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It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because yo

It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. Recently there are more and more Chinese products flooding Amazon (Germany) with products that have hundreds of well-written positive reviews. I have to assume that most of them are fake because there's no way that some niche product can have more reviews than let's say a PS4 or Nintendo Switch, which is sold millions of times. Really a shame that Amazon does not seem to care much about this, maybe a chance for the smaller shops to take back some lost business though. I find that I buy more in smaller e-commerce shops, because I find they're much less affected by the review fraud and often ship things just as fast as Amazon.

reaperducer 7y ago
Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy I do the same. I wish I didn't, but I don't know what the practical alternative is. I guess it's the whole reason that brands were created in the first place. I do source some of my stuff from smaller brands and shops, whenever I can. But that's not always an option. When it comes to software, I'm not entirely satisfied with Apple's "walled garden." But for hardware, I know that if I get something at the Apple Store, or from apple.com, I generally don't have to worry. It's because of this that I wish Apple† would go back into some of the product lines it has abandoned. Wifi routers. Servers. Printers and scanners. Even AA batteries and blank DVD's (I still have some of both). I'm at the point where I'll pay extra for confidence in the product. † Or some other tech company that cares about its brand.
- snazz 7y ago
  It’s confidence-inspiring that Apple hasn’t stopped software updates for AirPort routers (I have a 5th gen). There’s even an unofficial Python script that enables SSH, giving you root access to the NetBSD system underneath. So even when Apple finally does abandon it, it might still be possible to customize the Unix underpinnings.
  - citiguy 7y ago
    Oh, that’s neat. What is this script called? How do you run it?
    - gregsadetsky 7y ago
      I just found https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools and https://jcs.org/2018/06/12/airport_ssh https://jcs.org/2018/06/12/airport_ssh -- fascinating!
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      Duck found this, but I haven't tried it yet: "To enable SSH on an AirPort base station you just need to set the dbug property to 0x3000, like this: python -m acp -t {ipv4-address} -p {password} --setprop dbug 0x3000 python -m acp -t {ipv4-address} -p {password} --reboot Then connect to the device with the username root and whatever password you use to manage the device." https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools/issues/1 https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools/issues/1
      - citiguy 7y ago
        Nice. Thanks!
      - snazz 7y ago
        Yup. That’s what I did.
- asiachick 7y ago
  Apple's machines are great. Apple's accessories not so much (see reviews on Apple's site). The 3rd party products Apple carries in their stores and on their site can be downright trash. I once made the false assumption that being sold by Apple was a kind of stamp of approval but I've since realized it's just which ever sales person managed to negotiate to get in the store. As a very concrete example, Apple used to carry Morphie battery cases which at the time were not actually Apple certified (lightning connector certification) as compatible with iPhone and yet other 3rd parties cases were but were not in the store. Also Belkin (not a fan)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  > ... I generally don't have to worry. Emphasis on generally. Apple still sells many (most?) of its iMacs with spinning rust drives. Just picking up something from Apple Store and paying tons for it does not guarantee it meets minimum quality standards one might expect.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    At least you know what you're getting. I don't understand why Apple still sells those devices but I'm not going to be surprised by what I receive.
  - mikorym 7y ago
    What do you mean by that? That the quality is not good or that the stock is old?
    - peatmoss 7y ago
      Classic hard-drives with platters that physically spin rather than a solid state SSD hard-drive. Nothing necessarily wrong with the older HDD technology, though most people have come to expect the better performance characteristics that come with newer SSD technology.
- undersuit 7y ago
  > It's because of this that I wish Apple† would go back into some of the product lines it has abandoned. Related: I try to buy Amazon Basics for a lot of items.
  - danieldk 7y ago
    I bought an Amazon Basics USB hub. First I was generally happy, but after some time it would regularly just stop working for several hours. It's not that I was drawing too much power, typically just a security key or USB flash drive (and the hub had an external adapter).
  - iainmerrick 7y ago
    Isn’t Amazon Basics just paid product placement?
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      No.
    - Kliment 7y ago
      That's "Amazon's Choice", which is a label you pay for that gets plopped on random bullshit. Amazon Basics is a brand that Amazon itself has had people design and manufacture for them. Not the same thing at all.
      - iainmerrick 7y ago
        Aha, thanks! You’re right, I was getting those confused.
- orijing 7y ago
  I don't have the same experience with Apple. My MacBook had to get replaced multiple times due to a bad graphics card. My subsequent one had to get replaced multiple times because of the butterfly keyboards breaking. So far so good on the latest one but it's annoying to deal with so many replacements
  - bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
    Right, it's really "generally works, and if it doesn't, and not too much time has elapsed since purchase or it's a widespread issue, you'll get the issue fixed relatively quickly, as many times as needed, until the issue is fixed or they give up and replace the device".
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Not profitable enough, Cook and co’s primary goal.
pdonis 7y ago
> Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy It's interesting that you say this, since Amazon itself is a brand--but not the kind of brand you're looking for. You are looking for reliable quality, and Amazon's brand is quick and cheap.
andrewfromx 7y ago
i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are a human, that there is no way to win this war.
- Zombieball 7y ago
  I thought fake reviews were typically from humans? Bot protection / human verification seems like the wrong front to be tackling.
  - andrewfromx 7y ago
    yeah, real humans blast past captcha and enter real heart warming text about how great the product is but don't mention they are being paid to write this review and pretend the product is good. Let's tackle the real issue and like connect wires from the human to the computer and like lie detector style measure their blood pressure, heart rate, sweat, or...
  - luckylion 7y ago
    From my experience in Germany, it's 50/50. There are fake human reviews (Vine Club being a large part of it...), but there are also clearly auto-translated reviews (though they might be posted by humans). It's mostly on low-price items that are FBA'd or shipped directly from China.
- jahnu 7y ago
  Only allow reviews from verified purchasers
  - milesskorpen 7y ago
    Doesn’t stop fake reviews.
pjc50 7y ago
One of the important lessons of the internet is that unless there's very deliberate suppression, noise will drown out signal if there's the slightest incentive to spam. Anything that can be faked will be faked in bulk.
- post_below 7y ago
  Well put. It's definitely a signal vs noise type issue, all other aspects of the problem are secondary. They can make a dent in the problem short term with more manual review but as the spammers evolve better automation, if all Amazon has in the race are humans, they'll keep losing. As more and more of these types of stories come out, over the course of years now, I keep expecting to hear about a big push from Amazon to clear out the noise. And it keeps failing to happen. The knee jerk interpretation is that Amazon doesn't care about fake products because they still get paid. But, historically at least, Amazon is smarter than that. Part of their dominance comes from understanding that, long term, there is more profit in happy customers even if it that means accepting otherwise avoidable costs. I wonder if this is the result of a changing culture or of it's an indication they've become too large and inefficient to respond to problems and iterate at modern tech company speed.
- m_fayer 7y ago
  It's in the nature of the technology. If you can figure out how to do it once, doing it 1000x or 1000000x isn't going to cost you that much more. Quantity is easy, quality is hard. So we've created a selection force for "business" models that benefit from the nearly free ability to scale in quantity while ignoring quality. Ie, all sorts of spamming. One of the reasons ML worries me is because it can sprinkle just enough of something that vaguely resembles quality into the pot to take the quantity (spam) scaling to a whole new level.
leoh 7y ago
> It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Totally agree. I think a lot of people feel this way, which is why it's so lucrative for Amazon and sellers to cheat on reviews.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
int_19h 7y ago
Chinese manufacturers themselves seem to follow this model. When they sell cheap junk, you see those one-shot noname brands. But once some market niche is flooded at the bottom, and the only way to get more of that market is to expand into higher-quality offerings, you start seeing established brands that care about their reputation, to the point where they sometimes outdo Western brands. One example that I know through my hobby is Holosun - not only they compete directly, and quite successfully, against Western market leaders on features and quality, but, in US at least, they have live support based in the country - not the usual call center somewhere in India.
agumonkey 7y ago
The web feels like a huge fine grained stress test to reassess all the reasons why most of the world was the way it was.
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  We had to steamroller all of Chesterton's fences to figure out which ones we'd miss.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence thanks for the reference as it's often seen in many places of society and culture
    - alharith 7y ago
      Wow. First time reading this as well, and there is such wisdom in it. It is doubly apt considering what is going on in the political realm currently as well. Not a lot of understanding or willingness to fix things within the constraints of a system, just promises to tear it all down and replace it with utopian versions.
Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
> I find that I buy more in smaller e-commerce shops, because I find they're much less affected by the review fraud I've had to start doing this with violin strings. The sort of strings I like are pretty damn expensive (~$120 list price), so originally, any chance I could get to save say 10% I would take. But I heard way too much about fakes being shipped from Amazon 3rd party sellers, so I've started just buying everything from Shar (which, it turns out, provides steep discounts fairly regularly; you just have to wait for them).
jay_kyburz 7y ago
I think Amazon should employ a hundreds of everyday people to review products full time. When you list a product on Amazon, you have to pay 10-20 of those Amazon Employees to review the product at arms length. Say each reviewer is given 2 hours for each product, before you can list a product on Amazon you have to pay $2 x 20 x hourly rate. These should be the only reviews. Or you can sell your product with no reviews.
- eugeniub 7y ago
  This would work for maybe 5% of products. This is no way to review the durability of a product, or review how it performs for specific tasks, e.g. swimming shampoo, internal computer component, sleeping mask, etc.
  - jay_kyburz 7y ago
    I think even a lay person would be able to make some good observations about any product. Then across hundreds of employees you could start to build specialized teams. But also, you don't want people to be too close to a range of products so they can be somewhat objective. For example is swimming shampoo a real thing? or is it just normal shampoo that costs more? Here is Australia there is a range of over the counter pain killers, all the same brand, all with the same active ingredients, but marketed at different kinds of pain, and at different price points. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36167011 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36167011
    - thecatspaw 7y ago
      And yet, there is a point to marketing pain killers for different pains: placebo
      - ProZsolt 7y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwD7RveNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwD7RveNE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn
hrktb 7y ago
I think we are going in the expected direction, but we’re not at the end yet. About brands, we’ve seen the rise of comparison sites and review videos that allows unknown products to raise to the top. I’d say that’s pretty in line with your expectations towards user reviews. We just have more experienced, less influencable/buyable reviewers (in general). For instance the top vacuum cleaner on wirecutter doesn’t need to be a Dyson to get recognized. The main issue here is really Amazon messing with the supply chain and injecting fakes where they could be guaranteeing genuine products instead. In a sense, looking at a wirecutter like site and buying directly from the maker is the best of both worlds.
- sk5t 7y ago
  After reading about the Wirecutter's attempts to extract a commission from a maker of standing desks[0] and observing their general high churn in product picks, it seems hard to argue that WC isn't buyable. [0] https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to-play-model https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - exhilaration 7y ago
    I was curious if this had been discussed on hacker news, and found that it has: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719
harimau777 7y ago
I wish Amazon would just let you select which countries you wanted to include/exclude (both for made in and sold by). It wouldn't be perfect, but it would at least allow me to filter out fly by night Chinese manufacturers.
sokoloff 7y ago
I’ve bought a few things that offered an Amazon gift card after a 5-star review. In some cases, the product was genuinely good and while I’d not have bothered to write a review, the gift card is enough to get me to write the review. I’m not going to write a good review for a crap product, but I bet plenty of people do.
EE84M3i 7y ago
> platforms like Amazon You can't use the word "platform" at Amazon, nor the word "marketplace", it's in violation of the mandatory legal training for FTEs.
- juliansimioni 7y ago
  Interesting. What words do they suggest instead?
baybal2 7y ago
> Really a shame that Amazon does not seem to care much about this No, no, no! They do care, and a lot! Amazon has been busy catching up to, and undercutting Alibaba on China-US direction for the last 5 years. Amazon has managers whose full time job is to poach vendors from Alibaba. I'm getting spammed by their salespeople non-stop
- Paperweight 7y ago
  Both eBay and Amazon have abandoned their own core business models and are trying to become second-rate clones of Alibaba. The snag is that they aren't headquartered in mainland China.
mbesto 7y ago
> Really a shame that Amazon does not seem to care much about this, maybe a chance for the smaller shops to take back some lost business though. I find that I buy more in smaller e-commerce shops, because I find they're much less affected by the review fraud and often ship things just as fast as Amazon. And this will effectively be Amazon's undoing. Given how much central power and authority they control over global retail, this is a good thing. Competition is good for the consumer.
Dylan16807 7y ago
This issue isn't reviews vs. brands. The biggest problem with Amazon is that the reviews and brands are disconnected from the actual supplier. Who knows what you'll get?
onetimemanytime 7y ago
>>Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, Amazon used to be that brand for me, I trusted that I'd get a real product vetted by real reviewers and by Amazon. Adios
mc3 7y ago
Maybe this is what will save bricks and mortar? Guess where I buy any product I am going to ingest, put on my skin or plug into a wall? A real store with some special online exceptions, but those exceptions are never going to be Amazon or Ebay. There are some shady real stores selling shit too of course, so I have to be choosy, but I'm feeling pretty safe at a national supermarket chain, or Kmart.
- jxramos 7y ago
  I really believe these shady operations are ripe for satire and jabs in advertising. Much in the spirit of this one, just with teeth: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5c_Br-mO7Po https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5c_Br-mO7Po
  - mc3 7y ago
    And also there are docos on netflix about the fake products problem, and they do scare you away from using certain large online marketplaces. So if I were the big retailers and cosmetic manufacturers (etc.). I'd be banding together to help fund more docos like that on netflix and elsewhere. That'll scare people over to physical retail without mucking the image of any specific brands. Another advantage of physical is the great advice you get and being able to act straight away (tale the thing home.). For example for a DIY project you often realise you don't have something mid job, just go and get it, get some advice on how to install it, and finish the job off on the same day.
myopenid 7y ago
You're right user reviews on Amazon are manipulated. Bought a bluetooth earphone on Amazon DE, was contacted by vendor to exchange a five star for a half refund. Also came across Facebook ads that asks you to buy random crap and leave positive review in exchange for a full refund, and they call this "free samplimg".
- jedberg 7y ago
  > was contacted by vendor to exchange a five star for a half refund And the way you can tell Amazon doesn't care is because they have no way to report this to them. I've tried. They just don't care if someone offers you something off platform in exchange for a good review. Maybe that's why Amazon beat eBay. When I worked at eBay 17 years ago we had systems in place to combat this exact type of fraud (off platform exchange for a good review).
LetThereBeNick 7y ago
I’ve been happy with the “ReviewMeta” chrome extension, which evaluates the product reviews on any amazon site, and displays a score indicating how likely it is the ratings have been manipulated. It shows examples of flagged reviews which can be pretty funny. Chrome lets you limit extension permissions by domain, so I don’t worry about it snooping on the rest of my browsing. But you’re right about brands. When it comes to certain products like phone chargers, the manipulation is so rampant I stick with the same supplier.
- humaniania 7y ago
  Reminder to always be very cautious about installing Chrome extensions. Especially ones being touted by new accounts.
  - LetThereBeNick 7y ago
    The only time it can see my browsing it when I’m on a .amazon.com/ domain
  - SuperGent 7y ago
    Very wise words,but in this case you can just go to the website (https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/)
andrepd 7y ago
But what do brands matter if the issue is counterfeits/knockoffs?
InternetOfStuff 7y ago
> Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. The other day I came across something interesting: two comments, for two different but related products (dynamos). One comment was in German, the other in Italian, but they both had the same non-sequitur in them. Apparently scammers reuse comments across products (not surprising) and languages (more surprising).
sfifs 7y ago
> because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews Well one of the things big brands - especially in the consumer products industry like the one I work in - do quite religiously is product testing during research and a lot of q/a during manufacturing to eliminate as far as possible risk of safety issues. We sometimes take competitive products through the same tests and while what some of the small producers sometimes produce wouldn't be illegal, we'd never run with those standards. Bigger competitors tend to be largely fine.
BiteCode_dev 7y ago
Unfortunate, brand loyalty doesn't mean anything anymore: - a lot of companies don't manufacture the product themself - they don't even manufacture two products from the same subcontractor - sometime, the same product, between two batches, is not produce by the same sub-contractor - big players just don't care. Cisco is not going to lose business because you chose to not buy, and most people won't follow you to allow the boycott to have enough wait - PR firms are so powerful now they can make any brand great again. See Microsoft. I guaranty there will be people that will want to answer this comment stating how they really are a good firm now. And cite great things they do. Yet I bet in 10 years, we will learn about some other horrible things they did. Again. It's been like that for decades. PR works extremely well now, people genuinely live the feeling they've been lead to by those amazing consent manufacturer. - a brand is dead ? Don't worry, it will be renamed into another one. Or subcontract for another one. You will buy its product again, you will just don't know you do.
- pitkali 7y ago
  > - a lot of companies don't manufacture the product themself But the brand is responsible for the quality as perceived by the customer. They retain any good brand image by properly managing supply/subcontractor chain with quality control. For the end user expiernce, it is not important who manufactures what but what assurances about the quality are made.
- moksly 7y ago
  I think brand matters more than ever. It’s anecdotal, but let me give you a few examples of how my purchasing habits have become, and I assume that I used to buy things pretty much like everyone else. Pants, one of my co-workers recommended a brand of pants from a Danish store called shaping new tomorrow, they have two real stores and their own internet business. They are the only pants I buy now, because they fit my needs. I used to buy pants at various places, but these guys really hit the nail on what I need, and as such their brand is immensely important to my pants buying. Blood Bowl, I play it and I buy 3rd party miniatures. In the blood bowl community there is a lot of talk on who build the best 3rd party miniatures. I prefer willys miniatures and Greebo Games myself, and typically only buy their stuff. Again these are small mom and pop companies with their own little web shops that have become successful through their brands being associated with high quality. T-shirts, I used to be a shirt guy. But a couple of years ago I started wearing t-shirts with prints. These are perhaps the best example because you can buy from so many places. And I did, I’ve bought t-shirts from about twenty different shops, but these days I mainly buy from qwertee because their fit suits my body best. Again their brand and the product I associate with it is important. I used to buy things of amazon, and stores like it here in Denmark. But because it’s almost impossible, or at least takes a lot of time to associate sellers and quality on those platforms I almost never use them now. This was all anecdotal, but if I’m not alone in this, then brand matters quite a bit these days.
zweep 7y ago
This was one of the early theories about how Facebook would monetize -- that your real-life friends would value their relationship with you too highly to recommend anything but truly great products to you. That hit the reality that people would squander most of their friends for their stupid MLM scheme.
professorTuring 7y ago
That is exactly what I feel. More and more I find Amazon to be closer and closer to a Chinese Bazar of cheap quality items (kind of an AliExpress or dx but with a different perceived quality). I believe they will gain a lot of customers among people who just want cheap stuff (or don't care if it is original as long as the brand is clearly visible and is cheaper) but definitely they will lose customers that use Amazon for convenience (more or less the same price, better refund policies, availability of products...) It's a pity. Hopefully others will fill that space. In Spain, El Corte Inglés with its new on-line platform is getting closer and closer.
Nasrudith 7y ago
Personally I would phrase it more cynically - the brand is fundamentally a lie even in a magical no counterfeiting world. It had a purpose once as an "index" once but it hasn't been that way for a while. Essentially all a Brand says is that they got money for it. It how it was made or that they won't decide to cut corners for their next quarterly earnings no matter how many years it was good. In practice given how often the "counterfeits" are made in the same factory by the same workers with materials from the same supplier the money going there is no guarantee of either product quality or righteousness. Trying to use brand for delegating quality control is doomed to failure in the real world. I suspect the better approach towards product identification would be going by verifiable specifications like manufacturers and doing both shopping and any enforcement based upon that. It would be hard as hell to transition society towards that as a norm though with marketer saturation, time investment, and every manufacturer having a financial incentive to try to decommoditize themselves to improve yields and protect themselves from competition.
sn4pp 7y ago
Just got scammed on one of those smaller sites, f it, I'll buy on amazon so I atleast get anything shipped to me.
habanany 7y ago
It’s probable PS4 and Nitendo users are too busy playing so they have no time to write a review I’m just saying.
EmpirePhoenix 7y ago
Also funny, my result of this is that I now order basically everything directly via aliexpress. If all i get is chinese crap anyway, I can at least get it cheaper. Then I noticed that aliexpress actually made some pretty good page design choices. Since you can see how long a seller is registered and how many they have sold (both directly on the product information site), it is pretty easy to find a at lest decent trader there
- microtherion 7y ago
  > I now order basically everything directly via aliexpress I would argue that in some ways, AliExpress is better than Amazon. Vendors seem really responsive, even for tiny purchases, and they are eager to avoid negative reviews.
inoop 7y ago
> Really a shame that Amazon does not seem to care much about this Amazon cares, but Chinese sellers are paying Amazon customers to write fake reviews for them. There's an article about it here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon-purchases-are-real-the-reviews-are-fake https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon... This practice basically makes it impossible to tell fake reviews from real ones.
Aweorih 7y ago
I saw a documentation a while ago on yt where a German family bought a smartphone over Amazon, which was from China (not sure anymore if they knew at that moment). It exploded then some time later while charging.. they said that Amazon also did not much care and it took a while until it was removed. I can also say that the company where I work at, had already multiple times problems with Amazon. True they are maybe a bit of a different kind but I think that dollars is the most important thing for them. Even if you have to fk with customers or third party sellers in one or the other way. That's also why I only buy at Amazon if it's really necessary and it's from a big company, like Nintendo or so. There's also now the law in Germany (or soon) which prohibits the destroying of brand new stuff just because it did not sell. That happened mainly (I'd say) because of Amazon where it went public that 2 trucks left a single warehouse on average per day, filled with only that kind of products
perjes 7y ago
I’d recommend using https://reviewmeta.com https://reviewmeta.com. It filters out suspicious reviewers and makes it much easier to avoid products with bought reviews on Amazon. Wouldn’t make purchases there without it.
spy888 7y ago
I had the same issue with not being able to tell what is from a 3rd party or Amazon. I assume that sold and shipped Amazon has a greater chance of being real. For example, my wife was looking to buy some masks (I know, give into the fear) but I refused to buy from 3rd parties since I have a low level of trust. So I built an app to help me and friends quickly tell if from a 3rd party or Amazon. Welcome to try and let me know how it can be better. https://www.trueseller.co https://www.trueseller.co

reaperducer 7y ago

Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy I do the same. I wish I didn't, but I don't know what the practical alternative is. I guess it's the whole reason that brands were created in the first place. I do source some of my stuff from smaller brands and shops, whenever I can. But that's not always an option. When it comes to software, I'm not entirely satisfied with Apple's "walled garden." But for hardware, I know that if I get something at the Apple Store, or from apple.com, I generally don't have to worry. It's because of this that I wish Apple† would go back into some of the product lines it has abandoned. Wifi routers. Servers. Printers and scanners. Even AA batteries and blank DVD's (I still have some of both). I'm at the point where I'll pay extra for confidence in the product. † Or some other tech company that cares about its brand.

snazz 7y ago
It’s confidence-inspiring that Apple hasn’t stopped software updates for AirPort routers (I have a 5th gen). There’s even an unofficial Python script that enables SSH, giving you root access to the NetBSD system underneath. So even when Apple finally does abandon it, it might still be possible to customize the Unix underpinnings.
- citiguy 7y ago
  Oh, that’s neat. What is this script called? How do you run it?
  - gregsadetsky 7y ago
    I just found https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools and https://jcs.org/2018/06/12/airport_ssh https://jcs.org/2018/06/12/airport_ssh -- fascinating!
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    Duck found this, but I haven't tried it yet: "To enable SSH on an AirPort base station you just need to set the dbug property to 0x3000, like this: python -m acp -t {ipv4-address} -p {password} --setprop dbug 0x3000 python -m acp -t {ipv4-address} -p {password} --reboot Then connect to the device with the username root and whatever password you use to manage the device." https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools/issues/1 https://github.com/x56/airpyrt-tools/issues/1
    - citiguy 7y ago
      Nice. Thanks!
    - snazz 7y ago
      Yup. That’s what I did.
asiachick 7y ago
Apple's machines are great. Apple's accessories not so much (see reviews on Apple's site). The 3rd party products Apple carries in their stores and on their site can be downright trash. I once made the false assumption that being sold by Apple was a kind of stamp of approval but I've since realized it's just which ever sales person managed to negotiate to get in the store. As a very concrete example, Apple used to carry Morphie battery cases which at the time were not actually Apple certified (lightning connector certification) as compatible with iPhone and yet other 3rd parties cases were but were not in the store. Also Belkin (not a fan)
deleted 7y ago
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smnrchrds 7y ago
> ... I generally don't have to worry. Emphasis on generally. Apple still sells many (most?) of its iMacs with spinning rust drives. Just picking up something from Apple Store and paying tons for it does not guarantee it meets minimum quality standards one might expect.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  At least you know what you're getting. I don't understand why Apple still sells those devices but I'm not going to be surprised by what I receive.
- mikorym 7y ago
  What do you mean by that? That the quality is not good or that the stock is old?
  - peatmoss 7y ago
    Classic hard-drives with platters that physically spin rather than a solid state SSD hard-drive. Nothing necessarily wrong with the older HDD technology, though most people have come to expect the better performance characteristics that come with newer SSD technology.
undersuit 7y ago
> It's because of this that I wish Apple† would go back into some of the product lines it has abandoned. Related: I try to buy Amazon Basics for a lot of items.
- danieldk 7y ago
  I bought an Amazon Basics USB hub. First I was generally happy, but after some time it would regularly just stop working for several hours. It's not that I was drawing too much power, typically just a security key or USB flash drive (and the hub had an external adapter).
- iainmerrick 7y ago
  Isn’t Amazon Basics just paid product placement?
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    No.
  - Kliment 7y ago
    That's "Amazon's Choice", which is a label you pay for that gets plopped on random bullshit. Amazon Basics is a brand that Amazon itself has had people design and manufacture for them. Not the same thing at all.
    - iainmerrick 7y ago
      Aha, thanks! You’re right, I was getting those confused.
orijing 7y ago
I don't have the same experience with Apple. My MacBook had to get replaced multiple times due to a bad graphics card. My subsequent one had to get replaced multiple times because of the butterfly keyboards breaking. So far so good on the latest one but it's annoying to deal with so many replacements
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  Right, it's really "generally works, and if it doesn't, and not too much time has elapsed since purchase or it's a widespread issue, you'll get the issue fixed relatively quickly, as many times as needed, until the issue is fixed or they give up and replace the device".
mixmastamyk 7y ago
Not profitable enough, Cook and co’s primary goal.

pdonis 7y ago

> Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy It's interesting that you say this, since Amazon itself is a brand--but not the kind of brand you're looking for. You are looking for reliable quality, and Amazon's brand is quick and cheap.

andrewfromx 7y ago

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are a human, that there is no way to win this war.

Zombieball 7y ago
I thought fake reviews were typically from humans? Bot protection / human verification seems like the wrong front to be tackling.
- andrewfromx 7y ago
  yeah, real humans blast past captcha and enter real heart warming text about how great the product is but don't mention they are being paid to write this review and pretend the product is good. Let's tackle the real issue and like connect wires from the human to the computer and like lie detector style measure their blood pressure, heart rate, sweat, or...
- luckylion 7y ago
  From my experience in Germany, it's 50/50. There are fake human reviews (Vine Club being a large part of it...), but there are also clearly auto-translated reviews (though they might be posted by humans). It's mostly on low-price items that are FBA'd or shipped directly from China.
jahnu 7y ago
Only allow reviews from verified purchasers
- milesskorpen 7y ago
  Doesn’t stop fake reviews.

pjc50 7y ago

One of the important lessons of the internet is that unless there's very deliberate suppression, noise will drown out signal if there's the slightest incentive to spam. Anything that can be faked will be faked in bulk.

post_below 7y ago
Well put. It's definitely a signal vs noise type issue, all other aspects of the problem are secondary. They can make a dent in the problem short term with more manual review but as the spammers evolve better automation, if all Amazon has in the race are humans, they'll keep losing. As more and more of these types of stories come out, over the course of years now, I keep expecting to hear about a big push from Amazon to clear out the noise. And it keeps failing to happen. The knee jerk interpretation is that Amazon doesn't care about fake products because they still get paid. But, historically at least, Amazon is smarter than that. Part of their dominance comes from understanding that, long term, there is more profit in happy customers even if it that means accepting otherwise avoidable costs. I wonder if this is the result of a changing culture or of it's an indication they've become too large and inefficient to respond to problems and iterate at modern tech company speed.
m_fayer 7y ago
It's in the nature of the technology. If you can figure out how to do it once, doing it 1000x or 1000000x isn't going to cost you that much more. Quantity is easy, quality is hard. So we've created a selection force for "business" models that benefit from the nearly free ability to scale in quantity while ignoring quality. Ie, all sorts of spamming. One of the reasons ML worries me is because it can sprinkle just enough of something that vaguely resembles quality into the pot to take the quantity (spam) scaling to a whole new level.

leoh 7y ago

> It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Totally agree. I think a lot of people feel this way, which is why it's so lucrative for Amazon and sellers to cheat on reviews.

deleted 7y ago
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int_19h 7y ago

Chinese manufacturers themselves seem to follow this model. When they sell cheap junk, you see those one-shot noname brands. But once some market niche is flooded at the bottom, and the only way to get more of that market is to expand into higher-quality offerings, you start seeing established brands that care about their reputation, to the point where they sometimes outdo Western brands. One example that I know through my hobby is Holosun - not only they compete directly, and quite successfully, against Western market leaders on features and quality, but, in US at least, they have live support based in the country - not the usual call center somewhere in India.

agumonkey 7y ago

The web feels like a huge fine grained stress test to reassess all the reasons why most of the world was the way it was.

erik_seaberg 7y ago
We had to steamroller all of Chesterton's fences to figure out which ones we'd miss.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence thanks for the reference as it's often seen in many places of society and culture
  - alharith 7y ago
    Wow. First time reading this as well, and there is such wisdom in it. It is doubly apt considering what is going on in the political realm currently as well. Not a lot of understanding or willingness to fix things within the constraints of a system, just promises to tear it all down and replace it with utopian versions.

Gene_Parmesan 7y ago

> I find that I buy more in smaller e-commerce shops, because I find they're much less affected by the review fraud I've had to start doing this with violin strings. The sort of strings I like are pretty damn expensive (~$120 list price), so originally, any chance I could get to save say 10% I would take. But I heard way too much about fakes being shipped from Amazon 3rd party sellers, so I've started just buying everything from Shar (which, it turns out, provides steep discounts fairly regularly; you just have to wait for them).

jay_kyburz 7y ago

I think Amazon should employ a hundreds of everyday people to review products full time. When you list a product on Amazon, you have to pay 10-20 of those Amazon Employees to review the product at arms length. Say each reviewer is given 2 hours for each product, before you can list a product on Amazon you have to pay $2 x 20 x hourly rate. These should be the only reviews. Or you can sell your product with no reviews.

eugeniub 7y ago
This would work for maybe 5% of products. This is no way to review the durability of a product, or review how it performs for specific tasks, e.g. swimming shampoo, internal computer component, sleeping mask, etc.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  I think even a lay person would be able to make some good observations about any product. Then across hundreds of employees you could start to build specialized teams. But also, you don't want people to be too close to a range of products so they can be somewhat objective. For example is swimming shampoo a real thing? or is it just normal shampoo that costs more? Here is Australia there is a range of over the counter pain killers, all the same brand, all with the same active ingredients, but marketed at different kinds of pain, and at different price points. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36167011 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36167011
  - thecatspaw 7y ago
    And yet, there is a point to marketing pain killers for different pains: placebo
    - ProZsolt 7y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwD7RveNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwD7RveNE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn

hrktb 7y ago

I think we are going in the expected direction, but we’re not at the end yet. About brands, we’ve seen the rise of comparison sites and review videos that allows unknown products to raise to the top. I’d say that’s pretty in line with your expectations towards user reviews. We just have more experienced, less influencable/buyable reviewers (in general). For instance the top vacuum cleaner on wirecutter doesn’t need to be a Dyson to get recognized. The main issue here is really Amazon messing with the supply chain and injecting fakes where they could be guaranteeing genuine products instead. In a sense, looking at a wirecutter like site and buying directly from the maker is the best of both worlds.

sk5t 7y ago
After reading about the Wirecutter's attempts to extract a commission from a maker of standing desks[0] and observing their general high churn in product picks, it seems hard to argue that WC isn't buyable. [0] https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to-play-model https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- exhilaration 7y ago
  I was curious if this had been discussed on hacker news, and found that it has: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719

harimau777 7y ago

I wish Amazon would just let you select which countries you wanted to include/exclude (both for made in and sold by). It wouldn't be perfect, but it would at least allow me to filter out fly by night Chinese manufacturers.

sokoloff 7y ago

I’ve bought a few things that offered an Amazon gift card after a 5-star review. In some cases, the product was genuinely good and while I’d not have bothered to write a review, the gift card is enough to get me to write the review. I’m not going to write a good review for a crap product, but I bet plenty of people do.

EE84M3i 7y ago

> platforms like Amazon You can't use the word "platform" at Amazon, nor the word "marketplace", it's in violation of the mandatory legal training for FTEs.

juliansimioni 7y ago
Interesting. What words do they suggest instead?

baybal2 7y ago

> Really a shame that Amazon does not seem to care much about this No, no, no! They do care, and a lot! Amazon has been busy catching up to, and undercutting Alibaba on China-US direction for the last 5 years. Amazon has managers whose full time job is to poach vendors from Alibaba. I'm getting spammed by their salespeople non-stop

Paperweight 7y ago
Both eBay and Amazon have abandoned their own core business models and are trying to become second-rate clones of Alibaba. The snag is that they aren't headquartered in mainland China.

mbesto 7y ago

> Really a shame that Amazon does not seem to care much about this, maybe a chance for the smaller shops to take back some lost business though. I find that I buy more in smaller e-commerce shops, because I find they're much less affected by the review fraud and often ship things just as fast as Amazon. And this will effectively be Amazon's undoing. Given how much central power and authority they control over global retail, this is a good thing. Competition is good for the consumer.

Dylan16807 7y ago

This issue isn't reviews vs. brands. The biggest problem with Amazon is that the reviews and brands are disconnected from the actual supplier. Who knows what you'll get?

onetimemanytime 7y ago

>>Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, Amazon used to be that brand for me, I trusted that I'd get a real product vetted by real reviewers and by Amazon. Adios

mc3 7y ago

Maybe this is what will save bricks and mortar? Guess where I buy any product I am going to ingest, put on my skin or plug into a wall? A real store with some special online exceptions, but those exceptions are never going to be Amazon or Ebay. There are some shady real stores selling shit too of course, so I have to be choosy, but I'm feeling pretty safe at a national supermarket chain, or Kmart.

jxramos 7y ago
I really believe these shady operations are ripe for satire and jabs in advertising. Much in the spirit of this one, just with teeth: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5c_Br-mO7Po https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5c_Br-mO7Po
- mc3 7y ago
  And also there are docos on netflix about the fake products problem, and they do scare you away from using certain large online marketplaces. So if I were the big retailers and cosmetic manufacturers (etc.). I'd be banding together to help fund more docos like that on netflix and elsewhere. That'll scare people over to physical retail without mucking the image of any specific brands. Another advantage of physical is the great advice you get and being able to act straight away (tale the thing home.). For example for a DIY project you often realise you don't have something mid job, just go and get it, get some advice on how to install it, and finish the job off on the same day.

myopenid 7y ago

You're right user reviews on Amazon are manipulated. Bought a bluetooth earphone on Amazon DE, was contacted by vendor to exchange a five star for a half refund. Also came across Facebook ads that asks you to buy random crap and leave positive review in exchange for a full refund, and they call this "free samplimg".

jedberg 7y ago
> was contacted by vendor to exchange a five star for a half refund And the way you can tell Amazon doesn't care is because they have no way to report this to them. I've tried. They just don't care if someone offers you something off platform in exchange for a good review. Maybe that's why Amazon beat eBay. When I worked at eBay 17 years ago we had systems in place to combat this exact type of fraud (off platform exchange for a good review).

LetThereBeNick 7y ago

I’ve been happy with the “ReviewMeta” chrome extension, which evaluates the product reviews on any amazon site, and displays a score indicating how likely it is the ratings have been manipulated. It shows examples of flagged reviews which can be pretty funny. Chrome lets you limit extension permissions by domain, so I don’t worry about it snooping on the rest of my browsing. But you’re right about brands. When it comes to certain products like phone chargers, the manipulation is so rampant I stick with the same supplier.

humaniania 7y ago
Reminder to always be very cautious about installing Chrome extensions. Especially ones being touted by new accounts.
- LetThereBeNick 7y ago
  The only time it can see my browsing it when I’m on a .amazon.com/ domain
- SuperGent 7y ago
  Very wise words,but in this case you can just go to the website (https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/)

andrepd 7y ago

But what do brands matter if the issue is counterfeits/knockoffs?

InternetOfStuff 7y ago

> Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. The other day I came across something interesting: two comments, for two different but related products (dynamos). One comment was in German, the other in Italian, but they both had the same non-sequitur in them. Apparently scammers reuse comments across products (not surprising) and languages (more surprising).

sfifs 7y ago

> because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews Well one of the things big brands - especially in the consumer products industry like the one I work in - do quite religiously is product testing during research and a lot of q/a during manufacturing to eliminate as far as possible risk of safety issues. We sometimes take competitive products through the same tests and while what some of the small producers sometimes produce wouldn't be illegal, we'd never run with those standards. Bigger competitors tend to be largely fine.

BiteCode_dev 7y ago

Unfortunate, brand loyalty doesn't mean anything anymore: - a lot of companies don't manufacture the product themself - they don't even manufacture two products from the same subcontractor - sometime, the same product, between two batches, is not produce by the same sub-contractor - big players just don't care. Cisco is not going to lose business because you chose to not buy, and most people won't follow you to allow the boycott to have enough wait - PR firms are so powerful now they can make any brand great again. See Microsoft. I guaranty there will be people that will want to answer this comment stating how they really are a good firm now. And cite great things they do. Yet I bet in 10 years, we will learn about some other horrible things they did. Again. It's been like that for decades. PR works extremely well now, people genuinely live the feeling they've been lead to by those amazing consent manufacturer. - a brand is dead ? Don't worry, it will be renamed into another one. Or subcontract for another one. You will buy its product again, you will just don't know you do.

pitkali 7y ago
> - a lot of companies don't manufacture the product themself But the brand is responsible for the quality as perceived by the customer. They retain any good brand image by properly managing supply/subcontractor chain with quality control. For the end user expiernce, it is not important who manufactures what but what assurances about the quality are made.
moksly 7y ago
I think brand matters more than ever. It’s anecdotal, but let me give you a few examples of how my purchasing habits have become, and I assume that I used to buy things pretty much like everyone else. Pants, one of my co-workers recommended a brand of pants from a Danish store called shaping new tomorrow, they have two real stores and their own internet business. They are the only pants I buy now, because they fit my needs. I used to buy pants at various places, but these guys really hit the nail on what I need, and as such their brand is immensely important to my pants buying. Blood Bowl, I play it and I buy 3rd party miniatures. In the blood bowl community there is a lot of talk on who build the best 3rd party miniatures. I prefer willys miniatures and Greebo Games myself, and typically only buy their stuff. Again these are small mom and pop companies with their own little web shops that have become successful through their brands being associated with high quality. T-shirts, I used to be a shirt guy. But a couple of years ago I started wearing t-shirts with prints. These are perhaps the best example because you can buy from so many places. And I did, I’ve bought t-shirts from about twenty different shops, but these days I mainly buy from qwertee because their fit suits my body best. Again their brand and the product I associate with it is important. I used to buy things of amazon, and stores like it here in Denmark. But because it’s almost impossible, or at least takes a lot of time to associate sellers and quality on those platforms I almost never use them now. This was all anecdotal, but if I’m not alone in this, then brand matters quite a bit these days.

zweep 7y ago

This was one of the early theories about how Facebook would monetize -- that your real-life friends would value their relationship with you too highly to recommend anything but truly great products to you. That hit the reality that people would squander most of their friends for their stupid MLM scheme.

professorTuring 7y ago

That is exactly what I feel. More and more I find Amazon to be closer and closer to a Chinese Bazar of cheap quality items (kind of an AliExpress or dx but with a different perceived quality). I believe they will gain a lot of customers among people who just want cheap stuff (or don't care if it is original as long as the brand is clearly visible and is cheaper) but definitely they will lose customers that use Amazon for convenience (more or less the same price, better refund policies, availability of products...) It's a pity. Hopefully others will fill that space. In Spain, El Corte Inglés with its new on-line platform is getting closer and closer.

Nasrudith 7y ago

Personally I would phrase it more cynically - the brand is fundamentally a lie even in a magical no counterfeiting world. It had a purpose once as an "index" once but it hasn't been that way for a while. Essentially all a Brand says is that they got money for it. It how it was made or that they won't decide to cut corners for their next quarterly earnings no matter how many years it was good. In practice given how often the "counterfeits" are made in the same factory by the same workers with materials from the same supplier the money going there is no guarantee of either product quality or righteousness. Trying to use brand for delegating quality control is doomed to failure in the real world. I suspect the better approach towards product identification would be going by verifiable specifications like manufacturers and doing both shopping and any enforcement based upon that. It would be hard as hell to transition society towards that as a norm though with marketer saturation, time investment, and every manufacturer having a financial incentive to try to decommoditize themselves to improve yields and protect themselves from competition.

sn4pp 7y ago

Just got scammed on one of those smaller sites, f it, I'll buy on amazon so I atleast get anything shipped to me.

habanany 7y ago

It’s probable PS4 and Nitendo users are too busy playing so they have no time to write a review I’m just saying.

EmpirePhoenix 7y ago

Also funny, my result of this is that I now order basically everything directly via aliexpress. If all i get is chinese crap anyway, I can at least get it cheaper. Then I noticed that aliexpress actually made some pretty good page design choices. Since you can see how long a seller is registered and how many they have sold (both directly on the product information site), it is pretty easy to find a at lest decent trader there

microtherion 7y ago
> I now order basically everything directly via aliexpress I would argue that in some ways, AliExpress is better than Amazon. Vendors seem really responsive, even for tiny purchases, and they are eager to avoid negative reviews.

inoop 7y ago

> Really a shame that Amazon does not seem to care much about this Amazon cares, but Chinese sellers are paying Amazon customers to write fake reviews for them. There's an article about it here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon-purchases-are-real-the-reviews-are-fake https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon... This practice basically makes it impossible to tell fake reviews from real ones.

Aweorih 7y ago

I saw a documentation a while ago on yt where a German family bought a smartphone over Amazon, which was from China (not sure anymore if they knew at that moment). It exploded then some time later while charging.. they said that Amazon also did not much care and it took a while until it was removed. I can also say that the company where I work at, had already multiple times problems with Amazon. True they are maybe a bit of a different kind but I think that dollars is the most important thing for them. Even if you have to fk with customers or third party sellers in one or the other way. That's also why I only buy at Amazon if it's really necessary and it's from a big company, like Nintendo or so. There's also now the law in Germany (or soon) which prohibits the destroying of brand new stuff just because it did not sell. That happened mainly (I'd say) because of Amazon where it went public that 2 trucks left a single warehouse on average per day, filled with only that kind of products

perjes 7y ago

I’d recommend using https://reviewmeta.com https://reviewmeta.com. It filters out suspicious reviewers and makes it much easier to avoid products with bought reviews on Amazon. Wouldn’t make purchases there without it.

spy888 7y ago

I had the same issue with not being able to tell what is from a 3rd party or Amazon. I assume that sold and shipped Amazon has a greater chance of being real. For example, my wife was looking to buy some masks (I know, give into the fear) but I refused to buy from 3rd parties since I have a low level of trust. So I built an app to help me and friends quickly tell if from a 3rd party or Amazon. Welcome to try and let me know how it can be better. https://www.trueseller.co https://www.trueseller.co