
Amazon Merchants Continue to Find Ways to Cheat - non_sequitur
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-24/amazon-merchants-still-find-new-ways-to-cheat-in-shopping-frenzy
======
jakelarkin
fake/dangerous products are the bigger issue with Amazon. I have seen prenatal
fish oil supplements that are supposed to retail for $50, on Amazon
fulfillment for $40 and on Alibaba for $18. Who's to say 3rd party merchants
aren't reselling the fake Alibaba ones on Amazon for tidy profits? Odds are
the fake ones are just repackaged low quality supplements, chock full of
mercury.

With the breakneck pace of scams can anyone really trust Amazon fulfilled
Merchants for items with very specific safety tolerances?
(medication/supplements, hepa air filters, electrical components, just to name
a few things) I have just started ordering more things direct from
manufacturers web-stores rather than deal with the stress.

~~~
nasredin
>Who's to say 3rd party merchants aren't reselling the fake Alibaba ones on
Amazon for tidy profits?

Hmmm. Have you looked at Amazon? A lot - or most IMHO - of the products ARE
Chinese (So you get the famous "Made in China Quality Control"). Sellers
usually add $10-$20 markup over Alibaba/Aliexpress.

(Don't know how Aliexpress is so profitable since their website is worse than
Amazon (yes, that is possible); they couldn't even hire a native English
speaker to copyedit it.)

Depending on the product $10 markup is probably a good deal, since you get
Amazon-quality shipping as opposed to the Chinese sellers stuffing your
purchase into a trashbag with zero padding.

~~~
bigbugbag
> Don't know how Aliexpress is so profitable since their website is worse than
> Amazon (yes, that is possible); they couldn't even hire a native English
> speaker to copyedit it.

Aliexpress sells to Chinese people which makes it profitable, but also to
drophippers and reseller which makes it even more profitable but also to
international buyers across the world and (with alibaba) sells bulk. All at
affordable prices and with a glitch in the matrix in shipping fees. They also
charge you in your local currency to avoid additional currency exchange fees.

This beats amazon.com not selling their products outside the US and having to
contract a US reshipper and adding customs fees and international shipping on
top of it.

I'm not sure why the bad mouthing of aliexpress and Chinese sellers, I've been
doing business on aliexpress for several years and I'd say 95% of my orders
went flawlessly and maybe 2-3% were not up to par in term of shipping. I got
99% refund for those.

Also yes amazons and ebays have a lot of Chinese sellers and resellers of
Chinese stuff, most of the time with a hefty markup but sometimes cheaper than
aliexpress, go figure.

------
a2tech
The only people that should be able to leave reviews for a product are people
that have purchased it from that listing. I’ve found that the only reviews
worth reading are the ones that are from verified purchasers.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> The only people that should be able to leave reviews for a product are
> people that have purchased it from that listing.

That might make sense for electronics and other items, though even here
sellers have found ways to get around it by offering to reimburse their shills
who bought the product just for a 5-star shill review.

However, Amazon's introduction of the Verified Purchase tag on reviews and
recent changes that make non-VP reviews difficult to view, has had a
deleterious effect on reviews for books, films and music. There were a lot of
great well-written and insightful reviews written by people who got the media
in question from the library (or a filesharing community). For books and
films, that reviewing culture lives on at Goodreads and IMDB, but both are now
owned by Amazon and who knows how long those reviews might last. There is
however no analogue for reviews of music (Allmusic has strict character count
limits and few ever go there, Discogs reviews seem mainly meant for vinyl
enthusiasts).

Yes, in retrospect it was silly for fans of music, books and films to create a
rather non-commercial community of enthusiasts on the basis of a site whose
sole aim is to make lots of money, but I still regret what has been lost.

~~~
WalterBright
> it was silly for fans of music, books and films to create a rather non-
> commercial community of enthusiasts on the basis of a site whose sole aim is
> to make lots of money

Nothing silly about it at all. I've written many such reviews and I'm well
aware that I'm giving my work for free to a profit making entity. The thing
is, I also benefit a lot from reviews on Amazon, even for things I'd never
buy. Amazon is my go-to site for reviews on books and music. (Not so for
films, I use IMDB for that.) I enjoy writing and posting the reviews, and
enjoy getting "likes" on them from others that find them useful.

------
ikeboy
If you poke around, you can easily find newly launched listing with hundreds
of reviews ranking on the first page of popular keywords. E.g. search
"earbuds". There will be a handful of results on the first page from no name
brands, with all reviews within the last month, many unverified. That first
page placement gets them thousands of sales before it falls off and they go
launch a new product.

I don't know the methods but it's more than just reviews.

------
millstone
reddit found that some Adidas Ultra Boost sneakers sold on Amazon were
replicas (fake). The authentic and replica sneakers are co-mingled. It's crap
shoot what you get; even some "ships from and sold by Amazon.com" sneakers
were fakes.

Amazon's response is to issue a refund if you receive reps. However replicas
are often quite convincing, and most customers won't know how to tell the
difference. The carelessness here is just astounding: it seems like they're
begging for a lawsuit.

1:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/685wca/u...](https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/685wca/ultra_boosts_on_amazon_for_126/)

------
libertyEQ
As the topic has been discussed on HN over the years, I've often thought it
might be cool to create a browser extension that only shows reviews from HN
users with the option of specifying a minimal karma threshold. Perhaps the HN
community is too small, so substitute reddit where appropriate. Anyone have
thoughts on such a thing?

~~~
jaytaylor
That's a neat idea, how would you confirm identity, though? Could be
challenging to reach critical mass.

Why tie it to only HN and/or reddit? It could be a choice for users to make,
about which sites to correlate with which review sites.

In any case, interesting idea, thanks for sharing!

~~~
libertyEQ
As def_true_false mentioned, the way keybase handles things would be what I
was thinking, but the crypto doesn't have to be as strong, nor the workflow so
elaborate.

And for those mentioning gaming, HN does pretty well against all but the most
sophisticated and motivated. Browse with 'show dead' on you can see there are
plenty of attempts. A link to their profiles on HN and reddit would allow for
review of their comment histories in order to determine authenticity/ how
closely tastes align.

Even Amazon could allow us to filter reviewers by review history, or other
such criteria.

Edit: You are probably right about allowing other identity providers, but the
idea was to minimize the addressable market in order to study the dynamics of
such a platform. Your comment definitely made me think of it as a possibly
viable idea, thanks!

------
ben_jones
"I'm a bit reluctant to buy this because from what I've heard, Levi makes
these specifically for amazon and they are of much lesser quality. They had a
similar deal a few months ago (where a certain pair was available for pre-
order) and I can tell you first hand that those were much lesser quality than
the other 511's I have."

Recently gleaned from a user of /r/frugalmalefashion on reddit. I think it
adds to this discussion quite a bit. Ironically I'm still perusing amazon hard
today as part of Black Friday sales.

~~~
leviathant
With regards to Levi's specifically, I've found that their highest quality
jeans are made in Turkey. I can't speak to any "Made in the USA" Levi's, they
cost more than I've been willing to pay. Made in Mexico Levi's have, in my
experience, been the next tier down, and made anywhere else tends to be lower
quality fabrics and workmanship. I haven't been to an outlet, but I have
landed some really good deals on quality jeans on the clearance rack at the
Levi's store in King Of Prussia, knowing that their online promotions are
matched in-store.

While you can't look at those tags online, the MSRP on the Levi's website is
typically a decent indicator of the quality you're looking at. Jeans marked
down to $49.98 from $69.50 are a cheaper grade (e.g. cardboard patch on the
back instead of leather, lower quality fabric used in the pockets) than $49.98
jeans marked down from $89.50 or $128. All that said, stick to 12oz denim and
higher and you're looking at diminishing returns going upward from an MSRP of
$89.50. I've snagged some of the higher dollar stuff during the summer "Take
50% off sale prices" seasonal blowouts, and aside from one positive comment
about a pair of Made & Crafted, no one else has ever noticed if I'm wearing a
$20 pair or a $120 pair.

~~~
jotm
I'll just pitch in on this - I've noticed that textiles made in Turkey are
really great quality, unlike many of their other exports.

Same goes for tableware, good quality for cheap.

------
siruncledrew
It's a systemic problem with Amazon's marketplace, but their stock has been
performing well, so until they start taking multi-quarter financial hits,
their executives don't have a huge incentive to care about these marketplace
problems.

The FBA aspect of Amazon has created many of the problems, such as fake
reviews, merchant scamming, and counterfeit products, but FBA sellers are also
a huge money maker for Amazon, so they are in a very precarious situation of
managing expectations across their customers, sellers, and themselves.

------
alfozan
I use [https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com) to filter out fake
product reviews and I found to match my gut feelings most of the time.

------
dizzystar
One time, I was contacted by someone who wanted to open up a community forum
for Amazon sellers. I told him that's about the worst idea I've ever heard.

The online selling community is so cut throat and fractured that it goes well
beyond healing at this point. It's a game of win at costs.

This absolutely nothing new. Sellers will leave bad reviews, flag legitimate
listings for fraud, sue each other, and myriad other things.

To give an idea of how old this is, look at the origin story of Nast Gal
clothing.

------
blubb-fish
That was one of the reasons why I decided to completely ditch Amazon. And I
don't regret it.

~~~
sbuttgereit
I haven't had this issue with Amazon myself, but the threat of it does weigh
on my mind. Nonetheless, what pushed me over the edge of not buying from them
anymore is they really just don't care what happens once a package leaves the
warehouse.

Amazon insists on regularly using a specific carrier to get product to me
which alters altogether the concept of what it means to get product to
someone. There's a whole story behind this, but Amazon is a big company and
clearly is shooting to satisfy the lowest common denominator. I've tried to
resolve my issues with them but just get whatever script their corporate
spokeshole gives to customer support to parrot. I get it, I'm not their common
problem... but since I'm their edge case... I'm done with them.

I will shop Amazon chiefly as a sort of search engine when necessary and buy
direct or from some other seller once I know the product exists; maybe use
them for price check. In fact, given the unreliability of Amazon actually
getting product to me in any predictable fashion, it's usually just more
convenient to drive to a B&M store and make the purchase (I do check inventory
before I leave the house ;-) ).

------
chiefalchemist
If Facebook is concerned about fake news, why isn't Amazon concerned about
fake products?

~~~
thg
Facebook isn't concerned about fake news, it's concerned about bad press and
possibly facing regulation. Make the bad press about Facebook fake news go
away and Facebook will stop caring about fake news on their platform.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook-
regulati...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook-regulation-
incentive.html)

~~~
chiefalchemist
I'm not saying FB's concern is sincere, just that it exists. They are aware
there's an issue. They are aware it could hurt them.

Jeff \ Amazon seem to be taking the head in the sand approach.

------
tomohawk
Maybe they could form a partnership with Consumer Reports? Like, if you're a
prime member, you could see related Consumer Reports reviews? Maybe Consumer
Reports could review Amazon's practices?

------
j-c-hewitt
In some categories, Amazon is putting more weight onto editorial reviews. It'd
be a good thing for Amazon and a good thing for product oriented media
companies for those reviewers and reviews to regain some of the clout and
influence that they have lost to easily manipulated user reviews.

On the flip side I think media companies have to do more to deserve the trust
of shoppers. More Consumer Reports style product evaluations and less
clickbait trolling, more investment into respectable writers/video reviewers
who have integrity and earn a real salary to make them resistant to PR
bribery.

I don't think most shoppers fully understand how extreme the review
manipulation is on the brand and merchant side of things. One issue is that
the Federal government does not enforce the laws on the books against many of
the worst types of manipulation. I'm not a particularly pro-regulation type of
guy, but this is one of the consequences of zero law enforcement in a
particular area of business: you become a sucker if you abide by the law when
none of your competitors are.

The Yelps and Amazons of the world are kind of split on this because they both
want to restore/retain the trust that users have in these reviews without
drawing attention to how absurd the level of manipulation is.

Another issue is the entirely legitimate manipulation of reviews that
nonetheless confers a competitive advantage. One local car dealership that did
some service on my car has earned thousands of positive five star reviews by
being extremely aggressive with e-mail followup to people who show up for even
minor service interactions. I gave them five stars out of bemusement and
because we legitimately received good service on a free interaction paid for
by the car manufacturer with a rebate. But I would have been much less
generous with my five star review had I had to pay for the service, as
everyone is. That's why Amazon as of last year bans that practice.

I have myself counseled clients in ecommerce and written email sequence
scripts to do just this kind of manipulation. But in the case of this
dealership and of most people, is the dealership that is the most efficient at
running an email marketing program really the best car dealership in the area
by an order of magnitude? While it may be an indicator of the overall
professionalism of the company and a signal of business health, it's pretty
unrelated to the business of selling cars and servicing them. As a rather
clueless car owner, I'm not even really qualified to give an intelligent
opinion about the quality of a dealership apart from how I feel about it and
whether or not I (rather clueless) think that I was ripped off or not.

Why is my unqualified opinion based on that minor interaction worth more than
that of someone who really knows a lot about cars, bought a car from that
dealership, and has had dozens of service appointments with the mechanic? Why
is my dumb 5 star rating worth the same amount as that guy's? It makes no
sense.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Consumer Reports is expensive. Media company reviews are free.

~~~
emodendroket
It's not that expensive considering what you get (essentially saving me,
collectively, tons of hours researching products like toaster ovens and leaf
blowers I don't necessarily want to learn that much about).

