I noticed that Amazon seems to have some serious issues with counterfeit product. For them to compete long-term with companies like Walmart and Best Buy they need to do better and this is another example of where sometimes a curated product selection can be better.
Yes! For example I wanted to purchase Stranger Things Season 2 box set for a family member who has poor access to the internet. If you search for it on Amazon it looks legit but then you notice something odd. Zero retailers actually carry this. Only Amazon and eBay.
Turns out it's completely counterfeit. Worst yet I reported it and nothing happened to it and last I checked it's listed as "Amazon's Choice". They are still selling these.
Amazon seems perfectly fine with selling counterfeit products and it's quite frustrating.
Amazon also used to be pretty notorious for fake SD cards, especially those sold in their 'frustration free packaging'.
They've gotten better at it these days, but I think that's more due to the fact that faking SD cards isn't as profitable as it once was.
Amazon seem to take a very hands-off approach to caring about the quality of the items they sell; I'd like to see what their internal slippage budget is.
Every time the "same" item is sold by many vendors or has many look-a-like, I approach with caution. And that goes for maybe fake brand or obviously cheap product. It is a every growing pain to shop on Amazon because so many things fall in one of these two category.
Maybe Jet (Walmart) can do that. Only carry certified goods and not carry any off-brand knock off stuff. AMZ is getting really off-putting with all their inventory comingling and their third party vendors making their own brands on a daily basis as if A/B testing live with product.
Yes, there are small outfits who all they do all day long is try to strategize and evolve quickly to beat others out. Basically much of the contract manufacturing stuff. One of the better examples: https://www.inc.com/magazine/201603/burt-helm/pharmapacks-am...
One of the most useful things the administration could do to limit imports from China is to require UL certification on anything that plugs in or has a safety related function. That would filter out a huge amount of junk.
I'm trying to get a company approved to sell portable batteries on Amazon and it is pretty strict. Amazon requires testing reports that meet the UL 2056(?) certification or something. I don't know whether they require this for all electronics but as an Amazon seller, it seems to me they are very intense about quality and customer satisfaction. Another example is that I helped someone with a product launch for headphones that ended up having a little over 6% return rate. It was flagged by Amazon within a week.
However, what I have also learned is that there are many Chinese sellers that have also learned how to game the system.
Yes. Solid state relays are widely counterfeited. Especially Fotek. Here's an obvious counterfeit on Amazon[1] This is supposed to be a 100 amp solid state relay. Fotek doesn't even make a 100 amp relay in that form factor - the screw terminals are not big enough for 100 amps. The real Fotek makes nothing bigger than 40A in that packaging.[2]
Here's a teardown of some fakes.[3] The fakes are way overloaded - they have the parts for a much lower current device inside. Also, the higher current ones need a heat sink, which the counterfeit ones don't provide.
These things tend to show up in "internet of Things" devices, because they can switch considerable power from a logic level input.
There are so many really good counterfeit products that sometimes its difficult to tell, especially electronics and clothing. USB Wall chargers; for example, are really popular and sometimes can be found for 1/10 the price from Apple or Belkin.
Tempting to save quite a bit of money (~$3 vs $25), but you might burn your house down.
What prevents the manufacturer from rebranding themselves and listing their products again on Amazon? I really hope Amazon takes some proactive steps here, otherwise, people would lose trust in Amazon products and ratings.
I have that exact model of alarm, purchased for $2.50 from eBay.
Seeing this report, I decided to test it, and have taken a few barbeque coals smouldering and left them near the alarm.
The alarm goes off within about 1 minute, and the screen shows first 25, then "50ppm" of carbon monoxide.
I also tested the behaviour with a low battery, and it does indeed warn you.
Overall, it seems to be working as advertised - I can only suspect that not all of this model of alarm are bad, or perhaps that the british standards have some strict requirements (like perhaps it needs to go off quicker than 1 minute).
For the $2.50, the safety per dollar seems like the best deal around, and it is still way better than not having an alarm.
If anyone else tries this, beware that once the alarm has gone off, it keeps beeping for about an hour, even after you remove the carbon monoxide...
It's very possibly a quality control issue. The design of the alarm will work so if you're lucky enough to get a well build one with working components you're in luck.
The problem is not being able to rely on them, if you've a lucky one which passed your test are you confident it'll still be working in a couple of years?
My appliances don't burn anything in the room atmosphere, so I don't really need an alarm at all.
For $2.50, it seemed worth getting anyway (just incase someone is an idiot and brings the lit barbequeue indoors or something), but wouldn't have been worth it in my eyes for $10.
You would be well advised to never ever get anything you depend on from Amazon, especially not things to protect lives or ensure safety.
Amazon has an incredible problem with counterfeits, but also with quality control: they often will sell you items that have been used and returned by customers as new and never used.
You can't even rely on the reviews because sellers routinely game the system and flood their listings with fake or bought 5 star reviews. Oftentimes, when I publish a 1 star review, the seller will reach out and ask me to change my review to 5 star in exchange for another free product of theirs. Many people bite.
I personally quit buying anything at all from Amazon for that reason, instead I find the item locally and price match if the store allows. Even if you report it, the underpaid customer service agent only seems to have one incentive: number of cases handled by hour. Don't expect much when reporting counterfeit or unsafe products, they'll say amazon cares, thank you, it will be forwarded to whoever. It might as well go to /dev/null because nothing ever happens.
It eludes me how amazon (the retailer) plans on staying in business in the long term while behaving this way.
Along the same lines, you shouldn’t buy your average smoke detector online, either. The radioisotopes used in the detector mechanism necessarily have a half-life, and it behooves you to check the manufactured/expiration date on the packaging before purchase.
Cheap smoke detectors are pretty much all optical these days, and even the unbranded £2 Chinese ones have pretty sophisticated self-tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzKAZCKjpU8
To be honest, I'm not sure whether there's even any point having expiration dates on modern photoelectric detectors, except as a way to sell more smoke alarms.
Smoke detectors use Americium-241 which has a half life of 432 years. Unless that expiration date is a few centuries in the future, it's not because of radioactive decay.
Which? apparently is a paid service. That I find morally questionable - telling you that some are literally deadly and then asking for money to tell you which ones are.
You do not have to pay money to see which ones are deadly. You can see all the safety alert information on which ones are unsafe on the product listings[1] as well as individual product pages[2]. I've been involved in the product safety work at Which? and they've gone to great pains to make sure that this was publically and easily available information. They are also running a huge campaign on product safety[3].
But, you've made me see something I had not spotted before in that you _don't_ see what is unsafe for free on our "don't buy" pages[1]. I have raised this right now with the team!
Not only that, the Don't Buy page actively asks people to pay up in order to find out which carbon monoxide detectors are deadly:
"Compared with Best Buy carbon monoxide detectors, the Don't Buy alarms that we've named and shamed on this page just can’t be relied upon to detect the gas and sound the alarm. In our tests, the Don’t Buys failed to detect carbon monoxide in more than one-in-three of our tests. This adds up to 26 failures out of 72 tests. By contrast, the Best Buys passed all 312 of our carbon monoxide gas tests.
The potentially deadly CO alarms all claim to have passed the relevant EU safety standard, EN 50291. But repeated failures in our lab tests – which mirror those of the safety standard – lead us to doubt that they actually did. And we’re as concerned about several lookalike models as we are about the three models that failed our tests.
To find out which models are Don't Buys, as well as our Best Buy carbon monoxide detectors, sign up for a £1 trial to Which?"
Or, simple rule of thumb, stick with one of the major brands like Kidde or First Alert (other reputable brands like Nest should be safe too). Or better, use more than one major brand/model just in case there's a design flaw in one of them.
If you don't want to pay for Consumer Reports: their top rated standalone detector is the First Alert CO615 ($30)
Sticking with a major brand won't protect you from literal counterfeit goods, only from shady brands. Amazon also has a counterfeit branded goods problem.
More often, Which? tests different laundry detergents and tells its members how they perform. Morally, as a member funded organisation, they’re in better shape than the alternatives that take payment from the manufacturers in exchange for a stamp of approval.
As you can see in this CO detector case, when there’s something more serious than whether it gets your whites whiter than white, they share it with the press and make a campaign around it.
