
New Parents Complain Amazon Baby-Registry Ads Are Deceptive - mwnivek
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-parents-complain-amazon-ads-are-deceptive-1543417201
======
0x00000000
That's pretty egregious. The fact that is says "0 of 1 purchased" implies that
the person making the list asked for it which is a lie no matter how you spin
it. Sounds like fraud to me.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I could spin it as well-intentioned. Regardless of whether the list-maker
requested the item, you don't want to buy something that's already been
purchased by someone else.

I'm not willing to give Amazon that benefit of the doubt, however.

~~~
carbocation
Well intentioned would be to indicate that the product is not requested.
_Maybe_ writing 0 of 0 could be acceptable. 0 of 1 is a lie.

------
floatingatoll
It seems like Amazon may have violated California law, and under CACI 1903 the
buyers of items on the baby-registry list could have standing to sue Amazon
for negligent misrepresentation:

Fact: "the item was added to the list by the list's creator"

1\. Amazon represented to the buyer that the Fact was true.

2\. Amazon's representation was not true.

3\. Amazon had no reasonable grounds for believing the Fact was true.

4\. Amazon intended the Buyer to rely on this representation.

5\. The Buyer reasonably relied on this representation.

6\. The Buyer was harmed.

7\. The Buyer's reliance on Amazon's representation was a substantial factor
in causing the harm.

The core of the issue to puzzle over: How was the buyer of the gift harmed?

[https://www.justia.com/trials-
litigation/docs/caci/1900/1903...](https://www.justia.com/trials-
litigation/docs/caci/1900/1903/)

~~~
goodcanadian
_The core of the issue to puzzle over: How was the buyer of the gift harmed?_

One might be able to argue that the buyer was reputationally harmed by being
tricked into buying a gift that was neither asked for nor wanted.

------
datguacdoh
Happened to us a few months ago. We got a pair of baby bath kits we didn't ask
for. We looked afterward, and saw the ads mixed into our list with no way to
remove them. Incredibly slimy practice.

~~~
hbosch
Same with my wife and I. We have already been hemming and hawing with our
parents about buying high quality products as a general rule – nothing against
Fisher Price or Greco, but we have just decided on nicer things – and in this
spirit have intentionally selected a diaper subscription service rather than
buying certain other brands via Walmart/Target/Amazon/etc. (In fact, we
originally rejected the idea of a baby shower or registry so that we could
just buy everything ourselves).

Anyways, we were surprised to see packages of Huggies showing up on our
doorstep. Not only did we never add Huggies to the registry, we never added
_any_ diapers period. When we checked the registry again, we saw some Huggies
ads spliced in discretely and almost imperceptibly. It speaks to our modern
day lives that we simply said "wow, they put an ad in our registry... guess
that's what Amazon does now" and just kicked off the return process. We've
probably wound up with >$100 in Amazon credits based on returned Huggies at
this point.

~~~
arkades
What diaper service did you end up choosing?

~~~
hbosch
My wife chose to get monthly bundles from Honest (www.honest.com).

~~~
joering2
That's was initially my choice, but wife told me "a woman with STD will not be
putting a diaper on my kid's ass". Then I looked up she was referring to
Jessica Alba (the owner)

The net is full of terrible reviews but the whole company marketing scheme was
based on pure fear mongering. They tried to argue that other diapers are
dangerous for your baby. Then when that unsubstantiated fake news got popular,
Honest deleted off the website related to it and redirected everyone to their
home page. Slimy.

Great reading you can start here: [https://slate.com/human-
interest/2013/06/honest-diapers-are-...](https://slate.com/human-
interest/2013/06/honest-diapers-are-all-the-rage-these-days-but-are-they-
really-any-better-than-huggies.html)

~~~
trolololooo
What exactly does STD status have to do with any of the rest of this?

~~~
joering2
Its a branding thing. Would you buy a childcare services from Jeffrey Epstein?
Or give your investment money to Elizabeth Holmes?

------
dzink
I created DreamList [https://www.dreamlist.com](https://www.dreamlist.com) as
a parent because I was appalled by the practices of baby registries and wish
lists out there. Without naming competitors we saw:

\- A major retailer hid the actual wishlist behind an "idea list" page that
visitors saw first when they clicked on someone's wishlist link. The "Idea
list" was full of high margin items that had nothing to do with the wisher
(sometimes even targeted to the wrong gender).

\- Multiple major registries indexed your name for SEO and thus a baby
registry still showed as top result on google for female founders and
executives who had babies in recent years.

\- Multiple wikipedia and gossip press links boosting SEO of several universal
registries by showcasing the wedding or baby lists of famous people (the SEO
boost was substantial too). Privacy was non-existent at that point.

\- Popular new baby or wedding specialized registries that are also retailers
and would push gift cards for their own stores to registry guests where you'd
often find 30%+ markup on common items. Etc...

So, as I was literally nursing a baby in one arm, I wrote code for DreamList
with the other. It was architected to be actually private (no lists get SEO,
unless users explicitly ask for it; no ads or promotional emails; etc.). It is
not tied to a retailer, so you can add the lowest price items from anywhere
(and link your other wish lists and registries). It lets you manage wish lists
together with your spouse or team (we've served charity and disaster recovery
teams in every disaster since Hurricane Harvey). More importantly, you can add
large items and dreams you are saving towards such as a big trip to Disney, or
529 plans, so on special occasions family can contribute small amounts to help
little ones get there sooner.

It starts with little architectural decisions, but every detail matters in a
family product, as it sets a tone for interactions and thus relationships of
millions of families that live apart geographically. We've reached a time when
we have to take online privacy and quality in our own hands, for the sake of
our kids.

~~~
bmsleight_
Wow inspiring - How can HN help promote ?

------
danielskogly
I run exactly 0 analytics and ads on Wishy.gift, nor do I plan to ever do so.
Almost 300 users are using the service so far, and I have no idea who most of
them are, where they come from, or how they found the service. There's a huge
uptick in the number of registrations now before Christmas, but I'm really
hoping that people might find it useful for birthdays, weddings and baby
registries as well.

All feedback is very welcome :)

~~~
arkades
This sounded perfect until I went to your site and found the one and only way
to sign in was via fb.

I mean, it’s nice that -you’re- not tracking me, but you’re still requiring I
invite fb to track what I’m doing.

So... for those of us for whom “I absolutely don’t track you” actually
matters, I don’t know if this is usable.

~~~
drewmate
Another consideration: it looks like those of us without fb accounts probably
can't even look at lists or buy for friends / family. This is a bummer on a
personal level, but also limits usefulness in cases where anyone who would see
the list doesn't use fb or feel comfortable using it to log in.

To the developer: please consider adding email-based login, or maybe just
unique links sent by email for viewers without fb.

~~~
danielskogly
Since yesterday, it's possible to view the items in someone's list without
logging in. If you open your own wishlist in incognito mode you can see how
this looks like :)

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deogeo
Unless consumers/people get organized, and get laws passed (and enforced) to
force companies to some minimal ethical standards, things will only get worse.

"Voting with your dollars" is just another way of saying to stay divided and
alone, while companies unite and get ever more organized. How well has it
worked so far?

~~~
petermcneeley
Here is a good little video by an evolutionary biologist detailing your point
[https://youtu.be/EsBvI9oSD1g](https://youtu.be/EsBvI9oSD1g)

------
myroon5
Even after reading the article and specifically searching for the "sponsored"
text, it took me minutes to find it in the screenshot. Extremely deceptive

~~~
cpeterso
I had the same experience. I was scanning the Amazon wish list page _knowing_
what I was looking for and finally found it with CTRL+F. This is unethical
design. :\

~~~
zaroth
“One weird trick... the FTC _hates_ it when companies do this”

r/unethical/illegal.

------
Topgamer7
I've grown annoyed with Amazon's ad practices. I filter by for example price,
and there is something like 4 ads per page, nearly identical to the properly
search results. Makes scanning a page a much more cumbersome so that you don't
click on the garbage products they advertise.

~~~
techsupporter
> Makes scanning a page a much more cumbersome so that you don't click on the
> garbage products they advertise.

Which, I imagine, is the entire point. The ideal outcome, from Amazon's
perspective, is that you can't simply scan a page and tune out the ads. As
long as people are just "annoyed" and not "leaving the platform in droves,"
the ad creep will continue.

------
encoderer
I suggest using BabyList, which was launched by a friend on HN 7 years ago and
is now one of the top baby retailers in the country.

[https://babylist.com](https://babylist.com)

~~~
jcurbo
Relevant HN link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175757)

------
wnevets
Amazon keeps making it harder and harder for me to justify having a prime
account and buying things from them.

~~~
SkyPuncher
My wife and I are having the same discussion. We had a stretch where 8 of 10
orders were late, damaged, or clearly repackaged.

Buying from Amazon use to mean getting a legit product, quickly, and in new
condition. Now it's a complete crap shoot what fake junk we're going to get.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Couldn't agree more. A decade ago, you'd always be 100% sure with Amazon.
There was no need to be cautious. If the product was fake, broken, or you just
didn't like it, Amazon would fix it. Support was both rarely needed and
amazing. Their default answer before they were even sure what the issue was
would be to overnight more things to you.

But these days, you've gotta keep your guard up at all times. Whoops, this
isn't for sale from "Amazon," it's some rando on their marketplace. Hrm, do
they have lots of reviews? Okay, let's check a few and see if they look real
or fake. Is this the sort of product that might be faked or be a weird, cheap
knockoff? Is this the right product page for this product or a weird clone of
the real one? I can still get my business done with a minimum of being taken
advantage of, but it's a lot harder to do now.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I bought a phone recently and specifically didn't go to Amazon for this
reason. After searching for the kind of Samsung phone I wanted, I would find
several slight variations, all with slightly different prices. It looked
really sketchy to me.

------
TACIXAT
I've gotten this from ads in their normal search. I've been conditioned for
years to trust that the search returns what I expect. Now when I instinctually
click the first link, I end up with the wrong brand. My fault for not paying
attention, but me being more careful means they've lost my trust.

------
neonate
[https://outline.com/8NvRtf](https://outline.com/8NvRtf)

------
Spooky23
Just use Target.

Amazon is more expensive, abusive with this kind of behavior and it’s core
differentiator (speed) is irrelevant to a registry.

------
gwillen
I see this as a control group in the great Internet advertising experiment. It
answers the question: "How often will someone click an ad, given that the
advertised product is certain to be unwanted?" That is, how often will someone
mistake an ad for a real result?

------
DanBC
These ads are probably not compliant with UK regulation, so if you see one in
the UK please do contact ASA.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So the ASA can say, "we told them they'd been naughty, job done".

Aside: do people in the UK do "baby registries"? I've only ever seen it on USA
media. Mind you we do seem to get USA culture eventually. My kid said he had
"math" the other day ...

~~~
JCharante
What do people there say instead of math? Mathematics?

~~~
int_19h
Maths.

------
mysterypie
Is there no way out of the antiquated gift registry idea? Could we have baby
showers and weddings in which everyone contributes cash (and absolutely no
gifts) to offset the event costs? Any excess cash becomes a gift to the
parents or couple.

Gifts served a purpose in the distant past because people needed "things" to
start their life, but that's no longer the case. Most people have way too many
things, and most of their expenses are operating costs anyway (like mortgage,
rent, education, health care, and transportation).

~~~
prepend
Baby showers were extremely helpful to me because experiences friends and
family with babies shared items I didn’t even know about, but were useful.

Personally, I don’t like to give cash because it’s impersonal and doesn’t
allow me to express creativity of something relevant to my friendship or
affection. I rarely get it perfect, but a gift let’s me interact with the
recipient to find out how they are doing, what they need, what I think will
help best.

If I don’t know someone well enough that I can’t help with an item and would
only send cash, I use that as a filter for whether to send a gift.

I also don’t like receiving cash from friends, but appreciate gifts.

------
ajb
How is this not literally fraud?

------
markfive
I thought "Customer Obsession" was their first core value?

~~~
lozaning
The customer in this case being the company paying to have their ad shown.

------
benologist
Nothing deceptive about pushing your own brands over third parties then
letting third parties buy back those sales with advertising then deceiving the
users to click on those ads...

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glbrew
Jesus our west coast techno saviors are turning on us.

------
Symbiote
There are quotes from people interviewed who removed the sponsored ads from
their own listings. Did no-one think Amazon's behaviour was so unacceptable
that they abandoned it, and used a different service?

Or is Amazon such a monopoly that this wasn't even considered?

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fipple
“Customer-obsessed”

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ummonk
I hope we see legal action over this. Incredibly deceptive.

------
milankragujevic
It's paywalled, and even Googling the link still gets me paywall version.

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gwbas1c
Just return it

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voldacar
Is there a non-paywalled version of this article somewhere?

~~~
idDriven
I use the 'bypass paywalls' extension for Firefox. You can download from
Github.

------
daodedickinson
Pathetic

