13 ms·
Amazon offered ‘Amazon’s Choice’ to vendors who bought ads and lowered prices
- java-man 7y agoto put it simply: do not buy from 'amazon choice' vendors. read the reviews instead.
- jrockway 7y agoI am not sure I would trust reviews either. Everything is some sort of hustle. Companies pay for reviews. Reviewers often have no idea how to use the product. All you can really do is be ready to throw what you get in the trash if you don't like it.
- Gys 7y agoOr stop buying from Amazon ;-)
- manigandham 7y agoFor many smaller items, I prefer the ease and convenience over price differences or occasional bad products. I know I'm not alone in this and it shows how much experience matters in purchasing.
- cortesoft 7y agoYou think other retailers don't have the same issues?
- joering2 7y agoNo they do not. For example, every single memory card I got from amazon was fake, even if I explicitly selected "Amazon" as seller. Meanwhile every single card I ordered from Newegg was original and high speed.
- cortesoft 7y agoWeird... I have ordered a dozen or so memory cards from Amazon and have never received a fake one.
- maccard 7y agoHow many memory cards did you order that you can measure both? I know Amazon has a problem with counterfeits, but it's a bit hyperbolic to say all Amazon bad, all Newegg good. Anecdotally all the controllers I've bought from Game in the UK have been sold as "new" but actually open box and used, whereas every one I've bought from Amazon has been legit.
- martin8412 7y agoIs that a problem specific to the US? I have ordered a few memory cards from Amazon by now in Europe, and I've never had issues with them. I don't think I have ever received a fake item from Amazon. Not where I've noticed it anyway.
- makoz 7y agoDisclaimer: Work at Amazon Not sure? I built a new PC recently and didn't run into any problems with counterfeits when I got everything from there
- nytesky 7y agoHow do you identity a memory card as fake? Did it function?
- joering2 7y agoYou use CrystalDiskMark to benchmark it. Visual inspection as well. Most real cards are made in China, knockoffs are made in Malaysia but its not always the case. Counterfeit will be 1/3rd of the speed of regular one and most likely much shorter shelf life since its pretty much old generation chips used. I build custom video setups as hobby so I say overall probably I got over 150 cards from Amazon (at least half were fake) and some 100 from Newegg so far (last 3 years) and haven't had a single fake from Newegg. [mostly I use Sandisk and Lennar cards]
- dalfonso 7y agoI agree. Take everything with a grain of salt. In addition, I use Fakespot. It gives products a letter grade based on how "fake" their reviews are. Not perfect, but another data point.
- jedberg 7y agoThe vendors are starting to combat fakespot by messaging "A" accounts and offering to give them off platform refunds for good reviews. It works because even when they message someone like me, I haven't figured out how to report it to Amazon. They don't seem to have a "report future fraud" feature.
- mulmen 7y agoPlease don't just throw things in the trash if you do not like them. Return and buy back options are available. Additionally even if you do not like something it may still be worthwhile to donate. If all else fails at least try to recycle before throwing it in the trash.
- fmajid 7y agoReturned items are passed to an ecosystem of specialized companies. In most cases, the small minority of good stuff is resold and the chaff goes to landfill.
- feedbeef 7y agoBefore returns enter that ecosystem they may be stolen en route, placed back in an Amazon FC, resold on Amazon as new, returned by customer, stolen en route, placed back in an Amazon FC, resold on Amazon as new... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20601200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20601200
- OJFord 7y ago> All you can really do is be ready to throw what you get in the trash if you don't like it. Are you kidding? I buy from Amazon specifically because returns and refunds are so easy.
- maccard 7y agoYep. Most of the time for smaller items the seller doesn't even want me to send the item back. It's _almost_ no risk.
- fmajid 7y agoNot all third-party merchants have the same return policy.
- OJFord 7y agoAt least in the UK, if you contact them and they don't resolve it, contact Amazon and you'll get a refund (and presumably they charge it back to the seller) under its 'A-Z Guarantee'. That said, I've never bought higher value items from third parties via Amazon, so that may be a different experience. But I basically treat non-fulfilled by Amazon as eBay in terms of trust/expectations.
- pkaye 7y agoWhat reason do you put for the return? Because usually they end up charging a return shipping fee unless I drive to their hub.
- HeavenBanned 7y agoCaveat emptor: if you process too many returns, Amazon will outright ban you from shopping there ever again. I know this might be anecdote, but it is true.
- OJFord 7y agoI'll hope and assume it's as a percentage of sales. To be clear, I'm not 'taking advantage' like buying something I need to use once and then returning it out whatever - I just appreciate that if the item arrives broken, or not as described/fit for purpose that I can return it with minimal hassle.
- sixothree 7y agoI've bought products where I wonder if I am in some alternate reality. They are just so demonstrably awful and did not perform their basic function to the point of being borderline false description.
- lukevp 7y agoThe free multimeter from Harbor Freight is like that. One of the leads snapped off internally the first time I used it. I opened it up and it was held against pressure using a plastic weld which had failed immediately.
- nradov 7y agoHarbor Freight is for single-use tools. I think everyone knows that by now.
- rahimnathwani 7y agoThis is not a new phenomenon. About 25 years ago, I bought an airbed and a pump from Argos (UK), a popular bricks and mortar retailer. They had two pumps that worked with that airbed, and I bought the cheaper of the two. But it just didn't work, because of something about the way the tube joined the body of the pump. It didn't look like a manufacturing variation, but a design flaw. I returned the pump and paid more for the more expensive one, which worked fine.
- monktastic1 7y agoI've been using reviewmeta.com to help with this. They even have a Chrome extension. I'm sure it's not perfect, but hopefully it helps.
- java-man 7y agoThat is true, of course. However, the reviews offer a valuable, though noisy, signal: one star reviews uncover design issues with a product. A lack of one star reviews (like 100% five star reviews seen in some products) point to obvious manipulation and should also serve as a red flag. I should have said: read the reviews and use your head (d'oh!)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- DHPersonal 7y agoMy suggestion would be to reconsider local shops—even if they’re chains—as they’ve gotten much better at stocking good items these days. (Obviously this can’t apply for everything) Many stores have drive-up pickup and ship-to-store options, and have even gotten better about stocking good products on their shelves. I have started to consider stores as “immediate delivery” over the two-ish day delivery of Amazon, and it has really helped me leave the Amazon machine. I never really needed all the impulse purchases from Amazon, and more standard purchases are far more convenient than any subscription or Dash purchase could ever be. And if the item is a dollar or two more? Oh, well; if I could upgrade my two-day shipping to “get it in 20 minutes” shipping for $2 more, then I’d probably do it. You might have a different experience or a wider range of purchase history than me, but unsubscribing from Amazon Prime and driving to the store was a great choice for my shopping needs.
- esotericn 7y agoIsn't this obvious? I mean I'm pretty cynical, but the first time I ever saw "amazon's choice" I figured oh - they have a higher profit margin on this or something - it's obviously not (necessarily) the best thing for me.
- dontbenebby 7y agoI can just picture Jeff Bezos dictating a reply to a customer: "We said it was Amazon's choice, not the editor's choice. But here's a 5 dollar credit - we value your feedback at Amazon."
- adtac 7y ago>we value your feedback at Amazon And its exact value is $5!
- TheCowboy 7y agoThere are plenty of times people think their guess is the obvious truth, but it falls apart when examined. Gathering and presenting evidence to better examine our own assumptions about a situation should be a positive act.
- wpietri 7y agoIs it obvious? People could just as well think it's something like Trader Joe's, where the first hurdle for selection is quality. One of the big problems with e-commerce is trust, and I could easily see some bright spark at Amazon saying, "What if we did extensive testing, found the best-value item in each category, and gave it our blessing? We could reduce decision fatigue, increase revenue, and strengthen our customer bond." We see Wirecutter out there making good money on doing exactly that, so it's not crazy to think Amazon would just do that themselves.
- lonelappde 7y agoQuality is the first hurdle for Amazon's Choice. Trader Joe's does the exact same thing. They promote and sell stuff that makes them money. They offer don't even let alternate brands into the store! Wirecutter sometimes recommends (on commission!) products in categories they specifically recommend against buying, like SFF PCs!
- leggomylibro 7y agoThese days, I see Amazon as a combination of eBay and AliExpress with faster shipping and prices that are ~$2-3 higher. I still use it a lot, because I'm almost always happy with what I get with those expectations. But it surprises me when people talk about it like some sort of heavily-curated marketplace. Even so, it sounds like they haven't done what the title describes for a couple of years. FTA: "An agency source said that while this bidding program ran briefly in 2017, Amazon rolled it back and Amazon’s Choice badges are now driven by Amazon’s algorithms."
- sixothree 7y agoThe need to have the return policy and customer service they have because some of the stuff they sell is just not high quality.
- nutjob2 7y agoThis is arguably true for any store, it's just that Amazon mostly has done it better. Every single store on earth will disappoint you at one time or another.
- rdtwo 7y agoI buy Chinese products that are failure prone from them for this reason. Sure I could get it $10-15 cheaper from China if I wait 3 weeks and forgo the return option but I end up returning that junk so often that it’s worth paying 15% more
- londons_explore 7y agoI have a fairly good eye for products that will fail right out of the box, so I prefer not to pay extra for a returns policy.
- rdtwo 7y agoThere is typically an inverted failure curve on these things, if it doesn’t fail the first 30 days of hard use then there is a good chance it will last another couple years.
- all_blue_chucks 7y agoThis seems a bit like the online equivalent of stories auctioning off display space at high-visibility positions in their stores.
- dehrmann 7y agoWhat's odd is there isn't any outcry over stores doing that, and they don't even label promoted placement. At least Amazon labels product ads. That said, the opacity of Amazon's Choice is still concerning.
- ryan_j_naughton 7y agoWhile it is absolutely valid to discuss Amazon's market power and the nature of monopoly in the modern era, the ideas that a featured product would be featured because it makes the company more money is in no way scandalous! If any retail store has an end-cap product placement of an item that they are featuring, everyone presumes it is because it is a profit maximizer for them. Why is it presumed that Amazon must be a more impartial arbiter of quality versus traditional brick and mortar retail? In part it is because Amazon is a marketplace, but both are middlemen (except for private label products from your grocery store or Walmart/target).
- filmgirlcw 7y agoI would say the difference here is that you can’t see ratings/reviews from other buyers on an end-cap the same way you do online. So the phrase “Amazon’s Choice” suggests that there is a level of editorial oversight that might not exist if the phrase was “featured by Amazon.” Overall, I agree that this isn’t a huge surprise, but I think the fact that Amazon has data on things like returns, ratings, reviews, makes it totally understandable why someone would assume a “choice” product was chosen because of those factors and not because the company paid to be featured.
- CobrastanJorji 7y ago"Amazon's Choice" certainly suggests editorial oversight, but only in the way that "Quality Inn" suggests quality. For anything that isn't an objective, measurable fact, companies are allowed to lie.
- GavinMcG 7y agoThe difference is that Quality Inn represents itself as "quality". Amazon is advertising other products as being chosen by them. We know not to trust a company's claims about its product, but if you ask an employee about a product you expect an honest answer – not one based on a kickback, for example.
- 7y ago
- spraak 7y agoUnrelated, but lately I'm frustrated that so many household items I want to buy are mostly available only in some kind of bulk pack. No, I don't want 6 bottles of dish soap if I don't yet know I like it. And it seems sometimes the bulk pack is even cheaper than a single item, like how a round-trip can be cheaper than a one-way. Also weird are the paid shipping options for me, even with Prime - most often if I chose to pay more for shipping it would schedule the package to arrive later than sooner, vs the free shipping being the fastest option. I don't know why I'm even presented with that choice.
- notatoad 7y ago>To be considered, Amazon required brands to be able to keep products in stock for a 12-month duration, keep customer review ratings above four stars, and maintain certain technical specifications for their respective subcategories. i don't see anything wrong with this. Essentially, if multiple products in a category are all good enough to be recommended, amazon was selling the featured slot instead of picking one of the contenders randomly. They weren't selling the featured slot to undeserving products.
- lonelappde 7y agoDo you want the best product for the price, or an OK product with someone else getting an extra cut?
- ajross 7y ago"Someone else" (Amazon) was always getting an extra cut. That's exactly the value proposition of a retailer. I mean, there's some complexity here that you don't see with physical retail due to the affiliate relationship, but the principle doesn't change. The whole point to going to a store for an item is that you know they'll stock it in an easily accessible form and quantity that you would have a hard time sourcing from an original manufacturer. And we've always been willing to pay for that service with a markup.
- Dylan16807 7y ago> The whole point to going to a store for an item is that you know they'll stock it in an easily accessible form and quantity that you would have a hard time sourcing from an original manufacturer. And we've always been willing to pay for that service with a markup. That's the expected cut. It's not extra at all. The extra cut here is giving someone else a kickback and you get exactly zero value for those extra dollars.
- notatoad 7y agoI want the best product for the price, but i wouldn't trust amazon to make that choice for me. "Amazon's choice" is always going to be about what's best for amazon. that can either be some opaque criteria that the sellers can try to game, or amazon can just be honest about it and sell that spot instead of giving it to whatever seller cheats the best. I trust that the "amazon's choice" listing for any search is good enough, and not defective or fraudulent. beyond that i'm either going to do my own research if it's something i really care about, or i'm going to buy amazon's choice if i decide that i don't really care and i value not having to think about it.
- duxup 7y ago-My bad-
- cheeze 7y ago[Citation needed] Nowhere in that article is Amazon's choice mentioned. Amazon has always taken a pretty libertarian stance on selling books. It's been a dilemma for the company since inception. What is and isn't okay to sell. I agree there should be some moderation, but I don't see anything wrong with the article you posted.
- duxup 7y agoYou're correct, my mistake. I misread that article while reading about a different story about Amazon's Choice.