Couldn’t this be solved with some vigilantly style justice. (Since Amazon are not dealing with it proactively)
If a large group of individuals buy these hard drives (~1-3k) and then all file for refunds on the basis that the product is a scam / not as advertised (providing the evidence from the blog post).
Isn’t the result that everyone gets a refund. The seller loses the sales. They get 1-3k bad reviews. And they lose the merchandise (unless they’re sent back, but it seems like lower value products like this don’t require a return).
Surely that would quite quickly make this an unprofitable venture for the scammers.
I'd imagine that the sellers have a number of accounts and only sell a small amount of products through each.
In cases like these, Amazon should take note that a product is a scam, automatically refund all customers and remove the product and account. The issue is, that would require Amazon to withhold payment to sells for 30 - 60 days, which is going to absolutely suck for small honest sellers.
I don't think Amazon really care what happens on their platform, as long as it make a profit... or are they still losing money on the e-commerce side of business?
> are they still losing money on the e-commerce side of business?
It isn't entirely clear to me if the losses Amazon reports are accounting magic (invest rather than profit, keeping taxes low and growth high), or a genuine failure, or a mix of both.
If AWS was split from Amazon so the latter was forced to operate without its cash cow, I think we'd all be better off. I'm sure lots of us would also be willing to trade a smaller product selection for better quality guarantees; the Alibaba-reseller model sucks.
Are you willing to spend several hundred dollars buying hard drives hoping to someday get it back? Then will you spend the time testing them, refunding them, and making a bad review? And how many new scammers can pop up over the time it takes you to ruin one scammers ratings?
Expecting a large group of customers to test these things thoroughly enough to discover how fake they are is unreasonable. With blatantly intentional fakes like these, a single one should be enough to indict and imprison the seller and fine Amazon.
So that might make a difference fir this 1 product, but Amazon is absolutely full of Aliexpress tat. It's more aliexpress than genuine CE marked products nowadays
If a large group of individuals buy these hard drives (~1-3k) and then all file for refunds on the basis that the product is a scam / not as advertised (providing the evidence from the blog post).
Isn’t the result that everyone gets a refund. The seller loses the sales. They get 1-3k bad reviews. And they lose the merchandise (unless they’re sent back, but it seems like lower value products like this don’t require a return).
Surely that would quite quickly make this an unprofitable venture for the scammers.