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This is not the first time this makes it to the HN front page. Either no one at amazon reads HN, or they seem to be comfortable having their customers scammed.

by cm2187 4y ago

This is not the first time this makes it to the HN front page. Either no one at amazon reads HN, or they seem to be comfortable having their customers scammed. I find the former highly unlikely.

cogman10 4y ago
Anyone that's done software knows what's going on here. Scams earn amazon money. No manager or executive will prioritize addressing this issue because it'll hurt revenue. Can't be damaging those OKRs, that's where your bonuses come from. The only solution to this is new regulations and enforcement. That's the only way an amazon exec looks at this and says "Oh, if we don't fix this we'll be out billions!"
- octacat 4y ago
  idk, if it does not hurt revenue. I cannot trust their reviews anymore, so I don't shop there for a long long time. And prices are the same as everywhere anyway.
georgemcbay 4y ago
Amazon has turned a blind eye to all manner of scams for YEARS. The one I ran into personally is the one where a seller takes a product that sells by the case and they take the retail cases and split them up into units that aren't meant for resale. In my case it was Hartz Delectables Bisque cat treats. These come in small cases of 12 pouches per case. The sellers will buy those cases, split them up into individual pouches, and then sell each pouch for SLIGHTLY less (eg. 11 dollars instead of 12) than the normal price of a full case of 12. The real retail cases you buy of this product have wording on them specifically saying they are meant for sale as a single unit and not to break them up, so presumably the manufacturer is aware of this sort of thing happening, but Amazon still allows marketplace users to run this fraud years after I first reported it to them (and stopped using them for any cat food related product and switched to Chewy). If you read the fine print below the fold the sellers list a valid size in ounces, which maybe gives them some legal protection, but given both the out of band pricing and the fact that Amazon often jams all of the listings of a single product type into one big listing that you sometimes can't make heads or tails of who is actually selling the exact version you are buying (as long as they are Fulfilled by Amazon) its super easy to miss this until after you've fallen victim to it. After running into this years ago I made Amazon very aware of what had occurred but the scam listings are still up on the site (AFAICT exactly the same listing since Amazon almost tauntingly informs me that I purchased this product in the past when I view the suspect listing), still wildly overpriced, with a bunch of reviews that talk about the scam but give it a 4 or 5 star review because I guess the people reviewing it didn't feel like trashing the product. My review is 1 star. The product is fine, but I'm perfectly fine with 1 starring a review of a fraud listing for a good product because best case scenario that happening repeatedly maybe pushes the real OEM into getting on Amazon's case about their policies, wish more people would do the same honestly.

by cm2187 4y ago

This is not the first time this makes it to the HN front page. Either no one at amazon reads HN, or they seem to be comfortable having their customers scammed. I find the former highly unlikely.

cogman10 4y ago

Anyone that's done software knows what's going on here. Scams earn amazon money. No manager or executive will prioritize addressing this issue because it'll hurt revenue. Can't be damaging those OKRs, that's where your bonuses come from. The only solution to this is new regulations and enforcement. That's the only way an amazon exec looks at this and says "Oh, if we don't fix this we'll be out billions!"

octacat 4y ago
idk, if it does not hurt revenue. I cannot trust their reviews anymore, so I don't shop there for a long long time. And prices are the same as everywhere anyway.

georgemcbay 4y ago

Amazon has turned a blind eye to all manner of scams for YEARS. The one I ran into personally is the one where a seller takes a product that sells by the case and they take the retail cases and split them up into units that aren't meant for resale. In my case it was Hartz Delectables Bisque cat treats. These come in small cases of 12 pouches per case. The sellers will buy those cases, split them up into individual pouches, and then sell each pouch for SLIGHTLY less (eg. 11 dollars instead of 12) than the normal price of a full case of 12. The real retail cases you buy of this product have wording on them specifically saying they are meant for sale as a single unit and not to break them up, so presumably the manufacturer is aware of this sort of thing happening, but Amazon still allows marketplace users to run this fraud years after I first reported it to them (and stopped using them for any cat food related product and switched to Chewy). If you read the fine print below the fold the sellers list a valid size in ounces, which maybe gives them some legal protection, but given both the out of band pricing and the fact that Amazon often jams all of the listings of a single product type into one big listing that you sometimes can't make heads or tails of who is actually selling the exact version you are buying (as long as they are Fulfilled by Amazon) its super easy to miss this until after you've fallen victim to it. After running into this years ago I made Amazon very aware of what had occurred but the scam listings are still up on the site (AFAICT exactly the same listing since Amazon almost tauntingly informs me that I purchased this product in the past when I view the suspect listing), still wildly overpriced, with a bunch of reviews that talk about the scam but give it a 4 or 5 star review because I guess the people reviewing it didn't feel like trashing the product. My review is 1 star. The product is fine, but I'm perfectly fine with 1 starring a review of a fraud listing for a good product because best case scenario that happening repeatedly maybe pushes the real OEM into getting on Amazon's case about their policies, wish more people would do the same honestly.