9 ms·

Amazon has become an extremely unpleasant place to shop in the past two years. The proliferation of garbage sellers makes it hard to find anything. It used to

Amazon has become an extremely unpleasant place to shop in the past two years. The proliferation of garbage sellers makes it hard to find anything. It used to be that you could avoid most of them by just ignoring anything with less than 10 reviews, but with Amazon's latest change to factor in number of reviews for their "sort by average review" list has let the genie out of the bottle. Now you'll see literally THOUSANDS of 5-star reviews on their garbage, completely drowning out the real stuff :/ It's to the point now where I'll only purchase known brand-name items from the manufacturer, and hope to god it's not a scammer using their name, or some typosquatter, or their supply chain hasn't been polluted by counterfeits. And it's only getting worse. Now I try to buy direct from individual websites like it's 1999.

te_chris 9y ago
Agree. I've cancelled prime. I'm lucky to live in London, so local UK retailers are actually pretty good in terms of delivery and click and collect options - I tend to find it easier to buy something online on Argos, then just walk down the road and collect it straight away. I don't really miss prime that much tbh. It certainly is easier sometimes, but the variability of the merch is just not worth it.
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  I don't use Prime and have noticed Amazon keep increasing the time taken for 'free delivery' to a point where i'll just buy it from eBay now, or direct from the retailer.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    I cancelled my Prime subscription, but the last time I ordered from Amazon, I chose the free option which was estimated to take 5 days, and it got to me overnight, which was nice. My current complaint about Amazon is that when I order a grocery item, it's because I can't find it in a local store and Amazon charges double or triple the normal price. Oddly enough, I ordered something once in bulk for an exorbitant price, and immediately it appeared in my local grocery store for the normal price (50% less). I'm not sure what's going on, but it feels like algorithms run amuck.
  - banderman 9y ago
    Some companies sell directly on eBay, usually at a discount.
- arethuza 9y ago
  I buy plenty of content from Amazon (video, kindle, audible) but I'm increasingly reluctant to use Amazon for physical products - I rarely buy paper books and when I do its usually from an actual bookshop (maybe 4 physical books last year compared to about 30 from audible and maybe 20 on kindle). I certainly wouldn't use them for anything over £50 or so - I'd go straight to a dedicated retailer that I have more confidence in.
  - weavie 9y ago
    I have great success getting second hand books through amazon. My wish list is up on camelcamelcamel and then every so often someone comes along and puts up a book I want for dirt cheap. I get a notification and if I am quick enough get the book ordered straight away. I've managed to get some books that normally go for £40 for £5 + postage before.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      I used to use Amazon for second hand books, and then I noticed some sellers were not accurate in their description ("like new" had food stuck in the pages). Amazon was great at refunds, but I'd prefer to avoid the need to refund things. I noticed I was buying all my books from Wordery via Amazon, so I just went direct to Wordery.
- teh_klev 9y ago
  UK based here as well and I'm not renewing Prime this year. Apropos fake stuff and fake reviews, I won't buy anything of value from Amazon now, I can't be sure any more that I'm not going to receive a counterfeit. I'm in the market right now for a couple of new electronic gadgets, but I'll just get them from Halfords and PC World, their prices aren't that different from Amazon's. My other annoyances... Over the past few months I've noticed their so called "Next Day" delivery randomly isn't really that. For example this week I ordered a thing that was eligible for Prime next day. It was on Tuesday and I was well within the cut off time (by 7 hours or so). Oddly that item then showed as "Get it by Thursday" which is not Next Day. I thought it was specifically that seller or product that perhaps had ran out of stock. But no, every Prime eligible SKU was showing as "Get it by Thursday". Upon querying this with Amazon they said: "One day delivery starts as soon as the item is marked as dispatched. We will aim to have your item with you in One day."I didn't have the energy to point out that the previous Tuesday all their Prime eligible SKU's were showing as "Get it by Wednesday" i.e actually and really next day. They seem to vary this throughout the year to suit themselves. I did order the product though and on Wednesday I got notification that the item was dispatched and out for delivery. Sadly it didn't turn up and when I checked the parcel tracking sure enough it'd been bounced back to an expected delivery of Thursday again. Another annoyance are these "Add On" SKU's (for example cleaning products) where there is simply no way to order these products without spending say a minimum of 20 quid on other stuff. Some marketplace resellers seem to game this by stocking these SKU's but the delivery price is almost as much as the SKU itself. No thanks, I'll just get these from the supermarket next week when I drive into town (I live in a rural area so having stuff delivered makes sense to me). I also have an ethical problem with the seemingly ridiculous workloads, hours and low pay their delivery drivers have put upon them, I'd rather not fund these abuses. I know for a fact the that the usual fella that delivers to me is doing at least a 10-11 hour day, and that's screwed up. So anyway, I don't really order enough "new" stuff to make the Prime next day worthwhile, and tbh I can easily wait a couple of days for an order to arrive. I also tend to only order books these days, and will hold out until I can get a decent used copy at a fraction of the new price. The other thing that's deeply annoying are these add-on channels where you need to pay a monthly subscription for, on top of Prime. Films/TV that you could previously pay for are being silo'd into these channels with no option to just pay for the film itself. Sure I could run with the 10-14 day free trial, but that soon gets old. Finally there simply isn't enough compelling "included with prime" video that interests me.
tonygrue 9y ago
Something I’ve learned recently is that Target price matches amazon (and a number of other sites). It’s basically turned Target into a same day pickup Amazon warehouse for me. Yes, I’ve got to get to Target; but sometimes I want something the same day anyway, and even more crucial, I have a lot more confidence stuff isn’t counterfeit. (In this case though I’m sure they don’t sell this luggage brand :/)
- jshelly 9y ago
  There have been a lot of rumors about Amazon buying Target and although I do like Amazon, I hope it never happens. IMHO Target was the only online/b&m business that was competitive with Amazon prices and deals over the holidays.
- richjdsmith 9y ago
  Same as BestBuy. Actually, they price match plus 10% of the price difference. Which is awesome because I get to go pick it up, but don't have to fear the amazon knock-offs.
  - walterbell 9y ago
    Do you request the price-match online at time of purchase, or after pickup?
- twobyfour 9y ago
  Target's website is awful to the point of painful, unfortunately.
- sparky_z 9y ago
  How does that actually work? Do you just tell the cashier during checkout that Amazon offers a better price and they give you the discount no questions asked? Or is it more involved than that?
defo_nonconvex 9y ago
I went into a Decathlon for the first time the other day, after long assuming Amazon would always be cheaper for outdoor+active wear...so wrong. Totally surprised at a high street store having a huge range of better quality merchandise, at lower prices, and no need to shop around amongst all the clones with very similar appearance, but varying quality. My faith in the bricks-and-mortar stores has been partially restored. And for safety-critical purchases...no way am I risking buying something like angle grinder discs or fire extinguishers off Amazon. Fake headphones mean a bit of distortion, fake discs might mean a lost eye. So now its just low-cost, low-risk purchases where I don't care too much if the item is junk. On that note, where do people buy electronic hardware if not Amazon/PC World? E.g. for SD cards - Amazon carries the risk of counterfeits, and PC World carries the high street premium.
- javiramos 9y ago
  I find that B&H Photo has great prices and fast shipping!
  - ddoran 9y ago
    And incredible (in-store) after sales customer experience, in my experience. If you're visiting NYC, anyone interested in technology, photography or just wants to see an incredible retail/sales operation in action should visit. NB - As they observe religious calendar/holidays both in store and online, make sure they're open before you visit.
- carlmr 9y ago
  I still buy on Amazon, but only what they sell directly. Nothing 3rd party.
  - teh_klev 9y ago
    Isn't there still a danger of co-mingling fake stuff with what looks like a genuine item sold by Amazon?
    - 9y ago
ataturk 9y ago
Christmas 2016 saw my family make quite a few Amazon purchases. Christmas 2017? One. One single item. It was a combination of the prices being lousy coupled with no longer keeping a Prime membership because why would I? The shipping promises didn't keep up and the video service is downright awful. My distaste for Amazon mirrors my distaste for all tech companies--the dream is dead folks. It's a cult of personality, just like Google, Apple (sorry, but Tim Cook is just an idiot--the cost cutting Tim, the cost cutting), Facebook, Microsoft... Bezos has his typically left-leaning feel-good hypocritical politics, with the Washington Post as his mouthpiece, spewing garbage corporatist propaganda. Amazon, police thyself! Next, there is my growing lack of concern about consumer products and consumerism in general. Everything you buy contributes to the destruction of our environment and our ecosystems: Every single bit of Chinese plastic is another dead animal, another cubic foot of pollution, more ocean pollution, you get the idea. We should be far more circumspect about how we're contributing to the problem. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. But ignorant Americans have to fill their empty lives with consumerist crap because.
nkrisc 9y ago
This is exactly why I no longer buy from Amazon unless it's something that's pretty much already junk. I was shopping for a Hario coffee grinder on Amazon and noticed about 10% of the reviews were 1-star as opposed to the usual 5-star reviews. Turns out about 10% of people who bought this item on Amazon received a counterfeit even though it was apparently the manufacturer's own page and listing (if it wasn't I couldn't tell nor figure out how to determine that). So after researching on Amazon I went to the manufacturer's site, found their list of authorized resellers, and bought it from Williams-Sonoma. I've since bought more items from WS. They should send a thank you card to Jeff Bezos. I'm a new father now too. Guess where we don't buy any baby stuff from.
- ascagnel_ 9y ago
  The problem with Amazon listings is that any seller (official reseller or not) can put a product up for sale. Amazon defaults to the cheapest seller listed as new (if you have Prime, sellers that offer Prime shipping will chosen over a cheaper seller that charges separately for shipping). The problem here is that when you buy from Amazon, you expect that you're buying it from Amazon. But with they way they have it set up, it's also very likely that you'll buy from another seller that's a few pennies cheaper than Amazon, with Amazon facilitating the sale.
  - ValentineC 9y ago
    From what I understand, Amazon also commingles its own "Sold by Amazon" inventory with other sellers who use the Fulfilled By Amazon programme, without checking for counterfeits. [1][2][3][4] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003872 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944675 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15774793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15774793 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15589274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15589274
    - brewdad 9y ago
      Right. It's this commingling that makes the whole exercise futile. I can check and double check that I am buying from Amazon directly, but if fake goods are mixed in the same bin as real ones it becomes a game of roulette to see what I'll actually receive.
devit 9y ago
I don't get why they don't fix it. It's a huge problem and it's eroding confidence in Amazon. It's not even hard: just require anyone selling on Amazon to wire a large enough deposit before they are allowed to sell (magnitude depending on the price, volume of their items and possibly their assumed trustworthiness); then, if they are found selling counterfeits or otherwise misrepresenting their products or their company, Amazon pockets a third of it, rewards another third to the person reporting it to Amazon and distributes the remaining third to affected shoppers. It seems to me that the gains would far outweigh any possible reduction in the number of legitimate sellers and products.
- skgoa 9y ago
  They have started to implement a prototype form of this. You can only be labeled as a verified sale, if they have received at least $50 from you in the past. Though that's still not enough to weed out all of the paid reviews written by professional reviewers. And another questionable thing that is starting to happen more and more is that you get something for free from the seller if you leave a review. It's very difficult for Amazon to guard against this, because the offer is made in the parcel you receive.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    > And another questionable thing that is starting to happen more and more is that you get something for free from the seller if you leave a review. This doesn't seem to be that hard to guard against. Amazon could offer a large bounty to report sellers that do this, and since Amazon has direct access to seller funds they could debit their account to pay for the bounty.
    - rayuela 9y ago
      This is actually a great idea and somewhat obvious come to think of it. Having outsized penalties to compensate for the probability of getting caught and deterring others considering partaking in the same type of fraud would be much like what many regulatory bodies have found to be a very effective way of curbing unwanted market behaviour.
pmulv 9y ago
There's a site I use to sift through counterfeit items and fake reviews on Amazon (and other sites I believe). [0] It's made the headache of finding legitimate products on Amazon a lot easier to manage for me.If you actually look at a lot of the fake 5-star products and analyse the reviews, the majority are really obviously fake. They're chock-full-of buzzwords and they almost always come from verified purchasers with absolutely nonsensical names. I agree - it's gotten really difficult to find real things. However, I haven't found it to be very difficult to spot the fakes in the markets current form. You would think Amazon could internally flag the name patterns for review, but I guess that would take moderating human-power. [0] https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  > but I guess that would take moderating human-power. Maybe they could use mturk? Or maybe give you a button to set up an mturk job on a product to weed out the fake reviews for you, then you could pay only a few cents to get a 'real' review...
lsaferite 9y ago
Every time I see a comment like this I think to myself we must either be using a different Amazon or just buying totally different categories of items. I buy lots of things from Amazon. I probably get a package from them at least twice a week (I hate going to stores). In all that time I've never gotten something that was straight up garbage. So how is it so many vocal people are getting a significantly different experience?
- ghaff 9y ago
  I have the same experience. I tend to try to buy stuff that Amazon sells directly and I regularly pay a bit more for items that seem to have better reviews or, at least, less reviews that give me pause. And I do buy a fair bit of electronics and so forth. I wonder how many of the people who seem to have such bad experiences buy solely on price even when the price seems too good to be true. Case in point. I just bought a couple of Samsung Qi wireless chargers. There were certainly cheaper ones listed but this one won Wirecutter recommendation so it's what I got. Are there counterfeits? Probably. But they probably aren't packaged like the legit item.
  - philjohn 9y ago
    That won't help you, Amazon comingles their "sold by amazon" stock with "fulfilled by amazon" stock.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      I don't doubt it happens but I've never had a problem.
    - lsaferite 9y ago
      Do you have proof of that?
- outworlder 9y ago
  You are just buying different products. I was looking for a Mophie battery case for the iPhone SE. Go there now and look. You’ll find a bunch of cases “by Mophie”, which are all counterfeits, no exceptions. Mophie doesn’t sell on Amazon.
toss1 9y ago
Unpleasant indeed! I'm actively wondering whether it would be possible to build an external ranking-by-review system, since Amazon's <Sort By Best Avg Review> system has been fully gamed, and I use a completely different algorithm. Meanwhile entire categories are completely full of fraudulent junk -- start with LiPo 18650 batteries. One seller was even using Tesla's brand and logo claiming to sell their batteries. It disappeared a few days after I reported them, so Amazon does appear to be doing something, but it's completely inadequate.
majormajor 9y ago
I've had good luck with Amazon personally, but I do avoid entire categories of stuff (anything with an Apple logo, to start with) and largely stick to single-seller things anyway by the nature of what I buy there. If they did start sending me junk I'd return it, and complain loudly. So far I've only had to engage their customer service about a few delivery-related screwups, but they've been extremely helpful for that stuff, so I'm curious what their threshold is for actually addressing stuff like this.
appleiigs 9y ago
> Now I try to buy direct from individual websites like it's 1999. Oddly, Amazon has reversed roles with the brick and mortars for me. Instead of using a physical store as a showroom and then buying online, I use Amazon's user reviews and algorithms* to see what to buy and then I go to a physical store to get it. I buy from the physical store with confidence I have a reasonable product and price and can return/exchange it easily if I'm still not happy with it. * the "Frequently bought together" and "Customers also bought" sections.

te_chris 9y ago

Agree. I've cancelled prime. I'm lucky to live in London, so local UK retailers are actually pretty good in terms of delivery and click and collect options - I tend to find it easier to buy something online on Argos, then just walk down the road and collect it straight away. I don't really miss prime that much tbh. It certainly is easier sometimes, but the variability of the merch is just not worth it.

sofaofthedamned 9y ago
I don't use Prime and have noticed Amazon keep increasing the time taken for 'free delivery' to a point where i'll just buy it from eBay now, or direct from the retailer.
- perl4ever 9y ago
  I cancelled my Prime subscription, but the last time I ordered from Amazon, I chose the free option which was estimated to take 5 days, and it got to me overnight, which was nice. My current complaint about Amazon is that when I order a grocery item, it's because I can't find it in a local store and Amazon charges double or triple the normal price. Oddly enough, I ordered something once in bulk for an exorbitant price, and immediately it appeared in my local grocery store for the normal price (50% less). I'm not sure what's going on, but it feels like algorithms run amuck.
- banderman 9y ago
  Some companies sell directly on eBay, usually at a discount.
arethuza 9y ago
I buy plenty of content from Amazon (video, kindle, audible) but I'm increasingly reluctant to use Amazon for physical products - I rarely buy paper books and when I do its usually from an actual bookshop (maybe 4 physical books last year compared to about 30 from audible and maybe 20 on kindle). I certainly wouldn't use them for anything over £50 or so - I'd go straight to a dedicated retailer that I have more confidence in.
- weavie 9y ago
  I have great success getting second hand books through amazon. My wish list is up on camelcamelcamel and then every so often someone comes along and puts up a book I want for dirt cheap. I get a notification and if I am quick enough get the book ordered straight away. I've managed to get some books that normally go for £40 for £5 + postage before.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    I used to use Amazon for second hand books, and then I noticed some sellers were not accurate in their description ("like new" had food stuck in the pages). Amazon was great at refunds, but I'd prefer to avoid the need to refund things. I noticed I was buying all my books from Wordery via Amazon, so I just went direct to Wordery.
teh_klev 9y ago
UK based here as well and I'm not renewing Prime this year. Apropos fake stuff and fake reviews, I won't buy anything of value from Amazon now, I can't be sure any more that I'm not going to receive a counterfeit. I'm in the market right now for a couple of new electronic gadgets, but I'll just get them from Halfords and PC World, their prices aren't that different from Amazon's. My other annoyances... Over the past few months I've noticed their so called "Next Day" delivery randomly isn't really that. For example this week I ordered a thing that was eligible for Prime next day. It was on Tuesday and I was well within the cut off time (by 7 hours or so). Oddly that item then showed as "Get it by Thursday" which is not Next Day. I thought it was specifically that seller or product that perhaps had ran out of stock. But no, every Prime eligible SKU was showing as "Get it by Thursday". Upon querying this with Amazon they said: "One day delivery starts as soon as the item is marked as dispatched. We will aim to have your item with you in One day."I didn't have the energy to point out that the previous Tuesday all their Prime eligible SKU's were showing as "Get it by Wednesday" i.e actually and really next day. They seem to vary this throughout the year to suit themselves. I did order the product though and on Wednesday I got notification that the item was dispatched and out for delivery. Sadly it didn't turn up and when I checked the parcel tracking sure enough it'd been bounced back to an expected delivery of Thursday again. Another annoyance are these "Add On" SKU's (for example cleaning products) where there is simply no way to order these products without spending say a minimum of 20 quid on other stuff. Some marketplace resellers seem to game this by stocking these SKU's but the delivery price is almost as much as the SKU itself. No thanks, I'll just get these from the supermarket next week when I drive into town (I live in a rural area so having stuff delivered makes sense to me). I also have an ethical problem with the seemingly ridiculous workloads, hours and low pay their delivery drivers have put upon them, I'd rather not fund these abuses. I know for a fact the that the usual fella that delivers to me is doing at least a 10-11 hour day, and that's screwed up. So anyway, I don't really order enough "new" stuff to make the Prime next day worthwhile, and tbh I can easily wait a couple of days for an order to arrive. I also tend to only order books these days, and will hold out until I can get a decent used copy at a fraction of the new price. The other thing that's deeply annoying are these add-on channels where you need to pay a monthly subscription for, on top of Prime. Films/TV that you could previously pay for are being silo'd into these channels with no option to just pay for the film itself. Sure I could run with the 10-14 day free trial, but that soon gets old. Finally there simply isn't enough compelling "included with prime" video that interests me.

tonygrue 9y ago

Something I’ve learned recently is that Target price matches amazon (and a number of other sites). It’s basically turned Target into a same day pickup Amazon warehouse for me. Yes, I’ve got to get to Target; but sometimes I want something the same day anyway, and even more crucial, I have a lot more confidence stuff isn’t counterfeit. (In this case though I’m sure they don’t sell this luggage brand :/)

jshelly 9y ago
There have been a lot of rumors about Amazon buying Target and although I do like Amazon, I hope it never happens. IMHO Target was the only online/b&m business that was competitive with Amazon prices and deals over the holidays.
richjdsmith 9y ago
Same as BestBuy. Actually, they price match plus 10% of the price difference. Which is awesome because I get to go pick it up, but don't have to fear the amazon knock-offs.
- walterbell 9y ago
  Do you request the price-match online at time of purchase, or after pickup?
twobyfour 9y ago
Target's website is awful to the point of painful, unfortunately.
sparky_z 9y ago
How does that actually work? Do you just tell the cashier during checkout that Amazon offers a better price and they give you the discount no questions asked? Or is it more involved than that?

defo_nonconvex 9y ago

I went into a Decathlon for the first time the other day, after long assuming Amazon would always be cheaper for outdoor+active wear...so wrong. Totally surprised at a high street store having a huge range of better quality merchandise, at lower prices, and no need to shop around amongst all the clones with very similar appearance, but varying quality. My faith in the bricks-and-mortar stores has been partially restored. And for safety-critical purchases...no way am I risking buying something like angle grinder discs or fire extinguishers off Amazon. Fake headphones mean a bit of distortion, fake discs might mean a lost eye. So now its just low-cost, low-risk purchases where I don't care too much if the item is junk. On that note, where do people buy electronic hardware if not Amazon/PC World? E.g. for SD cards - Amazon carries the risk of counterfeits, and PC World carries the high street premium.

javiramos 9y ago
I find that B&H Photo has great prices and fast shipping!
- ddoran 9y ago
  And incredible (in-store) after sales customer experience, in my experience. If you're visiting NYC, anyone interested in technology, photography or just wants to see an incredible retail/sales operation in action should visit. NB - As they observe religious calendar/holidays both in store and online, make sure they're open before you visit.
carlmr 9y ago
I still buy on Amazon, but only what they sell directly. Nothing 3rd party.
- teh_klev 9y ago
  Isn't there still a danger of co-mingling fake stuff with what looks like a genuine item sold by Amazon?
  - 9y ago

ataturk 9y ago

Christmas 2016 saw my family make quite a few Amazon purchases. Christmas 2017? One. One single item. It was a combination of the prices being lousy coupled with no longer keeping a Prime membership because why would I? The shipping promises didn't keep up and the video service is downright awful. My distaste for Amazon mirrors my distaste for all tech companies--the dream is dead folks. It's a cult of personality, just like Google, Apple (sorry, but Tim Cook is just an idiot--the cost cutting Tim, the cost cutting), Facebook, Microsoft... Bezos has his typically left-leaning feel-good hypocritical politics, with the Washington Post as his mouthpiece, spewing garbage corporatist propaganda. Amazon, police thyself! Next, there is my growing lack of concern about consumer products and consumerism in general. Everything you buy contributes to the destruction of our environment and our ecosystems: Every single bit of Chinese plastic is another dead animal, another cubic foot of pollution, more ocean pollution, you get the idea. We should be far more circumspect about how we're contributing to the problem. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. But ignorant Americans have to fill their empty lives with consumerist crap because.

nkrisc 9y ago

This is exactly why I no longer buy from Amazon unless it's something that's pretty much already junk. I was shopping for a Hario coffee grinder on Amazon and noticed about 10% of the reviews were 1-star as opposed to the usual 5-star reviews. Turns out about 10% of people who bought this item on Amazon received a counterfeit even though it was apparently the manufacturer's own page and listing (if it wasn't I couldn't tell nor figure out how to determine that). So after researching on Amazon I went to the manufacturer's site, found their list of authorized resellers, and bought it from Williams-Sonoma. I've since bought more items from WS. They should send a thank you card to Jeff Bezos. I'm a new father now too. Guess where we don't buy any baby stuff from.

ascagnel_ 9y ago
The problem with Amazon listings is that any seller (official reseller or not) can put a product up for sale. Amazon defaults to the cheapest seller listed as new (if you have Prime, sellers that offer Prime shipping will chosen over a cheaper seller that charges separately for shipping). The problem here is that when you buy from Amazon, you expect that you're buying it from Amazon. But with they way they have it set up, it's also very likely that you'll buy from another seller that's a few pennies cheaper than Amazon, with Amazon facilitating the sale.
- ValentineC 9y ago
  From what I understand, Amazon also commingles its own "Sold by Amazon" inventory with other sellers who use the Fulfilled By Amazon programme, without checking for counterfeits. [1][2][3][4] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003872 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944675 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15774793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15774793 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15589274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15589274
  - brewdad 9y ago
    Right. It's this commingling that makes the whole exercise futile. I can check and double check that I am buying from Amazon directly, but if fake goods are mixed in the same bin as real ones it becomes a game of roulette to see what I'll actually receive.

devit 9y ago

I don't get why they don't fix it. It's a huge problem and it's eroding confidence in Amazon. It's not even hard: just require anyone selling on Amazon to wire a large enough deposit before they are allowed to sell (magnitude depending on the price, volume of their items and possibly their assumed trustworthiness); then, if they are found selling counterfeits or otherwise misrepresenting their products or their company, Amazon pockets a third of it, rewards another third to the person reporting it to Amazon and distributes the remaining third to affected shoppers. It seems to me that the gains would far outweigh any possible reduction in the number of legitimate sellers and products.

skgoa 9y ago
They have started to implement a prototype form of this. You can only be labeled as a verified sale, if they have received at least $50 from you in the past. Though that's still not enough to weed out all of the paid reviews written by professional reviewers. And another questionable thing that is starting to happen more and more is that you get something for free from the seller if you leave a review. It's very difficult for Amazon to guard against this, because the offer is made in the parcel you receive.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  > And another questionable thing that is starting to happen more and more is that you get something for free from the seller if you leave a review. This doesn't seem to be that hard to guard against. Amazon could offer a large bounty to report sellers that do this, and since Amazon has direct access to seller funds they could debit their account to pay for the bounty.
  - rayuela 9y ago
    This is actually a great idea and somewhat obvious come to think of it. Having outsized penalties to compensate for the probability of getting caught and deterring others considering partaking in the same type of fraud would be much like what many regulatory bodies have found to be a very effective way of curbing unwanted market behaviour.

pmulv 9y ago

There's a site I use to sift through counterfeit items and fake reviews on Amazon (and other sites I believe). [0] It's made the headache of finding legitimate products on Amazon a lot easier to manage for me.If you actually look at a lot of the fake 5-star products and analyse the reviews, the majority are really obviously fake. They're chock-full-of buzzwords and they almost always come from verified purchasers with absolutely nonsensical names. I agree - it's gotten really difficult to find real things. However, I haven't found it to be very difficult to spot the fakes in the markets current form. You would think Amazon could internally flag the name patterns for review, but I guess that would take moderating human-power. [0] https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/

mgkimsal 9y ago
> but I guess that would take moderating human-power. Maybe they could use mturk? Or maybe give you a button to set up an mturk job on a product to weed out the fake reviews for you, then you could pay only a few cents to get a 'real' review...

lsaferite 9y ago

Every time I see a comment like this I think to myself we must either be using a different Amazon or just buying totally different categories of items. I buy lots of things from Amazon. I probably get a package from them at least twice a week (I hate going to stores). In all that time I've never gotten something that was straight up garbage. So how is it so many vocal people are getting a significantly different experience?

ghaff 9y ago
I have the same experience. I tend to try to buy stuff that Amazon sells directly and I regularly pay a bit more for items that seem to have better reviews or, at least, less reviews that give me pause. And I do buy a fair bit of electronics and so forth. I wonder how many of the people who seem to have such bad experiences buy solely on price even when the price seems too good to be true. Case in point. I just bought a couple of Samsung Qi wireless chargers. There were certainly cheaper ones listed but this one won Wirecutter recommendation so it's what I got. Are there counterfeits? Probably. But they probably aren't packaged like the legit item.
- philjohn 9y ago
  That won't help you, Amazon comingles their "sold by amazon" stock with "fulfilled by amazon" stock.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I don't doubt it happens but I've never had a problem.
  - lsaferite 9y ago
    Do you have proof of that?
outworlder 9y ago
You are just buying different products. I was looking for a Mophie battery case for the iPhone SE. Go there now and look. You’ll find a bunch of cases “by Mophie”, which are all counterfeits, no exceptions. Mophie doesn’t sell on Amazon.

toss1 9y ago

Unpleasant indeed! I'm actively wondering whether it would be possible to build an external ranking-by-review system, since Amazon's <Sort By Best Avg Review> system has been fully gamed, and I use a completely different algorithm. Meanwhile entire categories are completely full of fraudulent junk -- start with LiPo 18650 batteries. One seller was even using Tesla's brand and logo claiming to sell their batteries. It disappeared a few days after I reported them, so Amazon does appear to be doing something, but it's completely inadequate.

majormajor 9y ago

I've had good luck with Amazon personally, but I do avoid entire categories of stuff (anything with an Apple logo, to start with) and largely stick to single-seller things anyway by the nature of what I buy there. If they did start sending me junk I'd return it, and complain loudly. So far I've only had to engage their customer service about a few delivery-related screwups, but they've been extremely helpful for that stuff, so I'm curious what their threshold is for actually addressing stuff like this.

appleiigs 9y ago

> Now I try to buy direct from individual websites like it's 1999. Oddly, Amazon has reversed roles with the brick and mortars for me. Instead of using a physical store as a showroom and then buying online, I use Amazon's user reviews and algorithms* to see what to buy and then I go to a physical store to get it. I buy from the physical store with confidence I have a reasonable product and price and can return/exchange it easily if I'm still not happy with it. * the "Frequently bought together" and "Customers also bought" sections.