What's worse, there seems to be zero way to report these listings. I tried submitting a review warning other customers about the fake reviews for a fake product, but the review was not approved. In that particular instance, I was actively recommended a "wasp trap" by Amazon. Curious, I saw it was rated 4.8.
Turns out the positive reviews were all for... a pet cemetery headstone (complete with photos, to make the issue completely unambiguous). The listing itself was posted by a seller that had almost all negative reviews that were -- removed by Amazon! The reason? Amazon took responsibility, since it was fulfilled by Amazon. The problem: none of the negative reviews had anything to do with things like shipping time. They were all basically calling the product a scam.
This seems like a looming disaster for Amazon. It baffles me that there is no way for customers to at least report these issues. I've done most of my shopping for the last 15 years on Amazon, but I'm seriously considering stopping. Is anyone else in this boat?
But some can be harder to spot because of tricks that sellers use to essentially hijack listings for other products to carry all the positive reviews along. Or they may just go the route of putting completely fake reviews on the product. Some may even be from verified purchasers because they packed a card along with the product offering compensation for a 5 star review. Or they can get verified reviews in an even slimier way involving ordering from themselves and then shipping random crap to people who've they've sent stuff to before.
And then there's the inventory that's poisoned with counterfeits. Thanks to inventory co-mingling counterfeit and legit products can end up getting mixed together. There's a chance that even buying from a fully legit listing will end up with you getting sent a counterfeit product.
However, despite all of that I do still use Amazon. Their immense investment into logistics means that many things will make it to me next-day. And their return policies allow me to order with the confidence that if I get a fraudulent item (or just something I don't like) it will be fairly painless to get a replacement or my money back.
That said, I have also been making more efforts over the years to not use Amazon. I tend to buy all my major electronics from Best Buy or direct from the manufacturer. And I would never buy any food or medicine from Amazon. I don't want to risk things that go into me being counterfeit.
It used to be easy to tell which items are from third-party sellers, now often that's hidden.
It used to be that I could trust Amazon to have a reasonable price, so I didn't have to price-shop every item every time. Now, many common items are only available from third-party sellers with wildly inflated prices. Now I feel like I have to comparison-shop everything to ensure it's not a rip-off.
It used to be that third-party sellers would be listed in descending order by total cost (price plus shipping). Now they're in seemingly random order, and you can't see the shipping cost until it's in your cart. Many sellers game this by listing a low price with ridiculously high shipping.
Really feels like Amazon is going backward at a remarkably fast pace.
Oh they aren't random. They're sorted by Amazon profit margin.
Walmart will actively price match Amazon. I know it won't be counterfeit and I can return in store immediately. I had a recent experience when I returned an unopened Apple watch. Despite them receiving it for several days, I never got a refund. I had to chat with customer service. I don't know if I had any products in the past that never got refunded. I only checked for the Apple Watch because it was a significant amount of money.
Amazon at this point is only good for cheap made in China commoditized goods delivered quickly. i.e. needed a pair of throwaway quality headphones recently.
This is what really turned me off from Amazon. They say it'll get to you next day... and then it shows up several days later (or it gets marked delivered or never shows up, and you have to take the time to call them up and complain to get another sent).
And worse yet, there's always the knowledge in the back of your mind that if you complain too often, they'll simply ban you from purchasing from them [https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers... etc]
Yep, it's running about 25% 'on time' these days for me with Amazon. I've also noticed they'll continue to say 'arriving today by 9pm' even when UPS or Fedex tracking of the package says it is still halfway across the country and it is due to arrive in a couple days.
Honestly the problems also coincided with the change to in-house amazon logistics... it seems like the delay rate with UPS/Fedex logistics is far lower than with amazon shipping. Especially pre-covid, UPS/Fedex were just absolutely completely reliable, if they said 2-day it would be there in 2 days, nowadays the most I've seen is an extra day here or there occasionally.
It seems like Amazon looked at the logistics problem and said "we can solve that 95% as well as UPS and if anyone complains too often we'll just ban their account, so there is no need to outperform it since we're not the ones who bear the cost if we don't".
After all - the way Amazon gets that 2-day guarantee is, if it doesn't make it through their logistics in time for delivery on UPS 2-day shipping, they have to pay more to UPS for overnight shipping/etc. That's money they can now retain in-house because lol fuck the customer. And I'm sure on-time delivery was a KPI for UPS/Fedex if they wanted to get paid, they had an incentive to get it there on time or else... and amazon logistics doesn't. Having those two entities be separate led to big improvements in quality-of-service as they each tried to minimize the faults in their own behavior, now it's one entity and it's fine if it sucks.
(not talking about busting the balls of some delivery driver here either, these are problems with amazon's logistics and shipments, not the drivers.)
The price premium to know I'm getting a legitimate version of something in this category is painful. Protein powder might be twice as expensive directly through GNC, but I share your sentiment. I'm comfortable with the risk of a fake widget, but absolutely not with food.
I acknowledge there are some obscure supplements/etc that are difficult to source from third parties but.. a lot, you can.
Spot on for me too. That calculus is slowly shifting in the other direction for me though. It's becoming a pain to have to ship things back repeatedly, and I'm starting to find that the wait time of shipping from normal companies is coming out as a wash when factoring in the multiple-shipment-return-cycle Amazon factor.
At least with other companies that don't have a wild west of third party sellers I can be reasonably confident I won't get an outright counterfeit.
I still order like usb cables and cloths to clean my glasses. That's pretty much it. Looking at the parent and grandparent comments and my experience, I'd say they've become a flea market, where maybe you can get a good price of some throwaway crap you don't care about, but wouldn't use for anything of value. And in reality, that's what a collection of fly-by-night shady sellers is. It should not be a surprise. It's a shame though, in principle the ordering process and older style prime delivery is way better than going to a store for almost everything.
Oddly enough Amazon didn't invent this. All of the "big box" and online retailers had no-questions-asked returns before Amazon came along. My hunch is that one of two things have happened: 1) You figure out that the most cost effective way to manage quality control is through returns and refunds, and you streamline this process; 2) You go out of business.
The retailers who delivered quality goods and charged appropriately for getting it right on the first try are gone.
No. It's actually just about the most expensive way to do it. But the decision is made by the retailers, who (particularly in the case of Amazon, but also other chains, Walmart, Best Buy, etc) can effectively enforce the decision on their vendors unilaterally, and who coincidentally have virtually no financial stake in the matter (their vendors do!).
While Amazon may pay for the shipping, many low quality products are probably losing money for the seller when returned.
It's getting very hard to wade through offers and find what is the one that will make you waste the least amount of time.
Also, while Amazon might seem to get it faster more often, its also the most unreliable. I've had way more taped up empty boxes and never-sealed bubble mailers from Amazon and many times I've had it promise next day and have it arrive a week later. Meanwhile other retailers seem to not have as many shipping errors and tend to hit their shipping estimates better.
Wholefoods is owned by Amazon.
It was not a 5 star product. It was a 2 star product, at best.
I tried to mention the fact they were paying for reviews in my review (to explain the other 5 stars).
Amazon rejected my review.
It's against Amazon policy to let others know that sellers are buying reviews.
In a zero-trust marketplace it is impossible to ascertain the truthfulness of such statements. Let say, you a seller on Amazon and your competitor posts a review for your product accusing you of soliciting 5-star reviews from your customers. Now you have an egg on your face. How will you prove that this accusation is false? There were actual cases when sellers were buying blatantly fake 5-star reviews for their competitors to trigger Amazon ban of those competitors. This is a war zone out there.
Spot check via secret shopping. Get a few complaints about a seller doing this, place an order to an Amazon.com employee's home address and have that employee report in whether there's a "pay for review" in the package. Easy.
Can't come from their competitor that way.
I guess. I mean, my account has been around since 1997. We do a fair bit of ordering each year. And this was the only time I've reported someone bribing me.
It seems there are at least some signals there that would be useful.
Amazon's "customer focus" is a misnomer, because the resellers are more important customers than the buyers are.
I used to spend about 60% of my disposable income at Amazon. That’s dwindled to maybe 1-2% over the last 5 years. I do most of my shopping at Costco or Target now. Amazon is a last resort only. Their customer experience sucks. It reminds me of what happened to eBay and Etsy. I’ll be cancelling my 10-year Prime membership at the end of this year, because I don’t use it anymore.
The entire system is designed so that those spending considerable amounts of time and money on cheating come out on top. Because few customers are going to scroll till page 15 and spent hours doing detective work to filter out the products with fake reviews (and even if they do it's become almost impossible). The most aggressive manipulators win and get all the business. Amazon must be aware of that but they don't do anything, in fact it's gotten worse in recent years.
So naturally: "After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. It appears you reviewed shipping or packaging experience."
I finally got a review through by pointing out the misrepresentation that they did not come in a tray, and not mentioning breakage. So you have to read between the lines of that review.
I bought the next set of Aliexpress, and those were fine. What a garbage rule. On the one hand, I understand people are quick to complain... but there's no nuance, and it's definitely become stacked in sellers favour - at least the unscrupulous ones.
At this point people seem to not care since Amazon will give a refund/exchange pretty much no questions asked. It's still extremely annoying and it's definitely not a good look for their business, but I assume the number crunchers have determined actually dealing with the fraud isn't yet worth it financially.
Local optimization beats global optimization. It's why Google went to the crapper too after it reached some number of employees. With 100+k people, no one cares about Google, but about their success within Google.
Someone at Amazon is meeting their short-term objectives and getting their bonus. "The brand" suffering is much more amorphous and harder to translate to a KPI.
Google search is worse because their revenue model requires optimising returns for their advertising arm, not for making a better end-user product. Shareholders demand it (in fact, this problem has a lot more to do with a public listing than team size).
The same is true of Amazon. Amazon’s shopping experience is worse because it is more profitable to be a logistics front-end for a million dropshippers selling specialised goods from tiny Chinese factories. The brakes are off and everyone with any influence over the company is incentivised to make the company more “efficient” (profitable).
(1) To assume high level roles, you must invest $LARGE_SUM_OF_MONEY in funds managed by the company.
(2) After leaving, you get back your money after $FAIR_AMOUNT_OF_YEARS. That's done as an incentive for folks to think long term.
Not sure how you could do that in a company as large as G or A though.
Google Search seems to be in decline but that has more to do with the slow death of the open internet than with any sort of internal issues at Google.
Ryan George - What Shopping on Amazon Feels Like https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30
It's a subjective heuristic I developed informally. Never formalized anything statistical.
Just looking at the ration between 5 through 1 stars, I have a high confidence judging whether they bought fake reviews or not.
It's a subjective heuristic I developed informally. Never formalized anything statistical.
Just looking at the ratio between 5 through 1 stars, I have a high confidence judging whether they bought fake reviews or not.
They’ve dealt with it in limited ways. For example, they’ve inked exclusivity agreements with certain brands (ex. Apple) so that only Amazon can sell them. So at least that inventory should be legit as they don’t allow third party sellers.
Of course this is somewhat to Amazon’s favor. If a brand is concerned about their reputation due to customers unknowingly getting counterfeits, they need to strike a deal with Amazon, and likely one that is favorable to Amazon.
On the product page itself there are a few different page sections that show alternative products or similar products to consider. Only the single one at the very bottom of the page is not a sponsored listing. ALL the other ones are just sponsored listings.
I actually have more confidence in random ebay used listings lately. At least I get what was described.
Maybe I am just fortunate to have not had an issue, maybe the counterfeiters are very good, or maybe I am just clueless, or some combination of these.
I try to stick to only name brand items. If there is a product that looks compelling but is from a brand I have not heard of, I generally look at both their website and other reputable retailers which sell that same product.
I largely ignore the reviews. Not necessarily because they are scammy (which I’m sure they are) but because they are so largely subjective. Reviewers will often give a one-star rating for a product because shipping was slower than expected. Or a one-star because the product didn’t package a standard USB-A cable or didn’t include AA batteries. Or a one-star rating in protest something of the company or product itself. Many times it appears the reviewer did not read the description closely enough, and accidentally purchased the wrong product, for which they blame the retailer.
I almost always purchase from Amazon.com as the seller vs. some Harry’s Tech Supply Store. Exceptions are made if there are thousands of Store reviews and a 95%+ positive rating.
In other cases, I will simply purchase the item from the official brand website, or some other retailer. It’s frustrating that Amazon allows commingling of products from different suppliers and retailers in a common bin. It’s also frustrating that other retailers like Walmart and target seem to have followed suit.
When I returned it, I stated that I'd better get a 930e as a replacement, but the vendor (not Logitech -quelle surprise) told me that I would get a 930c, so I cancelled the order, and got one directly from the Logitech site (It was a bit more expensive, but not crazy more).
When I reported it, Amazon rejected my (polite, detailed, and backed up with photographs) reports on the product page, and ignored my reports to them. I would not be surprised if the item is still being sold as a 930e (it's not), and as being sold by Logitech (it's not).
I did mention it to Logitech, but they basically told me that Amazon is an 800-lb gorilla, and that they weren't gonna raise a stink (not in exactly those words).
Note the ridiculously low price (it has dropped quite a bit, since my experience, last year). I suspect a number of folks are happy with the Chinese version. Caveat emptor. Lots of apps and drivers can’t figure out what the camera is, and forget firmware or driver updates; let alone support.
To be fair, a couple of the 1-star comments are being listed at the top, warning of the scam, but the item has a couple of thousand “five-star” reviews.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CES5A60
Every product on the site seems to be rated 4.5+, which makes sense if they’re rejecting reviews in this way.
I can only recall ever having one review rejected, and I've reviewed probably hundreds of things.
I wonder if they have an internal system that marked your reviews in particular for more scrutiny.
This might be a difference between the U.K. Amazon and their US counterpart but I’ve definitely not had any issues leaving negative feedback.
AWS is great, but the Amazon.com side of things feels like a slow, steady decline for years now.
They have over 10,000 items listed too.
The hot/neutral being swapped thing matters because some stuff only has a switch on the hot leg. (Not your computer; it could just as easily be used with a Schuko plug on the end of that C13 cable - which isn't "polarized" at all!)
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