
Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak - juokaz
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-amid-crackdown-on-seller-scams-fires-employees-over-data-leak-1544437800
======
rchaud
One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the
absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me
that companies would deal only with authorized distributors.

These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is
happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models.

First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to be my driver".
Next it was Fiverr/Upwork/ etc, the digital equivalent of rounding up day
labourers in the Home Depot parking lot.

Now it's Amazon selling bootleg crap at scale. What's their excuse? Some
variant of "move fast, break things", no doubt.

~~~
decebalus1
> These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is
> happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models.

It's not a secret that lots of business models coming out of Silicon Valley
are just regulatory workarounds/loopholes. It's a matter of chance that they
coincide with some 3rd world country models as the latter's fuels are
survival/corruption/perceived lawlessness while over here it's
'disruption'/first-to-market and the drive to become a temporary monopoly on a
regulatory loophole.

~~~
reaperducer
"Disruption" is SV for "Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."

~~~
ohyeshedid
Technology always outpaces legislation.

~~~
reaperducer
That’s a popular SV cliche, but it’s not true.

For example, without the DMCA, neither Twitter nor YouTube would exist.

------
rootusrootus
As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar
company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third
party sellers.

I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun
making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold
by Amazon" any more.

At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going
to have to be public about that change and put a guarantee behind it. Your
reputation is slipping.

~~~
strictnein
And the prices on some of the stuff is just weird, with a lot of the Amazon
provided stuff now stuck behind Amazon Prime Pantry.

I used to order a lot of our daily household stuff from Amazon: cleaners, dish
soap, detergent, etc. So much of that stuff now is priced just horribly. $4
for a bottle from Amazon, but it's just from Prime Pantry so you have to order
a bunch of stuff or be stuck with a high shipping cost.

If you go with one of the other sellers, the prices are frequently 2-3x normal
retail, I guess preying on the fact that people don't realize they're getting
ripped off.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
>If you go with one of the other sellers, the prices are frequently 2-3x
normal retail, I guess preying on the fact that people don't realize they're
getting ripped off.

And as a result, I've become much more careful about checking prices on
Amazon, which can't be good for Amazon overall.

By contrast, when I go to the grocery store, I generally assume the amount I'm
paying is more-or-less the same as what I would pay elsewhere. (Likely a poor
overall mindset on my part, but good for the store.)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Yeah, there's a lot of specific products that are _always_ wildly overpriced
on Amazon. Mostly anything that is out of print/out of production, no matter
how recently it went out or how easy it is to find, but I recently ran into it
with Hanes underwear of all things--there wasn't a single seller that wasn't
asking at least 50% over Target's online price.

For out-of-print books/toys/games/etc., eBay is usually your best bet.
Computer hardware (video cards, RAM, etc.) is often cheaper on either eBay or
NewEgg. Et cetera.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I expect out of print stuff to fetch a high price, I'm more talking about
standard grocery items. I've seen ridiculous markups on penne pasta, diet
soda, certain brands of hand-soap, etc etc.

Some of these items, like the pasta, are things I'd previously ordered from
Amazon for a fraction of the current price. Which, again, has caused me to be
much more cautious—every time I reorder something nowadays, I have to check
whether the price has changed. How does Amazon expect people to use stuff like
the dash button when prices can vary this much?

~~~
secabeen
The reality is is that shipping an amazon item costs between $3-7. For
expensive items, they can cover that cost out of the wholesale/retail markup,
so you don't really have to pay it. For cheaper items, or items without that
much of a markup, it starts showing up in the price. Now, sometimes a
manufacturer will want to buy some market share, so they'll sell an item to
Amazon cheaper to reduce that impact, and then it's available. However, it
will usually go back up to the normal price, with them hoping that you won't
notice.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
It's the products that suddenly shoot up to 2-3x normal retail that throw me,
not the ones that change by a few dollars.

But the products that double in price have made more sensitive to the ones
that change by a few dollars, because I'm now on high alert for price changes
in general.

~~~
secabeen
Yeah, the doubling in price is usually when the low-cost vendor sells out, and
only high-cost vendors are left, but you're totally right; I also refrain from
purchasing via dash button, Echo commands, or any option where I can't
evaluate how reasonable the price is.

------
strict9
>Amazon in recent weeks also has deleted thousands of suspect reviews,

That's a drop in the ocean. But it's not reviews and brushing, the real issue
is fraudulent and counterfeit products. I don't even trust Amazon to buy books
anymore.

Just like craigslist, facebook, and countless other things, once something
gets to be too big, it gets co-opted by bad actors and the risks outweigh the
benefits.

edit: highly recommend this Reply All episode about Amazon, brushing, and
counterfeit goods: [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-
all/124](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124)

~~~
jackhack
Thus the importance of sites like
[https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

checking for likely-fake 5-star reviews before making an expensive purchase is
a good idea.

~~~
ikeboy
Fakespot and others like it have crappy algorithms. I know sellers that have
never done anything shady for reviews that get graded poorly by fakespot. And
their Chinese competitors that blatantly fake reviews get A.

~~~
sct202
I suspect that the spammers are also starting to do things to not get flagged
by Fakespot, especially since FS lists out a lot of the criteria that they
use.

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bloopernova
My (anecdotal) experience with dodgy sellers was this: I bought something that
didn't work correctly, I left a review. The seller contacted me and offered
money direct to paypal, bypassing Amazon. They did so by attaching an image
with the offer to the ticket.

I wasn't comfortable with that kind of interaction, so I informed Amazon. Lots
of copious apologies from Amazon, and I assume the company was "fired". But
the company just changed their name slightly and are still selling the same
items.

~~~
GhostVII
How much money were they offering? I definitely would have taken it, and then
re-posted the same review a day later.

~~~
sigfubar
I was just thinking the same thing. Street taught me that criminals can be
victimized to no end because they won’t call the police no matter what.

~~~
joering2
They wouldnt call the police. They would simply open Paypal dispute and tell
paypal that he agreed to remove his review for money and now he posted it
again.

------
taftster
If it can be gamed for profit, it will be gamed.

> The tactics include pummeling rivals’ listings with overly positive or
> negative reviews, and repeatedly clicking on links to products they want
> boosted to trick Amazon’s algorithm into ranking them higher in search
> results

Amazon is seemingly coming to this realization very late. The downfall of many
search engines has been the inability to deal with the tricks that subvert
their ranking systems. If you take any external signal as an indication of
popularity, it will be manipulated.

The overly positive reviews is an interesting spin on this manipulation; it
creates seeds of doubt when a product looks like it's been overly reviewed.
The "fake review" is easy to pick out.

[edit: formatting]

~~~
gboudrias
They've surely realized very early on, they've just been trying very hard to
be hush about it. Can't blame them, much as I dislike them.

~~~
taftster
Well that's fair. Realized AND acted on a problem vs. just realizing the
problem. It unfortunately has to hit them in the public eye before they are
willing to really start addressing the problem.

I further contend there really is no solution. It's a war of escalation. We've
seen it play out with SEO and search engines over the years. You can still
"game" Google, but it's a lot harder to do it, the barrier to entry is a lot
harder than it used to be when you could just list your site with a link farm.
I am guessing that Amazon is in a similar war.

~~~
deegles
Maybe the current state of affairs is _despite_ significant efforts to combat
it. That would explain some of the silence on all these complaints, since
"we're doing everything we can and it's still happening" is more embarrassing
than "we know it's happening and we're looking into it."

------
oblib
This time last year I ordered some Rose Oil from "Essential Oil Labs" at
Amazon. What I got wasn't Rose Oil, it was garbage.

Amazon issued I refund but when I looked into it further I found reviews from
others who got crap from them as well, but those reviews were well buried.
Because I'd requested a refund I wasn't allowed to post a review that warned
others about them. That felt to me like Amazon was shielding the vendor from
negative reviews.

As a result of how this was handled I've not bought anything from Amazon this
year and I canceled our "Prime" membership this month when it expired.

This "crackdown" feels like too little too late, and it will be a long time
before I go back there, if ever.

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del82
[https://outline.com/rjnnqM](https://outline.com/rjnnqM)

~~~
InGodsName
Does outline have some special deals with media sites?

And if it's simply stealing content, why aren't companies suing outline into
oblivion like they did with Napster?

~~~
sct202
I doubt they have a deal. The only place I've seen it used is HN, so they
might not have noticed yet.

------
deegles
(Please hold your pitchforks) Since a lot of these scams come from Chinese
sellers, I wonder if Amazon could talk to the Chinese government about
interfacing with their new social-credit system... you can't sell on the
platform if your score is below XYZ, and reports of fraud affect them
directly.

Obviously this would lead to a lot of sellers mysteriously relocating to other
countries, and there would be a lot of patsies set up to take the credit score
hit, but it's all about defense-in-depth right?

~~~
jmcgough
The much talked about social credit score doesn't really exist yet
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-
social...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-
credit-score-isnt-real/)

~~~
mherdeg
Yeah I suppose it's true that a system which has only "blocked more than 11.14
million flights and 4.25 million high-speed train trips by the end of April
[2018]"
[http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1103262.shtml](http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1103262.shtml)
is not "real".

Chinese high-speed rail carries more than a billion passengers per year (
[http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/1110/c90000-9291147.html](http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/1110/c90000-9291147.html)
).

If vastly fewer than 1% of rides are affected by the so-called social credit
blacklist, is it a real thing?

Personally I have been disappointed that the commentators are making the
"Black Mirror" comparisons without carrying the reference further back to Cory
Doctorow's "Whuffie".

------
reaperducer
I'm glad this has finally begun. But it's too late for the Christmas shopping
season.

With the exception of items from Amazon Global, I've already bought all of my
gifts from brick-and-mortar stores because I can no longer trust that Amazon
won't ship me fakes.

Maybe next year.

------
oflannabhra
One thing I've been thinking about: Amazon (and Google) have essentially taken
the old CPG paradigm of stock shelves (including visibility and monetization
of that physical space) and turned it into a new paradigm: Infinite shelf
space that dynamically changes based on customer inputs.

Across one axis, this is better for the consumer and better for Amazon:
customers get better results, and Amazon can charge for the (still limited)
high priority space much more than a typical retailer could charge a CPG
manufacturer for visibility.

Across another axis, this is much worse for Amazon: they cede a significant
amount of control over a highly valuable asset, which also greatly impacts
customer experience. All of the inputs they build their system on can be faked
or gamed, and now they have the added responsibility of distinguishing real vs
fake, and managing those inputs.

I don't really have any answers, but I think it is an interesting thought
exercise to consider how the old paradigm had some advantages, even if those
advantages are likely unable to scale.

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ChuckMcM
I think the gist of the article was "Hey we're working on fixing the
problems." but my experience with Amazon is that they aren't working hard
enough. The question is when does it show up in their bottom line (and stock
price) and when does Walmart start advertising "100% fully verified products
on our web site."

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LordHumungous
I was shopping with my fiancee on Amazon last night, and she mentioned that
she always ignores the first row of search results, which are often highly
reviewed but unknown Chinese brands, and goes for the brands that she knows
and trusts. She feels that the reviews are not always trustworthy.

------
cremp
Why on earth would Amazon allow whole-seller accounts to _edit_ other peoples
listings?

That just seems like a recipe for disaster, as seen here...

------
BadassFractal
Amazon fixing fake reviews would be a giant step in the right direction. What
could be more important than having your users believe you're a trusted
source?

~~~
nkrisc
I used to go to Amazon to look at reviews, regardless of where I was shopping.
Now, in the rare moments I'm shopping on Amazon, I go to other sites to read
the reviews.

~~~
goostavos
I've noticed that too -- it's kind of a weird full circle. I used to stand in
a brick and mortar store and pull up my phone to checkout amazon reviews
before purchasing. Now, I feel higher levels of trust in the supply chain of
most Brick and Mortar stores.

I've got no clue who to trust in the review space. I tend to trust comments I
find in niche subreddits more than I should. They're probably 50% astroturfed
or driven by poor incentives, but overall it tends to push towards higher end
established brands rather than cheap knockoff garbage. At least going towards
the former isn't an electrocution risk, I guess..

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legohead
If there is an alternate news source can you please not use WSJ? It is
paywalled pretty hard.

~~~
randomsofr
[https://outline.com/rjnnqM](https://outline.com/rjnnqM)

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pyman
I have to pay to read this article? Shameful promotion of a paid service.

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viburnum
I remember when they could ship booked undamaged. Those were good times.

