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I have to assume you meant the Amazon product with the url suffix "dp/B087NN41JH/". This seems to be the highest reviewed result for search term "webcam", at le

by hbosch 6y ago

I have to assume you meant the Amazon product with the url suffix "dp/B087NN41JH/". This seems to be the highest reviewed result for search term "webcam", at least on my page. Here on HN, we have a savvy audience that understands the problem on Amazon with counterfeits, fakes, and low-quality items. I don't usually have this problem myself, because I go out of my way to buy things from sellers that I recognize, such as Logitech for instance, which owns the top results for "webcam" even though they have fewer reviews and higher prices. In your case, I think there are warning signs for the product in question. An unknown seller hawking a cheap knock-off looking webcam with a fake sale price... I really do not enjoy being the devil's advocate but, come on. Amazon might reprimand the seller. They might even ban them. But if so, they will just pop back up over night with a new name. Their cheapo products are unlabelled, unbranded and modestly packaged for exactly this benefit.

whimsicalism 6y ago
They won't pop back up with 12k 5 star reviews immediately? I'm honestly shocked by this comment - warning sides aside, paying for reviews should cause a ban. I am as unconvinced by this argument about "popping back" as I am by people who say that raising taxes is useless because people will just hide their money.
- hbosch 6y ago
  > They won't pop back up with 12k 5 star reviews immediately? No, they will pay for those and have them soon enough. Even the OP says the product was sitting at >4,000 reviews at time of purchase and now is over 12,000. The reviews are easy to come by, of course. I am not pointing out that the seller here is right by any means. I fully agree that paying for 5-star reviews is reprehensible and unethical, and it's similarly unethical for ANY marketplace to feature items that have paid for positive reviews. But now we've arrived at a part that is beyond Amazon itself, haven't we? The concept of "paid positive reviews" is not confined to Amazon, naturally. This is why it's important to be a "literate consumer". That is to say, keen and discerning and aware. Like I said in my post, the buyer (in this case, OP) absolutely CHOSE a product that was visually an unbranded "knock off" of a webcam that Amazon actually featured HIGHER in their own search results. You can see which camera I am talking about being the "knockoff" and which is the "original", I hope. A person with high "consumer literacy" will not just pick the cheap option with a bunch of 5-star reviews. Not in 2020, and not on Amazon.com -- these plain facts mean nothing about the seller's reputation or the product's quality. Every "literate consumer" should already know this! It doesn't mean it's OK for the seller to do what they do, but it's important that we all know the reality is that they DO do it.
  - Hokusai 6y ago
    Amazon shows the reviews, it should be accountable for them. These are not comments from users, this is used to promote sales. > Every "literate consumer" should already know this! So, it is my fault that Amazon promotes false advertising? Should I be punished for not seeing thru the lies that Amazon shows in their website? I don't think so. Don't blame the victim, blame the scammer.
    - hbosch 6y ago
      > So, it is my fault that Amazon promotes false advertising? Should I be punished for not seeing thru the lies that Amazon shows in their website? I don't think so. Don't blame the victim, blame the scammer. Who was the victim here? The OP was a repeat buyer, implying he already had the item and was satisfied enough to buy it again. Hardly sounds like a victim. Look, I'll rewrite what I wrote earlier but more simply: Paying for good reviews = bad. Posting a good review to get paid for it = bad. There are approximately 12,000 bad people in the scenario this thread is about. But there are platitudes and there is real advice. The platitude is "scammers are bad". Very good, I agree with that. The advice is to be cautious where you spend your money, and be aware of who you're giving it to. That is the consumer's choice. You can choose to give it to the no-name company you've never heard of who just-so-happens to have more reviews than any other item for the search term "webcam", or, you can choose to buy the Logitech for a little more.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    Your notion of "consumer literacy" is a treadmill. Hoping individuals will solve this won't work, because the malignant vendor has a much stronger incentive to find new ways to cheat than individual consumers do to figure out those cheats and take countermeasures. The proper level to solve this at is higher up. Platforms and regulators in specific.
- scarmig 6y ago
  > I'm honestly shocked by this comment - warning sides aside, paying for reviews should cause a ban. The likely result of that policy would be that scammers would order the product of their competitors, take a picture of it with fake gift cards, report it to Amazon, and drive out the non-scummy vendors.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  They might pop back up with a lot of positive reviews: I just came across a product (random cheap drone) That had lots of great reviews... Only before a certain point, they were for a different product (some type of art kit) even with reviewer pictures of that older product. So sellers are doing a sort of "money laundering" of product listings, placing new items, descriptions, and photos over an existing item.
- mns 6y ago
  Well, he does have a point. I just checked amazon.de for "webcam". Holy crap, the first page is just no-name webcams that all look the same, probably built in the same 2-3 factories in the same city in China with different names on them. If you buy some JellyTech Webcam or a Webcams Webcam for Eu 20-30, what do you expect. The funny thing is, all of these have 1k+ ratings and 4,5 to 5 star reviews, while more expensive webcams from Microsoft are at 3,5-4 stars and 150 to 300 reviews.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    A lot of products have extreme monoculture. For another example, most ice machines for consumer use all use the exact same flawed mechanical mechanism. Someone cut a few cents of the BOM by dropping detection of when the water tray had fully rotated, and instead the mechanism will eventually break due to repeated stress as they just run the motor a few seconds too long. For occasional use it works. For frequent use and you'll easily cause them to break in the exact same manner each time after about a year. Models keep disappearing, presumably because too many break within the warranty period, but then new ones with slightly different exteriors and the exact same broken interior mechanism appears. This has gone on for many years. When I last bought one it took ages to find one that used another design, hampered by lack of pictures showing the tray. Finally did find one and never buying another brand again if I can avoid it.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  > paying for reviews should cause a ban Morally it should, but business-wise, for Amazon, it shouldn't. Amazon already has the monopoly and drove a lot of smaller retailers out of business; the counterfeit problem is not (yet?) causing people to shop elsewhere, probably because for a lot of goods there either isn't an elsewhere or the elsewhere is still a worse experience (longer delivery, etc). Our regulatory environment also doesn't hold Amazon liable for selling counterfeit and/or dangerous goods (bad batteries which catch fire, etc), so there is yet again no pressure on Amazon to do anything. Amazon doesn't really care whether you get a bad/counterfeit item, they get their money regardless. Until this changes there's no reason for Amazon to act.
Angostura 6y ago
> But if so, they will just pop back up over night with a new name. And that's fine. But if so they'll pop up again with zero reviews and have to work at rebuilding the scam. This is a pretty shocking comment. Amazon suggests that Amazon reviews are worth at least something. If they are not then they should all be removed and we can go back following your strategy of "buying from companies that I know the name of, because they will be best". Now excuse me while I go and buy an IBM laptop.
- hbosch 6y ago
  > Amazon suggests that Amazon reviews are worth at least something. More and more it is proven that reviews themselves don't mean much. You should consider your own personal relationship with the brand, or from people you trust. Of course we don't all have the luxury of those things and sometimes you need to read a few reviews. After all, without GOOD and HONEST reviews we probably would not have a company like Anker, which I love dearly and who did it all right... but like with all things, you have to be critical of what you see and read and hear. Reviewers are not always honest, people are not always honest. Particularly when there is money at stake, particularly when you're online. I'll have you know that the movie "Wolfman's Got Nards" is currently sitting at 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Does that mean you should go watch "Wolfman's Got Nards"?
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    'personal relationship with the brand' Personal relationships with a social construct indicate the need for proffesional help. Amd imaginary friends.
    - _carbyau_ 6y ago
      "Amd imaginary friends." Freudian slip? Need something to replace your intel laptop? :-P But yes, the whole point of brand marketing is to invoke a relationship in the mind of the [potential] buyer. And when you have people who devote their life to it there has to be someone out there who is good at it using whatever pysch tricks they can. So no wonder some people fall for it. It's almost inevitable.
voltagex_ 6y ago
Sidenote: I couldn't find this by reverse image searching, but if you search the same description you can find it on AliExpress for ~30% less. If I had access to Taobao, it's probably less again there. I buy a lot of stuff from AliExpress - I'd love to be able to go one up the chain and find the factories that are building this stuff.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  The factories will want to sell you pallets of the stuff. What you want is the export agent, he will likely send a sample if you can produce a valid company profile You will even pay reduced taxes for a sample, but make sure they have already a business relationship in your general area because they will have already done the legwork to certify the product and it'll clear custom straight away
  - voltagex_ 6y ago
    So what does the average Amazon seller need to do to get set up? I'm assuming they're not paying the Alibaba price.

by hbosch 6y ago

whimsicalism 6y ago

They won't pop back up with 12k 5 star reviews immediately? I'm honestly shocked by this comment - warning sides aside, paying for reviews should cause a ban. I am as unconvinced by this argument about "popping back" as I am by people who say that raising taxes is useless because people will just hide their money.

hbosch 6y ago
> They won't pop back up with 12k 5 star reviews immediately? No, they will pay for those and have them soon enough. Even the OP says the product was sitting at >4,000 reviews at time of purchase and now is over 12,000. The reviews are easy to come by, of course. I am not pointing out that the seller here is right by any means. I fully agree that paying for 5-star reviews is reprehensible and unethical, and it's similarly unethical for ANY marketplace to feature items that have paid for positive reviews. But now we've arrived at a part that is beyond Amazon itself, haven't we? The concept of "paid positive reviews" is not confined to Amazon, naturally. This is why it's important to be a "literate consumer". That is to say, keen and discerning and aware. Like I said in my post, the buyer (in this case, OP) absolutely CHOSE a product that was visually an unbranded "knock off" of a webcam that Amazon actually featured HIGHER in their own search results. You can see which camera I am talking about being the "knockoff" and which is the "original", I hope. A person with high "consumer literacy" will not just pick the cheap option with a bunch of 5-star reviews. Not in 2020, and not on Amazon.com -- these plain facts mean nothing about the seller's reputation or the product's quality. Every "literate consumer" should already know this! It doesn't mean it's OK for the seller to do what they do, but it's important that we all know the reality is that they DO do it.
- Hokusai 6y ago
  Amazon shows the reviews, it should be accountable for them. These are not comments from users, this is used to promote sales. > Every "literate consumer" should already know this! So, it is my fault that Amazon promotes false advertising? Should I be punished for not seeing thru the lies that Amazon shows in their website? I don't think so. Don't blame the victim, blame the scammer.
  - hbosch 6y ago
    > So, it is my fault that Amazon promotes false advertising? Should I be punished for not seeing thru the lies that Amazon shows in their website? I don't think so. Don't blame the victim, blame the scammer. Who was the victim here? The OP was a repeat buyer, implying he already had the item and was satisfied enough to buy it again. Hardly sounds like a victim. Look, I'll rewrite what I wrote earlier but more simply: Paying for good reviews = bad. Posting a good review to get paid for it = bad. There are approximately 12,000 bad people in the scenario this thread is about. But there are platitudes and there is real advice. The platitude is "scammers are bad". Very good, I agree with that. The advice is to be cautious where you spend your money, and be aware of who you're giving it to. That is the consumer's choice. You can choose to give it to the no-name company you've never heard of who just-so-happens to have more reviews than any other item for the search term "webcam", or, you can choose to buy the Logitech for a little more.
- wpietri 6y ago
  Your notion of "consumer literacy" is a treadmill. Hoping individuals will solve this won't work, because the malignant vendor has a much stronger incentive to find new ways to cheat than individual consumers do to figure out those cheats and take countermeasures. The proper level to solve this at is higher up. Platforms and regulators in specific.
scarmig 6y ago
> I'm honestly shocked by this comment - warning sides aside, paying for reviews should cause a ban. The likely result of that policy would be that scammers would order the product of their competitors, take a picture of it with fake gift cards, report it to Amazon, and drive out the non-scummy vendors.
ineedasername 6y ago
They might pop back up with a lot of positive reviews: I just came across a product (random cheap drone) That had lots of great reviews... Only before a certain point, they were for a different product (some type of art kit) even with reviewer pictures of that older product. So sellers are doing a sort of "money laundering" of product listings, placing new items, descriptions, and photos over an existing item.
mns 6y ago
Well, he does have a point. I just checked amazon.de for "webcam". Holy crap, the first page is just no-name webcams that all look the same, probably built in the same 2-3 factories in the same city in China with different names on them. If you buy some JellyTech Webcam or a Webcams Webcam for Eu 20-30, what do you expect. The funny thing is, all of these have 1k+ ratings and 4,5 to 5 star reviews, while more expensive webcams from Microsoft are at 3,5-4 stars and 150 to 300 reviews.
- vidarh 6y ago
  A lot of products have extreme monoculture. For another example, most ice machines for consumer use all use the exact same flawed mechanical mechanism. Someone cut a few cents of the BOM by dropping detection of when the water tray had fully rotated, and instead the mechanism will eventually break due to repeated stress as they just run the motor a few seconds too long. For occasional use it works. For frequent use and you'll easily cause them to break in the exact same manner each time after about a year. Models keep disappearing, presumably because too many break within the warranty period, but then new ones with slightly different exteriors and the exact same broken interior mechanism appears. This has gone on for many years. When I last bought one it took ages to find one that used another design, hampered by lack of pictures showing the tray. Finally did find one and never buying another brand again if I can avoid it.
Nextgrid 6y ago
> paying for reviews should cause a ban Morally it should, but business-wise, for Amazon, it shouldn't. Amazon already has the monopoly and drove a lot of smaller retailers out of business; the counterfeit problem is not (yet?) causing people to shop elsewhere, probably because for a lot of goods there either isn't an elsewhere or the elsewhere is still a worse experience (longer delivery, etc). Our regulatory environment also doesn't hold Amazon liable for selling counterfeit and/or dangerous goods (bad batteries which catch fire, etc), so there is yet again no pressure on Amazon to do anything. Amazon doesn't really care whether you get a bad/counterfeit item, they get their money regardless. Until this changes there's no reason for Amazon to act.

Angostura 6y ago

> But if so, they will just pop back up over night with a new name. And that's fine. But if so they'll pop up again with zero reviews and have to work at rebuilding the scam. This is a pretty shocking comment. Amazon suggests that Amazon reviews are worth at least something. If they are not then they should all be removed and we can go back following your strategy of "buying from companies that I know the name of, because they will be best". Now excuse me while I go and buy an IBM laptop.

hbosch 6y ago
> Amazon suggests that Amazon reviews are worth at least something. More and more it is proven that reviews themselves don't mean much. You should consider your own personal relationship with the brand, or from people you trust. Of course we don't all have the luxury of those things and sometimes you need to read a few reviews. After all, without GOOD and HONEST reviews we probably would not have a company like Anker, which I love dearly and who did it all right... but like with all things, you have to be critical of what you see and read and hear. Reviewers are not always honest, people are not always honest. Particularly when there is money at stake, particularly when you're online. I'll have you know that the movie "Wolfman's Got Nards" is currently sitting at 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Does that mean you should go watch "Wolfman's Got Nards"?
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  'personal relationship with the brand' Personal relationships with a social construct indicate the need for proffesional help. Amd imaginary friends.
  - _carbyau_ 6y ago
    "Amd imaginary friends." Freudian slip? Need something to replace your intel laptop? :-P But yes, the whole point of brand marketing is to invoke a relationship in the mind of the [potential] buyer. And when you have people who devote their life to it there has to be someone out there who is good at it using whatever pysch tricks they can. So no wonder some people fall for it. It's almost inevitable.

voltagex_ 6y ago

Sidenote: I couldn't find this by reverse image searching, but if you search the same description you can find it on AliExpress for ~30% less. If I had access to Taobao, it's probably less again there. I buy a lot of stuff from AliExpress - I'd love to be able to go one up the chain and find the factories that are building this stuff.

LoSboccacc 6y ago
The factories will want to sell you pallets of the stuff. What you want is the export agent, he will likely send a sample if you can produce a valid company profile You will even pay reduced taxes for a sample, but make sure they have already a business relationship in your general area because they will have already done the legwork to certify the product and it'll clear custom straight away
- voltagex_ 6y ago
  So what does the average Amazon seller need to do to get set up? I'm assuming they're not paying the Alibaba price.