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I was recently searching for 1TB flash drives. Currently, when I search for "1tb flash drive" on amazon.com, after ads and an Amazon's Choice banner, the top re

I was recently searching for 1TB flash drives. Currently, when I search for "1tb flash drive" on amazon.com, after ads and an Amazon's Choice banner, the top result is a listing for a $20 product: https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Memory-Rotatable-Laptop-Computer/dp/B07NY9WR28/ https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Memory-Rotatable-Laptop-Compute...

mrtksn 7y ago
This was my prime reason to cancel my Amazon Prime. For 20$ of revenue, people are willing to destroy other people's work and memories. In my case, it was a fake Kingston SD Card and luckily used it only for a Rasberry pi. It cost me only a day of figuring out what I am doing wrong but easily it could have cost me my photos from a trip to a remote place. Of course, Amazon would deal with that as if it was 20$(or whatever) issue and everything is supposed to be O.K. when you get a refund.
- RomanBob 7y ago
  You should test your SD cards as you receive them. Many applications that can do that. Even legit SD cards from well known manufacturers are not without defects.
artursapek 7y ago
The seller also has a "Digital Scale" that appears to be a re-purposed product listing page for a USB drive (based on reviews) https://www.amazon.com/Metal-256GB-USB-Flash-Drive/dp/B076BDNTBT?ref_=ast_bbp_dp#customerReviews https://www.amazon.com/Metal-256GB-USB-Flash-Drive/dp/B076BD... Very strange.
- pridkett 7y ago
  This is common. Amazon lets sellers tweak their product pages. What unscrupulous settlers have realized is that you can slowly change one product into another and keep the reviews. This allows them to have fake products with hundreds of verified purchases.
thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
Speaking of ads... Search results now show "Editorial recommendations" products above the search results, but are really just ads. It's getting increasingly difficult to trust anything Amazon shows me as being actually beneficial to me.
wnevets 7y ago
On a related note John Carmack recently ran into this issue https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1215844056091320321 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1215844056091320321
untog 7y ago
> an Amazon's Choice banner For those who don't know: despite having a name that implies curation, Amazon does not choose "Amazon's Choice" at all. It simply indicates which product is most popular, based on reviews that are widely known to be faked. Yet another utterly deceptive dark pattern.
- miohtama 7y ago
  Is it a machine made choice that yields Amazon most profit? :)
- Spooky23 7y ago
  It’s absolutely their choice. The fact that they use awful metrics to make curate shitty choices doesn’t change that.
- vkou 7y ago
  Just because you use a computer algorithm to choose the product that your company recommends does not mean you haven't made a choice.
  - untog 7y ago
    Yes, you’ve made a choice: you chose the algorithm. You didn’t choose the product, though.
    - vkou 7y ago
      Having Bill for <some department> choose a product to endorse is also 'choosing an algorithm to choose a product'. Just because your algorithm is a digitally encoded series of steps, as opposed to a a meat-encoded series of steps, doesn't mean you can wash your hands of the responsibility for its outcomes. If an algorithm told me that the best way for me to optimize my tax bill is to commit tax fraud, I'd be just as liable for it, as if I followed the advice of an accountant to do so. I'm responsible for my outputs, not my inputs.
- zeroego 7y ago
  >based on reviews That's incorrect. "Amazon's Choice" is based on sales. If you search "flash drives" the product that has the Amazon's Choice badge is the product that is bought most often by customers using that search term. It's one of the only organic things on the Amazon platform.
iliketosleep 7y ago
That's amazing. It's clearly a scam and it's been going on for almost 1 year. This really hurts Amazon's credibility and can't be good for them in the long-term. It doesn't seem rational at all.
- GordonS 7y ago
  It seems incredible to get away with selling such a brazenly fake product for so long - as well as the reviews, I would expect that Amazon have had several complaints about this. I don't know if perhaps there is some weird legal shenanigans going on, where Amazon are more able to get away with this in the US? Here in the UK, I've never come across such obvious deceit, or (knowingly!) ended up with a fake/counterfeit, across what must be at least hundreds of purchases, spanning 10+ years.
- pm24601 7y ago
  > This really hurts Amazon's credibility and can't be good for them in the long-term. It doesn't seem rational at all. corrected > This has no effect on Amazon's credibility and can't be good for the country in the long-term. Rationality has no effect on sales.
  - macNchz 7y ago
    It certainly hurt their credibility with me–I cancelled Prime and stopped buying on Amazon a year ago because of this nonsense, after being a subscriber for nearly a decade and having an Amazon rewards credit card since 2008. What’s the point of paying a membership fee for the privilege of sorting through garbage, scams and counterfeits yourself?
dawnerd 7y ago
I report them when I see them. I don't know if anyone at Amazon actually looks at reports but it's something. One thing that I look for to avoid junk like this, if the brand is in ALL CAPS then its almost 100% sourced from Alibaba or similar. Not many reputable brands use all caps like that.
ColanR 7y ago
I don't see what the big deal is. Even a cursory glance at the 3 star rating - not to mention the reviews - makes it clear that it's a product to avoid. Anyone remember that it's Amazon that pioneered the customer reviews that make it possible to identify such fakes?
dboreham 7y ago
Just received a pair of counterfeit North Face ski pants here. Only identified them due to owning an identical but not fake pair bought directly from TNF.

mrtksn 7y ago

This was my prime reason to cancel my Amazon Prime. For 20$ of revenue, people are willing to destroy other people's work and memories. In my case, it was a fake Kingston SD Card and luckily used it only for a Rasberry pi. It cost me only a day of figuring out what I am doing wrong but easily it could have cost me my photos from a trip to a remote place. Of course, Amazon would deal with that as if it was 20$(or whatever) issue and everything is supposed to be O.K. when you get a refund.

RomanBob 7y ago
You should test your SD cards as you receive them. Many applications that can do that. Even legit SD cards from well known manufacturers are not without defects.

artursapek 7y ago

The seller also has a "Digital Scale" that appears to be a re-purposed product listing page for a USB drive (based on reviews) https://www.amazon.com/Metal-256GB-USB-Flash-Drive/dp/B076BDNTBT?ref_=ast_bbp_dp#customerReviews https://www.amazon.com/Metal-256GB-USB-Flash-Drive/dp/B076BD... Very strange.

pridkett 7y ago
This is common. Amazon lets sellers tweak their product pages. What unscrupulous settlers have realized is that you can slowly change one product into another and keep the reviews. This allows them to have fake products with hundreds of verified purchases.

thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago

Speaking of ads... Search results now show "Editorial recommendations" products above the search results, but are really just ads. It's getting increasingly difficult to trust anything Amazon shows me as being actually beneficial to me.

wnevets 7y ago

On a related note John Carmack recently ran into this issue https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1215844056091320321 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1215844056091320321

untog 7y ago

> an Amazon's Choice banner For those who don't know: despite having a name that implies curation, Amazon does not choose "Amazon's Choice" at all. It simply indicates which product is most popular, based on reviews that are widely known to be faked. Yet another utterly deceptive dark pattern.

miohtama 7y ago
Is it a machine made choice that yields Amazon most profit? :)
Spooky23 7y ago
It’s absolutely their choice. The fact that they use awful metrics to make curate shitty choices doesn’t change that.
vkou 7y ago
Just because you use a computer algorithm to choose the product that your company recommends does not mean you haven't made a choice.
- untog 7y ago
  Yes, you’ve made a choice: you chose the algorithm. You didn’t choose the product, though.
  - vkou 7y ago
    Having Bill for <some department> choose a product to endorse is also 'choosing an algorithm to choose a product'. Just because your algorithm is a digitally encoded series of steps, as opposed to a a meat-encoded series of steps, doesn't mean you can wash your hands of the responsibility for its outcomes. If an algorithm told me that the best way for me to optimize my tax bill is to commit tax fraud, I'd be just as liable for it, as if I followed the advice of an accountant to do so. I'm responsible for my outputs, not my inputs.
zeroego 7y ago
>based on reviews That's incorrect. "Amazon's Choice" is based on sales. If you search "flash drives" the product that has the Amazon's Choice badge is the product that is bought most often by customers using that search term. It's one of the only organic things on the Amazon platform.

iliketosleep 7y ago

That's amazing. It's clearly a scam and it's been going on for almost 1 year. This really hurts Amazon's credibility and can't be good for them in the long-term. It doesn't seem rational at all.

GordonS 7y ago
It seems incredible to get away with selling such a brazenly fake product for so long - as well as the reviews, I would expect that Amazon have had several complaints about this. I don't know if perhaps there is some weird legal shenanigans going on, where Amazon are more able to get away with this in the US? Here in the UK, I've never come across such obvious deceit, or (knowingly!) ended up with a fake/counterfeit, across what must be at least hundreds of purchases, spanning 10+ years.
pm24601 7y ago
> This really hurts Amazon's credibility and can't be good for them in the long-term. It doesn't seem rational at all. corrected > This has no effect on Amazon's credibility and can't be good for the country in the long-term. Rationality has no effect on sales.
- macNchz 7y ago
  It certainly hurt their credibility with me–I cancelled Prime and stopped buying on Amazon a year ago because of this nonsense, after being a subscriber for nearly a decade and having an Amazon rewards credit card since 2008. What’s the point of paying a membership fee for the privilege of sorting through garbage, scams and counterfeits yourself?

dawnerd 7y ago

I report them when I see them. I don't know if anyone at Amazon actually looks at reports but it's something. One thing that I look for to avoid junk like this, if the brand is in ALL CAPS then its almost 100% sourced from Alibaba or similar. Not many reputable brands use all caps like that.

ColanR 7y ago

I don't see what the big deal is. Even a cursory glance at the 3 star rating - not to mention the reviews - makes it clear that it's a product to avoid. Anyone remember that it's Amazon that pioneered the customer reviews that make it possible to identify such fakes?

dboreham 7y ago

Just received a pair of counterfeit North Face ski pants here. Only identified them due to owning an identical but not fake pair bought directly from TNF.