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I'm sure there's a name for this effect, but I am always fascinated by the complaints about fake products on Amazon. I have _never_ received one and I spend sev

I'm sure there's a name for this effect, but I am always fascinated by the complaints about fake products on Amazon. I have _never_ received one and I spend several thousand on Amazon every year. I _know_ it must be happening, I just can't understand if I'm lucky, if it's an effect of my location, or somehow related to the way in which I shop on Amazon.

geerlingguy 7y ago
Many of the major product listings seem to be okay—for example I've ordered a number of the Samsung Evo+ cards I link to in the blog post, and tested each one and never found one that didn't perform as the first I bought—but I have gotten fakes here and there. Almost every time, though, it's because the Amazon official supplier/warehouse was out of stock and I accidentally ordered from one of the secondary suppliers. The problem is, unless you know what to look for in the interface, it's hard to determine if you're buying from Amazon or the manufacturer, or some 3rd party. Even then, there are many reputable 3rd parties. But there are many who are not. The worst cases in my experience are ordering 'Apple OEM' type products. I will not buy a charger or any other Apple accessory on Amazon because more than 50% of the time I've gotten a non-Apple-manufactured product.
- ilikepi 7y ago
  > The problem is, unless you know what to look for in the interface, it's hard to determine if you're buying from Amazon or the manufacturer, or some 3rd party. Also, Amazon sometimes commingles their own stock with that of 3rd-party vendors, so "Ships and Sold by Amazon" doesn't mean what it used to. EDIT: fixed numerous typos >:(
onewhonknocks 7y ago
> I have _never_ received one That you know of.
- blacksmith_tb 7y ago
  My take is that a 'fake' that's actually identical in terms of function is real enough for me (these could be ghost-shift output from the same factories, for example). The horror stories you see about SD cards though are unusable things that pretend to have huge capacity but won't hold data etc. so those are truly fakes.
morio 7y ago
I believe a lot of it can be attributed to shopping behavior. For instance I personally never "Sort by: Price: Low to High"; you are almost guaranteed to end up with a fake product at the top. What's more subtle is that when I watch other people (as part of a group project) order stuff on Amazon they seem to not pick up clues about the quality of the product. They purely focus on title, picture and of course price.

geerlingguy 7y ago

Many of the major product listings seem to be okay—for example I've ordered a number of the Samsung Evo+ cards I link to in the blog post, and tested each one and never found one that didn't perform as the first I bought—but I have gotten fakes here and there. Almost every time, though, it's because the Amazon official supplier/warehouse was out of stock and I accidentally ordered from one of the secondary suppliers. The problem is, unless you know what to look for in the interface, it's hard to determine if you're buying from Amazon or the manufacturer, or some 3rd party. Even then, there are many reputable 3rd parties. But there are many who are not. The worst cases in my experience are ordering 'Apple OEM' type products. I will not buy a charger or any other Apple accessory on Amazon because more than 50% of the time I've gotten a non-Apple-manufactured product.

ilikepi 7y ago
> The problem is, unless you know what to look for in the interface, it's hard to determine if you're buying from Amazon or the manufacturer, or some 3rd party. Also, Amazon sometimes commingles their own stock with that of 3rd-party vendors, so "Ships and Sold by Amazon" doesn't mean what it used to. EDIT: fixed numerous typos >:(

onewhonknocks 7y ago

> I have _never_ received one That you know of.

blacksmith_tb 7y ago
My take is that a 'fake' that's actually identical in terms of function is real enough for me (these could be ghost-shift output from the same factories, for example). The horror stories you see about SD cards though are unusable things that pretend to have huge capacity but won't hold data etc. so those are truly fakes.

morio 7y ago

I believe a lot of it can be attributed to shopping behavior. For instance I personally never "Sort by: Price: Low to High"; you are almost guaranteed to end up with a fake product at the top. What's more subtle is that when I watch other people (as part of a group project) order stuff on Amazon they seem to not pick up clues about the quality of the product. They purely focus on title, picture and of course price.