Schemes like this and people with lack of morals (admitted in the article), are what makes making online purchases so hard. Either the price has to be ridiculou

Schemes like this and people with lack of morals (admitted in the article), are what makes making online purchases so hard. Either the price has to be ridiculously low so that it doesn't matter if something is total crap (aliexpress comes to mind as a store where you do it) or you have to find some recommendation that you can trust. I usually look at reviews from the Consumer Associations of the Netherlands and Germany (Consumentenbond and Stiftung Warentest), which helps a lot. You usually end up with products of the same type of brands though (Bosch, Siemens, etc). Which isn't bad, but it makes it very hard for smaller brands to have a chance at some market share without resorting to scummy marketing techniques. Reviews on the German Amazon store used to be fairly trustworthy, but this has changed in recent years. As it is, you are better off going to physical stores where you can at least hold the products and see what the build quality is like.