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Stopped buying from Amazon for any household products after getting a fake hummingbird feeder and fake castor oil (was opened and repackaged canola oil). Just

Stopped buying from Amazon for any household products after getting a fake hummingbird feeder and fake castor oil (was opened and repackaged canola oil). Just can't trust them to send you the real name-brand product and not something knockoff or fake.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
How did you know it was canola?
- denkmoon 4y ago
  You can't tell from the odor?
- randycupertino 4y ago
  Castor oil is darker, thicker and higher viscosity. Canola is more of a pale yellow and thin. If it wasn't canola (which I assumed it was because it's the cheapest) it was some other cheap filler. Point being, I no longer trust amazon to send me anything that's going on or in my body. Then when we got a fake birdfeeder I realized there were a ton of fake products on there. We weren't the only ones to get a fake birdfeeder, fwiw: https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/ https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on... > WARREN, R.I. (WPRI) — Aspects has been in business for decades, manufacturing bird feeders that come with a lifetime guarantee. So in 2016, when a customer called about a defective hummingbird feeder, the Warren-based company took the complaint seriously. “We went through the process of cutting the plastic and looking at all the different molding telltales and we realized it was not our product,” Trisha Torres, the CEO of Aspects, told Call 12 for Action. Torres said the product was a counterfeit. She knew if there was one, there had to be others. > “We found that it was just rampant on Amazon,” Torres said. In 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 3,828 counterfeit Aspects bird feeders in 68 cartons. Federal court records show Aspects won a permanent injunction against the LLC that made the shipment, but even now, Torres still finds fakes on Amazon. “My customer service department has fielded hundreds of these calls,” Torres said. “People’s knee-jerk reaction is they are just angry at us. They think we’re not standing behind our product.”
wildrhythms 4y ago
Good lord the amount of dropshipping 'brands' with seemingly randomly generated names like Wynboop and FveBzem and DmofwHi and ZGGCD all selling the exact same product with the exact same description and product photos is frustrating. The NYT even wrote about this[1] in 2020 but clearly Amazon doesn't care. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...
- layer8 4y ago
  That reminds me of this sketch: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30?t=4s https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30?t=4s
- Widdershin 4y ago
  I recently ordered a magnetic usb-c adaptor and the box turned up empty. I left a review warning others this was a possibility, but Amazon removed it since it was critique of a seller rather than the product. It’s impossible to tell if you’ll get a genuine product if Amazon censors reviews critiquing sellers sending the wrong product or no product at all.
  - SomeBoolshit 4y ago
    Why didn't you rate the seller on their profile page? Doing it on the product page makes as little sense as removing stars for bad packaging on there.
- tkanarsky 4y ago
  A lot of them sound surprisingly similar to IFR waypoint names. Try guessing which one is a sketchy Amazon brand and which one is a waypoint name: WEXIM PEIPU SEMRE MIADY YEAKE (Answer: WEXIM and SEMRE are waypoints, the rest are brands) I wonder how the sellers decide that "ah yes, today is the day I'll start selling YEAKE-brand USB cables". It sounds vaguely English, I guess.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

How did you know it was canola?

denkmoon 4y ago
You can't tell from the odor?
randycupertino 4y ago
Castor oil is darker, thicker and higher viscosity. Canola is more of a pale yellow and thin. If it wasn't canola (which I assumed it was because it's the cheapest) it was some other cheap filler. Point being, I no longer trust amazon to send me anything that's going on or in my body. Then when we got a fake birdfeeder I realized there were a ton of fake products on there. We weren't the only ones to get a fake birdfeeder, fwiw: https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/ https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on... > WARREN, R.I. (WPRI) — Aspects has been in business for decades, manufacturing bird feeders that come with a lifetime guarantee. So in 2016, when a customer called about a defective hummingbird feeder, the Warren-based company took the complaint seriously. “We went through the process of cutting the plastic and looking at all the different molding telltales and we realized it was not our product,” Trisha Torres, the CEO of Aspects, told Call 12 for Action. Torres said the product was a counterfeit. She knew if there was one, there had to be others. > “We found that it was just rampant on Amazon,” Torres said. In 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 3,828 counterfeit Aspects bird feeders in 68 cartons. Federal court records show Aspects won a permanent injunction against the LLC that made the shipment, but even now, Torres still finds fakes on Amazon. “My customer service department has fielded hundreds of these calls,” Torres said. “People’s knee-jerk reaction is they are just angry at us. They think we’re not standing behind our product.”

wildrhythms 4y ago

Good lord the amount of dropshipping 'brands' with seemingly randomly generated names like Wynboop and FveBzem and DmofwHi and ZGGCD all selling the exact same product with the exact same description and product photos is frustrating. The NYT even wrote about this[1] in 2020 but clearly Amazon doesn't care. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...

layer8 4y ago
That reminds me of this sketch: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30?t=4s https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30?t=4s
Widdershin 4y ago
I recently ordered a magnetic usb-c adaptor and the box turned up empty. I left a review warning others this was a possibility, but Amazon removed it since it was critique of a seller rather than the product. It’s impossible to tell if you’ll get a genuine product if Amazon censors reviews critiquing sellers sending the wrong product or no product at all.
- SomeBoolshit 4y ago
  Why didn't you rate the seller on their profile page? Doing it on the product page makes as little sense as removing stars for bad packaging on there.
tkanarsky 4y ago
A lot of them sound surprisingly similar to IFR waypoint names. Try guessing which one is a sketchy Amazon brand and which one is a waypoint name: WEXIM PEIPU SEMRE MIADY YEAKE (Answer: WEXIM and SEMRE are waypoints, the rest are brands) I wonder how the sellers decide that "ah yes, today is the day I'll start selling YEAKE-brand USB cables". It sounds vaguely English, I guess.