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A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

• xvector 5y ago
  These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new. B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Crutchfield/Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even better vendors.) Walmart/Target/BestBuy have been good for everything else. If you're too lazy to figure out yourself which products are quality, Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of. And for simply next-level quality, nothing beats DIY. Personalize the final product exactly to your specifications, choosing the highest quality or even custom-machined parts with zero cost cutting. Requires time and passion, however.
  • z0xz0xz0x 5y ago
    Headphones.com is great!
    • xvector 5y ago
      1-year return policy, fast customer support, and no tax! I love them.
  • airhead969 5y ago
    Free returns. The sellers eat that. It's dumb and lazy buyers buying junk and not holding them accountable for the
    • xvector 5y ago
      To be fair, all the vendors I listed do free returns.
    • smabie 5y ago
      I'm lazy and dumb it's true, but I like ordering off of Amazon for most things. I just don't really care about the 99% of things I am forced to buy in order to live a somewhat comfortable existence. The most important thing I optimize for is own time, and for that, Amazon is great. That said, if you care about quality/stuff you buy a lot more than I do, Amazon is a pretty terrible place to shop most of the time. I've encountered this when I want to buy nice stuff, for example a nice and expensive wooden desk. Seems like that's pretty impossible to do on Amazon, as cheap garbage seems to be the name of the game.
  • hatsunearu 5y ago
    > B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Wait, explain this for me?
    • xvector 5y ago
      The B&H PayBoo card gives you a discount on their store equivalent to your state's tax. It's saved me thousands.
  • jamestnz 5y ago
    I stumbled upon an unusual policy when trying to order from B&H the first time. They are not open for business on Shabbat (NYC local time), and this includes their online checkout! I could fill up my cart, but had to come back later to do my purchase.
    • xvector 5y ago
      True. B&H is sort of unusual in this regards, but from what I hear their employees are treated well, and the lack of tax is well worth it!
      • cfqycwz 5y ago
        Fwiw there has been some history of B&H workers being treated fairly not-well. I encourage reading past the first few paragraphs of this article as it's not all "union stuff"--there are lawsuits, DOL complaints, and OSHA fines as well: https://gothamist.com/news/bh-photo-workers-strike-on-may-day-to-protest-their-jobs-moving-to-new-jersey https://gothamist.com/news/bh-photo-workers-strike-on-may-da...
        • xvector 5y ago
          Interesting, thank you!
        • ixtli 5y ago
          Thank you for pointing this out. I live in the area and showed up for the pickets when they fired all of their warehouse employees for complaining about unsafe working conditions. If possible use Adorama or some competitor.
      • spoonjim 5y ago
        Note that B&H has been sued for discriminating against its non-Jewish employees: https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/new-lawsuit-claims-b-and-h-discriminates-against-non-jewish-employees-571983/amp https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/new-lawsuit-claims-b-and-h-disc...
  • DenverCode 5y ago
    Regarding headphones.com, I just ordered a pair of HD6xx headphones off drop.com and it was an amazing experience as well.
  • spyspy 5y ago
    If you’re shopping for furniture I’ve found Room & Board to be head and shoulders above the rest, in both quality and customer care. No questions asked free returns are a godsend.
    • xvector 5y ago
      Indeed! Design Within Reach and AllModern are also quite good for that mid-century modern aesthetic.
    • fmajid 5y ago
      Nope. All my Room & Board furniture bought 10 years ago turned out to be duds, as I reviewed on Yelp 3 years ago: Don't be fooled by the glitzy showrooms and "made in America" promises of quality, this chain sells essentially disposable furniture. When we were expecting our first child 7 years ago, we moved from an apartment to a single-family home. We wanted to also upgrade from IKEA and equivalent to proper furniture. I bought some heirloom pieces from Thos. Moser (a dining table, two end-chairs, a coffee table, a rocking chair and two foot stools) but they are quite expensive, and we got many other pieces from Room and Board: a queen bed, nightstands, two dressers, six Thatcher dining chairs, Pisa leaning bookshelves, side tables and a coffee table with rounded angles). Unfortunately after 7 years the furniture turned out to be much less durable than I expected. The finish on the coffee table is worn and ugly, the bed required extensive work even though we only use a mattress, no boxsprings, and the spokes on the Thatcher chairs are coming unglued. A proper Windsor chair like the Thatcher should have "through-holed and wedged" construction that ensures the spokes don't move. The Moser chairs have that, of course, and in retrospect I deeply regret cheaping out. I could have bought 2 buy-it-for-life Moser chairs for the price of the 6 Thatcher chairs that are now essentially kindling. To add insult to injury, Room and Board refuses to stand by their product and are refusing to repair them. In the Bay Area, we've had good luck with Hoot Judkins furniture, which are better quality for the price (not all though, they have a wide range that goes from meh to Amish-grade).
      • stephencanon 5y ago
        Yeah, Thos. Moser is lovely and rock-solid stuff, but $$$$ and a very specific aesthetic, which you either like or you don’t (we have some Moser stuff in our bedroom, but not in the rest of the house because it’s not a great fit style-wise). We have Carl Hansen & Son dining table and chairs, which is a considerably more modern look but still very solid (noticeably more so than most DWR stuff), but again, $$$$ and a special order from Europe that took ~16 weeks.
  • tomnipotent 5y ago
    > B&H has been a godsend for tech Let's hope they don't go the marketplace route while chasing growth. Shopping on Amazon feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you.
    • zmix 5y ago
      > [...] feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you. Has that become any better?
      • tomnipotent 5y ago
        I made a recent purchase for some networking equipment, but the seller had 1k+ positive ratings in the last year. Honestly, I ran across a lot of the same sellers on eBay as I did Amazon (since eBay now sells a lot of new stuff).
    • techrat 5y ago
      > Let's hope they don't go the marketplace route while chasing growth. I'm already hearing complaints about how B&H "isn't what they used to be" because they're selling much more than their original scope of audio visual equipment.
  • awslattery 5y ago
    +1 for Crutchfield, a great price match/protection policy, and support that is responsive yet not overbearingly so. I would also add rtings.com; they do a great job of documenting their process and the results themselves from their reviews with incredible detail.
  • ChuckMcM 5y ago
    Exactly right. Watching Ebay and Amazon converge on being "Aliexpress" has really made me sad. I understand the folks who are measuring themselves by how effectively they promise quality and deliver crap to their customers. I understand their goal is maximum profit as their best score. And I understand that enough of the market doesn't care that it is crap that they prefer this over a quality good. Back when Walmart started and everyone was all about "wow, their prices are great!" and nary a mention of their quality. I realized that Walmart was going to do the same thing to groceries. Without re-invigorating the UCC with stronger consumer protections so that the "costs" are born not individually by consumers but by the market maker who pushes an inferior product, I don't see it getting much better.
    • at-fates-hands 5y ago
      >> Aliexpress I used to buy a lot of cheap things on there, then something interesting started happening. Every time I made a purchase on there, literally a few weeks later, I would start getting fraudulent charges on my card. Thank god, my bank would call and ask, "Are you in Paris France right now? Someone just tried to purchase 3,000 euros worth of clothing on your card." I haven't bought anything on there for about 5 years now and remarkably as soon as I stopped buying stuff off of their site, I have yet to have my cc number end up on some carders market and deal with getting a new credit card. I also did some research and found out many, many, many people have had the same issues with bad charges showing up on their card after making purchases on that site.
      • Animats 5y ago
        Yes. I was annoyed when Bank of America discontinued the feature that allowed me to create a single-used credit card number and fund it with a limited amount of money. That was a good solution to the bogus charges problem. But it was so hidden on the BofA site that few used it. I'd like to have that service back.
        • xvector 5y ago
          Privacy.com has been awesome for this and integrates with 1Password.
  • ElViajero 5y ago
    > If you're too lazy to figure out yourself which products are quality Amazon is a gambling company. People buys things with the hope that, this time, they are getting a bargain. And, as any gambling company, the customers will lose in the long term. But, people gets addicted to gambling. Maybe next item, maybe I will do a smart purchase. The more randomized the experience the more irrational the consumer. I prefer traditional business that follow regulations and are subjects to my country laws. I used Amazon when it started, because they had a great recommendation engine for books. Even that is now a shitshow that offers you what Amazon wants to sell regardless of what you look for. Amazon works as intended, and that is terrifying. p.d.: People is not lazy. It is just that most people are not experts on the products that they purchase, and they are already spending a lot of their time working hard and taking care of their families to add another ten hours of investigation to purchase a pair of shoes.
  • at-fates-hands 5y ago
    I've been doing the same thing for a few years now and for the same reasons. I have accepted the fact in most cases I will pay more, but at least for that extra cost, I can trust the sites and the companies I'm buying from. I also try and find something locally first, before heading to larger chain stores. Perfect example is how I don't buy anything Apple on Ebay anymore. WAY too many fakes, stolen or misrepresented stuff on there now. Hard to get away from all the Chinese resellers there either. I just buy directly from Apple. Yeap, its going to cost a little extra, but I can take comfort knowing its not going to be a fake or get something that was completely misleading in the listing.
  • aikinai 5y ago
    I know most people here are in the US, but for anyone in Japan, check out Yodobashi as an Amazon alternative. They have more curated products and deliver most items the same day in the Tokyo area for free with no subscription. It’s incredible you can have one tiny part delivered within hours for free. I feel bad doing that though, so I always try to cluster my orders just to be nice to their delivery people and the environment.
    • NavinF 5y ago
      Google Shopping Express used to do that in San Jose. I once ordered a toy spring for $3 with free shipping and had it delivered in 2 hours so I could use it as a heater coil. Good times Within a couple of months they changed the policy to $75 minimum for free shipping. There are also fewer delivery slots today relative to demand
  • tomaskafka 5y ago
    > Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of. Oh no, they absolutely don't. Wirecutter performs some subjective testing, but they get paid for a choice of a products to test and promote. If you watch any category for a while, you can witness a top product (or multiple top products of a same brand) disappear overnight to be be replaced without a trace by another 'reviewer's favourite'. What did change overnight? Did Anker stop making the best budget chargers? No, their business deal with Wirecutter just expired and another brand took their place in paying for 'independent review'.
    • larrybud 5y ago
      That’s a pretty strong accusation to make. Do you have evidence? Wirecutter says “our writers and editors are never made aware of or influenced by which companies have affiliate relationships with our business team.” And elsewhere on the site: “The reputation of Wirecutter and its parent company, The New York Times, rests on our vigorous reporting, editorial integrity, and avoidance of actual or even perceived conflicts of interest.” Are you saying this is a lie / outright deception? And, fwiw, they indeed still review & recommend Anker changers; see this review where the #1 choice is currently an Anker model: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-multiport-usb-wall-charger/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-multiport-us...
• giggly_gopher 5y ago
  I got the baby Klein bottle from Cliff years ago. Nice little nerd tchotchke for the mantelpiece. He also wrote an awesome account of a KGB internet hacking from in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)
• mrcodedude 5y ago
  https://smile.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp/B017UY60MK https://smile.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp... I think this is the item.
  • varenc 5y ago
    Direct link to buy one from Cliff Stoll on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp/B017UY60MK?m=A2YU99E4PF7QUE&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER https://www.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp/B... (but you should actually buy from his website)
    • CliffStoll 5y ago
      Thank you Mr. Varenc and Mr. Code, Yes, that's what's left of what used to be my Amazon Klein bottle listing. Note that what used to be Klein Bottle by Cliff Stoll is now Amvoom Klein Bottle. Although I created the listing 4 or 5 years ago, I'm now unable to edit or change the listing. I've bumped up my price sufficiently high, in hopes that nobody will buy from there.
      • techrat 5y ago
        Seems you got Amazon's attention. Both links are broken and searching for Amvoom Klein Bottle results in nothing relevant.
• dflock 5y ago
  That sucks. Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn't aware of the details previously. Also, if anyone is unaware, this is this Clifford Stoll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll - who wrote this brilliant (and true) book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) - which is a really good read and perfect for HN.
  • adrian_mrd 5y ago
    Has anyone read his other book ‘Silicon Snake Oil’ [1] from 1995 lately? Sounds like most of his predictions in it (eg e-commerce will fail, digital books will not be viable, etc) were wildly off the mark - but were any prescient? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • wombatpm 5y ago
      I read in 1995 when it came out. My take away - searching is not the same as browsing, and something is lost when serendipity is removed from the process. And the internet works for a certain mindset to the detriment of other points of view
    • teraflop 5y ago
      Just from skimming through the book, it seems like its central thesis is an enumeration of all the ways in which computers and the Internet are terrible, accompanied by predictions that none of those flaws are ever likely to change. So it's not really a matter of any of his predictions being "prescient", it's just that some things have improved drastically, and others less so. For example, he complains that nobody will want to look up information from computerized databases because CD-ROMs are too slow; consumers won't shop online because they can't pay securely; retailers won't rely on e-commerce because too few customers have Internet access; nobody will want e-books because you can't read them on the subway; there's no way to effectively search for content online; digital art will never surpass clip art and crude photoshops; it's impossible for networks to be secure because data and credentials are unencrypted; and so on. On the bright side, he thinks that at least nobody will need to worry about online privacy, because it will be too cumbersome for anyone to effectively maintain databases of personal information. But on the other hand, with some of his observations, it's at least arguable that they still hold true 25 years later: > Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion. Online debates of tough issues are often polarized by messages taking extreme positions. > An original IBM PC, now over ten years old, is fully obsolete. Likely, it will still work perfectly and do everything it was build for; after all, the silicon and copper haven't deteriorated. But you can't get software for it any longer. > A word processor may last two years before the next version. These upgrades likely add as many new bugs as are patched, and result in a bigger, more complex program. One that's less and less compatible with old files. [...] Curiously, as computer hardware gets faster, programs run slower. > Photo retouching isn't new. Digital image processing, however, can be so extensive yet undetectable that it undermines the foundation of photojournalism -- that seeing is believing.
• ggm 5y ago
  Now I'm wondering how blackhead removers work and if I want to even think about finding out.
  • airhead969 5y ago
    Sucking, pinching, and/or adhesive.
  • jcims 5y ago
    There's a world waiting for you on YouTube.
  • ratww 5y ago
    > Now I'm wondering how blackhead removers work The vast majority of them don't actually work, this is why those sellers rely on scams. It's almost impossible to know which ones do online. Source: girlfriend and family experiences.
  • mardifoufs 5y ago
    They don't but if you have very oily/not sensitive skin the L'Oreal Man Charcoal Cleanser is just short of being miraculous. It doesn't outright remove blackheads but everything that can be removed will be so it works a lot better than masks ime. I've never really cared enough to bother using any "beauty"/skin products but that one I've added to my routine and over time it just made blackheads disappear. Idk how l'Oreal came up with such a good formula when their other products are usually more gimmicky (or downright just bad and useless) according to my GF/dad/mom etc. Though keep in mind I didn't have any huge, dried out aged blackhead to worry about, & those would be impossible to remove without some extraction.
• Nicksil 5y ago
  This seems completely insane to me. How is this possible? I like Cliff Stoll and have been looking forward to my first Klein bottle purchase for some years now, so I say this without any insinuation Cliff's not telling the whole story: There's got to be more to it than this, right? Can someone really go on Amazon, effectively take over someone's storefront, and completely ransack the place this easily? Because Cliff doesn't have a registered trademark? This seems out of this world absurd.
  • errantspark 5y ago
    Well, it's not strictly regulated and it's a monopoly so...
  • enjeyw 5y ago
    On the bright side, I think I’ve finally manage to internalise the meaning of “Kafkaesque”.
  • II2II 5y ago
    I don't know if it is easy, but I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is aware of the problem. There was a discussion about selling products through Amazon on The Amp Hour a few months back, and part of the discussion included trademarks as a requirement. They made it sound like a new and expensive hurdle to deal with. Given Stoll's comments, it sounds like the lack of a registered trademark was a contributing factor to his problem. Putting the two together leads me to believe that Amazon is aware this can happen. (From the show notes, it looks like https://theamphour.com/523-a-keyzermas-story/ https://theamphour.com/523-a-keyzermas-story/ is the episode in question.) Edit: for clarity.
  • fredsir 5y ago
    Does it really? With what I’ve been reading about what is going on over at Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, this doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s awful, but not surprising. And reading about how Amazon treats it’s employees, as has been covered on this site numerous times in the last while, it’s even less surprising. And continuing to use those services is giving a vote for those practices to keep on keeping on, and that people still use them? Well, no, it’s not surprising but it’s sad.
• moepstar 5y ago
  They're still in denial that they have a problem. Just read the thread on the previous occasion where listings got hijacked on their own fora [0] - its sad to see the sellers so powerless, helpless and just left to themselves. You really have to wonder why they even bother... Edit: also, reading that thread you can also get a feel why big brands have completely left AMZN as a platform (like Adidas, Birkenstock are a few i'm aware of). Possible co-mingling of inventory, hijacked listings... no, just don't bother - of course not each and everyone is a heavyweight as my 2 examples - but do we really need 100s of dropshippers FBA'ing the same crap? I'd rather buy direct at the source than at Amazon these days. [0] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/review-manipulation-amazon-echo-dot-listing-hijacked-seriosly/856604 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/review-manipulatio...
  • hef19898 5y ago
    The one thing I don't get, and I worked for AMZN in logistics, is the co-mingling of inventory. It is so easy to solve, poses so many problems and yet the logistics benchmark company fails to do it right.
    • beerandt 5y ago
      I always assumed they tracked co-mingled sourcing internally, but don't have a reason to make it public. At least that way they could trace the people who were seriously poisoning the co-mingled well, in circumstances where they wanted to.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • AnssiH 5y ago
        They explicitly say on their seller help pages that comingled inventory can be tracked to the original source. https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/external/G200141480 https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/external/G2001414... > Note: Amazon ensures that the initial source of the commingled units can be traced throughout the fulfilment process. The linked FAQ goes into slightly more detail.
• Taniwha 5y ago
  Cliff - if you're reading this - you own the images they're using - time to claim copyright with Amazon ....
  • bhrgunatha 5y ago
    I have a further question. Since he has common law trademark, why wouldn't that still apply? Someone else is selling via Amazon in the US using his common law trademark.
    • Hnrobert42 5y ago
      Total speculation here, but probably because common law trademark would have to be proven in a court of law. That is, he would have to sue the Chinese company, present evidence like newspaper clippings or testimony from customers, win, get a judgement, and present that to Amazon. Until then, Amazon looks in the USPTO database.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • CliffStoll 5y ago
      The very first step in Amazon Brand Registry is to tell them your US Trademark registration number. Without it, I'm unable to get through the Brand Registry website. And I can't find any email address for them - nor, any place to mention this to. That's why I posted that to my website's home page.
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    Um, thanks, I guess. I think that Amazon’s agreement is that sellers waive copyright to images uploaded. -Cliff around 11:30 in the evening
    • Marsymars 5y ago
      I'm no expert, and am not recommending any particular copyright-related recourse, but the image submission agreement has a clause to remove materials from the service, and the license grant to Amazon is not specified as being irrevocable: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201995990 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
• IncRnd 5y ago
  It seems like going on the Live Chat with Amazon would help Stoll speak with someone. I've used that several times and they always fixed the issue right away.
  • DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    as a customer or as a seller?
    • IncRnd 5y ago
      As a seller you can go to the contact us page at sellercentral, select the option on the left, then click phone in the middle and get a call back from Amazon. For live chat as a seller, follow these instructions from Amazon's Moderator: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/wheres-live-chat-support/156997/3 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/wheres-live-chat-s...
      • CliffStoll 5y ago
        Yes, I posted (repeatedly) to Amazon Seller forum. Several people replied, but, alas, the suggestions were not of help. See: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/product-page-hijacked-to-completely-different-item/865278 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/product-page-hijac...
        • IncRnd 5y ago
          Were you able to contact a person through their live chat or call back links?
          • CliffStoll 5y ago
            No, I was never able to contact a live person at Amazon. However thanks to this Hacker News article, three Amazon employees have contacted me, with varying degrees of success. As of this moment (around 4PM Pacific time on Wednesday30 June), my listing has been 404'd ... I'm unsure if I will be able to recover the reviews if I rebuild it. Or even if I can rebuild it. Most of all - thank you to my friends on HN. What a bright spot in an otherwise weird situation!
• Trias11 5y ago
  Amazon stimulates fake reviews, fake listings and fake vendors. This practice has to stop. Gigantic class action suit is overdue for this fraudulent criminal empire.
• Johnny555 5y ago
  A sleezy company hijacked my Amazon listing to move my positive reviews over to their product. I've seen that happen sometimes, and always wondered how or why it happened. Like I'll be reading reviews for a USB Memory stick, and the 5 star reviews rave about nail polish. I've reported these cases to Amazon, but they take no action.
  • intricatedetail 5y ago
    And when you report it to government agency in your country they say to talk to Amazon or stop using them. These too big to fail companies need to be split and held accountable! If they consciously let fraudsters operate, in my opinion they are complicit!
• binarysolo 5y ago
  Given how this is on page-1 of HN, jeff@amazon (the elite US-based seller support team who uses the email, not Bezos) is gonna tear this AMVOOM / TaroRee hijacker a new one. While this is kinda designed-as-intended (Amazon wants you to brand register with them for protection), this is a pretty shitty dark pattern they put up and sadly it happens as an annoying edge case that existing sellers and customers have to deal with. Source: me, a mid-sized Amazon 3P seller/vendor. Edit: "-Cliff Stoll Saturday morning June 26, in Oakland, California. And yes, I am now trademarking Acme Klein Bottle." Looks like Amazon's getting what they want after all.
  • modeless 5y ago
    Sure, but there are hundreds of other sellers ready to do the same exploits tomorrow, or worse. The systemic problems are not being addressed. Amazon doesn't have the right incentives to solve these issues.
  • fmajid 5y ago
    It takes some chutzpah to turn defense from your own willful negligence into a revenue center. Like telcos’ telemarketer blocking services or Equifux offering credit monitoring services (only free for the first year) to the millions whose sensitive financial info they allowed to be breached.
    • EricE 5y ago
      "It takes some chutzpah to turn defense from your own willful negligence into a revenue center." It's not chutzpah - it's the norm for most tech companies - or any other companies who's primary product is intellectual property. Think patent trolls, copyright trolls, etc. Amazon is a product troll that somehow has managed to maintain a veneer of legitimacy. I see what they are doing no differently than what Steele started with Prenda law. Heck that's probably where Amazon got the idea :p
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    Sigh. A trademark for a common item (like a T-shirt or a voltmeter) seems to cost about $350 through the USPTO, if you do it yourself and your goods are listed in their directory. If your goods are oddball (like glass or woolen nonorientable manifolds) then you have to use a more expensive system which starts at $450 and escalates depending on how many different types of goods you're trademarking.
• chx 5y ago
  A mathematical side note: I might be woefully ignorant but I thought it's not possible to make a Klein bottle in the real world...? This is not to belittle Stoll's work, it might be a model or approximation... or I'm just missing something.
  • cperciva 5y ago
    You are correct. Stoll makes a projection of Klein bottles into 3-space which results in them being self-intersecting.
    • CliffStoll 5y ago
      Yep, exactly.
  • onion2k 5y ago
    I might be woefully ignorant but I thought it's not possible to make a Klein bottle in the real world...? I think Cliff Stoll sells 3D models of Klein bottles rather than the impossible 4D version.
    • fortran77 5y ago
      The 4D version is not impossible in 4D space.
      • taneq 5y ago
        Now you've got me wondering if it'd be possible to build a 4D klein bottle by animating a 3D shape.
        • jcl 5y ago
          I imagine you could, and that it might not even be that exciting... Since a Klein bottle is just a cylinder with its ends glued together a particular way, I think one way to sweep out a Klein bottle through time would be to have a rubber band split into two, then have each band travel along a trajectory that brings them back together with the correct orientation. The self intersection is easily avoided by having one of the bands travel faster than the other.
• seanwilson 5y ago
  > To make their blackhead remover listing look legit, Amvoom then submitted several hundred orders over Amazon, and immediately cancelled each order. These depleted my Klein bottle inventory on Amazon - even though nothing was paid for, and nothing was shipped. In turn, this removed the "second color option" for their blackhead-remover, since Amazon felt that the Klein bottles were out of stock. Result: their black-head remover listing got 199 positive reviews, and the Klein bottle did not show up as a "color choice" in the Amvoom black-head listing. How do people manage to figure out such elaborate ways to manipulate Amazon results without getting banned? Getting banned has minimal cost? Poor detection? Inside information?
  • unclekev 5y ago
    > How do people manage to figure out such elaborate ways to manipulate Amazon results without getting banned? Getting banned has minimal cost? Poor detection? Inside information? They don't actually ban the accounts doing this. They only remove the reviews/listings, but don't take any action on the accounts (so they just re-list 24 hours later) Apparently when Amazon acts, they are just removing the fake reviews, sometimes the whole product but never actually banning the sellers account (even if every product that seller is listing is pumped full of fake reviews) It seems to be a endless cycle of a item being hijacked or a item filled with fake reviews, then when reported to Amazon they simply remove the fake reviews or the product but don't take any action at all against the seller (or accounts making the fake reviews) This thread[0] on the Amazon Seller forums is crazy with people finding products that are scam listings (with 10,000+ fake reviews), they report them, the products get taken down, then 24 hours later the same sellers have re listed with more fake reviews. Amazon simply do not care, if they did they would: A) Address the root problem B) Ban the seller accounts clearly manipulating the system. Amazon is quick to permaban accounts from real sellers, who make a single mistake (sometimes completely out of their control) but are happy to let these fake review/sellers keep their accounts. [0] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/review-manipulation-amazon-echo-dot-listing-hijacked-seriosly/856604/258 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/review-manipulatio...
    • seanwilson 5y ago
• tushar1196 5y ago
  great
• deleted 5y ago
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• lanstin 5y ago
  I have a Klein Stein and it is excellent, both for beer and coolness. Cliff Stole’s book on tracking a hacker is also a tour de force in tracking things back to the cause. And, like me, he was a stay at home parent for a long time.
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    Thank you Lanstin! Stay-at-home parent? Oh, but your note brings smile to this tired astronomer's face...
• lgats 5y ago
  The trademark the foreign seller used to hijack the listing https://uspto.report/TM/90721592 https://uspto.report/TM/90721592
• Apocryphon 5y ago
  Good fodder for him to write a sequel.
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    Any suggestions on where I should post a slightly more academic version of this analysis? Somehow, posting here on Hacker News seems like I'm talking with friends at a cafe; surely there's a better place for this to be addressed. I'm not even sure if this kind of thing falls under the aegis of "computer security"
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      It's a social engineering- or maybe trademark/big online platform loophole engineering attack, sounds like a computer security issue imho. It could certainly be done to scam other sellers as well, and perhaps it has already.
• beprogrammed 5y ago
  It's so hard to watch as Amazon just let's there platform go to the dogs. All in the name of hands off automation I guess?.
• gabereiser 5y ago
  This, and other instances of this scam make me not want to buy anything off Amazon ever again. Where is Amazon in this? Why is this even a thing? Is there no oversight at all? Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west and it makes me sick to think the once beloved marketplace is now just scamville. I typically buy from sellers websites now and rarely buy off of Amazon but now I feel I need to completely remove Amazon from my options.
  • jannes 5y ago
    Amazon simply is on the same level as eBay now. (No idea about Alibaba.) It’s really sad to see.
    • zeusk 5y ago
      IMO eBay is less scammy. I've been using it to buy car parts and it is SO MUCH better than dealing with junkyards (LKQ/Car-Parts websites suck!) and everything that I've got so far including parts from Latvia and Germany have been genuine. eBay too is full of knock-off trash from China but you can easily tell those apart from a real listing most of the time with reviews being unique per listing/seller. And eBay allows for local pickups too!
      • taylorfinley 5y ago
        The one exception to car parts sites being shit is rockauto. Just start typing in the search bar and it figures out what year make model and part you're looking for. Their search experience is light-years ahead of any other auto parts website and might actually be the best product search interface I've found anywhere, hiding out on a car parts site. I highly encourage anyone interested in product search ux to go check it out.
        • function_seven 5y ago
          Just bought a new radiator from Rock Auto. I think it was like 3 clicks to drill down to the part. I just tried your method and was blown away. After I entered the year and make, and was halfway into typing the model, it autocompleted all the way to my trim level and I resumed typing "radia" where it suggested all the relevant things. Hitting enter, I watched it navigate the tree on the left. Small delights like that are worth serious money. I love sites that have such a structured categorization of their items. McMaster-Carr is the gold standard IMO, and RockAuto is pretty close.
• pjbeam 5y ago
  Not sure if it will help but I escalated this internally. I work at AWS though and am certainly not in a position of great influence.
  • ad-astra 5y ago
    Hey, I’m from the photos org, how can I help +1 this?
• lilyball 5y ago
  I would really love to know why "Amvoom" could declare to Amazon that they own "Acme Klein Bottle" when "Acme Klein Bottle" has nothing to do with the "Amvoom" trademark. Can they just declare they own any page that doesn't have a registered trademark?
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    In short, yes. If a seller (like me) has not trademarked his/her brand, and has not registered with Amazon's Brand Registry, then the listing can be hijacked. Of course, hijackers will only considers taking listings with many five-star reviews extending over several years.
    • hippich 5y ago
      Speaking from the experience - listing can be hijacked even if it has a brand registered trademark. These hijackers, rumored, are bribing amazon insiders to change trademark on the listing and gain full editing access to it after change is made.
  • mike_d 5y ago
    Any valid trademark gets you in the door, then Amazon trusts that you exert your rights only over your brands. For example Anker could have a trademark on "Anker" (the brand) and then claim the "PowerCore III" listing for their battery pack without having to trademark the name of each product.
• jmkd 5y ago
  So, appalling scam aside, everyone knows what a Klein bottle is or what it does? First I've heard of it, and neither Stoll's site or the Amazon listing shed any light on the topic...just in-jokes.
  • matsemann 5y ago
    It is mainly a joke/gag product for mathematicians, or a cool office decoration. Nothing you would buy without the background knowledge. But second sentence in the listing: > Like a Möbius strip, this Klein bottle has only one side. In addition, a Klein bottle has no edge - the connection from "inside" to "outside" is smooth, and the bottle has no lip. Is proper descriptive.
  • ratww 5y ago
    There's a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle
    • jcl 5y ago
      I love that the “hand-blown” bottle pictured in the article is one of Cliff Stoll’s.
• mbeex 5y ago
  Buyed the real thing from his site (https://www.kleinbottle.com/ https://www.kleinbottle.com/ as mentioned) 1.5 years ago. Much more to enjoy there anyway. Thanks Cliff & Greetings from Germany
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    Thank you M'Beex. You're why I make these one-sided things. (a tip of my hat, -Cliff)
• CliffStoll 5y ago
  Guess I'd better say a few things. First, I deeply appreciate that so many on Hacker News have come out for this. Enough to awaken me from a sound sleep on a Tuesday evening! I don't really care that much about selling Klein bottles over Amazon - it's mainly to reach parents over the holidays. But I do wish that Amazon would do something about this kind of thing. Finally, I"m very low on stocks of glass Klein bottles. It's weird for me to ask my friends not to buy the things I've worked so hard to make, but I guess I'd better. I hope to have more manifolds in mid to late summer. Warm wishes all around, -Cliff (way late on a cloudy Tuesday evening in Oakland)
  • atlanta90210 5y ago
    Big fan sir - thank you for all you have done and continue to do.
  • meesterdude 5y ago
    Hold lots of respect for you and regret that this has happened to you, but thanks for bringing these specifics to light. Amazon needs to fix this - or regulators need to force them to.
  • furyg3 5y ago
    Hey Cliff, I just have to say thanks. I read the Cuckoo's Egg in the early 90s and while I was already interested in computers, the idea that there were "networks" of them out there... well... it blew my mind. I immediately went to my school librarian and said I wanted to try to connect computers together, or try to dial-up to library information services, etc. We started learning together. You were a huge inspiration, thanks.
    • beardyw 5y ago
      I read it only last year. A brilliant and now historical book.
      • BuildTheRobots 5y ago
        Mind slightly blown. The Cookoo's Egg is a great book, Cliff is amazing to watch in the Klein Bottle videos, but I've only just realised they're the same person!
• seu 5y ago
  The pointing out that it's a 'foreign' seller seems unnecessary and xenophobic, especially given the fact that it is an American corporation the one that not only allows, but almost incentivizes this behavior.
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    One of the problems is that many foreign sellers have opaque addresses, through which it's impossible to contact. Specifically, a PinYin address is very difficult to reliably send mail to. Making it worse is that Amazon does not list any email address to contact for their Brand Registry. Together, this means that I have nobody to easily contact.
    • phonon 5y ago
      Can you contact their attorney? https://uspto.report/TM/90721592/FTK20210522113954#3 https://uspto.report/TM/90721592/FTK20210522113954#3 From the filing 244 Fifth Avenue, Suite V284 New York, New York 10001 United States 646-785-1788(phone) domee.zhong1@gmail.com SECONDARY EMAIL ADDRESS(ES) (COURTESY COPIES): dmtm2020@outlook.com From the NY bar (only match for that name) Attorney Detail Report as of 06/30/2021 Registration Number: 5054689 Name: XIAOFANG ZHONG Business Name: Business Address: Not on File Business Phone: (917) 819-2798 Email: xiaofangz@hotmail.com Date Admitted: 06/19/2012 Appellate Division Department of Admission: 3rd Law School: Temple University Beasley School of Law Registration Status: Attorney - Currently Registered Next Registration: Nov 2022
  • deleted 5y ago
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• nullc 5y ago
  You mean you don't remove your blackheads with a volumeless four dimension manifold?
• greatgib 5y ago
  @CliffStoll : fyi, at the bottom of the linked page on your website there is a link "TOP OF PAGE" that is broken! It goes to a not found page.
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    Sigh -- the price of maintaining a very antique, hand-coded website. (blush)
    • CliffStoll 5y ago
      Fixed. it had pointed to index.htm (wow - that's an oldie).
• EchoReflection 5y ago
  Amazon is unfortunately a very convenient plague on our beautiful ppanet, and Bezos seems like a borderline (if not outright) psychopath. it's late and i need to sleep, but just search the internet for "Jeff Bezos is a scumbag" and you'll see that people don't "just" hate him because he's filthy rich (nothing wrong with being filthy rich, lots of great people are!). https://trofire.com/2019/01/28/scumbag-jeff-bezos-to-lose-billions-after-affair-exposed/ https://trofire.com/2019/01/28/scumbag-jeff-bezos-to-lose-bi... https://www.grunge.com/143621/the-dark-truth-about-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos/ https://www.grunge.com/143621/the-dark-truth-about-amazon-fo... there is a lot more but I am tired. we should all boycott/avoid using Amazon.
  • f6v 5y ago
    That's just tabloid quality posts.
  • Applejinx 5y ago
    You can't single out Bezos as being a psychopath, though, because all people in Bezos-like positions are psychopaths. Otherwise they don't end up in Bezos-like positions. The question is really, how do you constrain them so they can be psychopaths but integrate into society in a useful way: they're already making themselves useful in some ways, but by their nature they have to push for more and more until they ruin everything including themselves. It's a larger and more interesting question than whether these captains of industry are good or nice or healthy. You can assume they're not trustworthy and then go from there. Hell, all of crypto is based on the idea that people aren't trustworthy: not a big stretch to take that literally and assume that business operators aren't trustworthy.
  • dang 5y ago
    Please don't fulminate on HN. That's in the site guidelines: "Please don't fulminate." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Regardless of how you feel about $Bigco, plagues on planets, psychopaths, and similar rhetoric makes for bad HN threads, and we're trying to avoid those here. Thoughtful critique is welcome of course. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27685624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27685624.
• azinman2 5y ago
  I _really_ want a filter on Amazon for both where a product is manufactured as well as where the company exists. Basically I want to undo the Chinese-knockoffization of Amazon with all its complete dilution of all search results… let alone sad stories like this.
• malwarebytess 5y ago
  Automation without live human review should be criminal. One could imagine non-internet analogous situations that are explicitly criminal. It's common that automated decisions with no human contact cause situations like these; probably most of them go unresolved because the victims do not have the clout to arouse a mob. Corporations have a monetary incentive NOT to resolve these problems. It's time for regulation. The market has failed.
• mekkkkkk 5y ago
  Is there any economics term for being "too big to care"? This seems to be a case of that, and it seems to be quite widespread at Amazon in particular. Just look at the mess that is the AWS console UI as another example. With all those billions and billions, you'd think that they could remedy a lot of this stuff. But alas, why bother when you are in such a dominant market position? Of course I could think of a lot of reasons, but this seems to be the mentality.
  • pas 5y ago
    This uncaring attitude is directly a result of lack of competition. Amazon won. (Sure, there are some other big names in the game, but the online retail market is in a pathological state. As in case of other "natural monopolies" the network effect is very large, thus barriers to entry is absurdly high, hence no real competition. The incumbents are optimizing and diversifying, participating in meta-games - eg. lobbying, regulatory capture, PR, etc. Not to mention the endless cross-financing between services that muddies the waters. Eg. just as Google Search funds Chrome development, AWS finances the Amazon expansion.) Basically one oneline retail market participant optimized out almost all competition. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Retail is not really a winner take all market though. It has very low barriers to entry. There are multitude of options to use as an alternative to Amazon. https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecommerce-though-its-market-share-varies-by-category https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecomme... To Amazon's credit, they did move fast and bet big on online retail first. But since it is a low barrier to entry business, there is next to profit to be had in it, so they really do not have an incentive to keep pouring into it. Why bother playing for 2% profit margins versus Walmart and Target and Home Depot and Costco when you can earn 15%+ as a platform. If people stop using you, then oh well, switch to web services or media which have double digit profit margins, but it is not really a big loss. So I would say the uncaring attitude is due to lack of profits margins, compared to their alternative.
• ad-astra 5y ago
  Hey Cliff, I’ll hop on the internal Amazon network tomorrow and figure out who I can talk to about this.
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    Thank you! Ad astra per aspera? !! Cheers, -Cliff
• kgeist 5y ago
  Why does it matter that it's a foreign seller? The title sounds a little xenophobic.
  • mard 5y ago
    It matters because you could sue a domestic seller for trademark infringement. It's much harder to do so if the seller is under jurisdiction where US trademark law does not apply.
• rbanffy 5y ago
  Don’t they know who they are messing with? This man took down a spy ring from their ping times ;-)
• helixfelix 5y ago
  What is ironic is that there is an annual Award given to an AWS employee called the Cliff Stoll Award: For those individuals who see something suspicious, not working as expected, show ownership and drive it to resolution. As Cliff did to find a KGB spy, and documented in "The Cuckoo's Egg". I wonder what would happen if someone at Amazon pulled on this thread and not only solved Cliff's problem but also the root cause that enables this kind of product hijacking.
  • danparsonson 5y ago
    Plot twist: the root cause is greed
    • mentos 5y ago
      The root cause is oxygen. Anyone expecting any other behavior from utility maximizing entities is naive?
      • danparsonson 5y ago
        I would counter that by saying anyone ascribing that mindset automatically to all humans is cynical ;-)
        • hrdwdmrbl 5y ago
          Disagree. It’s possible to start with that assumption and then design systems with that in mind.
          • danparsonson 5y ago
            Agreed, but I guess we're talking about slightly different things (and perhaps I missed the point of the 'oxygen' remark) - I was saying, Amazon's system is designed that way because Amazon are greedy (that's the root cause), and that it's cynical to say that it's just because they're human (and therefore implicitly greedy). Vaguely worded statements on my part though, I should've been clearer.
• maciekpaprocki 5y ago
  Hi Cliff, First of all thank you for being you. I read about you week ago and then I went into a massive youtube binge of your videos. I had a bad day and needed a distraction and seriously your videos were uplifting, funny, educational and so binge worthy. Great stuff, highly recommended to anyone. Wish there would be more of them. From ecommerce perspective, don't care about amazon. I wouldn't say that for most business, but I am sure most of the clients buying from you actually know you as it's hard to search for klein bottle without without you popping up. It is first result above amazon in my google search and I would assume most of the sales on amazon were actually coming from people that first seen your website and just wanted to quick checkout.
  • CliffStoll 5y ago
    My thanks to you Macie. I appreciate your smile and kindness - I hope you got more than your fill of my silly videos. You're right, of course: As others point out, mine is a hobby-business, and Amazon isn't the best place for it. Still, it was fun having a (small) presence there, even if most of my customer interaction happened through my Kleinbottle website. Having said this, I'll probably continue this zero-volume business out of my home; the cool thing is how many fascinating people I meet. Just a week ago, a mathematician stopped by and tried to teach me homotopy theory. Good stuff!
• hardlianotion 5y ago
  It has only really now dawned on me that I really do need to take my Amazon custom elsewhere. Amazon is not a place to do my shopping any more and inertia is not really a good enough excuse for not taking my quantum of influence somewhere else. So I am shopping around for alternative marketplaces for books and general goods. Not groceries - never really fell for that Amazon offer.
  • WesleyHale 5y ago
    Why not order directly from the vendor itself rather than looking for a marketplace? Books can still be sourced from Books-A-Million, Barns & Noble, as well as local shops. If I'm looking for choices for a solution, I'll use a marketplace, but after I find a solution, I'll order straight from the vendor itself
  • fotta 5y ago
    I really like bookshop.org to support local bookstores.
• deleted 5y ago
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• williesleg 5y ago
  Ha! Asshole finally got hacked!
• osazuwa 5y ago
  It amazes how much raw ingenuity goes into scams and hustles.
  • hippich 5y ago
    This kind of scam was happening on Amazon for at least couple years if not more. So it is not even new/original.
• deleted 5y ago
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• neom 5y ago
  I had no clue what a Klein Bottle is, this video was very very very helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfhiVaJj9UY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfhiVaJj9UY
  • chrisjc 5y ago
    I had no idea who Cliff was, as well as what a Klein Bottle was, but after watching this video I could watch him all day. I'd love to watch more short videos with him explaining things!
    • neom 5y ago
      Quite the character!!! If we had more people as wonderfully excited about life as this guy, the world would be a considerably better place. What a cool dude.
    • CliffStoll 5y ago
      I still have no idea who Cliff is...
• darepublic 5y ago
  Every fresh outrage has me shaking my fist. Amazonnnnn!!!
• alisonkisk 5y ago
  Wish we could throw all these brand thrives into a Klein bottle.
• dreamcompiler 5y ago
  Sorry about this Cliff. Hope somebody at Amazon can clear it up. FWIW I bought one of your Klein bottles last year (directly from your website) and it arrived quickly and undamaged. I'm also moving away from Amazon ordering in general because it takes much too long to sift through all the fake reviews of Chinese-made garbage to find the fake reviews for the Chinese-made good stuff.
• deleted 5y ago
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• 238475235243 5y ago
  Just to say I bought one of these as a gift years ago and it was great. If you're thinking of buying one, go for it.
• ScottWRobinson 5y ago
  Just came here to say that I bought one of Cliff's Klein bottles maybe 5 years back, and it's still my only decorative contribution to our house. Cliff seems like a great guy, and I hope this gets resolved for him.
• deleted 5y ago
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• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  I went to Amazon.com, searched for a Acme Klien Bottle and got a "Cradle and Dew" brand bottle "collab with Mr Cliff Stoll." Not a "blackhead" remover. I'm confused. Is that not Cliff's bottle? EDIT: Apparently it has been fixed. Still, WTF, Amazon?
  • Willson50 5y ago
    You can see the old link on Google still https://www.google.com/search?q=Klein+Bottle+amazon https://www.google.com/search?q=Klein+Bottle+amazon
• mtnGoat 5y ago
  One more piece of proof Amazon lost its soul in the pursuit of the all mighty dollar. Maybe federal court will help then find it again.
• rickspencer3 5y ago
  We're finally going to not renew our Amazon Prime after many years. We don't have that much need for "free" shipping on cheap Chinese products, and the convenience of the Amazon marketplace is now counter-balanced by the inconvenience of sorting out the fake goods and fake reviews. We are choosing sellers' own marketplaces when we can these days, and just dealing with longer and paid shipping. Additionally, we are finding that Amazon Prime Video doesn't have so much that we want to watch anymore either, and we are paying for multiple streaming services anyway.
  • 1-6 5y ago
    Welcome to the other side. I haven't renewed Amazon Prime in quite a while. It's not that bad because you can still shop on Amazon with free shipping as long as you hit the minimum amount. I may keep things in the cart and sometimes it becomes a reminder for me to grab those items at the local shop. The only time I get an 'itch' to get back on Prime when I'm at Whole Foods. Other than that, goodbye free shipping!
    • rickspencer3 5y ago
      My wife pointed out that the shipping is not, in fact, free, because we pay $100 (or whatever it is now) for Prime.
    • giarc 5y ago
      Do you know if you can still use Subscribe and Save without a Prime membership? We use that service quite a bit.
      • mattnewton 5y ago
        You can (I do)
        • giarc 5y ago
          Interesting. I'm wondering if I'd be able to drop the Amazon Prime then as well. Outside of Subscribe and Save, all of our purchases could be bunched until we hit the minimum order $. We hardly ever watch Amazon Prime video, we used to use the Photo storage but now pay for Google Photos (or Google One... whatever they call it now). Not sure what other benefits it provides?
• notananthem 5y ago
  Amazon: wrings hands HOW DO WE STOP MALICIOUS SELLERS?
• soheil 5y ago
  What is the purpose of a Klein bottle for those of us not in the know? Can you store food in it or is it just the geometrical shape that fascinates children?
  • gnopgnip 5y ago
    It is a 3d representation of a 4d object that is basically the equivalent of a 4d mobius strip. There is only one side, no edges, and in 4d it doesn't bisect itself. You could store a liquid in it, but it is impractical to clean or drink from. Mostly mathematicians would be interested in it, as a novelty.
    • soheil 5y ago
      Why can't we have even a cooler 5d object represented in 3d and sell that on Amazon?
• nyghtly 5y ago
  It feels like buying stuff on Amazon gets worse and worse every year.
• curation 5y ago
  I blame Zizek and his 2020 book Sex & the Failed Absolute who link unorientables (klein bottle, crosscap and Mobius) to unfinished human subjectivity.
• grammers 5y ago
  This, and similar scams make me not want to buy anything off Amazon ever again.
• thethought 5y ago
  Sleazy company hijacked Cliff Stoll’s Amazon Klein bottle listing. To me “foreign seller” implies Amazon sellers/buyers has some sort of national context? Note: I do feel bad hijacking happens in Amazon.
  • qvrjuec 5y ago
    I think they are considered a foreign seller as a merchant shipping from outside the US on amazon.com (the US marketplace)
• greyhair 5y ago
  One more reason that I am no longer renewing my Amazon Prime this year when it is up. Amazon is on a slow slide to hell. I came to realize this last year. And Prime membership is a large part of the problem. Two issues: 1) It reduces friction so it is easiest to default buy from them. 2) The price on those handcuffs / membership has gone up, a lot, and it is basically a driver to dilute the cost burden via volume. So cancelling Prime is the key to kicking Amazon to the curb. You can still use it, for times when you cannot find something anywhere else, but it no longer becomes the default.
• vfclists 5y ago
  Title should read "A seller based in China has hijacked Cliff Stoll's Amazon Klein bottle listing" "foreign" is provincial and kinda racist. "foreign to who"? Is a seller in China foreign to a Chinese person? Is a seller in Nigeria "foreign" to a Nigerian? Is a seller in the UK "foreign" to a British person? Will this make headlines in the broadsheets, The Washington Post in particular?
• EricE 5y ago
  A perfect example of why I buy less and less from sites that support 3rd party sellers. The problem is even once reliable sites like newegg.com are now playing these games. If I wanted the Ebay/alibaba experience I can get that! Why large retailer sites dilute their brand and frustrate customers in the fruitless chase of "being like Amazon" in catering to 3rd party sellers amazes and annoys me. At least most other sites let you weed out the 3rd party sellers fairly easily. What's really annoying is with Amazon, even if you are buying from "Amazon" it could be ultimately supplied to Amazon by some hackney 3rd party and not a trusted wholesaler or the original manufacturer. And as Cliff Stoll found out, Amazon doesn't care either. Talk about coasting on your reputation. It will be interesting to see how much trust they have to piss away before it affects them enough for them to finally pay attention to stuff like this :/
  • fma 5y ago
    I buy a lot from Walmart now, to drive business away from Amazon (I would never have typed these words a few years ago...). First thing I do is click Retailer = Walmart.com.
    • jonahhorowitz 5y ago
      I used to hate Best Buy because I had some poor return experiences back in the 90s, but now it's my first choice for online shopping because they only sell first-party items and they have control over their supply chain. This is particularly important for frequently-counterfeited products like SD cards.
      • sethhochberg 5y ago
        Sometimes it makes me feel like a crazy person - I bought some new headphones a few months ago, and walked to a physical Best Buy store to make the purchase, because I had no confidence any online retailer wasn't going to sell me counterfeits, and the manufacturer was selling at full MSRP instead of the slightly-cheaper usual going rate for them. And for what its worth, the store experience was totally fine. I'll give them my money again next time I need something tech related.
• vfclists 5y ago
  Amvoom fraudulent page in Google webcache https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0UGfjt7PRgEJ:https://www.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp/B017UY60MK+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0UGfjt...
• IOT_Apprentice 5y ago
  Is there someone here from Amazon that can actually do something about this?
• nr2x 5y ago
  I got locked out of my Amazon account due to getting a new phone number and 2FA not working. It was a blessing, not looked back.
• worik 5y ago
  Can people stop using Amazon. Not a question. I have not bought anything from Amazon for several years. Just stop.
• psim1 5y ago
  "Shenzhen Hangteng Information Technology Co in Shenzhen, China" Let's just call them Chinese SHIT Company.
• rfwhyte 5y ago
  This isn't an Amazon bug, it's a feature. Amazon has known for YEARS about sleazy (Mostly Chinese) sellers manipulating reviews, paying for review and generally engaging in super shady practices, and Amazon has done literally NOTHING about it, so at this point we can reasonable assume they tacitly condone these practices. Amazon reviews have all but become useless as a result. Perhaps one of the least trustworthy corners on an increasingly trustless internet.
• naga_n 5y ago
  Great to see news of Cliff here. I have his hardbound book autograpged when I met him in a conference in Berkeley about 10 years ago. I read the book almost 25 years ago..
• freeopinion 5y ago
  I meant to show a simple example of how a vendor offers the same product for the same price on their own website and on Amazon. I was going to argue that they should mark it up on Amazon to encourage traffic through their own site. So I just grabbed a random item on Amazon to illustrate this: https://www.amazon.com/Adafruit-2769-Circuit-Playground-Educators/dp/B07BB84BBQ/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1&keywords=adafruit&qid=1625089241&sr=8-11 https://www.amazon.com/Adafruit-2769-Circuit-Playground-Educ... $99.99 "Adafruit 2769 Circuit Playground Express Educator's Pack" https://www.adafruit.com/product/3399 https://www.adafruit.com/product/3399 $350.00 "Code.org Circuit Playground Express Educators' Pack" https://www.adafruit.com/product/2769 https://www.adafruit.com/product/2769 $99.95 "Circuit Playground Express Advanced Pack" Then I looked closer at the Amazon listing, thinking it odd that Adafruit would confuse the product label. I see that it isn't being sold by Adafruit. So somebody is apparently buying one product from Adafruit, relabeling it on Amazon as a much more expensive product, and misleading buyers. And that's a generous reading. I'm not pointing this out as a warning that it can happen. I'm pointing out that I didn't pick this product to illustrate this point. I picked a random product to illustrate a different point, but ran into this. Granted, this is a uselessly small sample size, but sheesh! One moral of this story: Always buy direct when possible. Never buy through Amazon if it can be avoided. It irritates me to find a vendor who offers a product cheaper through Amazon than on their own website. That encourages the exact type of abuse seen here. (I'm not ripping Adafruit for doing this. Of the pages of products displayed by Amazon when I searched for "sold by Adafruit" I didn't find any evidence that Adafruit even sells on Amazon. Lot's of other people--including Amazon--sell Adafruit products on Amazon. Somehow they can meet or beat Adafruit's price. Have to wonder how many are legit.)
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• arduinomancer 5y ago
  Side note: reading other parts on the website, this guy is hilarious "CORONA VIRUS: I've ordered everyone at Acme Klein Bottle to work from home. Of course, I'm Acme's only employee, and this is my home business. "
• oauea 5y ago
  This is nothing but negligent on Amazon's part. Absolutely horrible.
• koreanguy 5y ago
  i hate chinese sellers
• dpifke 5y ago
  Somewhat amusingly, Amazon doesn't let you include HN URLs in abuse reports, it errors out with "Please don't include personal info": https://i.imgur.com/7nFbL3l.png https://i.imgur.com/7nFbL3l.png I'm guessing because it contains the string "ID".
• tamaharbor 5y ago
  Another Klein bottle article on HN? Smells like advertising to me.
• jhgb 5y ago
  When I enter "Klein bottle" or "Acme Klein Bottle" as a search pattern, the first item in the list is https://www.amazon.com/Kleinverse-Exquisite-Handmade-Education-Decoration/dp/B08YWM31V4/ https://www.amazon.com/Kleinverse-Exquisite-Handmade-Educati... . Is that wrong?