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The Downfall of Amazon: Top Ranking Electrical Fuses Show Dangerous Results [video]

• deleted 3y ago
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• Handprint4469 3y ago
  I knew before clicking, just from the title, that it was going to be a Louis Rossmann video. If you're reading this Louis, thanks for all your work and for fighting the good fight.
  • janice1999 3y ago
    Louis is great. I really appreciate his candor. I'm always amused at how petty trillion dollar companies can be. Amazon killed his 7yr old affiliate account days after his first video critical of them. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiKflg8Uko4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiKflg8Uko4
• moolcool 3y ago
  Amazon has turned into "Aliexpress but more expensive and faster". Look up almost anything on Amazon and the results will be a made-up brand attached to a trashy product which costs 1/10 the price directly from China.
  • kman82 3y ago
    Just plain wrong
  • juujian 3y ago
    Yup, wouldn't want to buy anything on Amazon that I haven't thoroughly researched prior to visiting Amazon. Their search algorithm is worse than useless, it's predatory. Much better to buy directly from a reputable store if it's expensive/important.
    • lacrimacida 3y ago
      Even something you research is not guaranteed to match your order due to comingling. I personally stopped using Aamzon altogether even if some things are okay, this company does not deserve my trust at all..
      • everybodyknows 3y ago
        > comingling That's one failure mode. Damaged returns resold as "new" is another.
  • amelius 3y ago
    Wasn't this always the case, but is it now more apparent because we can find the same product on AliExpress?
    • xeromal 3y ago
      Nah, I'd say in the 2010s, Amazon was just a competitor for regular brands you could find in any store here in the US but since around 2015-2016, you seem more DINGPOW equivalents.
    • jprete 3y ago
      At one point most of their items were from brands that cared about their reputation - the manufacturer and the third-party seller. It took a few years for the third-party seller program to become a laundering program for no-name low-quality goods.
  • wmidwestranger 3y ago
    So true. I just had two Meanwell PSUs from Amazon delivered and the package was indistinguishable from the usual AliExpress job.
    • alangibson 3y ago
      Are you saying they were fake? I've started getting all power electronics from Digikey, Mouser, RS, Pollin etc. because of paranoia over a crap power supply or SSR.
      • fleventynine 3y ago
        Likewise. A friend was almost killed a few years back by a counterfeit SSR purchased on Amazon. I would love to see them take some legal responsibility for the lethal garbage they let onto their platform.
      • wmidwestranger 3y ago
        No clue, just received the package. I was just surprised the at the packaging.
  • captainkrtek 3y ago
    Even with reputable brands on Amazon I’m wary of getting counterfeit products. I recall back in the day the good feeling of ordering something on Amazon, knowing you ordered exactly what you wanted and it would arrive quickly. These days I trust Ebay more and never buy on Amazon hah
  • the_snooze 3y ago
    Unless I'm specifically looking for cheap Chinese crap where quality doesn't really matter (e.g., clothes hangers), Amazon's main use to me is to price-match at brick-and-mortar stores if the online price is miraculously lower than in physical retail. Prime shipping hasn't been worth it for years, and Amazon often has higher prices than at other retailers or direct from the manufacturer. Their business model is just extracting dollars from people who have been conditioned to default to Amazon as their first choice for shopping.
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• quickthrowman 3y ago
  Electricity will kill you. For the love of god, do not buy any line-voltage electrical equipment/devices from Amazon. I wouldn’t even buy 12v/24v/48v electrical parts from Amazon. It is not worth the risk of a house fire, no matter how much money you save. I don’t care if it claims to be ETL and UL listed, buy it elsewhere. Amazon’s supply chain cannot be trusted when life safety is a factor. Please buy electrical material/electrical devices from a retailer or supply house with a trusted supply chain, it isn’t worth killing your family to save a few bucks on an extension cord.
  • ryandrake 3y ago
    There are a couple of categories of stuff that you should probably just never risk buying on Amazon: As you say, anything that plugs into AC mains >= 120V. Anything that, were it to malfunction could cause a home fire or plumbing flood. Anything that could lead to injury or death were it to fail (like car or boat parts, safety equipment). Anything that your family or pets eat. Anything mission critical that you depend on to run your business/income. (any other ideas?)
    • justinclift 3y ago
      > any other ideas? Anything medical. There was some talk of Amazon getting into (legal) drug supply, which could go very poorly.
• dharmab 3y ago
  Several years ago I noticed that the motorcycle oil filters I was receiving from Amazon had changed- much lower construction quality, less filtration material, and didn't include a crush washer. I double checked that I was buying the same product on Amazon as previously, and then bought the same SKU from a different store to compare. Apparently, Amazon was mixing counterfeit items in the same stock as the real stuff. After that I stopped buying safety critical things from Amazon.
  • alangibson 3y ago
    The inventory comingling is just insane. It creates such a strong incentive for counterfeiting.
  • quickthrowman 3y ago
    > After that I stopped buying safety critical things from Amazon. Why would you buy anything from Amazon after that experience? I personally stopped buying things on Amazon when they gave up on having a trustworthy supply chain.
    • dharmab 3y ago
      I don't care if I get, like, a counterfeit spatula or whatever. I'm paying for utility, not authenticity.
      • sockaddr 3y ago
        The type of plastic or metal it’s made out of could have utility or health implications that are initially hidden to you.
        • dharmab 3y ago
          I ride motorcycles. Every other risk is so tiny I don't give a damn lol.
• alangibson 3y ago
  Reminds me how Amazon is fundamentally a logistics company. Their merchandising is basically non-existent. Pretty much indestinguishable from AliExpress + fast shipping.
  • justinclift 3y ago
    Isn't Amazon more of a cloud hosting (AWS) company, with some logistics + retail front end on the side?
    • pasttense01 3y ago
      No. Cloud hosting (AWS) provides the substantial majority of the profits (and all the profits some of the time), but only a small fraction of the revenue.
• blagie 3y ago
  For the record: Some of these are a bit over-the-top, and Amazon is trash for anything safety-related, but for the record, virtually all fuses have a pretty significant margin before they blow. The risk here is very limited: - A 2A fuse needs to conduct 2A, no matter ambient temperature, manufacturing variation, age, etc. - 95+% of the time, what you're protecting from isn't a minor overload condition but a short. This means a reliable fuse purchased from the best manufacturer in the world won't blow at 2A. Something like 3-4A is perfectly reasonable. 5x rated current is not okay, but 2x is well within norm. Even at 5x, though, the risk here is not huge: - You've caught shorts which is the most common failure mode. - Everything carrying current typically has a ton of safety margin built in, so even 2x isn't really a big deal. - There's a fairly narrow set of failure modes which (1) won't blow the fuse AND (2) will still be small enough to be less than 5x. - Those failure modes still need to occur near something flammable. The key reason why there is a risk at all is that power is a square law of current. If this was 5x heat / power, I wouldn't be worried /at all/. 5x current is 25x power and 25x the heat, which is more of a problem.
  • postpawl 3y ago
    I saw an example of this recently during the test of some large DC fuses for solar: https://youtu.be/6o9tbhgtws4?feature=shared https://youtu.be/6o9tbhgtws4?feature=shared Some are slow burn fuses and don’t pop until you exceed the rated amperage for a long time and by a lot of amperage. Not really what I expected. Some of the fuses do work like you’d expect and pop when they exceed the amperage by a minor amount.
    • blagie 3y ago
      When I was a student, my lab professors had a saying: "Sometimes a fuse will blow to protect the circuit, and sometimes the circuit will blow to protect the fuse." One problem is that fuses are thermal devices. They break due to overheating. They take a while to warm up and blow. If a fuse overheats at 2A at 100ms, it will get that same amount of energy at at 20A over 1ms, which is an eternity by the standards of transistors. Most silicon devices can destroy themselves in milliseconds or microseconds.
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• lnsru 3y ago
  Amazon is a gamble. Buying (and returning) is very convenient. But the goods are sometimes not very good quality. I wouldn’t buy food or critical installation parts from there. Some weird brands are totally fine for consumables. Others are obvious scam and can be returned. I see a trend, that consumer must think more and more what and where to buy. Analyze sellers, look for their addresses in the map. Even search for financials.
  • rebeccaskinner 3y ago
    Returning isn't even convenient these days. I've been in the process of moving away from streaming services toward physical media, and Amazon is often the only place that carries certain things on disc. Unfortunately, the failure rate is pretty high. Trying to return some DVDs to Amazon is like pulling teeth. Either you have to drive across town to a Whole Foods to drop off the package, or you have to pay $10 to return a $15 DVD and then you have to make sure you are around at whatever time the UPS driver shows up to pick up your return. They won't even give you the address so that you can ship a return yourself, or allow you to print the label so you can leave it on your porch. It's so painful at this point I've just started building in a 30% markup in the price mentally to account for things I'm going to have to buy an extra copy of. Returning things isn't worth the hassle it except for with very expensive boxed sets. As a "bonus" amazon has also removed my reviews on things that I've had a particularly high error rate with, since the poor quality is apparently not relevant to the thing they are selling.
• snakeyjake 3y ago
  I am an empathetic fellow. I understand that people are under cost and time pressure. But if you buy a fuse set on Amazon to save $10 off what a fuse assortment kit costs on Digikey, you are getting exactly what you paid for. The signs are obvious: a nonsensical name like HOODOOVOOKOO, sold by BLXXYUSA a seller specializing in children's socks and fuses, quantity listed in "pieces", an obviously cheap plastic box, a ludicrous quantity at a per-unit price that is absurd. Amazon is giving you what you want: the absolute cheapest possible item in the fastest possible time. You cannot be angry at them for giving you exactly what you want. If you cannot be bothered to spend more than 4¢ per fuse or spend more than 15 minutes researching the product, is the device you're protecting even worth replacing the fuse on?
  • mint2 3y ago
    Unfortunately people and companies are near guaranteed to fall for that internecine race to the bottom type behavior if given the opportunity.
  • postpawl 3y ago
    A lot of people trust Amazon and expect them (or their sellers) to sell a fuse that works. A lot of us make a dozen decisions about what to buy every day, and sometimes you don’t have time to do a bunch of research. This isn’t a problem that should only be pushed onto the individual buyer. There should be some required testing on safety critical products. It wouldn’t even cost that much to have an electrical engineer spot checking a few of the products.
  • lupusreal 3y ago
    Just a shred more empathy please: These are automotive fuses being bought and installed by normies, not geeky tinkerers. Most normies have never heard of digikey and, if not for PSAs like this video, wouldn't know to avoid Amazon until they get burned.
  • janice1999 3y ago
    > You cannot be angry at them for giving you exactly what you want. What they want and were sold is a working fuse... which this is not. If I starting calling myself a medical doctor and advertising cheap surgery I would hope someone would try to stop me. You can't claim to be empathetic and expect everyone to be a domain expert in absolutely everything to avoid getting poisoned, burned or killed by sellers lying to people.
• stbenjam 3y ago
  There's a reason retailers have buyers who are experts in their domains and try to buy the best products optimizing for quality/reliability/price. I much prefer to buy things from stores like Target and Lowes now, because I can't rely on any reviews on Amazon anymore. The reviews are all fake.
  • everybodyknows 3y ago
    But this is not true. Work through the screens to get to search mode "all critical reviews", ordered by time.
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• rightbyte 3y ago
  This is quite terrible. For reference twice rated current is usually supposed to make the automotive fuses blow in some seconds or less. The worst thing is that Amazon is threatening to pull Home Depot et al. down with them in the race to the bottom, unless they are shut down hard. Quality control costs money and Amazon got zero.
• doodlebugging 3y ago
  Amazon sells so much crap. All those companies with nonsense names selling the exact same products with the the same verbage and photo spreads and only a few dollars different in price should tell you all you need to know. Quality issues apparently have become so bad for them that they no longer want the defective item to be returned. It is yours to dispose of in any way you see acceptable. They will refund your money or ship a new product but they don't want the failed item. This has been true for me with garden planters, electrical components like pliers, crimpers, and lugs, automobile parts, and solar installation components. Every item that has failed or been found to be unfit for the purpose yielded a refund and a note that it is not necessary to return the failed item. I review many of the products that I buy and give honest reviews. I also answer customer questions about items I have bought even if the answer they need is in the product description. I think so many people have lost trust in Amazon that they need to know whether descriptions are accurate or hype. It is impossible to tell just from reading reviews and when Amazon shows multiple <3-star reviews for a product I read all of them so I can decide whether user error caused the bad review or whether the product is probably not worth buying. Amazon is broken and I am trying to get my wife to quit buying so much shit from them. I buy most auto parts, hand tools, etc from their manufacturer sites. I can trust things to be fit for purpose and durable.
• BenFranklin100 3y ago
  Amazon should reverse the changes it made to the reviews and let people respond to individual reviews again. Self-policing will improve the value of reviews as fake and biased reviews will be more easily identified by the community. When Amazon got rid of that feature (for cost savings presumably), it marked the beginning of the downfall of Amazon as a source for reliable product information and quality.