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Cheap junk flooding Amazon has brand names like MOFFBUZW
- NonNefarious 4y agoWho is JUST becoming aware of this?
- toomuchtodo 4y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1550230795230781440.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1550230795230781440.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220722194603/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1550230795230781440.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220722194603/https://threadrea...
- draw_down 4y ago
- alangibson 4y agoI wonder if theres a business idea in here. Set up a site that looks better than Amazon (not hard) and only list reputable listings on Amazon. Collect affiliate revenue. Basically just filter out the crap and profit
- qqqwerty 4y agoThat is basically what WireCutter is, among many others.
- alangibson 4y agoThey are all content marketing. I'm thinking of essentially an alternate storefront that is a garbage filter.
- spathi_fwiffo 4y agoI've been less trusting of WireCutter reviews lately. Still see so many of these strange brands listed when I go in to read a review, combined with no real long term testing. Lack of long term testing makes me not trust Consumer Reports as much either. I still use their reviews as a reference point, but for a lot of things I don't really go for their top selections.
- misterprime 4y ago"We used this brand new hybrid truck for two weeks, and it's great!" Yeah, I'm not sure what to do with that information.
- Marsymars 4y agoIf you’re buying something that Lee Valley sells, and you typically go for the higher-end rather than the budget pick, you can basically skip the Wirecutter guide and just buy whatever Lee Valley stocks. (Not much in the way of electronics, but lots of tools and home stuff.) Extra benefit if you’re Canadian; lots of Wirecutter stuff isn’t available in Canada, and Lee Valley is Canadian. The Lee Valley curation is incredible, probably the best of any store I’m aware of.
- walterbell 4y agoThey deserve an award. They even have product descriptions with use cases not intended by the vendor of the product.
- vineyardmike 4y agoThe issue is that the listing URLs are shifty and reference different things over time, and the listings can be hijacked.
- alangibson 4y agoA URL is tied to an ASIN, so those don't change. But the listing can get hijacked. There's an opportunity for improvement. Take down a listing when creative suddenly changes, for example.
- tylerrobinson 4y agoRight? I had the same idea when I read this. If you're serious about it, reach out to my email in profile. I tried you at your @landshark.io email but it bounced back to me.
- helaoban 4y agoI've also mulled different iterations of this idea, specifically with some kind of "on-the-ground" verification of sellers / quality. I lived and worked in China for 8 years, with a small spell of that time in manufacturing QC. I know the country well and speak fluently. Feel free to reach out, email in profile, and GP is also welcome to get in touch if you read this!
- cheald 4y agoFakeSpot kind of does this. Their browser extension can hide Amazon listings directly on Amazon which fall below a certain trustworthiness threshold.
- intrasight 4y agoIt would violate their terms-of-service and they'd unplug you in a heartbeat - or after you'd sold a million dollar of stuff, and they'd keep your affiliate cut
- rootusrootus 4y agoI still end up using Amazon for a lot of things, but I do find the gibberish chinesium crap somewhat amusing. I won't buy anything that isn't sold by Amazon, brand name, and not a battery or other really common counterfeiting target. I also use eBay sometimes, but the prices are 9/10 times higher than Amazon for brand name items.
- TavsiE9s 4y agoeBay has been more reliable for me the last two years. I don't want to dig through thousands of fake reviews, reviews for wrong items, etc.
- elforce002 4y agoI only shop on Amazon when there's something that's difficult to find. That's it. I prefer spending on niche or small shops.
- Pakdef 4y agoI only buy from amazon when it is cheaper because I can find everything elsewhere.
- Fargoan 4y agoAmazon is the last place I go if I need to purchase something. Sometimes I'll use it like a search engine and then go off-site and make the purchase elsewhere.
- Bellend 4y agoI am the same as you. Although the only difference is: 1. Amazon is the never the cheapest. 2. Their search is absolutely garbage and I can't use it. I'd need to go elsewhere, find a specific product, then search to compare. I just logged into Amazon and the last thing I bought was 2021 "Leuko Tape" for hiking since it was the only seller that had it at a reasonable price. I am genuinely always amazed by the responses on HackerNews. It might be because amazon.com is just cheaper in general than amazon.co.uk?
- Trias11 4y agoRock bottom prices, free delivery (with prime) + one click, no risk, no question asked refunds overweight fakes and crap. Hard to argue with that, honestly. Obviously if you want to buy genuine Rolex, or quality European made tools, Amazon is not the place.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y agoAmazon won't refund your lost time though. Unless I'm feeling particularly generous, or have some other reason to believe it was a freak occurrence, getting shipped a bobcat and getting a 100% refund on a $1 widget is an instant negative feedback and low-scoring seller review. That $1 widget being Chinesium garbage has set back whatever was working on by at least a full day, probably more like a week, and wasted all the initial time I spent selecting the item, plus the time I spend determining that the item was indeed faulty, and it wasn't my fault obviously costs way more than a dollar. These companies couldn't afford a "no risk no questions asked refunds" policy, since there's no way they'd ever pay for that wasted time. I'm not asking for a genuine Rolex, but fakery is so bad at the moment that I'm not even confident I'd get a genuine Casio.
- liberia 4y agoMost buyers are savvy though and buy reputable brands. Search for ‘USB flash drive’ and invariably you will get cheap Chinese muck that will break within a day. Then just filter by respectable brands like SanDisk and case closed, all the cheap stuff is filtered out!
- aphroz 4y agoExcept if you get a fake one
- chainwax 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pvg 4y agoPlease don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- spiderice 4y agoIt's so tiresome to read this on every twitter thread that gets posted to HN
- JadoJodo 4y agoPretty interesting. Its odd Amazon allows this to happen, but I guess they have no incentives not to. Reminds me of this video from the Pitch Meeting YouTube guy: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30 https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30
- gibolt 4y agoIt is becoming hard to find anything trusted online. Here is the equivalent Ryan George video for Google: https://youtu.be/NT7_SxJ3oSI https://youtu.be/NT7_SxJ3oSI Same problem. Different clothes
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> but I guess they have no incentives not to I'm surprised that reputation didn't do it. (But I agree; Amazon's behavior certainly seems to show that they don't care.)
- metalliqaz 4y agoAmazon "... is turning their marketplace into a flea market of total junk." Man if this isn't the dead-on honest truth. Amazon is so garbage now that Walmart.com is a trusted supplier by comparison. I can't believe Amazon gets away with the crap they do. They so obviously turn a blind eye to constant, serious anti-consumer crap from Chinese sellers. Why? And why doesn't the FTC or any other department do anything?
- Booktrope 4y agoOn the other hand, much of what passes for "reputable" brands is just reselling the crap from the same sellers, but with a "trusted" name on it.
- AlexandrB 4y agoSee also this blog post on USB-C hubs: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.h...
- bendbro 4y agoWalmart does dropshitting too. Hell, even Home Depot is getting into it. You can often find the same piece of garbage furniture on all 4
- wollsmoth 4y agoyeah... I kinda use walmart more since it has a better signal/noise ratio.
- kmeisthax 4y agoHalf of the Twitter thread is just talking about literal bribes paid to Amazon staff to conveniently change things in the system in the black-hat sellers' favor. This is not a "why don't they fight the spam harder" problem. That's Google's problem. Amazon's problem is, apparently, that their corporate culture is so toxic and broken as to make any kind of internal controls or moderation outright useless.
- DanAtC 4y ago
- spaceman_2020 4y agoEveryone who does anything online should be required to hang out on some black hat internet forums and marketplaces. It really opens up your eyes to the sheer size of the fake account and bot traffic, market. It makes you skeptical of everything you see online. You can buy verified Twitter accounts, blue check mark accounts, Facebook ad accounts, Google AdSense/AdWords accounts, Amazon accounts, and more bot traffic than you can imagine. All for a few hundred dollars at most. I wonder what the internet would really look like if there was no bot traffic, fake clicks, and fake accounts.
- ms4720 4y agoPorn and cat pictures
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoFurry? You can have both!
- amelius 4y agoThis sent me down a rabbit hole.
- anakaine 4y agoDon't linger too long. You'll wind up like Alice.
- fknorangesite 4y agoThat's one way to put it.
- thrwwy5685865 4y agoEveryone who does anything online should be required to hang out on some black hat internet forums and marketplaces. It really opens up your eyes to the sheer size of the fake account and bot traffic, market. It makes you skeptical of everything you see online. You can buy verified Twitter accounts, blue check mark accounts, Facebook ad accounts, Google AdSense/AdWords accounts, Amazon accounts, and more bot traffic than you can imagine. All for a few hundred dollars at most. I wonder what the internet would really look like if there was no bot traffic, fake clicks, and fake accounts.
- coding123 4y agomy wife and I have been increasingly buy on Target, HomeDepot and other sites to buy things because the brands are much more likely to have a legit business backing them up. Generally too one of the causes of this craziness is that we keep outsourcing our manufacturing to China. China is only making these items because a much larger American company like OXO has them making really awesome kitchen items (for example) So it's not that hard for the same factory to create a series of shell companies that also sell the OXO stuff. I mean how hard is it to copy and paste the ads that the legit companies make and sell directly? If we didn't outsource everything then it wouldn't be happening.
- dkarp 4y agoI recently moved to the US from the UK. In the UK, we have Argos that sells a few versions of each product at different price points. If you pay more, you get better quality and you aren't sifting through hundreds of fake brands of similar products. Target is definitely the closest we've found over here.
- aimor 4y agoI’ve been making a conscious effort to buy things manufactured in the USA. Made in USA still exists for a lot of things and the quality and design is superb compared to all the Chinese junk. What really surprises me is the prices are also very reasonable. Right now buying home goods online is a nightmare: Search engines don’t help, the big retailer websites are full of junk, prices are unbelievable. But I’ve had great success identifying the handful of companies that make X in the USA and ordering directly from them.
- tryptophan 4y agoShopping on amazon is really an awful experience nowdays. I really do not want to search through 40 pages of water kettles of really dubious brands. It is so anxiety inducing and unpleasant.
- m463 4y agoI think amazon has jumped the shark[1] There is no practical way to buy a reputable/brand name on amazon. Some brand names are "available", but it seems not officially and people are buying them at a store and shipping them to customers. Other brand names are available, but the search results are paid (and manipulated) so they get crowded off the page by sponsored and "5 star (2)" results. and so amazon as a brand is associated with junk. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
- ant6n 4y agoThe problem I’m having in Germany ist that only Amazon reliable delivers to my door, usually next day. Every other store ships with DHL, which after several days pretends that they ring you, when they don’t, and then u can go pick it up at the DHL store a day later. That’s their moat.
- sveme 4y agoWeird. Out of the four major delivery services, DHL is by far the best and most accommodating.
- sofixa 4y agoI think most of the complaints are directed at the amazon.com. They do not at all reflect my experience with amazon.fr - yes there's no name crap but there's also lots of legit stuff, and it's the majority that comes up in search results (confirmed through third parties recommending the same legit stuff with amazon links).
- mk89 4y agoWeird, DHL is for me the best and most professional of all. The experience you mentioned happens to me with DPD and very often with GLS. Hermes is also pretty good and professional. Maybe it depends on the location...
- lph 4y agoPro tip: If you absolutely must buy the junk being sold by MOFFBUZW and other randomly generated drop-shipper brands, the exact same product is usually available on AliExpress for 10% the price.
- Cerium 4y agoAll this cheap junk follows a fairly reliable markup scheme: Factory sells for 1x Taobao sells for 2x Aliexpress sells for 3-4x (2x Taobao) Ebay sells for 8-10x. (~2x Aliexpress) I think Aliexpress is usually about 20% of the Amazon price, but depending on the item I agree that it can be 10%.
- mrguyorama 4y agoWith the caveat that on ebay, you can usually find someone in the US wearhousing it for some reason with free 3 day shipping for the same price.
- notahacker 4y agoI've actually cross-referenced the original product on Alibaba to check specs when ordering the marked up product using eBay for Click-and-collect... Reverse image search works wonders against "unique" brandnames.
- wtallis 4y agoAnd quite often when ordering from an eBay seller with US stock, the package that arrives has an Amazon logo on the box.
- krallja 4y agoThis happened to me: I ordered a cheap UV EPROM eraser on eBay with three-day delivery. It was literally drop-shipped from Amazon, on an Amazon truck, in an Amazon bag. I could have gotten the same (crappy, simple) product on Amazon a day earlier for about a dollar less. But I was trying to avoid buying on Amazon, because of all the reasons posted in this comments section!
- callahad 4y agoThe New York Times did some decent reporting into the pseudo-brands which comes closer to answering the question in the title: having a registered trademark unlocks a lot of on-platform seller tools (predictive analytics, early review program, etc.), and the easiest path to a trademark is to have an utterly unique, nonsense name. Some Chinese municipalities were also offering cash incentives for citizens who obtained foreign intellectual property registrations, further exacerbating the problem. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...
- alangibson 4y agoI've listed a few things on Amazon. This is very much true. If you don't have a registered trademark youre a second class citizen. You can't upload a video, for example.
- gerdesj 4y agoAmazon isn't eBay. In theory, for us punters: we should be flogged goods by Amazon that conform to local standards. Beyond that all bets are off. eBay doesn't even bother with ... anything - it's all caveat emptor. So even in the wild west of Amazon at least there are a few standards. Sorry if you feel aggrieved but I'd rather buy stuff that had to follow a few standards that I nominally trust. By registering a trademark/incorporating/etc you are declaring your intention to work within the rules or at least some rules. You are not a second class citizen at all. You are actually trying to avoid being a citizen at all if you don't want to abide by rules designed to protect customers. Amazon is pretty horrendous already if you are not careful but you seem to imply that you want to use it for ad hoc sales. That is what eBay and the like is for. Amazon is for shop style sales ie vendors with product lines and inventory.
- sgc 4y agoYou are kind of deciding Amazon's business model for them, or describing what you would like them to be. But your description doesn't fit well with their "Do you have one of these to sell?" links etc. It seems fair to say they send out mixed signals.
- distrill 4y agoUnless I missed it, he didn't really talk about why these names exist, other than to suggest it might be a troll? Related, I don't understand twitter as a place for long form content. It's difficult to read and it can't be easy to post.
- Narretz 4y agoThe idea is that these names are generated pseudo-randomly or arbitrarily because they have no brand value. Sellers that use them run through "companies" quickly as they get banned for forbidden practice or because their reputation tanks. Then they create the next seller account with another name.
- distrill 4y agoAh, yeah, I suppose. Maybe I need things spelled out for me.
- namdnay 4y agoThat article was a bit of a bait-and-switch: instead of explaining why the Chinese resellers all use similar patterns, the author just spent 30 twitter posts complaining about being undercut by cheap Chinese crap
- misterprime 4y agoI've been wondering why I do like Twitter for long form content. At first, I hated it. But then I got caught up in several long threads, and invariably at the end someone would link the threadreader collection of the whole thing. I kept thinking, I'm just going to start going to the bottom and looking for that link, but I never did. Instead, I learned to love it. It's almost a way of being reminded again and again about who is speaking, and it gives you a little feedback of how interesting other Twitter users found that particular section. I don't really like that I learned to love it. I think it might be unhealthy. But that's a different issue.
- mfkp 4y agoHere's unrolled version, easier to read: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1550230795230781440.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1550230795230781440.html
- barbOzon 4y agoThe author writes: > how can you protect yourself as a consumer? Followed by a tedious list of hoops to jump through around verifying authenticity to a point where you might not get stung. At this point, is it not better to just give up on Amazon and use a retailer that takes its product sourcing more seriously? Continuing to use Amazon when you know how full to the brim of scams it is, just seems to me like rewarding them for bad behaviour. Take your money elsewhere, with everyone else, and let the invisible hand of the market give Amazon a bloody good slap.
- fassssst 4y agoMy solution was to buy most stuff from Costco/Target/Best Buy instead. Their buyers do good enough vetting that it saves me a bunch of time.
- javajosh 4y agoWell, you could also use newegg, bhphoto, alibris, discogs and etsy (gifts) - which are all, like Amazon, purely online retailers. Each of the alternatives beats Amazon in its particular niche, and pretty much always has. But Amazon is convenient because it sells everything.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- karaterobot 4y agoLooking at the name of the company, reading recent reviews, and ensuring there is a non-obviously-fake address associated with the business doesn't sound like a tedious list of hoops to jump through to me. You should do all this stuff on any marketplace, Amazon or elsewhere. Honestly, if we're talking about convenience, Amazon is pretty much the best game in town. They have many documented failings and faults, but being inconvenient isn't one of them.
- mentalpiracy 4y agoif Amazon just wants to be the market, that's one thing. but they're also trying to position themselves as a brand name with notion of value attached (e.g. amazon basics). I value my time and don't want a 'caveat emptor' market experience, so I've largely given up on Amazon as a reliable market browser.
- Ancalagon 4y agoIts funny how much less online shopping Im doing these days specifically because of my bad experiences ordering from Amazon. I feel super old school going into stores, and even my girlfriend complains about it, but I no longer will risk the annoyance of delivery times and returns processes - nor the risky health effects of buying food online or clothing or kitchen ware that I'll interact with often.
- nopenopenopeno 4y agoI find it more and more difficult to return items to stores in the US because they keep their returns deparments so short-staffed. Home Depot and Target are 2 places where I have stood in line for 45min to 1hr just to return something.
- Ancalagon 4y agoMy experience is the opposite - at least with HD. I come in, wait 5 minutes max, and return my item and the money is back on my card within the day. Never had a hassle either returning even more expensive, even custom-fit orders (window blinds). I don't know about target as I don't shop there too often.
- NavinF 4y agoYep, my local Home Depot has no line for returns and they don’t ask questions. Example: They gave me a full refund when I returned an empty box of wooden dowels after I used them for a project and realized the box had fewer dowels than advertised (likely because someone opened it and stole a few).
- coldpie 4y agoYes, I've switched almost entirely to B&M shopping, and I haven't ordered from Amazon specifically since 2019. Physical stores have limited retail space, so they have a good reason to be choosy about what they stock. It's worth a few extra bucks to me to not have to sort through online flea markets like Amazon (plus, it gets me out of the house).
- 4y ago
- rahimnathwani 4y agoThe thread didn't answer the question.
- rahimnathwani 4y agoOne of the posts contains a screenshot of a vendor's company name and address. The company name (and words in th address) may look really long and suspicious, but it's just because it's transliterated from Chinese. OP says these are all 'shell companies', but AFAIK it's more onerous and costly to register and maintain a company in China, than in many states in the US.
- ev1 4y agoThis is pretty much it. People always say it's random mess or fake, but "youxian gongsi" is literally "limited company" and based on Shenzhen. I do a lot of hardware ordering and speak none of the language and picked this up over time. Chinese company names are generally [location] [selected name] [what they do], like Baidu is Beijing + Baidu + Netcom Science Technology. The transliteration in the tweet: "shenzhenshizhengshunzidianziyouxiangongsi" Shenzhen-shi (city), Dianzi (electronics), youxian (limited), gongsi (company) "wu long da sha b dong" seems like it's Five Dragons Building (https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=da+sha https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.... ;some kind of office park?), Building B, and a suite number. The first line is something like "Longhuan 1st Road, Jinglong Community, Longhua Street, Longhua District". It just looks like a mess because people are not used to it, and in chinese writing you don't separate the characters - it's "有限公司" for limited company, not "有限 公司"
- notahacker 4y agoSame goes for brand names that are completely unpronounceable in English and the fondness for ALLCAPS. Of course people accustomed to a completely unrelated language and writing system are likely to come up with transliterated or synthetic brandnames or acronyms that seem bizarre to English speakers. Buyers make one-time-only purchases based on search result order, price and star ratings, so localising brandname to the market is well down the list of priorities below keyword stuffing and trimming the Alibaba images. Names which look as bizarre in ASCII as Huawei and Xiaomi have actually succeeded in becoming brands in the West anyway. (Your comment should probably be the top comment for the thread)
- Narretz 4y agoThe case that is mentioned is Oberdorf vs Amazon. Here's an article from 2019. https://www.courthousenews.com/amazon-back-on-the-hook-for-dog-owner-blinded-by-leash/ https://www.courthousenews.com/amazon-back-on-the-hook-for-d... I can't find anything more recent. The case is interesting as it needs to make a decision if Amazon has the same responsibility for Amazon marketplace as it has for its own listings.
- yegle 4y agoAmazon employees have a "perk" of a 10% off multi-use coupon, up to $1000. It applies to anything whose seller is Amazon (sold by amazon.com). In the last few years it's been extremely difficult to make full use of the "perk", simply because there aren't a lot of things that are sold by amazon.com anymore.
- namdnay 4y agoMaybe it’s different in each country? I’ve used Amazon in the UK and several European countries, and you can get tons of major brands sold by Amazon (Apple, Dell, Samsung, Gardena, Bosch etc)
- Scramblejams 4y agoI guess we buy different things. Mine tends to run out pretty early in the year.
- AlexandrB 4y agoThe ending is rather unexpected: > despite all of this, i still mostly love Amazon as a customer. it played a big role in getting my e-commerce business off of the ground and i'm grateful for that. "It's a flea market full of cheap (and sometimes dangerous) junk, but I still love it!"
- iamthepieman 4y agoFlea Markets are great. You can find obscure stuff you didn't even know existed or that you needed. Amazon is a flea market shoved into a Costco with bots stocking shelves with whatever shows up at the loading dock. You think you're walking into a reputable retailer, it has all the signs and signals of one, but you're not.
- larrik 4y agoWhoa whoa whoa, don't besmirch Costco like that!
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoYou do get the junk quickly and can send it back easily.
- Analemma_ 4y agoIt's a hostage situation. This is how you can tell Amazon is a dangerous monopoly: when even the people they fuck over have no choice but to smile and say, "But we still love 'em!"
- astrange 4y agoAmazon isn’t a monopoly, its competitors just don’t have good shipping or return policies. I got an empty box shipped to me instead of an SSD last week and got an instant refund for it.
- bornfreddy 4y agoI mean, sure, you got an instant refund... But, do you find it OK that you got an empty box shipped instead of an SSD? To me that is unacceptable.
- stuff4ben 4y agoImagine if Amazon dedicated some human effort and time to curate their catalog and reviews instead of their legion of engineers trying to automate the solution and continually failing. Hire a bunch of college interns every semester and they'd have this problem solved. EDIT: I actually forgot they have this already in Amazon Mechanical Turk!
- htrp 4y agomturk might be legit worse
- kevinmchugh 4y agoThe interns would be even easier to bribe
- jmrm 4y agoIt's a shame how Amazon is bloated of Chinese off-brand products with mediocre quality. Some of them are simply products from AliExpress, DealExtreme, or similar Chinese websites but sold more expensive.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WheatM 4y ago
- Cupertino95014 4y agoSomeone in the postings wonders what would happen if Retail was split from AWS. Good question. Supposedly Retail is not profitable and AWS carries all the weight for the company. I don't know if that's true or not (?) Anyhow, I don't think it would make that much difference. The reputational hit that Retail takes every day probably does not carry over much to AWS, nor does AWS good will (if there is any) help Retail at all.
- TameAntelope 4y agoIs there an opportunity to create a marketplace that does meaningful validation and testing of the items on it, such that when you buy a product, you can be guaranteed to be getting the real thing? What could a competitor do to attack Amazon here?
- kbd 4y agoHappy to see this discussed on HN because I've constantly been stressing about this whenever I shop on Amazon. "All these brands are Chinese with random combinations of characters for a name" I've looked at laptop cases. Here is a sampling of brand names: Lacdo, Voova, KINGSLONG, NIDOO, tomtoc, MOSISO, INVZI, XMBFZ, Arvok, Kinmac, Londo... I've bought cases for my ipad and work laptop from Lacdo and one for my upcoming MBA from Voova. They're actually great, but I worry they're made with Uighur slave labor or toxic materials or something. I'd prefer not to support Amazon, but where else am I supposed to find stuff like this? Do I buy my electronics (eg. Hue lights recently) from Best Buy instead, which has a worse return policy and whose Geek Squad worked with the FBI to violate customers' rights? Edit: Also, a few days ago I went on a search for a desktop organizer. Here are some brand names: DALTACK, ARCOBIS, DEZZIE, Hossejoy, Greenco, AMERIERGO, SONGMICS, X-cosrack, Marbrasse, Citmage, Samstar, Beiz. It goes on forever. I checked Walmart and Target too, but wound up buying this one from "Lavatino" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PL59RL6 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PL59RL6 The product is actually awesome. The compartments are the perfect size to hold my coasters and I organized everything that was loose on my desk with room to spare. So, it feels great to get something I needed, but the whole process still feels bad somehow.
- ficklepickle 4y agoI bought a laptop case off Amazon with the brand name "unik" on it. I think it is supposed to read "unique" but I always see "eunuch".
- pathartl 4y agoWe absolutely need some consumer protections for things like this, but at the end of the day it takes some smart choices by the consumer. Sometimes those smart choices are to not make a purchase for that type of product, or compromise on design for reputability, etc. Keep in mind that while Amazon is the white whale here, this absolutely happens at pretty much any retailer that has moved to an online store where they list more than any individual store has inventory of. I hate supporting Amazon, but personally Best Buy is the lesser of two evils, and at least there I can return in store.
- 4y ago
- protastus 4y agoI no longer have the patience to navigate Amazon's terrible search results and have lost trust in the quality of their inventory. Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount. I've been a customer since 1997. Amazon has impressed me with their ability to play the long game, and I don't understand the long term incentives favoring Amazon here.
- bmitc 4y agoI too have stopped buying on Amazon. I did so a while back after being concerned about counterfeits, safety issues, etc. I had this talk with my wife not too long ago about a mirror she ordered from Amazon, clearly made in China by a no-brand manufacturer. We discussed about how, yes, it looks nice, but we have no idea what quality of glass they used. So if it falls and shatters, it could be very dangerous. It also came with a bunch stuff on it that looked like pieces of fiber glass. I just don't trust anything on that platform anymore. I buy everything else from more legitimate sellers selling brand name stuff or directly from manufacturer's websites.
- Phrodo_00 4y agoThis doesn't sound like an Amazon issue though, but an issue with that specific product. You're the one who chose to purchase it. You would likely have the same experience with that product in other marketplaces like EBay, Walmart or Alibaba.
- planetafro 4y agoI don't buy this for a millisecond. Amazon ushered in this behavior and made it the "norm". It's throwaway, cheap, non-branded junk... and dangerous. There is value in discussion of the manipulation of the market and not just "Shop somewhere else". It's predatory.
- maxerickson 4y agoIt's easy to not buy from other seller's on the marketplace. Did Amazon stop commingling fulfillment inventory? That's where I worry about getting burned.
- eslaught 4y agoIs it correct to say that when you get something "shipped and sold by Amazon.com", it really comes from them? It's the "fulfilled by Amazon" (the infamous FBA) that you need to watch out for. It's a bit screwy, but you can filter by seller by clicking into a specific product category, and then selecting Amazon.com in the bar on the left. Then all the items should be "shipped and sold by Amazon.com". But I've been sort of shocked to find recently that Amazon's prices, even with free shipping, are often not competitive with buying first-party, even with paying the shipping. For a lot of products these days, if there's a recognizable name brand associated with it, I just by first-party. You get it slower, but you know what you're getting, and probably end up giving more money to the seller too. I would not have seen myself doing this ten years ago.
- elliekelly 4y agoI’m actually not sure that’s a safe assumption. I could be wrong but I believe Amazon co-mingles products of the same SKU. So if Amazon is selling a book and other sellers have listed the same item as “new” and sent it to Amazon’s warehouse I don’t believe there is any distinction between the two at the warehouse. So the stock picker might grab Amazon’s (presumably authentic) item from the bin when they pack your order but there’s also a chance they’ll grab the third-party-seller “shipped by Amazon” item. My understanding is that it’s all kind of a crapshoot no matter how careful & deliberate you are when ordering.
- derefr 4y agoNot same SKU — same ASIN. I believe that brands that sell through Amazon (not FBA sellers), who are worried about comingled inventory, can get their official product moved over to a new ASIN, leaving the fakes behind in the old ASIN bin.
- davidbanham 4y agoMy understanding is that the items have different uuids, but there are no markings on the physical item. They’re identified by bin location. There are lots of bins in the warehouse. They contain up to around five items each. There is a theoretical possibility that two of the same thing from different sellers could end up in the same bin. At that point the picker wouldn’t know which is which.
- vineyardmike 4y agoI’ve been slowly trying to de-amazon my life, even more aggressively than trying to de-google (which is easy once you accept that search result quality is still good elsewhere). I got a Shoprunner account and Walmart plus from AMEX and recently started using it. I also found that VISA gets you a shipt account. Shoprunner let’s you buy direct from brand with 2 day shipping, so you don’t need to lose that benefit, while avoid “mass marketplace” mis-incentives of amazon like fake products. It has the benefit of being good on clothing, which amazon was never a great destination for. I haven’t used the Walmart “prime-equivilent” benefit, but it seems pretty comparable to amazon prime but at a retailer that has quality control (of some basic level). I’m just not much of a Walmart user. Shipt gets you “Same day” delivery from stores like target, which is a good counter to the growing same day delivery amazon has been rolling out. I found that its way worse than amazon though, since Shipt is “gig workers” and doesn’t connect to the store’s inventory very well, so you never really know if your order will be fulfilled in full. I use this for last-minute target orders when I don’t have time to visit the store. Shopify is rolling out a bunch of competing features, but the most useful one is that they’ll provide a single app to track your purchases, which means you don’t need 20 apps on your phone for each retailer just to track that one package a month you order (or more if that’s you). Oh and now you have a bunch of accounts that you have to give your data to and hope they don’t get breached. TLDR: It’s really hard to de-amazon if you’re a regular and hooked on the convenience BUT capitalism at work is providing alternatives slowly…
- 99_00 4y agoDecoupling from China can't happen fast enough.
- trasz 4y agoAs an European I'd prefer decoupling from US: https://unsafeproducts.com/childrens-products/toy-elmo-recalled-after-destroying-house/ https://unsafeproducts.com/childrens-products/toy-elmo-recal...
- 99_00 4y agoNext time you can just link to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_export_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_export_recalls It has all the info on the incident.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jollyllama 4y agoMy favorite example is BEEGOD, I was never sure if it was "be god", "bee god", or "be good."
- blangk 4y ago"be egod" ?
- quwert95 4y agoI have a tip for Amazon shopping related to these weird brand names: Do not buy anything that will go in or on your body. Doing this significantly reduces the likelihood of counterfeit or poorly packaged goods.
- ohlookcake 4y agoI was excited to know where the names come from, and after reading all of the tweets I still don't know. If the answer is just: it's a random collection of letters because it's not a brand they want to build, then that's a very predictable and uninteresting answer.
- dqpb 4y ago
- scrlk 4y agoI wish there was some way to force the "sold by Amazon" filter to be on all the time; I think that would resolve most of the issues I have with browsing on Amazon. There's still the inventory co-mingling issue that people have mentioned in other comments. Solving this would mean I'd start to consider using Amazon more frequently.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> want to get in touch with DOTTAVR? > well, they're on Amazon... surely they are a legit company and Amazon is covering their bases... good luck! >> Business Address: >> longhuaqulonghuajiadaojinglongshequLONGHUANYILU jiruizongheyuanWULONGDASHA Bdong502 >> Shenzhenshi >> Guangdongsheng >> 518110 >> CN This is the second time I've seen someone complain about "obviously" illegitimate business information that appears to be the vendor's own home address. I don't see how they could be more open or informative than that. Want to get in touch with them? Send a letter to that address; they'll see it.
- josephh 4y agoYeah, if that's the first thing that comes to their mind, then they need to look themselves in the mirror real hard and wonder whether they're the ones perpetuating xenophobia.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y agoPicking a small online business in the UK, I can verify their company number with Companies House, verify that the street address listed is the same as the one on that registration and that the Nature of Business of the registration matches what I would expect for said business. I know that they were founded around ten years ago. I can then use Google Street View to look at the building they operate out of, and see the name of the business printed on the side. I can see that they have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts, and that they own the .co.uk DNS entry for their company name. I can see that those social media accounts have followers and that they interact with customers on them. I know the full name of their director. I also know that they have a landline telephone number, and that telephone number has an area code appropriate for their street address, and that it's registered under their name in the telephone directory. Their website links to their Trustpilot listing, and that they're verified on Trustpilot. This communicates that they have some kind of a reputation, and it would be very costly for them to throw away all of those accounts and registrations should they want to throw away said reputation. Compare that with that string of garbled pinyin: it returns zero google results, refers to an area of China with no Street View access, and I wouldn't even know where to begin to verify if they are actually a registered company, who owns that address or how long the company has existed, and there's nothing I could cross-reference with other sources. If they wanted to throw away that identity, they could probably get a dozen like it in under a week with minimal effort. So yes, there's definitely many ways they could be more open or informative to communicate their status as a legitimate business that values their identity.
- decafninja 4y agoI’ll be the odd person out and say that whatever it’s faults as a company, my shopping experience on Amazon has been great. Not perfect, but nearly so. Certainly better than most other online retail channels, plus the convenience of Prime, and being a “one stop shop” certainly is super useful. I don’t know what everyone is shopping for, But I’ve bought tons of items across a wide variety of categories. I usually avoid the obvious Chinese knockoff stuff (unless it’s some trivially unimportant thing), and don’t find it hard to do so at all.
- heliodor 4y agoThat kind of unimportant stuff is usually found on ebay for much cheaper. Usually things that cost no more than $10 or $20 on Amazon sell for much less on eBay. The trinkets category. I make a point of not engaging with that category on Amazon. It's the least I can do to feed the monster less.
- decafninja 4y agoeBay is also significantly more difficult and annoying to use than Amazon Prime. I don't disagree with the morality argument, but Amazon has made things so incredibly convenient for the consumer.
- misterprime 4y agoSeriously. If it has that Prime mark on it, I know I'm getting it at a ridiculous speed, plus that 5% cash back on thus ugly old metal card that I used to like. Well, the cash back reward is still very nice. I really wish I could switch to other online or brick and mortar vendors, but nothing executes as well as Amazon in my experience. I even tried ordering some computer parts from newegg and it was fine, but it felt like I was back in 2002 or so.
- heliodor 4y agoMost of the trinkets aren't needed fast, so I feel the experience is the same: click the buy button and the submit button.
- rich_sasha 4y agoAmazon carved a good niche for themselves by pretending you're not buying from them but rather some "vendor". That's not right IMHO. The seller is Amazon; where they source their stuff and what subcontractors they have is their business. It's like EBay takes more responsibility for products you buy, even though that is explicitly a site for matching random buyers and random sellers. Not that i use ebay much either.
- namdnay 4y agoIt that were the case, Amazon would be setting the prices, not the contractors
- spicymaki 4y agoThe scam is enormously profitable for Amazon and the Chinese black hats. You can tell it is really profitable because Amazon will compensate you for up to $1000 for damages caused by this junk. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58163915 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58163915 I believe that Amazon probably could not turn the screws on these companies even if it wanted to. It would be a massive loss to their revenue and share holders would revolt. It would bring prices up in aggregate if these companies could not sell junk on the platform. The best they can do is play coy and hope the US government or EU does not crack down hard on them. Caveat Emptor my friends!
- discardable_dan 4y agoI've stopped buying huge swaths of things from Amazon for this reason. I'm basically down to buying four categories of things: 1. Items whose brand absolutely don't matter so long as they work as intended (e.g., books, home goods like hangers). 2. Home goods it wouldn't be worthwhile to knock off (e.g., KIND bars, toilet paper). 3. Smaller brands whose market share and item appeal are not worth cloning (e.g., a mechanical keyboard breadboard kit). 4. Things I'd order from banggood /aliexpress anyway, that Amazon will get to me faster (e.g., some diodes). For everything else, I'd rather get it at a local store or order it from Target/Best Buy/Whoever than risk the Amazon purchase.
- pishpash 4y agoFor 4 it's always a better value proposition to get from eBay, when cost with shipping is all accounted. And you'd be surprised about 3, e.g. check out the standing desks. I posit that we're sliding back to the 1990's Amazon: only good for books. But it doesn't matter because they are interested in being a Google with customer service and making a profit that way.
- Dylan16807 4y agoYou also have to make sure the books aren't a print-on-demand counterfeit.
- wnevets 4y agoThe amount of non sense on amazon these days has me just ordering from target or other retailers.
- d23 4y agoI look for alternatives to Amazon every time now and have cancelled prime after 15 years.
- Havoc 4y ago>1. i just need some commodity cheap and fast, and am not too worried about safety or authenticity. Made this mistake with a cheap rice cooker. Main voltages, high temps, water and steam and sketchy wiring was a terrible plan
- Aachen 4y agoThe long twitter message list doesn't contain an actual answer to the question. Just a rant everyone likes to agree with and would like to see solved and that's why this is on the top 3 front page, no actual interesting content (stay for the discussion, though, but save some time reading the OP).
- alibarber 4y agoI thought the takeaway was ‘any suitable dictionary word would likely have been taken, or make as much sense as random nonsense anyway, and they’re creating so so many of these pump-and-dump brands hawking junk that it’s easier to just use a literal random character string’
- aendruk 4y agoIt’s disappointing. I’m all too familiar with the phenomenon of marketplace spam by seemingly nonsense all-caps brand names, and have been curious about the reasoning behind the names. How are they chosen? Is it really nonsense or just a language I don’t know? Are there patterns to it? Plausible influences? I waded through Twitter’s hostile interface only to be made a fool of by hostile content. Update: At least the title here has been changed now to remove the trick lede.
- cheald 4y agoI've gotten to the point that if it's a nonsense all-caps name or has an item description in broken English, I just don't bother. It's gonna be trash. It'll fail in 3 weeks, there will be no way to get it returned or repaired, the company won't exist, and the product listing will be gone next time you come back to it.
- OJFord 4y ago> It'll fail in 3 weeks, there will be no way to get it returned or repaired, the company won't exist, and the product listing will be gone next time you come back to it. We're talking about Amazon though right? You can definitely return that, that's even inside the official return window (one month).
- cheald 4y agoOkay, well, 5 weeks then :) (Yes, if it's inside the Amazon time window, I could return that)
- system2 4y ago3 months if you are Amazon Business shopper.
- OJFord 4y agoIn my non-Business experience, it doesn't matter, just chat to support. (I'm not suggesting taking the piss, but I've had genuine issues ranging from slightly to very out of their one month return window, and I've had full refunds or replacements without at all unreasonable exertion on my part.) (Except one actually, very recently, it was a relatively high value Warehouse order that wasn't as described and I returned - no problems accepting/arranging that, but some tardniness on the actual refund coming through. Probably it would have been fine, but I did chase it several times before eventually getting someone willing/with the power to override whatever was making it take weeks to refund after having shown as delivered to their facility. I still think even that experience was better than I get elsewhere, and certainly on the whole it is, that was my worst ever, and it was fine in the end.)
- cronix 4y agoYou'll also find the same product with same description/images listed by multiple different "companies" all with odd names like this.
- xanaxagoras 4y agoI stopped shopping at Amazon when they kicked Parler off of AWS. I don't understand how any self respecting liberal could celebrate a mega corp censoring the internet along idealogical lines, even those who drank the insurrection kool-aid.
- dylan604 4y agoThis is why you have an issue with Amazon retail? Really? Sure, you can dislike a parent company, but the issues being discussed in TFA and this HN thread is about the shopping experience. Your desire to have a chat about your right wing beliefs have no place here.
- how_rude 4y ago
- xanaxagoras 4y agoI have no such desire.
- supernova87a 4y agoIt's like we're repeating an old era of the early United States when every guy on a street corner would be copying reputable wares and selling them without regulation, patent protections, brand / trademark protections, and people were hawking quack snake oil under any name. I'm all for reducing useless regulation, but sometimes you understand where it originally came from as a legitimate need.
- throwaway5959 4y agoI wish it didn’t take this much crap being sold to make you figure this out.
- mod 4y agoCole South used to be one (probably still is) of the best poker players in the world.
- faangiq 4y agoIt all comes from the same factories. Some just has fancy branding and pricing attached. (ie. American middlemen.)
- Waterluvian 4y agoAnecdotally: Amazon Canada has gotten really really bad in the past months. My standards are low but woof. You can’t even get a marble run that’s not that super thin brittle plastic. The marble run at Walmart was half the price. I’m the laziest, least ethics-motivated consumer and I think my time with Amazon is wrapping up.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- marcodiego 4y agoPlease, fix the title: "Cheap junk flooding amazon.com has brand names like MOFFBUZW".
- ck2 4y agoAt least ebay has a quality search with precision filters. Amazon is an absolute nightmare to find specific details.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoAmazon has set a low bar and now there are unsafe, toxic products out there. Including: toxic toys for children, toxic cooking utensils, toxic water filters, toxic birthday cake decorations, toxic furniture, toxic plumbing, toxic rugs, etc. Buying on Amazon in 2022 is like walking on a minefield. Some companies go out of their way to emulate being non-chinese. But you can tell due to the aesthetics they use, punctuation, color palette, fonts, and sometimes DNS information that they are chinese shell companies as nobody in the west uses Alibaba cloud to host their stuff.
- maerF0x0 4y agoAfter a spate of bad cables (mostly where their internal circuitry overheats) I've stopped buying most electronics on Amazon and instead use bestbuy's insignia brand. For me it's worth $5 to not have to buy a replacement every 3 months. Maybe just my sample but it seems these things always fail _just_ after the return window.
- SMAAART 4y agoFor certain categories Amazon is a mess. Case in point I recently got an iPad and I was looking for a rugged case, an alternative to OtterBox. It's a mess, with no real winners, and lots of questionable brands/products. It was suggested before, the time is ripe for a disruptor search engine, The Innovator's Dilemma style; starting with some segment of search.
- Avamander 4y agoUnfortunately, I suspect such a search engine would start getting lawsuits about being uncompetitive once they start excluding sellers/spammers. Even if bogus, it's gonna bog things down real bad. They're good at abuse, it'd not be surprising.
- bornfreddy 4y agoI don't think it needs to include everyone unless it is a monopoly? (IANAL) Of course, it could be inclusive, but each seller must prove their worth, and longterm sellers are always preferred.
- the__alchemist 4y agoAnd in contrast to the focus of the (but alluded to), getting a legit seller account can be very tough. I tried and failed a year ago for my electronics business. I tried for about 2 months, with ~50 appeals. Ended up unable to get my account verified. I'll spare you the details since it's the typical FAANG tech support story that shows here regularly.
- mattanimation 4y agoAmazon has become pretty much unusable to me at this point.it no longer is my go-to which is a change from the last 8 years
- eljimmy 4y agoI've stopped shopping on Amazon because of the hundreds of Chinese brands for the exact same product.
- scottydelta 4y agoI have a friend who works as a category manager at Amazon global and she gets frequent offers from shady people for "mutually beneficial partnership". Even the suspensions don't have alot of affect for these shady sellers. I have worked with a company that provides listing services on Amazon in the past. The owner once casually mentioned how they help these companies get out of suspensions for long enough to withdraw their balance(I have seen screenshots with over $200k in balance) with the help of an amazon employee. The listing company and amazon employee are both paid via Bitcoin.
- adaml_623 4y agoSo is your friend contacted through LinkedIn or something similar? Because it would be terrible if these shady sellers bribed someone who had just set there company to Amazon but didn't really work there ...
- bornfreddy 4y agoHa ha, brilliant idea! Let us know if it works. ;)
- quattrofan 4y ago
- orobinson 4y agoI’ve stopped buying most things at Amazon for this reason. Surely they realise that long term this is going to be an existential threat for their retail business? Much like how Netflix is now having issues after pumping out sub-par content for too long.
- tuxie_ 4y agohttps://nitter.net/ColeSouth/status/1550230795230781440 https://nitter.net/ColeSouth/status/1550230795230781440
- aaronrobinson 4y agoSome of these are Amazon Choice too