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Good. Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drive

by Sanzig 3y ago

Good. Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drives/SSDs, spycams, etc) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens. Unlike eBay, Amazon goes to great lengths to sow confusion about what it sells versus its marketplace participants. The average user thinks that when they buy something off Amazon, they're buying something procured and vetted by Amazon, when it's really a marketplace seller using Amazon's logistics services. Well, they can't have it both ways, either Amazon is a well vetted marketplace or the wild west. They can't project one image to their customers and claim another in court.

nomdep 3y ago
This has absolutely ANYTHING to do with the article. The customer is not complaining, the customer is the criminal here. But somehow, “Amazon bad”
- richbell 3y ago
  Amazon is bad because: > Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drives/SSDs, spycams, etc)...
space_fountain 3y ago
And I'm not convinced we need a wild west either, at least if it's also more or less impossible to trace responsibility back to the producer. It's pretty new for something like Amazon to exist with the ability to market (through product recommendations), handle payments, and handle shipping logistics for a product that they need never even see. It means it's easy for manufacturers like this to basically get away scot free because they have to invest literally nothing in the US that can get taken away in the event that they turn out to be doing something like this. Some of the lines on the product page are chilling. > 【Motion Detection Mode】 When you turn on its motion detection mode, the camera will automatically start to record a video when motion is detected. You do not need to worry about missing any important moments, ensure the security of your home, garage or anywhere you want. Every line they're sure to end like this is being used for home security, but idk that someone could read this and think that was true
- Sanzig 3y ago
  eBay is a wild west, but it's at least honest about it. It's very clear when you buy something from eBay, it's coming from an independent seller, and eBay provides you all the history of seller feedback so you can try to vet the seller yourself. They also provide a dispute resolution system through PayPal that heavily favours the customer.
- toast0 3y ago
  > And I'm not convinced we need a wild west either, at least if it's also more or less impossible to trace responsibility back to the producer. I don't think it's wise to try to end the wild west. At the end of the day, we've been able to send money overseas and get things of questionable quality practically forever; some of the earliest writings are complaints about quality of foreign sellers. It's unreasonable to expect a courier to accept full responsibility for the packages it delivers, and it's usually not feasible to take effective action against a foreign seller. It might be reasonable to require a registered agent for a seller who is realistically subject to the legal jurisdiction(s) where products are warehoused/shipping originates though. It's generally pretty easy and inexpensive to find registered agents for incorporation requirements, but I imagine if there were real consequences for registered agents of products being warehoused, costs would be real as well. If that drives people to Aliexpress, so be it?
Pxtl 3y ago
Yes. I'm quite tired of hearing "it's not our fault that toys full of lead were sold on our storefront and stored, fulfilled, and shipped from our warehouse in boxes bearing our logo! When we said that we 'recommend' the product, we meant, like, algorithmically, not for realsies. We had nothing to do with these products! It's all XGZDoo, a company we kicked off the store. And now would you like to buy any products from XGZDee, our latest new seller?".
- grobbyy 3y ago
  I like having a Wild West, but it should be clearly advertised as such. AliExpress and eBay are clearly Wild West platforms and I appreciate them. Getting scammed on Amazon is different. Amazon should be fully liable since very sophisticated customers can be confused by commingling, marketplace settlers, algorithmic recommendations, etc. all designed to look legitimate to the unwary while being completely unsafe. I stopped buying food and medical products on Amazon because... scams.
  - oceanplexian 3y ago
    I like having an online store with better selection than whatever I can get at the local Big Box store. People forget how bad it was before Amazon, packages took weeks to deliver with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews). I remember the days of paying $40 for a 3 foot HDMI cable. Bought an unsafe or defective product at a “Trusted” retailer? Enjoy your $3.50 check from the class action lawsuit 3 years later.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews) Given that Amazon reviews are utterly worthless, I'm not sure that's an example of Amazon having more accountability.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Yeah so many are paid for reviews. You can tell in Europe because they're obliged to mention it. Almost all reviews on sketchy products are from people recieving the product for free or getting paid.
isk517 3y ago
I've had to explain to my father so many times that just because you've bought something off of Amazon does not mean that you bought it from Amazon. They really should have a separate store front for 3rd party sellers.
- Sanzig 3y ago
  Honestly, given that it seems like tons of retailers are trying to follow Amazon's lead with a marketplace system, I think we need a consumer protection law to require companies to make it very clear to consumers when they are buying from third party sellers. The issue is rampant. Here in Canada, CBC did an investigation about Best Buy's marketplace listings on their online store [1]. It's greed, pure and simple: these large retailers are willing to mortgage their reputation for some risk-free sales commission and absolve themselves of any liability by blaming their marketplace sellers. [1] https://youtu.be/Gdc9_uPETIE https://youtu.be/Gdc9_uPETIE
legitster 3y ago
Amazon used to have a rule that all sellers had to have a US business address. So you at least had importers stateside who could deal with product liability questions. They got rid of it to compete with Wish.com et al who had huge product selections. But the product quality on Amazon has been awful ever since then.
voytec 3y ago
> Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (...) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens. They've also been happy with making it harder for the customer to choose a particular seller (especially one w/o Amazon Storefront site)
- JohnFen 3y ago
  This is the main reason why I stopped buying things from Amazon. It became too difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, in part because it became 90% chaff.
  - wiml 3y ago
    I've started using Amazon's website to find a product and then going to the seller's website to buy it... what goes around comes around, I guess.
duxup 3y ago
I was helping my kids pick out Christmas gifts recently. I searched "lego" on amazon. Numerous knock off non lego products all over the place, many with very similar boxes, even lego numbers and fonts and all. It's just one ongoing scam site now.
redserk 3y ago
The wild thing is, Amazon’s first-party offerings generally stand out well by itself! They don’t need to trick people with Marketplace junk. They could completely drop the marketplace and still be, IMO, the most useful shopping subscription. I can get my weekly groceries, soap, toilet paper, a TV, and socks with a handful of clicks. On my doorstep. The same day I click. No driving to a store, no walking around, just grab off my doorstep. This is the entire reason I find Amazon worth it (even a steal!). I don’t care for millions and millions of items, of which many are duplicitous clones. This marketplace trend has been completely ridiculous and I hope Amazon (among others!) are found to be just as responsible for what’s sold. A lot of electronics I’ve seen are dodgy at best, but very clearly dangerous at their worst. If there’s a problem, just spin up a new nonsense “brand name” to mask the problems of the former one. This marketplace trend has completely turned me off from other websites. Target and Walmart’s websites are immensely frustrating. I haven’t used Newegg in ages.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  Amazon uses the marketplace and their intimate knowledge of the sellers' finances to algorithmically determine which products to knock off as one of their "first-party offerings", so eliminating their marketplace means eliminating a lot of their market research.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > This marketplace trend has completely turned me off from other websites If I can't find what I want in a local store, I order directly from manufacturer's websites instead of using any online marketplace (when possible -- which is the majority of the time).
jjk166 3y ago
I don't think the people buying spycams off Amazon are too surprised when a spycam arrives. If Amazon had put a big banner at the top of the page saying "this is a third party product, it seems skethy af" I doubt any of the purchasers would change their behavior. Certainly no one at Amazon duped someone into accidentally setting up a bathroom cam. Spycams are legal to sell in the US, and it is the responsibility of owners of cameras to use them legally. I wouldn't expect a brick and mortar store to certify that the products they sell are impossible to be 'used to “infringe privacy,” “surreptitiously record others for sexual purposes,” or “create and store child sex abuse material”' and be held liable when one of their products is used as such. Perhaps the sale of such cameras should be more regulated, but it shouldn't be Amazon's place to decide that the law is insufficient and fix it.
- JadeNB 3y ago
  > I wouldn't expect a brick and mortar store to certify that the products they sell are impossible to be 'used to “infringe privacy,” “surreptitiously record others for sexual purposes,” or “create and store child sex abuse material”' and be held liable when one of their products is used as such. Perhaps the sale of such cameras should be more regulated, but it shouldn't be Amazon's place to decide that the law is insufficient and fix it. But the question here doesn't seem to be about whether Amazon should have certified that; according to the article, they did, obviously falsely: > Amazon's Product Safety Team specifically inspected the camera to "ensure" that Amazon wasn't platforming a product being used to “infringe privacy,” “surreptitiously record others for sexual purposes,” or “create and store child sex abuse material.”
wkat4242 3y ago
> they're buying something procured and vetted by Amazon, when it's really a marketplace seller using Amazon's logistics services. And Amazon often seems to label random products "Amazon recommended" including those from completely made-up Chinese brands.

by Sanzig 3y ago

nomdep 3y ago

This has absolutely ANYTHING to do with the article. The customer is not complaining, the customer is the criminal here. But somehow, “Amazon bad”

richbell 3y ago
Amazon is bad because: > Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (uncertified electrical equipment, scam flash drives/SSDs, spycams, etc)...

space_fountain 3y ago

And I'm not convinced we need a wild west either, at least if it's also more or less impossible to trace responsibility back to the producer. It's pretty new for something like Amazon to exist with the ability to market (through product recommendations), handle payments, and handle shipping logistics for a product that they need never even see. It means it's easy for manufacturers like this to basically get away scot free because they have to invest literally nothing in the US that can get taken away in the event that they turn out to be doing something like this. Some of the lines on the product page are chilling. > 【Motion Detection Mode】 When you turn on its motion detection mode, the camera will automatically start to record a video when motion is detected. You do not need to worry about missing any important moments, ensure the security of your home, garage or anywhere you want. Every line they're sure to end like this is being used for home security, but idk that someone could read this and think that was true

Sanzig 3y ago
eBay is a wild west, but it's at least honest about it. It's very clear when you buy something from eBay, it's coming from an independent seller, and eBay provides you all the history of seller feedback so you can try to vet the seller yourself. They also provide a dispute resolution system through PayPal that heavily favours the customer.
toast0 3y ago
> And I'm not convinced we need a wild west either, at least if it's also more or less impossible to trace responsibility back to the producer. I don't think it's wise to try to end the wild west. At the end of the day, we've been able to send money overseas and get things of questionable quality practically forever; some of the earliest writings are complaints about quality of foreign sellers. It's unreasonable to expect a courier to accept full responsibility for the packages it delivers, and it's usually not feasible to take effective action against a foreign seller. It might be reasonable to require a registered agent for a seller who is realistically subject to the legal jurisdiction(s) where products are warehoused/shipping originates though. It's generally pretty easy and inexpensive to find registered agents for incorporation requirements, but I imagine if there were real consequences for registered agents of products being warehoused, costs would be real as well. If that drives people to Aliexpress, so be it?

Pxtl 3y ago

Yes. I'm quite tired of hearing "it's not our fault that toys full of lead were sold on our storefront and stored, fulfilled, and shipped from our warehouse in boxes bearing our logo! When we said that we 'recommend' the product, we meant, like, algorithmically, not for realsies. We had nothing to do with these products! It's all XGZDoo, a company we kicked off the store. And now would you like to buy any products from XGZDee, our latest new seller?".

grobbyy 3y ago
I like having a Wild West, but it should be clearly advertised as such. AliExpress and eBay are clearly Wild West platforms and I appreciate them. Getting scammed on Amazon is different. Amazon should be fully liable since very sophisticated customers can be confused by commingling, marketplace settlers, algorithmic recommendations, etc. all designed to look legitimate to the unwary while being completely unsafe. I stopped buying food and medical products on Amazon because... scams.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  I like having an online store with better selection than whatever I can get at the local Big Box store. People forget how bad it was before Amazon, packages took weeks to deliver with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews). I remember the days of paying $40 for a 3 foot HDMI cable. Bought an unsafe or defective product at a “Trusted” retailer? Enjoy your $3.50 check from the class action lawsuit 3 years later.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews) Given that Amazon reviews are utterly worthless, I'm not sure that's an example of Amazon having more accountability.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Yeah so many are paid for reviews. You can tell in Europe because they're obliged to mention it. Almost all reviews on sketchy products are from people recieving the product for free or getting paid.

isk517 3y ago

I've had to explain to my father so many times that just because you've bought something off of Amazon does not mean that you bought it from Amazon. They really should have a separate store front for 3rd party sellers.

Sanzig 3y ago
Honestly, given that it seems like tons of retailers are trying to follow Amazon's lead with a marketplace system, I think we need a consumer protection law to require companies to make it very clear to consumers when they are buying from third party sellers. The issue is rampant. Here in Canada, CBC did an investigation about Best Buy's marketplace listings on their online store [1]. It's greed, pure and simple: these large retailers are willing to mortgage their reputation for some risk-free sales commission and absolve themselves of any liability by blaming their marketplace sellers. [1] https://youtu.be/Gdc9_uPETIE https://youtu.be/Gdc9_uPETIE

legitster 3y ago

Amazon used to have a rule that all sellers had to have a US business address. So you at least had importers stateside who could deal with product liability questions. They got rid of it to compete with Wish.com et al who had huge product selections. But the product quality on Amazon has been awful ever since then.

voytec 3y ago

> Amazon has been happy to rake in commissions for years from dodgy products sold by third party sellers (...) and then turn around and blame the marketplace sellers when the inevitable happens. They've also been happy with making it harder for the customer to choose a particular seller (especially one w/o Amazon Storefront site)

JohnFen 3y ago
This is the main reason why I stopped buying things from Amazon. It became too difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, in part because it became 90% chaff.
- wiml 3y ago
  I've started using Amazon's website to find a product and then going to the seller's website to buy it... what goes around comes around, I guess.

duxup 3y ago

I was helping my kids pick out Christmas gifts recently. I searched "lego" on amazon. Numerous knock off non lego products all over the place, many with very similar boxes, even lego numbers and fonts and all. It's just one ongoing scam site now.

redserk 3y ago

The wild thing is, Amazon’s first-party offerings generally stand out well by itself! They don’t need to trick people with Marketplace junk. They could completely drop the marketplace and still be, IMO, the most useful shopping subscription. I can get my weekly groceries, soap, toilet paper, a TV, and socks with a handful of clicks. On my doorstep. The same day I click. No driving to a store, no walking around, just grab off my doorstep. This is the entire reason I find Amazon worth it (even a steal!). I don’t care for millions and millions of items, of which many are duplicitous clones. This marketplace trend has been completely ridiculous and I hope Amazon (among others!) are found to be just as responsible for what’s sold. A lot of electronics I’ve seen are dodgy at best, but very clearly dangerous at their worst. If there’s a problem, just spin up a new nonsense “brand name” to mask the problems of the former one. This marketplace trend has completely turned me off from other websites. Target and Walmart’s websites are immensely frustrating. I haven’t used Newegg in ages.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
Amazon uses the marketplace and their intimate knowledge of the sellers' finances to algorithmically determine which products to knock off as one of their "first-party offerings", so eliminating their marketplace means eliminating a lot of their market research.
JohnFen 3y ago
> This marketplace trend has completely turned me off from other websites If I can't find what I want in a local store, I order directly from manufacturer's websites instead of using any online marketplace (when possible -- which is the majority of the time).

jjk166 3y ago

I don't think the people buying spycams off Amazon are too surprised when a spycam arrives. If Amazon had put a big banner at the top of the page saying "this is a third party product, it seems skethy af" I doubt any of the purchasers would change their behavior. Certainly no one at Amazon duped someone into accidentally setting up a bathroom cam. Spycams are legal to sell in the US, and it is the responsibility of owners of cameras to use them legally. I wouldn't expect a brick and mortar store to certify that the products they sell are impossible to be 'used to “infringe privacy,” “surreptitiously record others for sexual purposes,” or “create and store child sex abuse material”' and be held liable when one of their products is used as such. Perhaps the sale of such cameras should be more regulated, but it shouldn't be Amazon's place to decide that the law is insufficient and fix it.

JadeNB 3y ago
> I wouldn't expect a brick and mortar store to certify that the products they sell are impossible to be 'used to “infringe privacy,” “surreptitiously record others for sexual purposes,” or “create and store child sex abuse material”' and be held liable when one of their products is used as such. Perhaps the sale of such cameras should be more regulated, but it shouldn't be Amazon's place to decide that the law is insufficient and fix it. But the question here doesn't seem to be about whether Amazon should have certified that; according to the article, they did, obviously falsely: > Amazon's Product Safety Team specifically inspected the camera to "ensure" that Amazon wasn't platforming a product being used to “infringe privacy,” “surreptitiously record others for sexual purposes,” or “create and store child sex abuse material.”

wkat4242 3y ago

> they're buying something procured and vetted by Amazon, when it's really a marketplace seller using Amazon's logistics services. And Amazon often seems to label random products "Amazon recommended" including those from completely made-up Chinese brands.