8 ms·

Why not just disable product changes altogether?

charcircuit 3y ago
Because you may want to improve the picture, description, etc of a product. Not everyone can get everything perfect the first time.
- ryantgtg 3y ago
  The person is asking why you can change it to a completely different product that’s in a different category. Like changing a listing for socks to a listing for a monitor stand.
  - nevir 3y ago
    Can you actually do that?
    - hippich 3y ago
      It is weird on Amazon marketplace. For our own product, for which we have trademark, registered in their brand registry, etc, we often can't make our changes reflect on a live product page. But then we see clearly highjacked product pages, like a 3d printed bracket for mounting GoPro on iris quadcopter I was selling many years ago to a USB cable.... Many in sellers community believe it is inside job, where current employees of Amazon with access to making changes to the product catalog making a side income from such shenanigans. There were cases were Amazon's own product pages were hijacked like that in the past...
      - topato 3y ago
        As someone who is also a long time seller on Amazon, my unscientific A/B testing seems to point at greater Buy Box control being tantamount to greater control over an ASIN's product details. I work mainly in drop shipping, and it's a constant battle to even get a UPC to actually point to the correct product info. Chinese sellers love to make a product's retail UPC point match to an ASIN for an arbitrary number of that item. But it just seems like in cases like that, Amazon likes to side with whichever seller is making the most sales on that ASIN, no matter the what the facts are
        hippich 3y ago
        For us controlling but box never a problem. But making changes appear - almost always requires at least a week of back and forth with seller support
    - edgineer 3y ago
      I've seen it, both with wildly off reviews, and also in my historical orders. Try browsing through your oldest Amazon orders--you may very well see something you didn't buy at those links now.
    - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
      Yes, you can sometimes read a review where the product is mentioned and it has nothing to do with the product you are looking at.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Suppose you post a product initially and the listing is all messed up. Clearly the wrong dimensions etc. But some people buy it and it's a decent product so it gets good reviews. Now you notice the problems with the listing and want to correct them. Can you?
      - ryantgtg 3y ago
        Yes of course. But that is not remotely close to what we’re discussing here.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        If you have a system that allows you to do that, guess what else you can do with it. If you don't, how do you fix a listing error?
    - heavyset_go 3y ago
      Yes, and it's a feature that most marketplace platforms specifically build out because they profit from new products being sold with glowing reviews from older unrelated products. This feature exists on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, etc.
bluGill 3y ago
How can you tell the difference between the same thing but updated packaging for the companies new brand from a whole new thing unrelated to the first? And in the grey area it is this years upgrades/version (is this still the same thing?) Don't forget that it needs to be automated as Amazon is too big to do this manually. And whatever rules you come up with can't be gamed.by creative lawyers.
- viraptor 3y ago
  There's a massive difference here between changing Widget v1 to Widget V2 and changing a pillow to an air conditioner. There are very simple things they could limit right now, like not allowing to change the listing category after N days without a review and hundreds of other things. > as Amazon is too big to do this manually Amazon allowed a guy to build a dick-rocket for a trip to space. They can hire a hundred people to review those requests. Don't worry about poor Amazon not coping.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I think even allowing changes from V1 to V2 while keeping reviews is pretty bad. It's not unheard of for hardware manufacturers to release a higher quality product initially and then "cost optimize" it to suck later. A good example is hard drives and SMR[1]. Why not allow linking back to the V1 version and its reviews from the V2 so shoppers can judge for themselves instead of having one take the place of the other? [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-disks-are-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-di...
    - heavyset_go 3y ago
      This is why I think a new listing per SKU requirement would be great. You also see this happen with retailers, where manufacturers work with retailers to build exclusive cheaper versions of existing products that use those products' names and packaging. You end up with situation where the Walmart version of your specific product is actually different than the ones sold everywhere else.
mildchalupa 3y ago
In hardware all products are constantly changing. Examples: A part gets obsoleted by vendor, sustaining engineering has to find a replacement. They conduct a small study to see how the new part works. The budget for conducting lengthy tests to determine if a simple change has any effect at the worst case tolerances is typically not there. Suppliers quality changes over time. This is known as supplier quality fade. Suppliers will often underbid a part to win a contract. Then once volume ramps up they begin value engineering. Maybe they add more regrind material to an injection mold. Or they progressively begin to make the part slightly thinner on each subsequent batch. Maybe they begin to use a toxic filler material without notice. An colleague literally had a situation in which a steel casting supplier was putting rocks in the castings. Companies move injection mold tooling from vendor A to vendor B. The tooling might be the same but the settings are different, so the results are then different. Without an excellent quality team that has money and time to check everything this will happen. If you are competing in a marketplace with low margins there will never be enough money to check everything.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Perhaps part of a product, each supplier, and each changed spec should contribute to a unique fingeprint. If you have a product which you keep calling FOO but has changed some spec in the new version (without hw change, perhaps you enabled some firmware option and now it can record 25 minutes instead of 20), it should get a new fingerprint. If it has changed a supplier for a chip, new fingerprint. And so on. And aside from the fingerprint, you should also give all the entries that contributed to it (which when hashed in a structured function should give the same fingerprint), plus things like its production date. Name="FOO", cpu.model="x-dragon-v5", cpu.supplier="Fukimata Japan", ..., fan.supplier="Fans-R-Us",... Reviews then are tied to the product+fingerprint instead of just the product.
  - vianneychevalie 3y ago
    I work in data management for large companies and I can promise you the problem is not a technical one. Which organization has the maturity to actually follow-through with quality data for such systems? Which legislators have the power to enforce such an approach?

Because you may want to improve the picture, description, etc of a product. Not everyone can get everything perfect the first time.

ryantgtg 3y ago
The person is asking why you can change it to a completely different product that’s in a different category. Like changing a listing for socks to a listing for a monitor stand.
- nevir 3y ago
  Can you actually do that?
  - hippich 3y ago
    It is weird on Amazon marketplace. For our own product, for which we have trademark, registered in their brand registry, etc, we often can't make our changes reflect on a live product page. But then we see clearly highjacked product pages, like a 3d printed bracket for mounting GoPro on iris quadcopter I was selling many years ago to a USB cable.... Many in sellers community believe it is inside job, where current employees of Amazon with access to making changes to the product catalog making a side income from such shenanigans. There were cases were Amazon's own product pages were hijacked like that in the past...
    - topato 3y ago
      As someone who is also a long time seller on Amazon, my unscientific A/B testing seems to point at greater Buy Box control being tantamount to greater control over an ASIN's product details. I work mainly in drop shipping, and it's a constant battle to even get a UPC to actually point to the correct product info. Chinese sellers love to make a product's retail UPC point match to an ASIN for an arbitrary number of that item. But it just seems like in cases like that, Amazon likes to side with whichever seller is making the most sales on that ASIN, no matter the what the facts are
      - hippich 3y ago
        For us controlling but box never a problem. But making changes appear - almost always requires at least a week of back and forth with seller support
  - edgineer 3y ago
    I've seen it, both with wildly off reviews, and also in my historical orders. Try browsing through your oldest Amazon orders--you may very well see something you didn't buy at those links now.
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    Yes, you can sometimes read a review where the product is mentioned and it has nothing to do with the product you are looking at.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Suppose you post a product initially and the listing is all messed up. Clearly the wrong dimensions etc. But some people buy it and it's a decent product so it gets good reviews. Now you notice the problems with the listing and want to correct them. Can you?
    - ryantgtg 3y ago
      Yes of course. But that is not remotely close to what we’re discussing here.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        If you have a system that allows you to do that, guess what else you can do with it. If you don't, how do you fix a listing error?
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    Yes, and it's a feature that most marketplace platforms specifically build out because they profit from new products being sold with glowing reviews from older unrelated products. This feature exists on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, etc.

bluGill 3y ago

How can you tell the difference between the same thing but updated packaging for the companies new brand from a whole new thing unrelated to the first? And in the grey area it is this years upgrades/version (is this still the same thing?) Don't forget that it needs to be automated as Amazon is too big to do this manually. And whatever rules you come up with can't be gamed.by creative lawyers.

viraptor 3y ago
There's a massive difference here between changing Widget v1 to Widget V2 and changing a pillow to an air conditioner. There are very simple things they could limit right now, like not allowing to change the listing category after N days without a review and hundreds of other things. > as Amazon is too big to do this manually Amazon allowed a guy to build a dick-rocket for a trip to space. They can hire a hundred people to review those requests. Don't worry about poor Amazon not coping.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  I think even allowing changes from V1 to V2 while keeping reviews is pretty bad. It's not unheard of for hardware manufacturers to release a higher quality product initially and then "cost optimize" it to suck later. A good example is hard drives and SMR[1]. Why not allow linking back to the V1 version and its reviews from the V2 so shoppers can judge for themselves instead of having one take the place of the other? [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-disks-are-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-di...
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    This is why I think a new listing per SKU requirement would be great. You also see this happen with retailers, where manufacturers work with retailers to build exclusive cheaper versions of existing products that use those products' names and packaging. You end up with situation where the Walmart version of your specific product is actually different than the ones sold everywhere else.

mildchalupa 3y ago

In hardware all products are constantly changing. Examples: A part gets obsoleted by vendor, sustaining engineering has to find a replacement. They conduct a small study to see how the new part works. The budget for conducting lengthy tests to determine if a simple change has any effect at the worst case tolerances is typically not there. Suppliers quality changes over time. This is known as supplier quality fade. Suppliers will often underbid a part to win a contract. Then once volume ramps up they begin value engineering. Maybe they add more regrind material to an injection mold. Or they progressively begin to make the part slightly thinner on each subsequent batch. Maybe they begin to use a toxic filler material without notice. An colleague literally had a situation in which a steel casting supplier was putting rocks in the castings. Companies move injection mold tooling from vendor A to vendor B. The tooling might be the same but the settings are different, so the results are then different. Without an excellent quality team that has money and time to check everything this will happen. If you are competing in a marketplace with low margins there will never be enough money to check everything.

coldtea 3y ago
Perhaps part of a product, each supplier, and each changed spec should contribute to a unique fingeprint. If you have a product which you keep calling FOO but has changed some spec in the new version (without hw change, perhaps you enabled some firmware option and now it can record 25 minutes instead of 20), it should get a new fingerprint. If it has changed a supplier for a chip, new fingerprint. And so on. And aside from the fingerprint, you should also give all the entries that contributed to it (which when hashed in a structured function should give the same fingerprint), plus things like its production date. Name="FOO", cpu.model="x-dragon-v5", cpu.supplier="Fukimata Japan", ..., fan.supplier="Fans-R-Us",... Reviews then are tied to the product+fingerprint instead of just the product.
- vianneychevalie 3y ago
  I work in data management for large companies and I can promise you the problem is not a technical one. Which organization has the maturity to actually follow-through with quality data for such systems? Which legislators have the power to enforce such an approach?