time) all the cables/chargers I had... Amazing how much difference a cable can make... wound up getting a bunch of new cables, and replacing half my chargers. To this day I'm amazed at how relatively badly the "Amazon Basics" usb cables worked.
  - hexane360 10y ago
    Aukey is also very good. Whenever I need hubs/chargers/power packs/etc. I go to them or Amazon Basics.
- vidarh 10y ago

marklgr 10y ago

> any benefit received now is far out shadowed by the negatives. Is it backed up by numbers? As a customer, I agree with you, but our annoyance could be less important than all the customers that quickly pick some product they neeed as long as it got enough stars, without going much into the reviews.

deanCommie 10y ago

Sorry I don't understand your point about travel adapters. 1. I go to your link 2. "Oh cool, there's a lot of travel adapters" 3. Filter by free shipping 4 (optional). See the top 2 are Sponsored, which makes me less likely to trust them, so ignore them. [NOTE: This is similar behaviour to using ANY search engine] 5. Open the top 3 links (https://www.amazon.com/MX-UC1-Protector-Universal-Charger-Adapter/dp/B00E0FZSQC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-4&keywords=travel+adapter https://www.amazon.com/MX-UC1-Protector-Universal-Charger-Ad..., https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Worldwide-Universal-Converters-Charging/dp/B01DJ140LQ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-5&keywords=travel+adapter https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Worldwide-Universal-Converter..., https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Universal-Schuko-Adapter-Germany/dp/B004SY5O5K/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1467713126&sr=8-6&keywords=travel+adapter https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Universal-Schuko-Adapter-Ger...) 6. Dismiss #2 because it's twice the cost of the other ones and has lower reviews 7A. Pick #3 because it's a "best seller" - which means it has been vetted by other customers 7B. Pick #1 because it looks the nicest Both have mostly good reviews with some bad ones, but hey it's a 7 dollar piece of plastic that tries to work in 150 different countries, it's not going to be perfect. What is so customer unfriendly about this process? Oh and by the way, this is a POWER user process who really wants to get the best one. A layperson could have just as easily just went straight for the "Best seller" and been satisfied.

Retric 10y ago
That 7 piece of plastic can destroy a 600$ phone. The risk might be a reasonable tradeoff, but you see vastly more junk at Amazon than say Best Buy. This means Amazon is fine for brand name stuff (PS4), or low risk stuff (Travel Pillow, Book). But, for a huge range of things you really can't tell if something is low cost, or low quality.
germanier 10y ago
About a year ago, I purchased one of the bestsellers on German Amazon (which basically look the same as the bestsellers on the US store). It is flimsy, the springs on one connector are likely to break after using them a few times. The worst thing: one of the connectors didn't retract fully when not in use and was connected to live AC. Yikes! It had tons of great reviews both on the German and on the US store, including ones were you could see the bad construction in the customer photos. After looking closely at them, one of the three-star reviews casually mentioned sparks when used in one configuration... I called customer support and wrote to the responsible regulatory body in Germany. This specific model is not available anymore. A dozen identical looking still are. In the end I used one that is three times as expensive made by a reputable company. That is the problem.

revelation 10y ago

Some of these travel adapters are outright deadly. As in "pop out a second set of plugs while plugged in" deadly. They are even shipped by Amazon. These products should never enter any western market. If a kid electrocutes himself thats going to be very bad news for Amazon.

AJ007 10y ago
My friend's wife told him to order a cheap barbell from Amazon. I pointed out that reviews said it have broken in half during use. They bought it, and it broke in half on the first use. Based on the kind of crazy dangerous shit that ends up on Amazon and stays on Amazon, I wonder what kinds of things they are catching and blocking from being sold? The number of verticals of items I won't buy off Amazon has increased. Between spending a lot of time looking at the search results, ordering something that sucks, sometimes its easier, faster, and cheaper to go to Target.

devit 10y ago

Would it be too costly for Amazon to just employ people to review most or all of their products, and maybe even rebrand the best products under its own brand where the seller agrees? It would dramatically increase the quality of their store and brand, and it benefits from economies of scale. Assuming they pay $100 for an high quality review, then a $10 item would increase by only 1 cent if at least 10000 are sold, which seem reasonable conditions. For categories with many very similar items, reviews should be cheaper since a standard review procedure could be designed and applied quickly, offsetting the lower sales per items.

corobo 10y ago
They do. Sort of. Amazon Vine is the system you're looking for, I don't believe the reviewer gets paid directly but they do get the thing they've reviewed for free (presumably they could then go on to sell on Ebay or indeed Amazon itself). Amazon also points out it was a Vine review when you're scrolling through which is great as it means you can more easily ignore the biased reviews. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/vine/help https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/vine/help
- hexane360 10y ago
  Oh, I always assumed those were funded by the seller. It's good to know they're a third party to the whole exchange. I'll pay attention to these next time.

SonicSoul 10y ago

have you tried emailing Jeff? http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-if-you-have-a-problem-with-amazon-email-me-1724561248 http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-if-you-have-a-problem-with-ama... I say this because I heard through someone that works there that Jeff does read complains and will often forward it to a department head with "?" body content. At that point that manager drops everything to come up with an explanation for what happened. Can't confirm this, but the source was pretty solid.

killface 10y ago

my first world anarchy is always voting 'no' for if a review helped if it's a vine voice or indicated that they got the product for free.