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> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is cus
by Judgmentality 6y ago
> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads.
And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem.
I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at this point. And I'd say the overwhelming evidence of them lying about safety reports is a pretty strong indicator of how their actions don't match their words.
This obsession with growth is metaphorically cancer. It has to grow no matter what, until the once-healthy host has long since died and all that's left is an enormous tumor.
- ColanR 6y ago> And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem I don't get this Amazon hate. Weren't they the ones who originally came up with the idea for putting purchaser reviews with the product, and the 5-star rating system? It seems like their solution was to 'crowdsource' the problem. Now people have learned to game the system, but I buy plenty of electronics from amazon and from ebay, and I'm careful enough that I've never ended up with a counterfeit. Edit: I've noticed that ebay gives seller ratings, and amazon does product ratings. I guess that belies the different focus they each have. It would be cool (and probably a big improvement) if amazon put both product and seller ratings in equally prominent positions.
- reaperducer 6y agopurchaser reviews with the product No. Companies have been doing this for as long as there has been advertising and mail-order catalogs. Did Amazon do it on the web first? Unlikely, but cannot be proven. and the 5-star rating system Also unlikely. The five-star system has been around for at least a century. In digital form, I had it on one of the first web sites I built, around the same time that Amazon.com launched, and even that was cribbed from online review systems that existed before the web.
- ColanR 6y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-10-15/amazon-turning-consumer-opinions-into-gold https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-10-15/amazon-tu... As I linked elsewhere, Bloomberg seems to think they were the "first successful online retailer to embrace consumer views".
- reaperducer 6y agoToo many qualifiers to be meaningful.
- ColanR 6y agoWhich qualifiers make it unsupportive of the point? Given it was already specifically talking about customer reviews, I think it's plenty meaningful.
- MattGaiser 6y agoI routinely get offers to buy a review from me inside the actual Amazon product itself. The system is being gamed under the nose of Amazon.
- ColanR 6y agoYeah, it took me a while to track down a cheap bluetooth headset recently. When there's >50-100 reviews, usually someone mentions if the reviews are being bought.
- xmprt 6y agoHow often are you buying stuff from Amazon that this happens? I probably buy something at least 1-3 times a month and have never gotten a counterfeit or review request. I almost want to get one just to see what it would look like to be honest.
- freeAgent 6y agoAll the time. They’re super common in electronic accessories (phone chargers, cases, etc.), for example.
- MattGaiser 6y agoSeemingly every time I purchase cables or accessories.
- xmprt 6y agoI can see that happening (most of my returns are cables or accessories). But how do you know whether it's a counterfeit when you buy it? Most of the time, I'm not even looking at the brand that I'm buying.
- coldtea 6y ago>Weren't they the ones who originally came up with the idea for putting purchaser reviews with the product, and the 5-star rating system? Were they? I doubt it...
- ColanR 6y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-10-15/amazon-turning-consumer-opinions-into-gold https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-10-15/amazon-tu... It doesn't say if they were the first, but it looks like they were at least one of the first. Edit: yep, Bloomberg says they were the first to do it.
- reaperducer 6y agoMaybe first on the web, but not the first online.
- JoshTko 6y agoThe mental overhead spent checking if the order could be counterfeit or choosing a more reliable seller is exhausting.
- wyxuan 6y agoOh gosh, the purchaser reviews are even worse. Either they're for a different product, or as I found out when I ordered a pair of earbuds and found a small leaflet claiming to provide a free gift card for a 5 star review, paid for.
- buildbot 6y agoYep, I got counterfeit parts for my 3d printer that resulted in it need a lot of repair, and fighting with Amazon only got them to pay half the cost of the repair...It's the last thing I'll order from them for sure. Canceling prime, just done with them.
- mardifoufs 6y agoWhat 3d printer part was it? I've been shopping mainly on aliexpress for my parts since amazon.ca has a very anemic offering (and what it has is basically dropshipped parts from aliexpress anyways). But I'm curious to know what I should be cautious of. I always thought most 3d printer parts are usually not "genuine" and made by a 3rd party anyway.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoSome guy below you: > I work at Amazon, we are hiring all the top ML people to work on this problem. Legions of ML PhDs. It doesn't take legions of PhDs in machine learning to fix a basic counterfeit problem on a glorified online shopping store.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- heavyset_go 6y agoAmazon doesn't even let their customers choose the correct reason for returns when they receive counterfeit items. Instead of being able to choose "This item is a counterfeit" or "I believe this item is a counterfeit", the customer must choose between reasons for their return that aren't entirely accurate, like "Inaccurate website description" or "Item defective or doesn't work". You'd think that a company that claims it is throwing vast amounts of resources at stopping counterfeiting on their platform would at least try to collect data on the counterfeits their customers receive.
- mschuster91 6y agoIt's like politicians preventing studies on racism in police (a current hot topic in Germany): As long as there is no data, no one can demand action (i.e. getting rid of racist cops) or subpoena it (i.e. a class action lawsuit against Amazon). Amazon has a vested massive interest in not provably knowing numbers about counterfeit rates!
- logicslave 6y agoNo interest in solving the problem? I work at Amazon, we are hiring all the top ML people to work on this problem. Legions of ML PhDs. Its not easy and you are just making stuff up
- MattGaiser 6y agoFulfilled by Amazon products ship with offers to buy reviews inside them, lol. Could start by inspecting the merchandise. You don’t need legions of PhDs. You need eyes and ears on the ground doing checks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stefan_ 6y agoA legion of ML researchers toiling away, but one middle manager to comingle all product!
- biztos 6y ago> we are hiring all the top ML people Thank God, now none of the top ML people will go work for Facebook and destroy the world!
- gamblor956 6y agoIt sounds exactly like Amazon has no interest in solving the problem, and would rather waste money on legions of ML PhDs to come up with yet another technology solution that doesn't work and would simply get gamed in a few weeks even if it did work, leading to an endless tech war cycle, than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a way that can't be easily gamed by counterfeiters.
- solidasparagus 6y ago> than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a way that can't be easily gamed by counterfeiters. This is the kind of "I don't know any details about the problem but I am certain it is simple and easy to solve" mindset that I hate. Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some people, they wouldn't do it? They absolutely would. The problem is more complicated as some other commenters have pointed out. Amazon sees itself as a marketplace for third-parties sellers and they see solutions such as 'stop allowing third party sellers' to be as ridiculous as 'stop charging for your products'. They have built logistic networks around this third party seller idea (e.g. co-mingling) that are clearly failing right now, but these are real world systems that have been built up over decades and are not easy to change without several years of investment. Do you even realize how much revenue Amazon has and how existential the counterfeit problem is? My guess would be that if you could actually solve the counterfeit problem given a budget of a $1B, Amazon would do it without a second thought.
- coldtea 6y ago>And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem. Well, as told by Bezos, “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” doesn't mean "Leaders start with the customer and his needs in mind". It just means "leaders start with how to get the customers' money doing what's minimally required, and/or profitably duping them without consequences".
- fizixer 6y agoI understand the sentiment but for the records: I don't think employees are the customers of Amazon. I definitely don't think Amazon sees it that way. What you said makes more sense if you replace both the words with the word 'humans'.