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Also, amazon is kind of skeevy; I'm very leery of buying food, cosmetics, or toiletries from them because they make it really hard to tell from whom you're buyi
by earl 14y ago
Also, amazon is kind of skeevy; I'm very leery of buying food, cosmetics, or toiletries from them because they make it really hard to tell from whom you're buying stuff. I'm happy to buy eg usb cables from the cheapest vendor, but I don't trust any of the chinese knockoff shit if it's going to regularly touch my skin or be eaten. Particularly since china appears to have no real food safety laws and poisoned 300k of their children [1] with the same well known techniques used to fake out protein readings on milk they used to kill thousands of american pets [2] the year before. China even went so far as to hurt more children by delaying a recall to avoid embarrassment during the summer olympics! If I'm going to buy food or cosmetics on amazon, they need to be much better about communicating from whom I'm purchasing and what was done to make sure it isn't a knockoff.
And knockoffs are everywhere on amazon's site. I've wanted one of these cool suck.uk bottle opener keychains that looks like an old school key for a while [3] but their shipping charges to the US are too expensive. So I found it on amazon [4]. If you read the reviews, it's full of complaints about knockoffs or the steel snapping. And I've seen it sold for as little as $2.99 with shipping while amazon sells it for $9. Adding to the skeeviness, the cheapest vendor of that item changes all the time, and for quite a while amazon didn't sell it directly. I finally bought it from amazon proper and I'm hoping they got the actual item and not some knockoff themselves, but who knows. Shit like this makes it hard to be willing to buy food on amazon.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls
[3] http://www.suck.uk.com/products/keybottleopener/ http://www.suck.uk.com/products/keybottleopener/
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Suck-UK-Key-Bottle-Opener/dp/B0000B0DKM http://www.amazon.com/Suck-UK-Key-Bottle-Opener/dp/B0000B0DK...
- robterrell 14y agoI buy food (dry goods: cereal, granola bars, coffee, etc.) from Amazon all the time. It's always clear who the item comes from, usually a manufacturer you've seen at the grocery store, and I've never gotten a knockoff item. Well, that I know of. Hmmm. You know, the very idea of knockoff food items from Amazon is so deeply disturbing I'm going to entirely ignore the possibility.
- rdl 14y agoThey show the seller, and I agree a lot of the Marketplace sellers are horrible. I pretty much stick to Amazon.com LLC (i.e. real Amazon) and trusted sellers (Adorama, J&R, ...) for most products. I wish there were a way to set a flag in your account to ONLY show Amazon.com LLC products.
- earl 14y agoThey show the seller, kind of, but say the seller is rightguard. Is it the deodorant brand or is someone camping the name?
- rdl 14y agoThe seller is listed separately from that. e.g. for http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Silicone-Pastry-Brush/dp/B000JPSI8C/ref=pd_ys_sf_s_1055398_b1_2_p http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Silicone-Pastry-Brush/dp/B00... Manufacturer is OXO, but it says "In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available." below the price. That means it's sold directly by Amazon. You can also go to "more buying choices" where it is even more transparent.
- Kadin 14y agoI think that's sort of overstating the problem a little bit, although I agree that Amazon shot its brand in the foot with the way it has implemented the "Marketplace". The whole "Marketplace" concept might have seemed cool back when everybody was trying to be an eBay competitor, but I'd be happy if they just ditched it, or moved it over to some subsite-ghetto where I don't ever have to see it. When I go to Amazon.com, I want to purchase products from Amazon, not from some random guy in a basement somewhere, using them for payment processing. That said, they make it pretty easy to tell who you're buying from, at least when you get to the point of checking out. Sometimes if you're moving quickly, you might not realize it until then, and I have definitely abandoned would-be sales when I've realized an item is coming from a Marketplace seller rather than Amazon itself.