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As certain as I can be of any store purchase. Nothing I've bought from Amazon has been substandard quality and it's pretty much all lasted as well as I'd expect

As certain as I can be of any store purchase. Nothing I've bought from Amazon has been substandard quality and it's pretty much all lasted as well as I'd expect. I've had much better luck with Amazon than with local stores. If the fakes are literally indistinguishable, it's possible I've had some, but then I guess it makes little difference to me. As far as research goes, if it's expensive, I put some research in if it's a product or brand I've never used before, but I never specifically look to see if it's a fake product on Amazon. For reference, I spend about £5k a year at Amazon UK. Nearly all my experiences have been positive apart from the occasional damage in transit.

OJFord 5y ago
I'm with you on never having had a fake (at least, echo your 'sure as I could ever be') - closest was a Marantz microphone that curiously identifies as a Blue Snowball, but I suspect they're probably just both farmed out to the same place and got mixed up or it always says Blue, or they're exactly the same underneath the shell. They're in the same price bracket anyway so not really my loss or any reason to fake that. What I have found though is that the quality of search results, the experience of using the site, has seriously deteriorated in the last two or three years. It's like AliExpress or eBay now. I used to read other countries' Amazon users (e.g. .com) complain about this and think what are you talking about it's great, but yeah, now... I still get as good stuff from Amazon because that's what I buy, I just have to wade through a lot of crap to get it.
- Retric 5y ago
  > Marantz microphone that curiously identifies as a Blue Snowball If you don’t consider that a sign of a fake product, I don’t think you’re being objective. Fake products put significant effort into looking like real products, many times you need to take them apart to find the differences.
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    Some people just aren't concerned with brand names. If it looks and works like it's supposed to, and it didn't cost any more money, then what's the problem?
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Certainly if it's 'really' a Blue Snowball rather than a Marantz MPM-1000U, I don't care, they're in the same price bracket from two respected brands. (I only chose between them on the basis that the Snowball was slightly more expensive at the time I ordered and aesthetically I preferred the Marantz. So really, if it were internally a Snowball and that was different, it would be a win?) To be fair though it's not as clear as I was expecting, but I'm no expert so not really set up to do any proper testing, the room its in is probably acoustically awful anyway, etc. It's certainly not awful even if it isn't what it says it is, it's several steps up from the dirt cheap 'Tonor' branded and unashemedly 'Chinesium' thing I used before it. The great thing about Amazon though is that after this thread I contacted support (way out of return period) and they've shipped a replacement. I'll see if it's the same; if it is, of course that doesn't prove anything, but I'll be very interested if it does seem (more - still wouldn't know for sure of course) real to see what the differences are in packaging/construction/printing etc.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        Just to follow up on that, replacement arrived, ~this one identifies as 'USB Microphone'. Seems otherwise~ [edit: I mis-remembered which way around it was, they're both 'USB Microphone' on macOS, and both 'Blue Snowball' on Linux] identical, I think my assumption is still that both products are manufactured (genuinely) by the same factory, and the design even perhaps farmed out so they really are identical on the inside, but either way just flashed with the wrong ID. Both of these two are identical inside too, same board revision even. (And not every penny pinched like you would if you were faking - gloss black solder mask, as well as on a second PCB whose only job is keeping wires tidy and displaying a silk screened revision number.) [edit: Further to edit above, it's actually 'C-Media Electronics, Inc. Blue Snowball', and the main chip is this one: https://www.cmedia.com.tw/applications/microphone/CM6327A https://www.cmedia.com.tw/applications/microphone/CM6327A so presumably both microphones use it and the same assembly house (whether the same design or not) and the EEPROMs' manufacturer/product strings are either getting mixed up or all Blue, whether by mistake or assembler realised they could get paid double to flash once.]
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Hm, is your thinking that it's unrelated to either and just clumsily faked by someone who fakes both? That... yeah, good point. I don't know why that didn't occur to me before. (I was previously thinking they probably just genuninely use some same chips, or even both brands farm it out to the same shop, and both genuine microphones are the exactly same, just differently packaged.)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Just chiming in with basically the same experience: never had anything I could tell was fake, everything was pretty much what I expected for the price, and Amazon search is a complete and utter shitshow of uselessness. For computer equipment, I shop NewEgg because their search rules. I wish there was a NewEgg for other stuff. I'm more than happy to pay more and wait a few days extra to have a search that doesn't suck.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Sadly, both NewEgg and BestBuy are "marketplaces" now, and amazon sellers have set up shop there too. They're smaller, so I hope there's a little better QA, but I'm not optimistic for their future
open-source-ux 5y ago
I use Amazon UK and have had very mixed experiences with finding and purchasing goods. The site is increasingly swamped with low-quality goods sourced from AliBaba or AliExpress. This is easily verified by searching for a item and seeing the same product sold under a different "brand name" (with the same generic product photos). These "drop-shipping" businesses dominate many product categories. Even with books, Amazon's print-on-demand service means that search results are swamped with "low-content or no content" titles (essentially notebooks, diaries, planners etc). These "no content" titles often slap an unrelated title on the cover for what is simply a empty notebook (e.g. "JavaScript notebook"). The keyword in the title is there to gain a higher position in Amazon's broken search. The things described above are easily discovered online. YouTube has hundreds of "drop-shipping" videos and videos of publishing "no content" books. These videos are full of advice on how to manipulate Amazon listings using various techniques. Quite simply, Amazon is now an untamed mess of an online store. But with enough customers (and growing) it is unlikely anything will change.

OJFord 5y ago

I'm with you on never having had a fake (at least, echo your 'sure as I could ever be') - closest was a Marantz microphone that curiously identifies as a Blue Snowball, but I suspect they're probably just both farmed out to the same place and got mixed up or it always says Blue, or they're exactly the same underneath the shell. They're in the same price bracket anyway so not really my loss or any reason to fake that. What I have found though is that the quality of search results, the experience of using the site, has seriously deteriorated in the last two or three years. It's like AliExpress or eBay now. I used to read other countries' Amazon users (e.g. .com) complain about this and think what are you talking about it's great, but yeah, now... I still get as good stuff from Amazon because that's what I buy, I just have to wade through a lot of crap to get it.

Retric 5y ago
> Marantz microphone that curiously identifies as a Blue Snowball If you don’t consider that a sign of a fake product, I don’t think you’re being objective. Fake products put significant effort into looking like real products, many times you need to take them apart to find the differences.
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  Some people just aren't concerned with brand names. If it looks and works like it's supposed to, and it didn't cost any more money, then what's the problem?
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Certainly if it's 'really' a Blue Snowball rather than a Marantz MPM-1000U, I don't care, they're in the same price bracket from two respected brands. (I only chose between them on the basis that the Snowball was slightly more expensive at the time I ordered and aesthetically I preferred the Marantz. So really, if it were internally a Snowball and that was different, it would be a win?) To be fair though it's not as clear as I was expecting, but I'm no expert so not really set up to do any proper testing, the room its in is probably acoustically awful anyway, etc. It's certainly not awful even if it isn't what it says it is, it's several steps up from the dirt cheap 'Tonor' branded and unashemedly 'Chinesium' thing I used before it. The great thing about Amazon though is that after this thread I contacted support (way out of return period) and they've shipped a replacement. I'll see if it's the same; if it is, of course that doesn't prove anything, but I'll be very interested if it does seem (more - still wouldn't know for sure of course) real to see what the differences are in packaging/construction/printing etc.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Just to follow up on that, replacement arrived, ~this one identifies as 'USB Microphone'. Seems otherwise~ [edit: I mis-remembered which way around it was, they're both 'USB Microphone' on macOS, and both 'Blue Snowball' on Linux] identical, I think my assumption is still that both products are manufactured (genuinely) by the same factory, and the design even perhaps farmed out so they really are identical on the inside, but either way just flashed with the wrong ID. Both of these two are identical inside too, same board revision even. (And not every penny pinched like you would if you were faking - gloss black solder mask, as well as on a second PCB whose only job is keeping wires tidy and displaying a silk screened revision number.) [edit: Further to edit above, it's actually 'C-Media Electronics, Inc. Blue Snowball', and the main chip is this one: https://www.cmedia.com.tw/applications/microphone/CM6327A https://www.cmedia.com.tw/applications/microphone/CM6327A so presumably both microphones use it and the same assembly house (whether the same design or not) and the EEPROMs' manufacturer/product strings are either getting mixed up or all Blue, whether by mistake or assembler realised they could get paid double to flash once.]
- OJFord 5y ago
  Hm, is your thinking that it's unrelated to either and just clumsily faked by someone who fakes both? That... yeah, good point. I don't know why that didn't occur to me before. (I was previously thinking they probably just genuninely use some same chips, or even both brands farm it out to the same shop, and both genuine microphones are the exactly same, just differently packaged.)
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Just chiming in with basically the same experience: never had anything I could tell was fake, everything was pretty much what I expected for the price, and Amazon search is a complete and utter shitshow of uselessness. For computer equipment, I shop NewEgg because their search rules. I wish there was a NewEgg for other stuff. I'm more than happy to pay more and wait a few days extra to have a search that doesn't suck.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Sadly, both NewEgg and BestBuy are "marketplaces" now, and amazon sellers have set up shop there too. They're smaller, so I hope there's a little better QA, but I'm not optimistic for their future

open-source-ux 5y ago

I use Amazon UK and have had very mixed experiences with finding and purchasing goods. The site is increasingly swamped with low-quality goods sourced from AliBaba or AliExpress. This is easily verified by searching for a item and seeing the same product sold under a different "brand name" (with the same generic product photos). These "drop-shipping" businesses dominate many product categories. Even with books, Amazon's print-on-demand service means that search results are swamped with "low-content or no content" titles (essentially notebooks, diaries, planners etc). These "no content" titles often slap an unrelated title on the cover for what is simply a empty notebook (e.g. "JavaScript notebook"). The keyword in the title is there to gain a higher position in Amazon's broken search. The things described above are easily discovered online. YouTube has hundreds of "drop-shipping" videos and videos of publishing "no content" books. These videos are full of advice on how to manipulate Amazon listings using various techniques. Quite simply, Amazon is now an untamed mess of an online store. But with enough customers (and growing) it is unlikely anything will change.