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Amazon is swamped with products from China of dubious quality. Just search for 'earphones' for example. All top results are very poor products from unknown bran

Amazon is swamped with products from China of dubious quality. Just search for 'earphones' for example. All top results are very poor products from unknown brands. Amazon needs to handle this now unless they want to turn into Aliexpress.

yurishimo 8y ago
I understand what you're getting at, but do people actually buy those items with the understanding that they are getting something of a higher quality? If you pay $2 for headphones and all the ones in the store cost $10+, it's hard to argue that you thought the quality was going to be higher. I know we're in the tech bubble so most of us probably do research before buying anything online, that's why I ask.
- simias 8y ago
  Yeah those don't bother me too much, you pretty much know ahead of time when you buy super cheap crappy products. Counterfeits are the real problem, and to an only slightly lesser extent fake reviews.
- dspillett 8y ago
  > it's hard to argue that you thought the quality was going to be higher. Oh, but argue people will! Some people have a fairly un-nuanced view and assume that instead of the cheaper option being a cheap knockoff the more expensive ones are attempting to rip them off (because if one company can offer X for Y, anyone asking more is creaming extra profit). And some pretend to be that naive when it comes to refund/replacement/negative-review-designed-to-encourage-an-out-of-warranty-replacement/refund time.
stef25 8y ago
The article mentions they're setting up their own brands in order to get a better grip on product quality. I'm quite sure Bezos does not want to be Aliexpress.
- baybal2 8y ago
  >I'm quite sure Bezos does not want to be Aliexpress. I'm sure he really wants to! Otherwise why would he sent his people to China to beg major Taobao/Aliexpress operators to get on the Amazon train?
  - wooptoo 8y ago
    I'm sure Amazon margins are more substantial on these Chinese products than on well established brands.
- snaky 8y ago
  Yes, Aliexpress does not have its own private labels.
gutnor 8y ago
Dubious quality is one thing, but dubious legality is the stuff that worries me the most. I ordered some food processing gadget, but it does not come with any kind of EU certification (i.e. not stamped or anything) and it is shipped direct from China in a box that says "gift". The same product on Alibaba have different seller and some claim they are selling the "food-safe" one and not others. The brand from China are all mysterious from a foreign buyer point of view, so I cannot even buy from a brand and trust that the brand is serious about its reputation. Anyway, on Alibaba/express, there are often several brand claiming the same product despite using the same picture than another. That's a mess, and indeed if I bother buying from Amazon (instead of Aliexpress), I hope the stuff coming to be at least legal. I can understand some amount of counterfeiting, not the current level though.
- stef25 8y ago
  > it does not come with any kind of EU certification They're already one step ahead and have just copied the CE Marking logo as well https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-chinese-export-logo/ https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-ch...
  - baybal2 8y ago
    When you ship a rebranded OEM product, you don't have to recertify it if the original white box product was. It is ironic how all kinds of certifications, originally conceived as a mean to kneecap Chinese/Asian exporters, now play into their hand. Now, it is Western companies that don't want to develop a thing on their own, or make any original products as such, as that will require them to undergo certification for every self-developed, original product. Unlike with white box designs that were specifically designed for OEM industry, and allow for all kinds of effortless customisation without losing certification, and reaping the benefit of economies of scale (one OEM design being sold to many customers under a single certificate).
- John_KZ 8y ago
  On a somewhat related note, I recently bought a chocolate from a local discount store (in the EU). Apparently the list of ingredients is a machine-translation of the original (unknown) language. It listed "palm-oil" as an ingredient. Sounds reasonable, but my language has different words for Palm, the tree and Palm, the palm of your hand. Apparently my chocolate was made from oil extracted from human hands. Pretty disgusting. If I had the required time or energy I'd try to file some sort of complain, but unfortunately I don't. Mostly because that's outright dangerous (imagine a potentially lethal allergen lost in machine translation).
chmod775 8y ago
Hmm. The top results for me are: Gritin - China - 12 Euro ~ 5 stars / 310 reviews "Amazon Choice" KLIM - China - 20 Euro ~ 5 stars / 864 reviews Panasonic - Japan - 8 Euro ~ 4 stars / 1.335 reviews Beats by Dr. Dre - USA - 22 Euro ~ 3 stars / 172 reviews qubbi - USA - 10 Euro ~ 4 stars / 48 reviews Anker - China - 20 Euro ~ 4 stars / 1176 reviews Mpow - China - 20 Euro ~ 5 stars / 463 reviews ALL of these companies manufacture most of their products in China. Anecdotally chinese companies appear to outperform foreign companies on quality among the popular choices - if review scores are anything to go by.
- ljf 8y ago
  Key line there: if review scores are anything to go by
- have_faith 8y ago
  They certainly outperform on gathering high review scores...
- AJ007 8y ago
  Do you have an adblocker running? I did the same search, I got one result from Panasonic. The rest were nonsense brands I've never heard of: omnigates, mpow, gloue, arrela, otium, actionpie, byz, etc..
  - chmod775 8y ago
    I do have an adblocker, but results probably differ between amazon.de, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, etc... Mine are the results I got on Amazon Germany.
- WisNorCan 8y ago
  I use Mpow headphones from Amazon. They work really well for running. I have tried many different brands and settled on these for price/quality ratio. The price also means I don’t need to worry about losing them which is a great “feature”.
- 8y ago
prolikewh0a 8y ago
Chinese IEM's & earphones are actually starting to compete with the big guys in USA and some simple research can yield wonderful results. TRN, KZ, LZ, Tin Audio, are all wonderful. Head-Fi forums are all the rage about them.
- snaky 8y ago
  And the price is often vary drastically. > At Newegg they go from $355 up to $446 but on Taobao and AliExpress they can be found as low as $130 https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/msur-n650.21366/reviews#review-17268 https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/msur-n650.21366/reviews#rev...
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    I'm talking more like $45. Can be found on Amazon too for a little more. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-KZ-AS10-5BA-HiFi-Stereo-In-Ear-Earphone-High-Resolution-Earbuds-With-0-75mm-2/32910756887.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-KZ-AS10-5BA-HiFi-St...
emodendroket 8y ago
I don't necessarily mind buying cheap goods from unknown brands. With something like earphones, I'm not optimistic they'll last that long before breaking or my wife losing them or something in the first place.
- badpun 8y ago
  With earphones, if they get too loud for even a split second, they could damage your hearing or give you permanent tinnitus. I wouldn't put stuff of unknown provenience or quality into any of my body's orifices, ears included.
pulse7 8y ago
How true is this... and there are products with false ETL and other certificates and Amazon is not removing them from the marketplace... in the last 2 months I've started looking on Amazon like a bit better Aliexpress - at least for electronics...
robmaister 8y ago
I spent far too long looking for a second USB charging block for my phone. The first page is full of < $5 chargers, none of them from a brand I'd heard of before, with mostly 5 star reviews from bots and a few 1 star reviews of "this caught fire and almost burned my house down" You'd think to see an Anker product on the first page given their reputation for reliable electronics and (at least in my circles) popularity.
- wingworks 8y ago
  I wouldn't trust Anker too much either, I got an Anker 3-Port USB-C to USB-A hub + ethernet jack (because like you, I heard they made good stuff) and it blacked my wifi whenever I tried it use it. Maybe I got a counterfeit one, IDK, it was sold by "AnkerDirect" (the hub looked to be made pretty cheaply too). Either way, I returned it and got a charjen hub.
wingworks 8y ago
I wish there was a filter to remove all the crap private-label items. If only

yurishimo 8y ago

I understand what you're getting at, but do people actually buy those items with the understanding that they are getting something of a higher quality? If you pay $2 for headphones and all the ones in the store cost $10+, it's hard to argue that you thought the quality was going to be higher. I know we're in the tech bubble so most of us probably do research before buying anything online, that's why I ask.

simias 8y ago
Yeah those don't bother me too much, you pretty much know ahead of time when you buy super cheap crappy products. Counterfeits are the real problem, and to an only slightly lesser extent fake reviews.
dspillett 8y ago
> it's hard to argue that you thought the quality was going to be higher. Oh, but argue people will! Some people have a fairly un-nuanced view and assume that instead of the cheaper option being a cheap knockoff the more expensive ones are attempting to rip them off (because if one company can offer X for Y, anyone asking more is creaming extra profit). And some pretend to be that naive when it comes to refund/replacement/negative-review-designed-to-encourage-an-out-of-warranty-replacement/refund time.

stef25 8y ago

The article mentions they're setting up their own brands in order to get a better grip on product quality. I'm quite sure Bezos does not want to be Aliexpress.

baybal2 8y ago
>I'm quite sure Bezos does not want to be Aliexpress. I'm sure he really wants to! Otherwise why would he sent his people to China to beg major Taobao/Aliexpress operators to get on the Amazon train?
- wooptoo 8y ago
  I'm sure Amazon margins are more substantial on these Chinese products than on well established brands.
snaky 8y ago
Yes, Aliexpress does not have its own private labels.

gutnor 8y ago

Dubious quality is one thing, but dubious legality is the stuff that worries me the most. I ordered some food processing gadget, but it does not come with any kind of EU certification (i.e. not stamped or anything) and it is shipped direct from China in a box that says "gift". The same product on Alibaba have different seller and some claim they are selling the "food-safe" one and not others. The brand from China are all mysterious from a foreign buyer point of view, so I cannot even buy from a brand and trust that the brand is serious about its reputation. Anyway, on Alibaba/express, there are often several brand claiming the same product despite using the same picture than another. That's a mess, and indeed if I bother buying from Amazon (instead of Aliexpress), I hope the stuff coming to be at least legal. I can understand some amount of counterfeiting, not the current level though.

stef25 8y ago
> it does not come with any kind of EU certification They're already one step ahead and have just copied the CE Marking logo as well https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-chinese-export-logo/ https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-and-the-ch...
- baybal2 8y ago
  When you ship a rebranded OEM product, you don't have to recertify it if the original white box product was. It is ironic how all kinds of certifications, originally conceived as a mean to kneecap Chinese/Asian exporters, now play into their hand. Now, it is Western companies that don't want to develop a thing on their own, or make any original products as such, as that will require them to undergo certification for every self-developed, original product. Unlike with white box designs that were specifically designed for OEM industry, and allow for all kinds of effortless customisation without losing certification, and reaping the benefit of economies of scale (one OEM design being sold to many customers under a single certificate).
John_KZ 8y ago
On a somewhat related note, I recently bought a chocolate from a local discount store (in the EU). Apparently the list of ingredients is a machine-translation of the original (unknown) language. It listed "palm-oil" as an ingredient. Sounds reasonable, but my language has different words for Palm, the tree and Palm, the palm of your hand. Apparently my chocolate was made from oil extracted from human hands. Pretty disgusting. If I had the required time or energy I'd try to file some sort of complain, but unfortunately I don't. Mostly because that's outright dangerous (imagine a potentially lethal allergen lost in machine translation).

chmod775 8y ago

Hmm. The top results for me are: Gritin - China - 12 Euro ~ 5 stars / 310 reviews "Amazon Choice" KLIM - China - 20 Euro ~ 5 stars / 864 reviews Panasonic - Japan - 8 Euro ~ 4 stars / 1.335 reviews Beats by Dr. Dre - USA - 22 Euro ~ 3 stars / 172 reviews qubbi - USA - 10 Euro ~ 4 stars / 48 reviews Anker - China - 20 Euro ~ 4 stars / 1176 reviews Mpow - China - 20 Euro ~ 5 stars / 463 reviews ALL of these companies manufacture most of their products in China. Anecdotally chinese companies appear to outperform foreign companies on quality among the popular choices - if review scores are anything to go by.

ljf 8y ago
Key line there: if review scores are anything to go by
have_faith 8y ago
They certainly outperform on gathering high review scores...
AJ007 8y ago
Do you have an adblocker running? I did the same search, I got one result from Panasonic. The rest were nonsense brands I've never heard of: omnigates, mpow, gloue, arrela, otium, actionpie, byz, etc..
- chmod775 8y ago
  I do have an adblocker, but results probably differ between amazon.de, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, etc... Mine are the results I got on Amazon Germany.
WisNorCan 8y ago
I use Mpow headphones from Amazon. They work really well for running. I have tried many different brands and settled on these for price/quality ratio. The price also means I don’t need to worry about losing them which is a great “feature”.
8y ago

prolikewh0a 8y ago

Chinese IEM's & earphones are actually starting to compete with the big guys in USA and some simple research can yield wonderful results. TRN, KZ, LZ, Tin Audio, are all wonderful. Head-Fi forums are all the rage about them.

snaky 8y ago
And the price is often vary drastically. > At Newegg they go from $355 up to $446 but on Taobao and AliExpress they can be found as low as $130 https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/msur-n650.21366/reviews#review-17268 https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/msur-n650.21366/reviews#rev...
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  I'm talking more like $45. Can be found on Amazon too for a little more. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-KZ-AS10-5BA-HiFi-Stereo-In-Ear-Earphone-High-Resolution-Earbuds-With-0-75mm-2/32910756887.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-KZ-AS10-5BA-HiFi-St...

emodendroket 8y ago

I don't necessarily mind buying cheap goods from unknown brands. With something like earphones, I'm not optimistic they'll last that long before breaking or my wife losing them or something in the first place.

badpun 8y ago
With earphones, if they get too loud for even a split second, they could damage your hearing or give you permanent tinnitus. I wouldn't put stuff of unknown provenience or quality into any of my body's orifices, ears included.

pulse7 8y ago

How true is this... and there are products with false ETL and other certificates and Amazon is not removing them from the marketplace... in the last 2 months I've started looking on Amazon like a bit better Aliexpress - at least for electronics...

robmaister 8y ago

I spent far too long looking for a second USB charging block for my phone. The first page is full of < $5 chargers, none of them from a brand I'd heard of before, with mostly 5 star reviews from bots and a few 1 star reviews of "this caught fire and almost burned my house down" You'd think to see an Anker product on the first page given their reputation for reliable electronics and (at least in my circles) popularity.

wingworks 8y ago
I wouldn't trust Anker too much either, I got an Anker 3-Port USB-C to USB-A hub + ethernet jack (because like you, I heard they made good stuff) and it blacked my wifi whenever I tried it use it. Maybe I got a counterfeit one, IDK, it was sold by "AnkerDirect" (the hub looked to be made pretty cheaply too). Either way, I returned it and got a charjen hub.

wingworks 8y ago

I wish there was a filter to remove all the crap private-label items. If only