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I'm starting to be on the same boat, though not necessarily for the same reasons. Amazon Basics is still pretty strong... it's when you get to third party stuff

I'm starting to be on the same boat, though not necessarily for the same reasons. Amazon Basics is still pretty strong... it's when you get to third party stuff that it becomes a real minefield. The amount of third party sellers re-using listings for multiple products to pad their reviews is honestly astonishing. Searching for a lightning to 3.5mm jack leads to this as the #2 result: https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Charging-Headphone-Splitter-Compatible/dp/B07QSQ2PFR https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Charging-Headphone-Splitter-... Not only does this not work (as discovered by my SO), but all of the reviews for it are for phone cases, utility knives, etc. In the past month or two, this has been happening WAY too often. It's gotten to the point, like you've said, where AliExpress has become more reliable. That seems insane to me.

Deimorz 7y ago
That's apparently called "brushing". It was mentioned in this article a couple of weeks ago that talks about some of the methods that are being used to manipulate the listings lately: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-marketplace-sellers-black-hat-scams-search-rankings https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-m... It links to this article from last year that seems to go into more detail about that particular method too: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-review-reuse-fraud https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...
ChickeNES 7y ago
eBay has a similar issue where sellers list, in the same listing, a high price item (eg a 3D printer) along with a low price item (a roll of filament). So then when you search for a certain keyword and search by price you'll see those listings gaming the system first
- paulmd 7y ago
  I have started using minimum prices on my queries to filter this out. List an item for $1-499, you're no longer in my results. (I would really just like a way to filter out multiple-product listings entirely. The only valid use-case is like, multiple colors or something. 99% of the time they're used to game search results and the prices are almost never good enough to be worth manually sorting through 200 identical listings vs just filtering them out entirely. But at least minimum price queries filter out one way they are abused.) Also, filter to US sellers only. Usually if you buy from China then the savings aren't that huge, you'll be waiting a month to get your item, and if the item ends up not working then it's impossible to return it. On some items you are going to be getting the same junk anyway, but from a bulk importer shipping from the US, but other items with definite name-brands it does cut out a lot of the junk listings.

Deimorz 7y ago

That's apparently called "brushing". It was mentioned in this article a couple of weeks ago that talks about some of the methods that are being used to manipulate the listings lately: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-marketplace-sellers-black-hat-scams-search-rankings https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-m... It links to this article from last year that seems to go into more detail about that particular method too: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-review-reuse-fraud https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...

ChickeNES 7y ago

eBay has a similar issue where sellers list, in the same listing, a high price item (eg a 3D printer) along with a low price item (a roll of filament). So then when you search for a certain keyword and search by price you'll see those listings gaming the system first

paulmd 7y ago
I have started using minimum prices on my queries to filter this out. List an item for $1-499, you're no longer in my results. (I would really just like a way to filter out multiple-product listings entirely. The only valid use-case is like, multiple colors or something. 99% of the time they're used to game search results and the prices are almost never good enough to be worth manually sorting through 200 identical listings vs just filtering them out entirely. But at least minimum price queries filter out one way they are abused.) Also, filter to US sellers only. Usually if you buy from China then the savings aren't that huge, you'll be waiting a month to get your item, and if the item ends up not working then it's impossible to return it. On some items you are going to be getting the same junk anyway, but from a bulk importer shipping from the US, but other items with definite name-brands it does cut out a lot of the junk listings.