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Top USB Drives on Amazon are a Scam

339 points by Arch485 4y ago

noncoml 4y ago
In the future if you want to avoid counterfeit/scams try: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/
- neilv 4y ago
  When I was learning photojournalism, I loved B&H service and prices so much. I've recently started adding B&H to where I shop for electronics, alongside Amazon and a local brick&mortar (Microcenter). I no longer check Newegg much, though recently they did have the best price on a particular 1U chassis that I wanted. I'd welcome more direct-to-consumer sales from the brands themselves. I hate buying USB or SD flash devices, because of all the counterfeits of brand names, and I'll never buy one of those spammy-semirandom-named products.
  - noncoml 4y ago
    Probably you know that already but you can buy Sandisk SDs straight from the Western Digital website (they bought Sandisk sometime back). Tried them a couple of times and delivery was prompt and free! Highly recommend it.
    - neilv 4y ago
      Thanks! I will absolutely try this! I did have a poor experience recently with what I thought was D2C with another quality brand name. I thought I was buying server RAM from Micron (not marketplace), but shipping info looked like it might've been "some random guy's kitchen table moonlighting business", and they actually shipped non-ECC initially, even though the order was for ECC compatible with a particular mobo model. I hope Sandisk/WD does D2C better.
      - fmajid 4y ago
        They also have great deals on Black Friday.
  - themadturk 4y ago
    I took a chance a couple of years ago and got a 500GB dual USB-A/C flash drive with the brand name "Thalar" from Amazon. It's not fast, but it has been utterly reliable. But you never know -- some brands just seem fishier than others.
- JamesAdir 4y ago
  +1 for B&H for top notch service and super helpful staff both online and onsite.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    Also their search doesn’t consider my search keywords as mere suggestions to be ignored (e.g. returning flash drives of all random sizes if you search for “usb flash drive 128gb”), and in many categories they have specific filtering dimensions, e.g. for flash drive they will have one filtering dimension that is USB-C vs USB-A vs Lightning. Amazon’s UI is complete garbage in comparison
Arch485 4y ago
Are there any good alternatives to Amazon that don't prominently feature fake products?
- sfvegandude 4y ago
  Depends on what you are looking for. I've never had any problems with BH Photo Video for technology products. Everything else I mostly get directly from the manufacturer website.
  - derefr 4y ago
    To me, the distinguishing feature of Amazon, is that it's an online "everything store" with a yearly subscription that makes delivery of most products free. Any alternatives that try to "be Amazon" in this sense, while 1. only carrying first-party listings, and 2. not commingling stock? Or, in other words: any stores that attempt to be the Amazon of ~2010, rather than the Amazon of 2022?
    - wombat-man 4y ago
      A lot of stores online ship free now in order to compete with Amazon. Also if you're ordering more than $25 you get free, but slightly slower shipping. I see no reason to have Prime.
      - derefr 4y ago
        I don't think I've ever received free shipping from a web store. (I live in Canada.) In fact, for some of the things my partner orders (e.g. books from Taiwanese book shops) not only is there a shipping cost, but there are often surprise $20-$50 COD import duties on top of that cost, doubling the final cost of the order. That, for some reason, they can't just build into the order invoice. And because of the duties, the logistics provider (usually FedEx) usually refuses to actually do the last-mile delivery of the thing until they're paid; so we have to go down to their depot to pay the duties, effectively forcing us to do the last-mile part ourselves. Also, even if a store were to offer free shipping at some price threshold (I think maybe some stores do for $100 here), I find that because most online other than Amazon aren't an "everything store", it's pretty unlikely that I'll be ordering more than a single item from them; and so I'd never qualify for the free shipping anyway. If I find a nice t-shirt, and it's $20... ain't getting free shipping from that.
chrismcb 4y ago
Attorney generals need to investigate stuff like this
- atlbeer 4y ago
  Attorneys General
  - locusofself 4y ago
    God damnit can they just came it to General Attorneys or something I hate this one.
    - actually_a_dog 4y ago
      Blame the French.
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      It causes 3 bagsfull of grief
  - mkoryak 4y ago
    Also generals who have switched careers and became attorney generals
  - bardan 4y ago
    Like "maidens fair"
  - deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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LeoPanthera 4y ago
If you still want to buy from Amazon, I often use diskprices.com (no affiliation, just a user) to sort disks on Amazon by price-per-GB. For example, here are USB flash drives sorted by price-per-GB: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=usb_flash https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=u...
- logifail 4y ago
  While it's a mildly useful site, all diskprices' links are affiliate links, and I've not found an opt-out. I don't think we should share that stuff here on HN, it's a cancer on the web.
  - hervature 4y ago
    You don't think someone providing a free service should receive compensation? I would gladly give them their cut for a useful service. This isn't some shady website writing bogus blogposts or best of listicles.
    - alexhsamuel 4y ago
      Absolutely not! That would be an oxymoron. Someone providing a service is entitled to seek compensation; the amount and means of compensation should be listed clearly next to the service. But it ain't free.
      - gtirloni 4y ago
        Would you have paid to read these reviews in the first place?
    - logifail 4y ago
      > You don't think someone providing a free service should receive compensation? It's an LLC not a charity. How about they follow the (GDPR and affiliate marketing and opt-in) rules like everyone else has to?
jquery 4y ago
Not paying obviously scam prices somewhat mitigates this, although not completely. I still managed to find out the hard way my 1 year old Amazon-bought micro sd card did not have 1tb of storage, despite costing around ~$150-200 which was the market price at the time. Now I run a full suite of tests on every storage device I get from Amazon (or anywhere else, for that matter).
propagandist 4y ago
The quality of listings on Amazon has nose-dived. It used to be a reputable corner of the web. Today it's filled with scams and low-effort white label crap.
- cube00 4y ago
  People been getting boxes of rocks instead of DSLRs for a while now.
  - mkhpalm 4y ago
    I got a couple LA area law office coasters in my Sonos box.
agolio 4y ago
Seems to be a bug in this page FYI, may have to do with the fact I am trying to access from Germany https://i.imgur.com/5C8Kgq4.png https://i.imgur.com/5C8Kgq4.png
- hutattedonmyarm 4y ago
  Working for me (iOS Safari, also from Germany)
- Jamie9912 4y ago
  The certificate served to me was valid until December 2022
  - herpderperator 4y ago
    Same, but Chrome still didn't want to show the page and said the date was invalid... Safari is doing the same: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rupu0y3wswxs2l2/validbutinvalid.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/rupu0y3wswxs2l2/validbutinvalid.pn...
- mnw21cam 4y ago
  I just get a blank white page, viewing from UK. This might have something to do with the fact that the web page doesn't actually have any content in the HTML file, and even if it did, the CSS file has "display: block" so one wouldn't be able to see it.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- dtgriscom 4y ago
  Same from USA (Massachusetts). Also got a "Not Secure" warning from Chrome. I assume it's the hug'o'death.
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hacym 4y ago
Sponsored by Amazon are literal ads, unless you’re referring to “Amazon’s Choice” which is more or less Amazon saying what the “highest rated” item is. Sounds like you clicked an ad.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  Anazon promotes that wording because it increases engagement. Does it demonstrate customer obsession to not vet these products at all?
- danpalmer 4y ago
  Allowing someone to push products up the ranking is implicit support for those products, whether it’s an ad or not. Amazon know they’ll be bought more and are ok with that. This is why advertising on the web, social media platforms, etc, has a bunch of stuff you can and can’t do. Scam products are harder to police there and definitely happen, but a product in a web page or next to a tweet is less risky than a product in a list of products where they user has intention to buy one. Amazon need to tread really carefully here. I know so many people who avoid eBay because of scams, it pretty much destroyed their reputation in the late 2000s, and Amazon is headed that way.
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esses 4y ago
I think there's one thing that should be clarified from the article. "Sponsored" does not mean that the product is "sponsored by Amazon" as italicized in the article. It means the seller paid money to be at the top of the search query. Perhaps it is a healthy dose of old aged jadedness, but I have a habit of trying to avoid Sponsored items.
- NavinF 4y ago
  uBlock Origin blocks sponsored search results by default because like you said they're just ads. (Amazon will still return a duplicate result for the same product in the correct place further down the list so you're not missing out on anything by blocking sponsored search results)
  - atoav 4y ago
    So yet another instance where using an adblocker can make you safer than not using one.
  - notRobot 4y ago
    Man I love uBO so fucking much.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      Which is precisely why Google is knifing the baby with Manifest V3.
    - zanmat0 4y ago
      This is actually a bad thing because the sponsored product will also be listed normally and then you can’t ignore it by virtue of it being sponsored.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  It absolutely implies some amount of endorsement. It’s the same as seeing the endcap of a supermarket aisle. They decide to co-market the product and they decide to promote each other in the process. If anything, it’s advertisers on Amazon who have little choice in the arrangement because there are so few alternatives to market themselves in.
RobertRies 4y ago
While I agree this is a problem - one which I have been the victim of as well - Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges. This, of course, is not a great consolidation, especially for a novice who doesn't understand or encounters it too late. But I strongly disagree with "Amazon runs little to no risk selling the fraudulent products, but still makes money off of them." In the next paragraph the author outlines how they've lost trust in Amazon and will not be buying electronics. Erosion of trust is absolutely a massive risk, and one that eBay is also arguably pretty publicly recovering from. I suspect Amazon would prefer not to have fake drives and the costs associated with returns and erosion of trust for the infinitesimal rounding error that makes up the extra revenue they get from fake $20 thumb drives. I'm far from an Amazon fanboy, but I think the problem is more complex than Amazon turning a blind eye because they're making $10k extra profit a year from phony thumb drives. As an outsider, it seems like a difficult tradeoff of not creating incredible hurdles to list products, versus counterfeits getting through. In my case, the phony thumb drive I bought was delisted before I got home from the walk to the mailbox, literally.
- mosselman 4y ago
  The real Amazon and other nature is who pays the real bill of this in the costs to nature in terms of transportation impact and pure waste of this crap being created and thrown away. So yes, you might get your $20 back, but who will restore the cost to nature?
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges But remember that Amazon keeps what's basically a social credit score on you that drops every time you return something, and then they permanently ban you (including from non-retail things like AWS and Prime Video) if it ever gets too low.
  - anu7df 4y ago
    I did not know the consequences were so draconian. However, I would imagine returning faulty or fake products will not trigger a score decrease.
matheweis 4y ago
A related problem I’ve encountered on Amazon is wrong quantity of items; ex, order three 8 packs and instead get three singles. Their return policy doesn’t have the ability to correct for this as far as I’ve been able to find.
- mwint 4y ago
  Isn’t that just “I got the wrong item”? The “item” you ordered was “8-pack of widgets”, you got “1-pack of widgets”, so it’s the wrong item.
  - matheweis 4y ago
    Nope, tried that, they let me return the “1-pack widgets” but sent another “1-pack widgets”
    - bombcar 4y ago
      When there is a mismatch like that you can only send it back for refund, sadly. They can’t understand the issue. I ordered one of something and got a ten pack and it took me about an hour on the chat to get them to understand I wanted to send nine back. It was pretty expensive stuff so I’d’ve felt bad keeping the other nine but man it was getting tempting.
- cfeduke 4y ago
  I've encountered this problem with superglue. I thought I'd be clever and setup a monthly subscribe and save and I ended up having to send back a single tube twice - the first time a single replacement tube was sent back to me, and the second time I received a credit and they cancelled the subscribe and save. It's basically impossible to get through their automated returns system to get the desired result - that is, receiving what you've already paid for. Years ago, a similar situation would result in a "keep the item we sent by mistake, and we'll dispatch the quantity you paid for." This behavior seemed to rely on human support personnel.
- Auracle 4y ago
  I also bought some toothpaste on Amazon recently and it was the wrong kind. Their return page wouldn’t let me return it for any reason - I needed to get on chat support to get a refund. You’d think “you literally sent me the wrong item” would always be a good reason but apparently not.
up2isomorphism 4y ago
You know that price is too slow for 1TB drive and you are willing to take the chance and at the end you can still return it get the refund and give a bad review. I didn’t know how much better Amazon can do as a platform in this case.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  But not selling fraudulent products. Are you saying nothing more can be done?
  - up2isomorphism 4y ago
    It can try to reduce the chance, but absolutely no fraudulent products? No, I don’t think so and I don’t think any platform can do that without significantly increasing the cost. I have using a dozen of e commerce websites and no one is doing remotely comparable to Amazon. Just return the product and write a review to help others rather than whining about something unrealistic didn’t happen.
    - newaccount74 4y ago
      Most electronics resellers do not sell fraudulent products. Here in the EU, if you buy from Reichelt or Alternate then there is close to zero chance you'll receive a fraudulent USB drive. Amazon makes a lot of money from selling sketchy products without QA, it's an explicit decision they have made. Other stores just don't sell that crap.
sandreas 4y ago
Like I describe in https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/the-ultimate-boot-stick/ https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/the-ultimate-boot-stick/, I tend no longer buying USB drives but mini USB single card readers for micro SD. Although not as fast and a bit more expensive, they are reliable, bootable and pretty cheap to "upgrade", as soon as micro SD cards (e.g. Samsung Evo Select - made for amazon and highest probability of "no fake" cards) have sale prices. I also use the software h2testw to check, if the drive / card is a fake or not as soon as I bought one.
andreapmd 4y ago
I noticed this as well recently while I was shopping for an SSD drive. A majority of listings are obvious frauds with no reviews. What I also found out is that there is no way to report a listing for obvious fraud, probably to avoid deliberately flagging competitors’ products, but which could easily done by taking into account an individual customer’s credibility score/reputation/history.
- IMSAI8080 4y ago
  I also tried to report some of these obviously fake 1TB drives about 6 months ago and found it incredibly difficult. I found the fact it was so difficult to report them more frustrating that the fact there were fake listings. I tried going through the hassle of contacting Amazon customer services. There's not option to report bad listings and the Amazon agent doesn't seem to even know what to do about it. Then eventually they say they'll pass it on to the relevant department and weeks later the exact same fake listing is still there.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
I have refused to give Amazon any business of my own for several years because their directly-operated logistics business is morally disgusting to me. Realistically they run many businesses, that’s one of them. Their retail business is little more than branding. Their real business is private infrastructure. The retail business overall is a scam. Example: I’ve been trying to find a comforter for a while, and I haven’t been happy with some of the options I found because a lot of other ecommerce sites have not great search experiences. I thought, well I can search Amazon for my preferences and buy it elsewhere. Nope, not even a single filter I applied was true for any search results I looked at. Amazon didn’t even try to serve me cotton comforters, much less any other refinements they offered. They’re in the business of selling business. Whether that’s their logistics connecting suppliers and shipping with sales, or it’s their tech services connecting startups with time shares on a server. I wouldn’t buy a USB drive or a blanket from IBM either. It’s the same thing.
- amelius 4y ago
  > I wouldn’t buy a USB drive or a blanket from IBM either. It’s the same thing. Nobody ever got fired for buying a USB drive or a blanket from IBM.
- scarface74 4y ago
  > I have refused to give Amazon any business of my own for several years because their directly-operated logistics business is morally disgusting to me. Realistically they run many businesses So where do you buy your electronics from? Guess how the people who are making those are treated? Or is that okay since they are in another country?
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    Nope, it’s not okay and I’ll readily admit I’m a hypocrite. Because, as you imply, there’s no ethical alternative. And I could go on about the ways I try to minimize my impact with electronics too, but that isn’t and wasn’t the point. I’m not sure what your point is. That I should buy from Amazon because factory workers in other countries are treated poorly? What would that do for those workers?
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idontwantthis 4y ago
Can anyone tell me if there is a program to verify usb drive size on Mac? F3 requires linux or windows (has instructions for mac but those require running linux in virtualbox). Edit: nvm, enough of it works natively on mac
- skibble 4y ago
  There’s a GUI app version here: https://github.com/vrunkel/F3XSwift https://github.com/vrunkel/F3XSwift
- bombcar 4y ago
  You can do poormans by copying known large files (all your Linux ISOs) and then doing a shasum on source and dest. Or repeated rsync set to verify each block.
jgaa 4y ago
Amazon does what's in their own best interest. This year, it looks like scamming is it. I wrote a 1 star review last month on a scam product (I fell for) with obviously fake reviews (the product was an earplug, the 3000 5-star reviews was totally generic or for womens beauty creams). The review was rejected because it was violating Amazons "policy". The scam product itself and the 3000 fake reviews was fine.
magic_hamster 4y ago
Amazon has not been reliable for a number of years. Even well reviewed products with thousands of reviews, products that are supposed to integrate well ("frequently bought together"), and basically anything not sold directly by Amazon is questionable. The sellers marketplace on Amazon has become unwieldy. I decided to reduce buying on Amazon as much as possible unless it's very low risk items sold by Amazon directly, and even then there might be a chance I'll send it back, because stuff like Amazon Basics has inconsistent quality.
captainmuon 4y ago
Who would buy a no-name USB drive from Amazon? Or even from a third-party seller? Stick to a brand like SanDisk and buy directly from Amazon (Prime) and you should be fine.
thih9 4y ago
It reminds me of Apple’s broken laptop keyboards that would also stop working after heavy use.
- nottorp 4y ago
  That's not a scam, it's stupidity. It would be a scam if half of the keys did nothing from the start. As it is it's design in California inside an air conditioned and purified office. You're using the laptop wrong if you take it outside ;) Source: I own one of those unusuable keyboards.
  - thih9 4y ago
    > You're using the laptop wrong if you take it outside ;) Same-ish with the USB drives, i.e. "You're using the usb drive wrong if you fill it to the max.". Both devices work for casual use, both look like they could handle more heavy use, both break sooner than expected. And sure, it's not a serious comparison, but I still see a surprising amount of similarities.
nottorp 4y ago
I just had the pleasure of analyzing a "60 Tb SSD" that a friend bought without asking me. 048d:1234 Integrated Technology Express, Inc. Chipsbank CBM2199 Flash Drive It's probably a 128 Gb usb stick chip. I didn't open it to see the chips but after copying like 150 Gb of movies to it they started to randomly not open. It was directly off aliexpress so the proud owner said he'll keep it to copy movies to it for when he goes on holiday. I guess for him it doesn't matter which 8 of 10 movies he watches.
schipplock 4y ago
It's really sad what Amazon has turned into :(. Nowadays I only buy products from brands / companies I know (and I do visit my local electronic stores to buy them). It's really hard to find a brand on Amazon that doesn't sound like its name wasn't generated :). Regarding these scam listings: I wouldn't buy a usb stick from a brand like "pullheart", "kiknin", "probuk", or "generic" (I'm not making these names up). Also: the biggest capacity for a usb stick Verbatim or Intenso offer is 256GB (Verbatim) or 512GB (Intenso). These companies have websites with product information.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Anything that gets infected with “marketplace” drops in quality substantially and quickly. It’s annoying.
possiblydrunk 4y ago
Not questioning the post or it's conclusions, but how does Kurtis 'know' that the drives are fake? Is it just the price point? Are there reliable lists to check? Curious as to how to spot fakes.
- genericacct 4y ago
  Forensicguy on tiktok opened one, It was a usb2 Stick inside a metal case
- microtherion 4y ago
  I've made it a habit to run F3 on any USB drive or SD card I buy. This will establish quite clearly whether the device has the advertised capacity.
- Arch485 4y ago
  If you sort the reviews on these items by lowest to highest, you'll usually find somebody who actually purchased and tested the item confirming it's a scam.
MarkusWandel 4y ago
My trustworthy go-to for electronics is increasingly Costco. This has tempted me before... https://www.costco.com/sandisk-nvme-1tb-extreme-portable-ssd.product.100780552.html https://www.costco.com/sandisk-nvme-1tb-extreme-portable-ssd...
j-bos 4y ago
When a store ceases to be reliable, isn't it time to stop shopping there? At least for USBs. Feels like an inconvenience.
genepope 4y ago
Pretty much any tech product top search results on Amazon is a fraud (and it can go VERY deep into the results). I have been burned so many times I finally learned: DO NOT BUY TECH from Amazon! PS: Forget the Amazon Choice as it is mostly just based on how many buy the product so it tends to be self reinforcing, even for a fraud product.
greatgib 4y ago
Lastly Amazon is very bad for shopping. I used to buy on Amazon when I wanted branded products with insurance. Opposite to buy on AliExpress, ebay, ... For some items. But there are 2 very big problems:. Amazon mixing the stock of all the sellers selling the same thing. So, when you want something like a USB key or SSD, sdcards, even if the listing and the seller you are looking at looks legit, you don't know where the item will come from, it can easily be fake as it will not necessarily come from the stock of this seller. Having to send back, be reimbursed, and reorder is not a solution. You loose a lot of time, and energy with stress. Maybe you needed that for a time sensitive usage. Also, the second issue I noticed is that it is now very hard to find good branded products with Amazon search. It looks like that they are mostly Amazon owned brands or a few sponsored products that show up. But there is not anymore the large choice of products that you would expect. I noticed that when looking for a vacuum cleaner for example!
- j1elo 4y ago
  > Amazon mixing the stock of all the sellers selling the same thing. So, when you want something like a USB key or SSD, sdcards, even if the listing and the seller you are looking at looks legit, you don't know where the item will come from, it can easily be fake as it will not necessarily come from the stock of this seller. Do you have any source for this? This explanation is perfect to explain some friends about why they should be wary of buying electronics from Amazon
  - dismalpedigree 4y ago
    All inventory filled by Amazon (almost all prime goods are filled this way) is commingled by sku. This allows amazon to distribute the items across warehouses and give faster delivery times. Problem comes when another seller claims to sell the same item. They send their fake items in marked as the real thing. They get mixed with all the real ones. Now when an order is placed from legitimate seller it can be filled using fake inventory.
  - greatgib 4y ago
    See this for example: https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-management/ https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...
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qaq 4y ago
I switched to Best Buy for a lot of the tech buying
mmastrac 4y ago
I refused to buy an SD card for my phone off Amazon, instead paying 1.5X from Best Buy from a non-marketplace seller there. I can't risk buying easily-faked stuff from AMZN any more. I have to assume that Best Buy isn't commingling marketplace/first-party, however.
- pevey 4y ago
  Agreed. The title of this article could have been, "Top EVERYTHING on Amazon are a Scam." I started buying a lot from Amazon way back when they mostly sold books and CDs. Was a Prime Member for years after that became a thing. But I canceled about a year ago. It's basically AliExpress, which is fine for certain things, but most of my shopping is now done elsewhere. Especially electronics of any sort.
sandworm101 4y ago
A terabyte of flash for 20$ ?? The number one song on the charts today is horrible. That "best in class" car is in a class of one. Fools and thier money.
scarface74 4y ago
> Not only was it top result, it was sponsored by Amazon. (I don't actually know what this means, but it adds some legitimacy to the item and implies that Amazon endorses it). Maybe the author is not a native English speaker? I saw “sponsored” and immediately knew it was an ad. This was “Amazon’s Choice” SanDisk 1TB Extreme PRO USB 3.2 Solid State Flash Drive - SDCZ880-1T00-GAM46 https://a.co/d/2hSvRQx https://a.co/d/2hSvRQx A product I assume is legitimate
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qrck13 4y ago
Sold by some CN company via amazon. Do never buy from CN company selling on amazon, it will greatly improve your amazon buyer's satisfaction

339 points by Arch485 4y ago

noncoml 4y ago

In the future if you want to avoid counterfeit/scams try: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/

neilv 4y ago
When I was learning photojournalism, I loved B&H service and prices so much. I've recently started adding B&H to where I shop for electronics, alongside Amazon and a local brick&mortar (Microcenter). I no longer check Newegg much, though recently they did have the best price on a particular 1U chassis that I wanted. I'd welcome more direct-to-consumer sales from the brands themselves. I hate buying USB or SD flash devices, because of all the counterfeits of brand names, and I'll never buy one of those spammy-semirandom-named products.
- noncoml 4y ago
  Probably you know that already but you can buy Sandisk SDs straight from the Western Digital website (they bought Sandisk sometime back). Tried them a couple of times and delivery was prompt and free! Highly recommend it.
  - neilv 4y ago
    Thanks! I will absolutely try this! I did have a poor experience recently with what I thought was D2C with another quality brand name. I thought I was buying server RAM from Micron (not marketplace), but shipping info looked like it might've been "some random guy's kitchen table moonlighting business", and they actually shipped non-ECC initially, even though the order was for ECC compatible with a particular mobo model. I hope Sandisk/WD does D2C better.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      They also have great deals on Black Friday.
- themadturk 4y ago
  I took a chance a couple of years ago and got a 500GB dual USB-A/C flash drive with the brand name "Thalar" from Amazon. It's not fast, but it has been utterly reliable. But you never know -- some brands just seem fishier than others.
JamesAdir 4y ago
+1 for B&H for top notch service and super helpful staff both online and onsite.
- fmajid 4y ago
  Also their search doesn’t consider my search keywords as mere suggestions to be ignored (e.g. returning flash drives of all random sizes if you search for “usb flash drive 128gb”), and in many categories they have specific filtering dimensions, e.g. for flash drive they will have one filtering dimension that is USB-C vs USB-A vs Lightning. Amazon’s UI is complete garbage in comparison

Arch485 4y ago

Are there any good alternatives to Amazon that don't prominently feature fake products?

sfvegandude 4y ago
Depends on what you are looking for. I've never had any problems with BH Photo Video for technology products. Everything else I mostly get directly from the manufacturer website.
- derefr 4y ago
  To me, the distinguishing feature of Amazon, is that it's an online "everything store" with a yearly subscription that makes delivery of most products free. Any alternatives that try to "be Amazon" in this sense, while 1. only carrying first-party listings, and 2. not commingling stock? Or, in other words: any stores that attempt to be the Amazon of ~2010, rather than the Amazon of 2022?
  - wombat-man 4y ago
    A lot of stores online ship free now in order to compete with Amazon. Also if you're ordering more than $25 you get free, but slightly slower shipping. I see no reason to have Prime.
    - derefr 4y ago
      I don't think I've ever received free shipping from a web store. (I live in Canada.) In fact, for some of the things my partner orders (e.g. books from Taiwanese book shops) not only is there a shipping cost, but there are often surprise $20-$50 COD import duties on top of that cost, doubling the final cost of the order. That, for some reason, they can't just build into the order invoice. And because of the duties, the logistics provider (usually FedEx) usually refuses to actually do the last-mile delivery of the thing until they're paid; so we have to go down to their depot to pay the duties, effectively forcing us to do the last-mile part ourselves. Also, even if a store were to offer free shipping at some price threshold (I think maybe some stores do for $100 here), I find that because most online other than Amazon aren't an "everything store", it's pretty unlikely that I'll be ordering more than a single item from them; and so I'd never qualify for the free shipping anyway. If I find a nice t-shirt, and it's $20... ain't getting free shipping from that.

chrismcb 4y ago

Attorney generals need to investigate stuff like this

atlbeer 4y ago
Attorneys General
- locusofself 4y ago
  God damnit can they just came it to General Attorneys or something I hate this one.
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    Blame the French.
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    It causes 3 bagsfull of grief
- mkoryak 4y ago
  Also generals who have switched careers and became attorney generals
- bardan 4y ago
  Like "maidens fair"
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LeoPanthera 4y ago

If you still want to buy from Amazon, I often use diskprices.com (no affiliation, just a user) to sort disks on Amazon by price-per-GB. For example, here are USB flash drives sorted by price-per-GB: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=usb_flash https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=u...

logifail 4y ago
While it's a mildly useful site, all diskprices' links are affiliate links, and I've not found an opt-out. I don't think we should share that stuff here on HN, it's a cancer on the web.
- hervature 4y ago
  You don't think someone providing a free service should receive compensation? I would gladly give them their cut for a useful service. This isn't some shady website writing bogus blogposts or best of listicles.
  - alexhsamuel 4y ago
    Absolutely not! That would be an oxymoron. Someone providing a service is entitled to seek compensation; the amount and means of compensation should be listed clearly next to the service. But it ain't free.
    - gtirloni 4y ago
      Would you have paid to read these reviews in the first place?
  - logifail 4y ago
    > You don't think someone providing a free service should receive compensation? It's an LLC not a charity. How about they follow the (GDPR and affiliate marketing and opt-in) rules like everyone else has to?

jquery 4y ago

Not paying obviously scam prices somewhat mitigates this, although not completely. I still managed to find out the hard way my 1 year old Amazon-bought micro sd card did not have 1tb of storage, despite costing around ~$150-200 which was the market price at the time. Now I run a full suite of tests on every storage device I get from Amazon (or anywhere else, for that matter).

propagandist 4y ago

The quality of listings on Amazon has nose-dived. It used to be a reputable corner of the web. Today it's filled with scams and low-effort white label crap.

cube00 4y ago
People been getting boxes of rocks instead of DSLRs for a while now.
- mkhpalm 4y ago
  I got a couple LA area law office coasters in my Sonos box.

agolio 4y ago

Seems to be a bug in this page FYI, may have to do with the fact I am trying to access from Germany https://i.imgur.com/5C8Kgq4.png https://i.imgur.com/5C8Kgq4.png

hutattedonmyarm 4y ago
Working for me (iOS Safari, also from Germany)
Jamie9912 4y ago
The certificate served to me was valid until December 2022
- herpderperator 4y ago
  Same, but Chrome still didn't want to show the page and said the date was invalid... Safari is doing the same: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rupu0y3wswxs2l2/validbutinvalid.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/rupu0y3wswxs2l2/validbutinvalid.pn...
mnw21cam 4y ago
I just get a blank white page, viewing from UK. This might have something to do with the fact that the web page doesn't actually have any content in the HTML file, and even if it did, the CSS file has "display: block" so one wouldn't be able to see it.
- deleted 4y ago
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dtgriscom 4y ago
Same from USA (Massachusetts). Also got a "Not Secure" warning from Chrome. I assume it's the hug'o'death.

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hacym 4y ago

Sponsored by Amazon are literal ads, unless you’re referring to “Amazon’s Choice” which is more or less Amazon saying what the “highest rated” item is. Sounds like you clicked an ad.

imwillofficial 4y ago
Anazon promotes that wording because it increases engagement. Does it demonstrate customer obsession to not vet these products at all?
danpalmer 4y ago
Allowing someone to push products up the ranking is implicit support for those products, whether it’s an ad or not. Amazon know they’ll be bought more and are ok with that. This is why advertising on the web, social media platforms, etc, has a bunch of stuff you can and can’t do. Scam products are harder to police there and definitely happen, but a product in a web page or next to a tweet is less risky than a product in a list of products where they user has intention to buy one. Amazon need to tread really carefully here. I know so many people who avoid eBay because of scams, it pretty much destroyed their reputation in the late 2000s, and Amazon is headed that way.

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esses 4y ago

I think there's one thing that should be clarified from the article. "Sponsored" does not mean that the product is "sponsored by Amazon" as italicized in the article. It means the seller paid money to be at the top of the search query. Perhaps it is a healthy dose of old aged jadedness, but I have a habit of trying to avoid Sponsored items.

NavinF 4y ago
uBlock Origin blocks sponsored search results by default because like you said they're just ads. (Amazon will still return a duplicate result for the same product in the correct place further down the list so you're not missing out on anything by blocking sponsored search results)
- atoav 4y ago
  So yet another instance where using an adblocker can make you safer than not using one.
- notRobot 4y ago
  Man I love uBO so fucking much.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    Which is precisely why Google is knifing the baby with Manifest V3.
  - zanmat0 4y ago
    This is actually a bad thing because the sponsored product will also be listed normally and then you can’t ignore it by virtue of it being sponsored.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
It absolutely implies some amount of endorsement. It’s the same as seeing the endcap of a supermarket aisle. They decide to co-market the product and they decide to promote each other in the process. If anything, it’s advertisers on Amazon who have little choice in the arrangement because there are so few alternatives to market themselves in.

RobertRies 4y ago

While I agree this is a problem - one which I have been the victim of as well - Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges. This, of course, is not a great consolidation, especially for a novice who doesn't understand or encounters it too late. But I strongly disagree with "Amazon runs little to no risk selling the fraudulent products, but still makes money off of them." In the next paragraph the author outlines how they've lost trust in Amazon and will not be buying electronics. Erosion of trust is absolutely a massive risk, and one that eBay is also arguably pretty publicly recovering from. I suspect Amazon would prefer not to have fake drives and the costs associated with returns and erosion of trust for the infinitesimal rounding error that makes up the extra revenue they get from fake $20 thumb drives. I'm far from an Amazon fanboy, but I think the problem is more complex than Amazon turning a blind eye because they're making $10k extra profit a year from phony thumb drives. As an outsider, it seems like a difficult tradeoff of not creating incredible hurdles to list products, versus counterfeits getting through. In my case, the phony thumb drive I bought was delisted before I got home from the walk to the mailbox, literally.

mosselman 4y ago
The real Amazon and other nature is who pays the real bill of this in the costs to nature in terms of transportation impact and pure waste of this crap being created and thrown away. So yes, you might get your $20 back, but who will restore the cost to nature?
josephcsible 4y ago
> Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges But remember that Amazon keeps what's basically a social credit score on you that drops every time you return something, and then they permanently ban you (including from non-retail things like AWS and Prime Video) if it ever gets too low.
- anu7df 4y ago
  I did not know the consequences were so draconian. However, I would imagine returning faulty or fake products will not trigger a score decrease.

matheweis 4y ago

A related problem I’ve encountered on Amazon is wrong quantity of items; ex, order three 8 packs and instead get three singles. Their return policy doesn’t have the ability to correct for this as far as I’ve been able to find.

mwint 4y ago
Isn’t that just “I got the wrong item”? The “item” you ordered was “8-pack of widgets”, you got “1-pack of widgets”, so it’s the wrong item.
- matheweis 4y ago
  Nope, tried that, they let me return the “1-pack widgets” but sent another “1-pack widgets”
  - bombcar 4y ago
    When there is a mismatch like that you can only send it back for refund, sadly. They can’t understand the issue. I ordered one of something and got a ten pack and it took me about an hour on the chat to get them to understand I wanted to send nine back. It was pretty expensive stuff so I’d’ve felt bad keeping the other nine but man it was getting tempting.
cfeduke 4y ago
I've encountered this problem with superglue. I thought I'd be clever and setup a monthly subscribe and save and I ended up having to send back a single tube twice - the first time a single replacement tube was sent back to me, and the second time I received a credit and they cancelled the subscribe and save. It's basically impossible to get through their automated returns system to get the desired result - that is, receiving what you've already paid for. Years ago, a similar situation would result in a "keep the item we sent by mistake, and we'll dispatch the quantity you paid for." This behavior seemed to rely on human support personnel.
Auracle 4y ago
I also bought some toothpaste on Amazon recently and it was the wrong kind. Their return page wouldn’t let me return it for any reason - I needed to get on chat support to get a refund. You’d think “you literally sent me the wrong item” would always be a good reason but apparently not.

up2isomorphism 4y ago

You know that price is too slow for 1TB drive and you are willing to take the chance and at the end you can still return it get the refund and give a bad review. I didn’t know how much better Amazon can do as a platform in this case.

imwillofficial 4y ago
But not selling fraudulent products. Are you saying nothing more can be done?
- up2isomorphism 4y ago
  It can try to reduce the chance, but absolutely no fraudulent products? No, I don’t think so and I don’t think any platform can do that without significantly increasing the cost. I have using a dozen of e commerce websites and no one is doing remotely comparable to Amazon. Just return the product and write a review to help others rather than whining about something unrealistic didn’t happen.
  - newaccount74 4y ago
    Most electronics resellers do not sell fraudulent products. Here in the EU, if you buy from Reichelt or Alternate then there is close to zero chance you'll receive a fraudulent USB drive. Amazon makes a lot of money from selling sketchy products without QA, it's an explicit decision they have made. Other stores just don't sell that crap.

sandreas 4y ago

Like I describe in https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/the-ultimate-boot-stick/ https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/the-ultimate-boot-stick/, I tend no longer buying USB drives but mini USB single card readers for micro SD. Although not as fast and a bit more expensive, they are reliable, bootable and pretty cheap to "upgrade", as soon as micro SD cards (e.g. Samsung Evo Select - made for amazon and highest probability of "no fake" cards) have sale prices. I also use the software h2testw to check, if the drive / card is a fake or not as soon as I bought one.

andreapmd 4y ago

I noticed this as well recently while I was shopping for an SSD drive. A majority of listings are obvious frauds with no reviews. What I also found out is that there is no way to report a listing for obvious fraud, probably to avoid deliberately flagging competitors’ products, but which could easily done by taking into account an individual customer’s credibility score/reputation/history.

IMSAI8080 4y ago
I also tried to report some of these obviously fake 1TB drives about 6 months ago and found it incredibly difficult. I found the fact it was so difficult to report them more frustrating that the fact there were fake listings. I tried going through the hassle of contacting Amazon customer services. There's not option to report bad listings and the Amazon agent doesn't seem to even know what to do about it. Then eventually they say they'll pass it on to the relevant department and weeks later the exact same fake listing is still there.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

I have refused to give Amazon any business of my own for several years because their directly-operated logistics business is morally disgusting to me. Realistically they run many businesses, that’s one of them. Their retail business is little more than branding. Their real business is private infrastructure. The retail business overall is a scam. Example: I’ve been trying to find a comforter for a while, and I haven’t been happy with some of the options I found because a lot of other ecommerce sites have not great search experiences. I thought, well I can search Amazon for my preferences and buy it elsewhere. Nope, not even a single filter I applied was true for any search results I looked at. Amazon didn’t even try to serve me cotton comforters, much less any other refinements they offered. They’re in the business of selling business. Whether that’s their logistics connecting suppliers and shipping with sales, or it’s their tech services connecting startups with time shares on a server. I wouldn’t buy a USB drive or a blanket from IBM either. It’s the same thing.

amelius 4y ago
> I wouldn’t buy a USB drive or a blanket from IBM either. It’s the same thing. Nobody ever got fired for buying a USB drive or a blanket from IBM.
scarface74 4y ago
> I have refused to give Amazon any business of my own for several years because their directly-operated logistics business is morally disgusting to me. Realistically they run many businesses So where do you buy your electronics from? Guess how the people who are making those are treated? Or is that okay since they are in another country?
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Nope, it’s not okay and I’ll readily admit I’m a hypocrite. Because, as you imply, there’s no ethical alternative. And I could go on about the ways I try to minimize my impact with electronics too, but that isn’t and wasn’t the point. I’m not sure what your point is. That I should buy from Amazon because factory workers in other countries are treated poorly? What would that do for those workers?

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idontwantthis 4y ago

Can anyone tell me if there is a program to verify usb drive size on Mac? F3 requires linux or windows (has instructions for mac but those require running linux in virtualbox). Edit: nvm, enough of it works natively on mac

skibble 4y ago
There’s a GUI app version here: https://github.com/vrunkel/F3XSwift https://github.com/vrunkel/F3XSwift
bombcar 4y ago
You can do poormans by copying known large files (all your Linux ISOs) and then doing a shasum on source and dest. Or repeated rsync set to verify each block.

jgaa 4y ago

Amazon does what's in their own best interest. This year, it looks like scamming is it. I wrote a 1 star review last month on a scam product (I fell for) with obviously fake reviews (the product was an earplug, the 3000 5-star reviews was totally generic or for womens beauty creams). The review was rejected because it was violating Amazons "policy". The scam product itself and the 3000 fake reviews was fine.

magic_hamster 4y ago

Amazon has not been reliable for a number of years. Even well reviewed products with thousands of reviews, products that are supposed to integrate well ("frequently bought together"), and basically anything not sold directly by Amazon is questionable. The sellers marketplace on Amazon has become unwieldy. I decided to reduce buying on Amazon as much as possible unless it's very low risk items sold by Amazon directly, and even then there might be a chance I'll send it back, because stuff like Amazon Basics has inconsistent quality.

captainmuon 4y ago

Who would buy a no-name USB drive from Amazon? Or even from a third-party seller? Stick to a brand like SanDisk and buy directly from Amazon (Prime) and you should be fine.

thih9 4y ago

It reminds me of Apple’s broken laptop keyboards that would also stop working after heavy use.

nottorp 4y ago
That's not a scam, it's stupidity. It would be a scam if half of the keys did nothing from the start. As it is it's design in California inside an air conditioned and purified office. You're using the laptop wrong if you take it outside ;) Source: I own one of those unusuable keyboards.
- thih9 4y ago
  > You're using the laptop wrong if you take it outside ;) Same-ish with the USB drives, i.e. "You're using the usb drive wrong if you fill it to the max.". Both devices work for casual use, both look like they could handle more heavy use, both break sooner than expected. And sure, it's not a serious comparison, but I still see a surprising amount of similarities.

nottorp 4y ago

I just had the pleasure of analyzing a "60 Tb SSD" that a friend bought without asking me. 048d:1234 Integrated Technology Express, Inc. Chipsbank CBM2199 Flash Drive It's probably a 128 Gb usb stick chip. I didn't open it to see the chips but after copying like 150 Gb of movies to it they started to randomly not open. It was directly off aliexpress so the proud owner said he'll keep it to copy movies to it for when he goes on holiday. I guess for him it doesn't matter which 8 of 10 movies he watches.

schipplock 4y ago

It's really sad what Amazon has turned into :(. Nowadays I only buy products from brands / companies I know (and I do visit my local electronic stores to buy them). It's really hard to find a brand on Amazon that doesn't sound like its name wasn't generated :). Regarding these scam listings: I wouldn't buy a usb stick from a brand like "pullheart", "kiknin", "probuk", or "generic" (I'm not making these names up). Also: the biggest capacity for a usb stick Verbatim or Intenso offer is 256GB (Verbatim) or 512GB (Intenso). These companies have websites with product information.

bombcar 4y ago
Anything that gets infected with “marketplace” drops in quality substantially and quickly. It’s annoying.

possiblydrunk 4y ago

Not questioning the post or it's conclusions, but how does Kurtis 'know' that the drives are fake? Is it just the price point? Are there reliable lists to check? Curious as to how to spot fakes.

genericacct 4y ago
Forensicguy on tiktok opened one, It was a usb2 Stick inside a metal case
microtherion 4y ago
I've made it a habit to run F3 on any USB drive or SD card I buy. This will establish quite clearly whether the device has the advertised capacity.
Arch485 4y ago
If you sort the reviews on these items by lowest to highest, you'll usually find somebody who actually purchased and tested the item confirming it's a scam.

MarkusWandel 4y ago

My trustworthy go-to for electronics is increasingly Costco. This has tempted me before... https://www.costco.com/sandisk-nvme-1tb-extreme-portable-ssd.product.100780552.html https://www.costco.com/sandisk-nvme-1tb-extreme-portable-ssd...

j-bos 4y ago

When a store ceases to be reliable, isn't it time to stop shopping there? At least for USBs. Feels like an inconvenience.

genepope 4y ago

Pretty much any tech product top search results on Amazon is a fraud (and it can go VERY deep into the results). I have been burned so many times I finally learned: DO NOT BUY TECH from Amazon! PS: Forget the Amazon Choice as it is mostly just based on how many buy the product so it tends to be self reinforcing, even for a fraud product.

greatgib 4y ago

Lastly Amazon is very bad for shopping. I used to buy on Amazon when I wanted branded products with insurance. Opposite to buy on AliExpress, ebay, ... For some items. But there are 2 very big problems:. Amazon mixing the stock of all the sellers selling the same thing. So, when you want something like a USB key or SSD, sdcards, even if the listing and the seller you are looking at looks legit, you don't know where the item will come from, it can easily be fake as it will not necessarily come from the stock of this seller. Having to send back, be reimbursed, and reorder is not a solution. You loose a lot of time, and energy with stress. Maybe you needed that for a time sensitive usage. Also, the second issue I noticed is that it is now very hard to find good branded products with Amazon search. It looks like that they are mostly Amazon owned brands or a few sponsored products that show up. But there is not anymore the large choice of products that you would expect. I noticed that when looking for a vacuum cleaner for example!

j1elo 4y ago
> Amazon mixing the stock of all the sellers selling the same thing. So, when you want something like a USB key or SSD, sdcards, even if the listing and the seller you are looking at looks legit, you don't know where the item will come from, it can easily be fake as it will not necessarily come from the stock of this seller. Do you have any source for this? This explanation is perfect to explain some friends about why they should be wary of buying electronics from Amazon
- dismalpedigree 4y ago
  All inventory filled by Amazon (almost all prime goods are filled this way) is commingled by sku. This allows amazon to distribute the items across warehouses and give faster delivery times. Problem comes when another seller claims to sell the same item. They send their fake items in marked as the real thing. They get mixed with all the real ones. Now when an order is placed from legitimate seller it can be filled using fake inventory.
- greatgib 4y ago
  See this for example: https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-management/ https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...

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qaq 4y ago

I switched to Best Buy for a lot of the tech buying

mmastrac 4y ago

I refused to buy an SD card for my phone off Amazon, instead paying 1.5X from Best Buy from a non-marketplace seller there. I can't risk buying easily-faked stuff from AMZN any more. I have to assume that Best Buy isn't commingling marketplace/first-party, however.

pevey 4y ago
Agreed. The title of this article could have been, "Top EVERYTHING on Amazon are a Scam." I started buying a lot from Amazon way back when they mostly sold books and CDs. Was a Prime Member for years after that became a thing. But I canceled about a year ago. It's basically AliExpress, which is fine for certain things, but most of my shopping is now done elsewhere. Especially electronics of any sort.

sandworm101 4y ago

A terabyte of flash for 20$ ?? The number one song on the charts today is horrible. That "best in class" car is in a class of one. Fools and thier money.

scarface74 4y ago

> Not only was it top result, it was sponsored by Amazon. (I don't actually know what this means, but it adds some legitimacy to the item and implies that Amazon endorses it). Maybe the author is not a native English speaker? I saw “sponsored” and immediately knew it was an ad. This was “Amazon’s Choice” SanDisk 1TB Extreme PRO USB 3.2 Solid State Flash Drive - SDCZ880-1T00-GAM46 https://a.co/d/2hSvRQx https://a.co/d/2hSvRQx A product I assume is legitimate

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qrck13 4y ago

Sold by some CN company via amazon. Do never buy from CN company selling on amazon, it will greatly improve your amazon buyer's satisfaction