[HN Gopher] Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products ...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe
shouldn't buy
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 355 points
Date : 2023-03-28 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| criddell wrote:
| I bought a $50 item and a couple of weeks later I received a
| letter in the mail offering me a $35 Amazon gift card if I leave
| a 5-star review with a video or picture attached.
|
| I'm surprised Amazon allows these kinds of bribes.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| Twice that has happened to me, so I left a review mentioning
| the bribe. Amazon rejected the review saying that isn't the
| right mechanism for that feedback. All the same, hundreds of
| people were ordering this five star item, unaware most of the
| reviews were paid for reviews.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Funny how they have a way to reject reviews that don't meet
| their criteria but claim rejecting improper listings is "too
| hard".
| m463 wrote:
| I've tried to report fraud, but amazon does not have any sort
| of way to report fraud _on their site._
|
| It's more like "amazon would never call you and ask your
| credit card number" types of stuff.
|
| I think it's all on purpose. I remember having a missing
| package and not being able to say "package missing but says
| delivered". The site would take you to a non-helpful page
| that would say "have you looked in your bushes?" "have you
| asked your neighbors?" but no way to resolve it through
| amazon. on purpose.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > I'm surprised Amazon allows these kinds of bribes.
|
| I reported one of these attempts to Amazon customer support
| once and the response I got back was basically "if we catch you
| accepting payment for positive reviews, we'll ban your account
| and you'll lose all of your digital purchases." No questions
| about the seller or the item, just a veiled threat.
| ei8ths wrote:
| I got one of these, i bought a kids alarm clock for my
| daughter, it works really well, good quality. I did cash in the
| gift card. Why not? now if it was some crap product, i would
| report the bribe.
| criddell wrote:
| Who would you report it to? Amazon doesn't care. Is there a
| state-level consumer affairs department that might care? The
| FTC maybe?
| walterbell wrote:
| https://www.ftc.gov/business-
| guidance/resources/disclosures-...
|
| _> If you endorse a product through social media, your
| endorsement message should make it obvious when you have a
| relationship ("material connection") with the brand. A
| "material connection" to the brand includes a personal,
| family, or employment relationship or a financial
| relationship - such as the brand paying you or giving you
| free or discounted products or services._
| mbreese wrote:
| They don't, but it's hard to crack down on. The only way for
| Amazon to know is if the people who get the gift card notify
| Amazon, which isn't likely to happen.
|
| Here's a story about how Amazon banned a popular
| battery/charger maker because of the same thing you're talking
| about. (I have one of their batteries... it was pretty good
| too).
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/16/22536976/amazon-ravpower-...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| It'd be far easier if Amazon didn't provide my contact
| information to sellers (unless they're large enough to be
| "trustworthy")
| aftbit wrote:
| I have actually tried to report this to Amazon customer
| support a number of times. Most of the time, the CS agent
| either entirely does not understand what I am complaining
| about, or openly says this is allowed. Last time they told me
| I would only get the gift card after I left a 5 star review,
| and to chat back if I did not get it!
| [deleted]
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| It seems that this would just flag Amazon as an unsafe place to
| buy anything valuable. For example, if someone buys a GTX 4090
| and receives a GTX 3070, will Amazon will flag the 4090 as a
| frequently returned item?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/11q8mjw/i_got...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| That's funny, I bought the exact record player shown in that
| article, and it was indeed broken. Very high wow-and-flutter, a
| horrible scraping noise whenever the tonearm moved, and the clamp
| that was supposed to hold the tonearm in place during shipping
| was missing, so it was just flapping around freely inside the
| box.
|
| I did indeed return it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is great, but another thing they really need to do is create
| and enforce two more rules:
|
| 1) Lister must provide all dimensions of _actual product_ (not
| just packaging)
|
| 2) Photographs must show product as actual sized, not
| photoshopped into a stock photo environment at 3x scale
|
| Especially for home items, it's astonishing the number of items
| that just provide NO WAY to know what the size is.
|
| It seems like such an easy first step to reducing returns. I
| wouldn't have to return it if the page did a better job
| describing the item in the first place.
| lostapathy wrote:
| The worst are items that are photoshopped not just into a
| background, but containers holding things that are the wrong
| scale. The other day I saw some 1.5oz shot glasses with a drink
| with 3 or 4 lime slices floating in them. The person editing
| that clearly had no idea the scale of the item they were
| editing in the first place.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes exactly! It baffles me so much because I could at least
| understand if they did it only in cases where bigger is
| better -- deceitful, but there's a logic to it.
|
| But nobody wants a shot glass the size of a whiskey tumbler.
| That's not going to drive sales of shot glasses.
| fswd wrote:
| The best one for me was a photoshop of elderly lady casually
| handling a 300lb pack lithium server rack battery.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I will typically pay for returns, instead of abusing the free
| option, but I have no moral qualms about choosing the free
| option (inaccurate description), when they pull this particular
| crap.
| barbazoo wrote:
| That whole specifications sections is broken for a huge subset
| of products.
| mikeortman wrote:
| I really wish Amazon would flag products who using images very
| similar to other listings. I'm tired of seeing dropshippers
| putting a random company logo on an alibaba listing. Leads to
| crap products and a poor experience.
| dehrmann wrote:
| These annoy me too, but they're not _necessarily_ crap. In a
| sense, this is exactly what Amazon Basics is, only I trust
| Amazon 's curation.
| anaganisk wrote:
| What do you mean Xichickenmomos USB c 65W cable is crap? It's
| the best product ever with 5 star ratings and 100s of orders.
| d23 wrote:
| And some people are even using them as barbecue grill plates
| and pet cemetery headstones! What a versatile product.
| olalonde wrote:
| On the other hand, it increases the range of available products
| on Amazon (at the cost of lowering the average quality). What
| they really need is to make those sellers easy to spot and
| filter out, if necessary.
| notahacker wrote:
| tbh I much prefer the Alibaba images which I can reverse image
| search to something with just enough use of cropping and
| watermarking to fool Amazon's filter...
| haunter wrote:
| The craziest scam I saw on Amazon was ordering an expensive GPU >
| people change the card's backplate and return a cheaper/broken
| one. Unsuspecting regular Joe will order the returned GPU ("open
| box deal!") and they get a fake one. And now you have to fight
| against the Amazon customer service too. It's incredible.
|
| Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays. Might
| as well I order from China becuase I at least _willingly know_
| getting a fake.
| HALtheWise wrote:
| How expensive would it be to perform an airport-style x-ray
| scan of every box (over some price) before it's shipped out,
| and when it's returned? That would give the customer support
| agent something to look at when judging somebody's claim that
| they were shipped a fake product, and you could probably even
| train ML models to distinguish genuine from knockoff goods in
| many cases.
| michaelt wrote:
| There's actually some equipment that's sorta similar - meat
| packing plants can get conveyor belt x-ray machines which
| detect bones and bolts inside burgers.
|
| I've never heard of it for general retail, though.
| favsq wrote:
| galansito?
| carimura wrote:
| but who was the seller? This should be a buyer beware
| situation. The marketplace is compromised.
| javawizard wrote:
| > Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays
|
| That's an interesting point, and it got me thinking: why _do_ I
| continue buying from Amazon over AliExpress etc.?
|
| Pretty simple answer, really: logistics. I can order an adapter
| from Amazon and have it here by 6 PM tonight. The same thing
| off AliExpress will take a week or more to get here.
|
| If Wish or AliExpress can figure out near-same day delivery,
| they could put a sizeable dent in Amazon's market share.
| adoxyz wrote:
| Yeah with Amazon you'll get in 2-3 days, but you'll end up
| paying 2-3x as well. I considered building a browser
| extension that just lists the Alibaba/AliExpress item for you
| when you land on amazon listing and did a bit of research.
| Most things you search for on Amazon these days that crowd
| the first page results are literally just copies of
| AliExpress items at 2-3x the markup. Sometimes the
| convenience is worth it.
| treis wrote:
| It's rare that I see that significant of a discount on
| Aliexpress. Most are within like 10% and sometimes cheaper
| on Amazon.
| bogwog wrote:
| I had the same concerns about shipping speed, but then I just
| said fuck it and cancelled my Prime anyways. It turns out
| that waiting a few more days for items actually isn't a
| problem for me. It also brings the added benefit that I no
| longer feel constrained to a single shitty store, and can buy
| from anywhere on the internet again.
|
| Also, when I do buy from Amazon as a non-Prime member, I find
| that often (not always) items tend to ship faster than the
| estimates claim. A few days ago I bought some RAM for my
| computer, and the estimate said it'd take a week to arrive.
| Instead, it "shipped early" and arrived in 2 days (on a
| Sunday). I think they've just optimized their shipping
| process for Prime so much that for some items it probably is
| cheaper to ship as fast as they can than to artificially
| delay shipping orders for non Prime members.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > That's an interesting point, and it got me thinking: why
| _do_ I continue buying from Amazon over AliExpress etc.?
|
| I asked myself the same question back in January and also
| couldn't come up with an answer beyond shipping speed, so I
| cancelled Prime and now just use AliExpress for most things
| that would've been an Amazon purchase before. Even the slower
| speed isn't that bad: if I genuinely need it right away I'll
| travel to a physical store; otherwise the extended wait feels
| healthy for reducing useless impulse purchases.
| barbazoo wrote:
| And it's kinda exciting when you get a delivery you totally
| forgot about.
| codersfocus wrote:
| That means you shouldn't have ordered it in the first
| place? I gave up on needless consumerism when I got an
| amazon package, didn't bother opening it, forgot what it
| was, and it just sat in my closet.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Not at all! There is a large intersection between
| Important and Non-Urgent.v
|
| Example - bicycle parts. A bicycle will ride without
| lubrication, with missing fenders and damaged brakes.
| Should it?
|
| I ordered a horn, forgot about it.
|
| Does it mean I don't need a horn? Hard to tell, it could
| save your life. It maybe it won't.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Most likely yeah :)
|
| What I mean though is when you want to fix something and
| you order a part off AliExpress or you have an idea for a
| project so you order a bunch of parts, things that aren't
| time sensitive so you order them, forget about it and get
| them at some point. Not everything has to be same day or
| next day delivery is all I'm saying.
| rurp wrote:
| I don't know, much of what I order online are non-
| perishable staples. If I order more soap or paper towels
| or whatever else I'm running low on, the exact arrival
| date doesn't matter much but it's definitely going to get
| used at some point.
| rurp wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense. Prime shipping is fast
| _sometimes_ , but not consistent enough to rely on for
| anything urgent. Arriving in a week rather than a few days
| rarely matters for most online purchases anyway.
| m463 wrote:
| I trust amazon to resolve problems with orders.
|
| They have _always_ resolved missing packages, late shipments,
| wrong item, etc.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, if I have this much concern about getting some item
| quickly, I go into a store and walk out with it.
|
| I remember doing exactly that once last year.
| rybosworld wrote:
| This is a classic scam that also exists for brick and mortar
| stores.
|
| For example: customer buys Brita filter from Walmart. Takes it
| home, puts their old used-up filter in the box. Returns the
| filter. Walmart employees aren't paid enough to care to check
| the contents, and even if they did, would they be able to tell
| the filter had been used?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I'm sure that works for many product examples, but Brita
| filters come in a sealed white plastic wrapper. Does the
| customer heat-seal it closed again before they return it?
| michaelt wrote:
| But the white plastic's probably in a cardboard box, right?
|
| And if the shop worker bothers to open the cardboard box,
| the customer can simply say "Yeah I opened it and it's the
| wrong size"
| addandsubtract wrote:
| This is kinda on Brita. Their filters should definitely
| change color with water contact. Preferably, the more water
| has touched the filter, the more intense the color.
| joering2 wrote:
| I like getting products I order online delivered overnight. And
| return them for free by dropping off at local UPS with my money
| back in less than 48 hours. Can Wish/Aliexpress do the same?
| dgellow wrote:
| In December I ordered an iPad Pro, and instead received a
| random book that has more or less the same size, plus a bunch
| of AA batteries to match the weight... I'm in Germany, not sure
| if that's common in other places but it was a first for me. So,
| yeah, I'm done ordering expensive device on the platform.
| redox99 wrote:
| > people change the card's backplate and return a
| cheaper/broken one
|
| People really have to ruin everything
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I wonder do they ban people's accounts for doing such things?
| That's basically theft
| bogwog wrote:
| I think the term is "mail fraud", and it's very illegal
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is it mail fraud if it does not go via USPS?
| jamincan wrote:
| The wiki page on mail fraud quotes the definition and it
| would seem to include the USPS as well as any
| private/commercial carrier crossing state borders.
| amccloud wrote:
| Looking at smoke detectors as they are somehow also often
| tampered/previously used and non-returnable because of hazardous
| materials in device :/
| paxys wrote:
| Why on earth are people buying stuff like smoke detectors from
| Amazon? Across most of the US your fire department will likely
| hand them out for free, and even if you have to pay you can at
| least be assured that someone is monitoring the supply chain
| and product safety. Your life isn't worth the $5 Amazon
| discount.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Amazon isn't really cheaper for anything (unless you count
| getting a Duwuu 'brand' cable instead of a reputable brand as
| a discount).
|
| Why do people (I?) order from amazon?
|
| 1. I don't mind taking $8 electronic devices apart and
| resoldering connections or doing basic troubleshooting
|
| 2. Often get a product in a day or three
|
| 3. I have no idea where I would buy a sediment filter (or
| similar specialized thing) that isn't walmart (and I live in
| a big city)
|
| 4. No need to go all around town to get things from different
| places (drive to the fire department for an alarm and then go
| to the pet store for a scratching post then go to best buy
| for an HDMI cable
|
| 5. They have all my details so I just click 'buy' and don't
| have to make a new account and deal with another retailer
| sending me a newsletter
|
| 6. I know that amazon will take my returns with no questions
| and I can drop it a few blocks away at the UPS store and I
| don't even have to put it in a box
|
| That said -- there are definitely lists of things I would
| never order from them. SD cards/thumb drives, any easily
| 'adulterated' food product like honey or olive oil,
| cosmetics, anything I want to last that isn't a specific
| brand that I know for a fact isn't counterfeited and is a
| seller...etc
| vel0city wrote:
| As for buying somewhat specialized parts I usually find
| retailers I trust and buy from them.
|
| For your example, I usually buy filters from AllFilters.com
|
| https://www.allfilters.com/sedimentfilters
|
| Or, I might buy direct from the manufacturer's parts
| website
|
| https://www.geapplianceparts.com/store/parts/spec/FTHPM
|
| Expanding on that idea, I often buy electrical components
| from a retailer like Mouser or Digikey or Adafruit or
| others before I buy off Amazon.
|
| If I'm lucky there's some nice local retailers and I'll buy
| from them. There's a few local comic and game stores
| nearby, I'll practically always buy from them even if
| they're a few bucks more than Amazon for some particular
| item.
|
| Amazon is almost always my last retailer I go to. I've had
| so many bad experiences with Amazon over the last few
| years. The majority of Amazon orders I've had in the past 5
| years ended up involving Amazon support.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I love specialty retailers like digikey and retailers
| have gotten better about incorporating shipping price
| into unit price so ordering something small doesn't take
| as big of a hit, and that has encouraged shopping from
| them.
|
| I am not trying to give the impression that amazon is a
| great way to get these things, I was itemizing the
| reasons I use it _when_ I do.
| mabbo wrote:
| There is a famous story about Customer Obsession and returns that
| I used to tell during training sessions for new Amazon employees-
| Customer Obsession 101, which I was a teacher for.
|
| Jeff is in a call center for a day shadowing a customer support
| agent. A customer calls about a specific item and the CS agent is
| like "They're going to say it's broken in this particular manner"
| before the call even starts. Jeff later is like "How did you
| know?" and the agent says "Because this is like the tenth time
| I've had calls about this". There was some problem in the
| warehouse that kept breaking the item in the same way, but what
| can a CS agent do about that? File a ticket that no one reads?
|
| So Amazon introduced an 'Andon button' that let CS agents stop
| sales of a given product if they keep seeing the same problem.
| Customer Obsession! Crazy idea to empower entry-level people to
| have such impact! Only Amazon would do something like that!
|
| Anyways, that Amazon is dead, "Day 1" is long gone, and unless
| the item is a standard product of low value I personally do not
| shop there anymore.
| tylerrobinson wrote:
| > So Amazon introduced an 'Andon button'
|
| Maybe my brain is just having trouble parsing it, but what does
| "Andon" mean?
| praisewhitey wrote:
| probably typo for Abandon
| barbazoo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)
| chin7an wrote:
| It's a term borrowed from assembly lines(0), where if the
| andon cord is pulled, the entire line stops until some
| manager or the likes inspects and restarts it. For amazon,
| the equivalent would be pulling the listing immediately from
| the website, blocking orders and flagging the item for
| immediate review.
|
| (0): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)
| kitten_mittens_ wrote:
| It's a Japanese loan word. I was mystified the first time I
| heard it out loud in Seattle back in 2015. I don't think I've
| ever seen it written.
| rngname22 wrote:
| Working in the trust and safety / bad actors space, I imagine
| that bad actors realized fairly quickly they could just
| purchase 20 of their competitors products and then rate/write
| in saying they were damaged / fraudulent and trigger that andon
| button being falsely triggered.
| rektide wrote:
| Add in some pretty basic filters & I think I'd be game to
| try. Is the complaint from someone >X years active? Is the
| complaint from someone with >$Y dollars spent?
|
| I can imagine a lot of factors that could go into discerning
| customer reliability, but there's some pretty blunt force
| ways to cut out a ton of noise really quick.
|
| And... Amazon should have some pretty clear smoking gun
| evidence in these cases of updating product listings, with
| pretty heavily revised listings that should show the issue.
| If people are mis-reporting, I feel like that too would be
| kind of hard to hide.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I am intrigued that such a button is superior to having someone
| read the tickets.
| owenmarshall wrote:
| Andon is a manufacturing concept. It's a button that, when
| triggered, stops the manufacturing line. You push it when
| things are systemically broken, and it has massive
| consequences because it costs companies meaningful cash.
|
| I can't see how disabling sales of a single product is
| equivalent either.
| pjsg wrote:
| I heard Jeff tell this story and it was about a dining
| table that often arrived with a gouge in the top surface.
| It was costing Amazon a lot to ship, and a lot to get it
| returned, and the table was essentially worthless when
| returned. Even if only 5% of the tables are returned, this
| makes selling this table a loss maker. Quickest way to
| increase profits -- stop doing things that make you a loss!
| dwater wrote:
| So the lesson from the anecdote is that Amazon wasn't
| actually Obsessed with the Customer, but maximizing
| profit, and in this case they just happened to align.
| habitue wrote:
| Making customers happy isn't totally orthogonal to making
| money right?
|
| In midwit meme format:
|
| Low wit: Make customers happy. Making customers happy is
| how you sell products and win customers from competitors
|
| Midwit: Screw over customers for profit. Customers are
| kind of low information though right? Maybe we can do
| things that increase profits at the expense of the
| customer if the customer wont notice or attribute it to
| us
|
| High wit: Make customers happy. While an individual
| customer is low information, in aggregate, doing these
| things causes a company's reputation to suffer a death by
| a thousand cuts.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| And once a fraudster finds out they set a troll army to the
| task of calling in complaints against their competitors'
| products.
| coderintherye wrote:
| That's not an actual scenario. Customer service can see if
| the person purchased the product or not. Getting a "troll
| army" to all buy and return products and call in complaints
| on actual purchases while waiting on refunds is a much higher
| bar.
| padjo wrote:
| If they think maybe I shouldn't buy a product maybe they
| shouldn't be selling it in the first place?
| clircle wrote:
| Seems like a great move for consumers, but I'm worried about how
| it will be automated and gamed.
| version_five wrote:
| One one hand this seems like a good thing, though it's really
| just a band-aid for what a low-quality bargain bin amazon has
| become. I see other comments about being able to dig into reviews
| by seller and whatnot. I don't want to have to do research like
| that to buy normal consumer crap. Some might, and that's cool,
| but I'm sad that any semblance of a curated experience is gone
| and it's basically just a street corner bazaar where you can't
| trust anything.
|
| It's interesting to me that amazon, facebook and google, (netflix
| I'm on the fence about and apple no) have practiced a kind of
| scorched earth capitalism where they made a lot of money and
| presumably continue to, but effectively destroyed the environment
| they operate in. I think most agree that google has hollowed out
| search into an SEO optimized ad-filled content farm wasteland.
| Amazon is doing exactly the same thing with retail, they're the
| biggest name and they've basically created this layer of garbage
| as the base layer of e-commerce.
| carimura wrote:
| Exploitable marketplaces just seem to be seesawing back and forth
| between those closing exploits and those finding new ones.
| Anything that gets massive these days seems to get into this
| stage because of the profit incentive on both sides. I wonder if
| there's data on whether the general "arc of progress" is going in
| the right direction? I go back and forth depending on the day.
|
| Personally I've just established my own rules of the road to
| avoid the bad side, like deleting Facebook and all social other
| than Twitter, using browser extensions in Twitter to filter out
| trending stuff, and being very careful and methodical about
| purchasing from Amazon including avoiding almost everything isn't
| a reputable company that I can do a simple background check on.
| I've even been fooled here but it's generally pretty easy to
| figure out.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Overall this is great. This might have some problems though. Some
| frequently returned items might not have any issues, but might be
| getting ripped off more.
|
| For example, I bought a warehouse deal controller. I opened the
| controller box and instead of a controller I found 2 bars of
| soap.
| ysavir wrote:
| That's true, and admittedly, there's a part of me looking for a
| reason to dismiss this action. But at the same time, after a
| decade or more of doing _nothing_ , Amazon is doing _something_
| , so credit to them for finally making an effort. I'll still
| never use the site or service, but it's good to know they're
| finally taking some action against unethical sellers.
| dxuh wrote:
| I think if I knew something like that about a product, I would
| also not want to buy it. Those false positives are probably
| fine.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Why wouldn't you want to buy it _new_ if this problem only
| affect the used products?
| pcamen wrote:
| One thing I have seen mentioned yet is this change from the
| perspective of honest sellers. Amazon customers are notorious for
| not bothering to read the listings and because of the generous
| return policy for FBA items, will just buy something to see if it
| works. I also sell on my own website and don't have any of that
| type of problem, but my return policy is not quite so generous.
|
| So me, as an FBA seller has certain products that I've
| specifically added "DOES NOT FIT XXX YYY" and people buy it and
| then return it with the comment "DIDN'T WORK on my XXX YYY". I
| get enough of these stupid returns and Amazon suspends my
| listing, making my go through a contrition process telling them
| all the things I've done to remedy the excessive returns. I've
| got one very popular product, my best seller, that has gone
| through this 5 or 6 times in the last few years.
|
| While I understand the perspective of fraudulent listings
| swapping in sub-standard products, the big improvement I am
| hoping for is that the warnings will actually get people to read
| the damn listing so they understand what the item isn't to be
| used for.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| I've given up on Amazon shopping years ago. I much prefer to buy
| things directly from specific retailers, eg: outdoor gear from an
| outdoor retailer, clothes directly from the brand, etc.
|
| This has resulted in never having to return anything, not rolling
| the dice on product legitimacy, and pretty great customer service
| who is knowledgable of the products.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's nice if you have local business that actually know their
| products. Especially with outdoor/sports equipment. I know I'm
| paying a premium but I happily do it.
|
| Electronics on the other hand, sure I'll try to go to bestbuy
| for stuff because that's the only electronics store we have
| that's close but they have no clue about the products they're
| selling.
| hasbot wrote:
| I've gone the opposite way. I lived in a rural area with the
| closest hardware or big box store nearly an hour way. I'd only
| go to town at most once a week but more often once every two
| weeks. Projects took forever to complete because I'd forget to
| buy some widget, get the wrong widget, or often be unable to
| find the right widget at a brick & mortar. Amazon to the
| rescue!
|
| I've since moved to town but still rely on Amazon for a large
| portion of my shopping. Nowadays, a lot of local retailers
| don't carry much stock so I'm having to order online anyway but
| only after I've driven to the brick & mortar and found they
| don't carry the item or it's out of stock.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I've gone back to ebay for commodities/non-name brand. So far,
| prices are better, shipping is faster, returns are easier, and
| fakes aren't an issue.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| There's not a single reality where ebay has faster shipping
| and easier returns than Amazon.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I can assure you that I live in one of those realities. It
| might not be entirely common, but it's absolutely true
| where I live.
|
| I cannot get most Amazon items in less than 5 days. I can
| get most ebay items in 2 to 3 days.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I buy hundreds of items per year and almost never return
| anything.
|
| If I buy from xiangxiangshenzencorp then I expect the item to
| be crap, but it's obvious from the listing and the price. If I
| buy from a reputable brand I also know what to expect.
|
| I honestly don't get how people can get a quality different
| from what was clear from the listing (well, I've been
| positively surprised in the past).
| verteu wrote:
| I would, but it's such a hassle to enter my address and CC info
| on every manufacturer's site. The last 3 things I bought were
| shaving cream, toothbrush heads, and a cheap tennis racket.
|
| Do I really want to signup/purchase/unsubscribe-from-spam for a
| Proraso account, a Philips Sonicare account, and a Wilson
| account?
|
| Perhaps Google Pay could add a useful layer here.
| abruzzi wrote:
| most of the online places I shop at allow account-less
| purchasing using PayPal. I know PayPal has some negatives as
| well, but those rarely impact buyers. Probably 95% of my
| online shopping passes through PayPal, though I do maintain
| accounts at a few online shops like B&H or KEH and with them
| I usually use direct CC/DC purchasing.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I hope that others can find a path too. I worry for some
| friends & family who seem properly addicted to the idea that
| stuff can magically appear on their doorstep within 24-48
| hours. I know some who receive _multiple_ shipments from all 3
| major carriers every single day. Just the slightest amount of
| planning ahead would prevent the need for the kind of retail
| model they provide.
|
| Everything about Amazon is intended to increase the amount of
| time you spend with Amazon. The 50% chance of broken crap keeps
| you coming back to their support center, with all sorts of dark
| patterns designed to send you right back into their store
| again.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Have they considered not selling products that people shouldn't
| buy? Works for Walmart.
| codeulike wrote:
| I've posted this before but I'll do it again because it really
| highlights how unfriendly buying things at amazon has become,
| slowly over time as meanwhile we barely noticed, like frogs being
| slowly boiled in water...
|
| What Shopping On Amazon Feels Like - Ryan George
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpxAvjD_30
|
| _" roll the dice"_
| macspoofing wrote:
| How long until this is gamed?
| we_never_see_it wrote:
| The thing I like most about Amazon is its dedication to
| customers. This is a very long awaited feature and Amazon has
| delivered it. Amazon could have let users buy from its
| marketplace and make profit. Instead Amazon has made the right
| call and decided to protect its customers.
| mint2 wrote:
| Perhaps they've finally estimated the cost of having their
| reputation turn to shady flee market.
|
| And As the other commenters point out, this is pretty
| inadequate when there are 100 trivially easy other things they
| could do which would be even better to help consumers avoid
| scams but choose not to.
| atyppo wrote:
| You don't think they were motivated by the cost of return
| processing and wasted fulfillment usage? All of these things
| are significant costs at the scale of returns that Amazon
| receives.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I can't tell if this is sarcasm or you really belive it.
| jwally wrote:
| While the idea of anonymizing product reviews might seem a tad
| idealistic, it could potentially reduce the prevalence of paid
| reviews. By concealing the identities of verified purchasers, it
| becomes more challenging for manufacturers to verify if their
| paid reviewers have indeed submitted their reviews. This approach
| may serve as a deterrent for unethical marketing practices,
| promoting a more honest review ecosystem.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Apparently, some people order stuff just to show them on social
| media, or even use them in monetized videos just before returning
| them. The service has been already abused to death; I would push
| for a badge to flag _users_ who return too many items.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I just hate the amazon empire, so whenever I have no option but
| to buy something I give an opposite review. If the product is
| decent, it gets 1 star and a scathing review. If it's shit, I
| give a glowing 5 star review.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| how is that helpful in any way?
| master-lincoln wrote:
| It makes Amazon an even worse place, which I assume is wanted
| by OP so Amazon dies.
| crazygringo wrote:
| So you mislead other buyers?
|
| That's not hurting Amazon, it's hurting regular people.
| twawaaay wrote:
| I think we know why products are frequently returned.
|
| 1) Because some people just want to try stuff out at no cost.
|
| 2) Because some people made impulse buy.
|
| 3) Because some sellers sell defective/scammy stuff.
|
| Now, the issue is Amazon will not tell you which category this
| is. You still have to rely on user reviews which still are yet
| another field of abuse.
|
| I just don't think this move will change anything, only cause
| potential confusion.
| kingforaday wrote:
| Amazon's product management criteria has a threshold of (number
| of returns) / (number sold) within time-frames and if you hit the
| threshold (which is about 10% iirc), your product is
| automatically removed until you file an appeal. I guess that
| isn't sufficient enough.
| mint2 wrote:
| I thought clothing bought online normally had return rates far
| higher than that?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I order 1 size above and below what I think I will need, so I
| return at least 2 items for every 1 item I keep. But usually
| much more, I just returned 15 to 20 clothing items and kept
| 5.
| spetapeta wrote:
| https://archive.is/RIQwy
| blendergeek wrote:
| Edit: It seems that it is easier now to see the feedback broken
| down by seller than when I had last used Amazon or I didn't fully
| understand how it worked previously.
|
| Will these be separated by seller?
|
| Last I checked there was no way to review a seller on Amazon (or
| if there was, it was so well hidden that a week of effort and
| calling customer support only got me a refund). Rather Amazon
| lets you review "products". Given that a "product" can differ
| between sellers (either because the products are of varying
| natural quality like with used items or because one seller
| straight up sells fakes and broken items), it is much more useful
| to review the seller than the item.
|
| Knowing that DVD copies of Jurassic Park are frequently returned
| (or that Jurassic Park has amazing reviews) helps me not one iota
| when I am buying from an unknown seller who might be sending out
| pirated DVDs with always-on Arabic subtitles.
|
| Until Amazon breaks down user feedback (reviews, return rate) by
| seller, I will continue to urge friends, family, (and everyone
| else) to stay away from Amazon at all costs. You just never know
| who you are buying from or whether they are trustworthy.
| miahi wrote:
| The way Amazon works now (or at least my understanding from
| past articles and seller interactions outside of the platform),
| for some of the items you are not guaranteed that you received
| the item that your specific seller sent to the fulfillment
| center. If an item has multiple vendors, you will receive
| probably the closest one, not the one from the seller you
| selected. If that item is fake (even though the seller you
| selected is selling original items), reviewing the seller would
| mean penalizing the good actor.
|
| I had an interaction ~10 years ago with an Amazon seller that
| kept also their online store. They did not deliver directly to
| my country but directed me to their Amazon store that did
| deliver. I ended up getting a slightly different version (same
| item but a different revision). Talking to the seller, it was
| not one that they sent to Amazon; it also came from a warehouse
| in a different country.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I was under the impression that internally Amazon can track
| whose item you got because every item gets a tracking sticker
| when it enters the warehouse (or even sooner, if the seller
| labels them to save money). It would be a bit of an UI
| problem, but Amazon could take your review and just attribute
| it to whichever seller provided the item you received,
| instead of whichever you bought from.
|
| Of course that's of limited help because you can't reliably
| order from a specific seller, but it would help Amazon fix
| the problem, e.g. by giving them an easy justification to
| reject to do Fullfillment by Amazon for sellers with low
| ratings.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > Last I checked there was no way to review a seller on Amazon
|
| You can: https://www.amazon.com/feedback
|
| Just only for orders that are not "Fulfillment by Amazon".
|
| Ultimately the problem is inventory comingling and Amazon not
| actually knowing which seller your product is from.
| d23 wrote:
| This happens to be yet another way they end up protecting
| scams and their bottom line. Scammers co-mingle fake
| inventory, consumers get screwed, they try to review the
| seller negatively, and amazon removes the review because it's
| not the sellers fault because it was FBA.
|
| Try to post a review about the product itself being a fake?
| Well that's not about the product either! Removed.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| It may not know when you order but surely knows when the
| return happens whose inventory was used
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > Last I checked there was no way to review a seller on Amazon
|
| What do you mean? Just click the Sellers name on the product-
| site, to get to their profile with all the reviews about them.
| There you will find a button to review them. Maybe there is an
| edgecase where it's not available?
|
| EDIT And looking through my order-history, the review-buttons
| appears there too for older orders. Maybe when the date of
| return is up?
| blendergeek wrote:
| Well, like I said, I couldn't find it. And the reviews under
| a product seem to be for the general concept of the product
| and not for X product from Y seller. And maybe its different
| for "Fulfilled by Amazon" and regular products. I don't know.
| It is all inscrutable.
| ljf wrote:
| In theory much of the inventory is pooled, so if it it
| 'Dispatched by Amazon' you aren't actually buying from that
| sell, but from a pooled inventory that the seller put stock
| into.
| asciimov wrote:
| I have been on a tear lately returning numerous Amazon orders.
| Often due to incorrect descriptions or being sent broken items.
|
| A recent "favorite" of mine was while trying to order a keyboard
| wrist rest, the first one arrived folded(!) up into a small
| plastic sack. The next had a very harsh smell, and the last,
| before I gave up, was uncomfortable to use.
|
| I've started to miss malls and the variety of electronics stores
| we used to have, just so I can pick up and see the physical item
| before I buy it. It's kinda sad that in the late-90's the small
| city I grew up in had more electronics stores than the metro I
| live in today.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| I wonder if there's an opportunity here for comparison shopping
| showcase stores. They carry no inventory, only samples that you
| can get your hands on. Scan to find the best price, and tap to
| add to your cart from the site and seller with that price. Gets
| delivered. You'd make money via a membership fee, referral
| sales, and a tiny bit from direct sale of the display items
| once it's time to swap them out.
|
| The up front cost and rapid turnover of supplier inventory
| would probably make this a no-go. Not to mention that there are
| so many /things/ available, even a costco-sized warehouse
| packed for maximum number of display items would require
| extreme selectivity (and associated costs for research, etc)
| ctvo wrote:
| I know other retailers are already doing this, but Amazon
| adopting it will force behavior change due to their size.
|
| It's possible to game listing details, product titles, brand
| names, and reviews. It's much harder to game _customers are
| dissatisfied and constantly return your item_.
|
| I can't wait for a bespoke service in China that will mass order
| a competitor's products and return them for a refund to get them
| tagged with this warning. Kidding aside, I'm hoping at Amazon's
| scale, it'll be too much of a lift for someone to attempt it.
| ei8ths wrote:
| My go to for shopping is amazon -> walmart (in store only lookup)
| -> then local stores. And it depends on what i want, if i need a
| guarantee its a legit item, then i'll go to the vendor site and
| look up where they sell the product and get a direct link, or if
| its tech related and i need a guarantee then bestbuy or whatever
| the vendor says is their link to buy. I do walmart for price
| comparison and convenience, i live really close to a walmart.
| Amazon is like other have said more like aliexpress these days,
| my returns this past few year have gone way up because the items
| either break quickly or were garbage out of the box.
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| whatever, too little too late. amazon wouldn't accept my bad
| review on a $12 beer faucet adapter with a thread pattern that
| made it 100% useless. I'm done with them.
| srmarm wrote:
| I don't get they don't crack down on the product switcheroo scam
| [0] - it seems like a trivial problem to solve. I've reported
| items to them before and they don't care.
|
| [0] this product for example, loads of the reviews are for
| something totally different - https://www.amazon.co.uk/WERPOWER-
| Windscreen-Invisible-Winds...
| coding123 wrote:
| The product switcheroo thing should be fixed with AI. Chatbot,
| is this product update similar to the previous product that was
| posted here?
| m463 wrote:
| it is _way_ easier than that - just allow feedback about a
| product listing. "This does not seem to be the product
| described".
|
| or flag a listing for review when photos are changed.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| I've noticed several products recently that used an old product
| entry where the bulk of the older reviews were written in
| Spanish or German. Once translated you find they are gushing
| about a comic book they loved rather than the computer
| interface adapters I was looking at. Pretty sneaky since Amazon
| puts foreign reviews in a different bucket that you have to
| drill down into, I usually only do so myself when there aren't
| many English reviews.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| I suspect the switcheroo scam is somehow profitable or
| desirable to Amazon and there is no end to the number of
| shoelaces they will trip over or tangents they will chase on
| the path to confronting it.
| tpmx wrote:
| Or they are badly managed and are stuck optimizing for some
| local maxima.
| sofixa wrote:
| How is it trivial to solve? They either need to prevent sellers
| from modifying product pages (which would be a disaster because
| any mistakes could no longer be fixed without losing all
| reviews) or gate it behind human intervention(slow) /algorithm
| (complex).
|
| There's nothing trivial about the issue.
| jsharf wrote:
| When you change a product page, you lose all reviews, but you
| get a "New Product" link on the old page to link to the new
| one, giving you exposure.
|
| Amazon can make the "New Product" show up for queries for the
| older one, but without the stellar reviews. This way modified
| products still get good exposure and no one will accidentally
| buy the old one. But there aren't reviews on the same page
| for a different product. The system can still be gamed
| similarly, but at least you can't get reviews for the wrong
| product on the same page.
| thayne wrote:
| Make it so the product name/title, product number, and brand
| are immutable. Make it so you can upload new photos, but you
| can't remove old ones. Flag changes to the description that
| change more than 50% of the text for human review.
|
| It would require the seller to be a little more careful with
| the initial submission, but hopefully if they do make a
| mistake, they notice before there are too many reviews
| anyway.
|
| And maybe have a way to request a change to fix mistakes that
| requires manual review. And I think charging a fee for that
| review would be fair.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Most of the problem is wholesale swaps of products - not
| minor edits. Allow minor edits, but prevent wholesale
| swapping of content/categories/descriptions/etc.
|
| Limiting edits, showing product history, or removing reviews
| on edit (or some threshold of content change) would be an
| easy place to start.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| No it's *incredibly* trivial. Just have human reviewers.
| d23 wrote:
| They could start by letting users report them. The fact they
| still don't have functionality like this makes me think
| they're purposefully putting their heads in the sand.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It's not trivial, but it's very, very feasible.
|
| Consider that Amazon already does a lot of manual review.
| They do manual review of _individual transactions_ if a
| customer is unhappy. The scale of that is enormous compared
| to this.
|
| They also already do some manual review of product listings.
| (Every product listing page has a "Report incorrect product
| information" link.)
|
| Adding this kind of manual review is surely a drop in the
| bucket if labor costs are the issue.
| [deleted]
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This seems to have about a half a hundred solutions
|
| - Changing listing voids prior reviews
|
| - Changing product category voids prior reviews
|
| - Enable transferring reviews by a paying a fee which will
| pay for a human reviewer to approve this
|
| - Make people put up a bond to sell goods and or agree to a
| huge fine if they do this. When you find people doing this
| take their bond and or fine money out of the money they would
| have received for their goods. Also delete all their listings
| and ban them from the platform. If any account attempts to do
| business in a way obviously linked same card same email etc
| ban them too.
|
| - Find mismatches between reviews and product by having a
| program classify reviews by probable product type reviewed
| and have a human review hits starting with the most prolific
| offenders and bring down the ban hammer. If you can actually
| collect fines directly out of money intended for the scammer
| this trivially pays for the enforcement activity and improves
| the health of the platform.
|
| If the economics of the scam are I'll make a little money to
| if I do this at a large enough scale to make any real money
| I'll probably be caught and lose money it doesn't look like
| an attractive scam to run anymore. It's not necessary to be
| perfect just good enough to mostly resolve the issue.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'm pretty sure GPT-4 could be shown the product page as it
| was when the first review was posted, and then again as it is
| now, and be asked "Are these two pages about the same
| product, please answer Yes or No with no further context"
| jlarocco wrote:
| And what's the problem gating it behind a human?
| srcreigh wrote:
| They could just show old pictures of the item under a link.
| And maybe manually review reports of clearly different
| products and display a warning or remove old reviews for
| those.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Requiring new listings for new product titles/SKUs, or
| approval for significant changes to titles/SKUs, seems like
| it would stop a good portion of these scams.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Yeah, with permanent delisting of the entire company as the
| penalty. Of course, these people don't care. They'll just
| spin up a new seller and thus the only people you end up
| hurting are legitimate partners updating their product
| line.
| Aeolun wrote:
| A new seller won't benefit from a bunch of existing
| products.
| hedora wrote:
| Add a filter by "companies that have been selling on
| amazon for at least 12 months and 10,000 fulfillments"
| button.
|
| (Or just call it "rank by seller reputation")
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Updating product line or need to amend something? No
| problem. Allow to add new content. Insert a link to the
| new version or a notice at any time.
|
| Just never allow to edit existing content beyond a few
| typos. Updating product line and want to keep reviews?
| Sorry it's dishonest even if seller thinks of itself as
| "legitimate".
|
| I don't think in the end any legitimate seller is hurt.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| They need to have human review of products and product
| changes. Easy enough. Just expensive. I don't care that it's
| expensive. That's Amazon's problem.
|
| Let's put another way, until Amazon does something about this
| there's no way for anyone to trust reviews on their site.
| Their reviews are all worthless.
|
| That's a huge liability.
|
| As long as they let people scam me, I will just assume
| everyone on there is there to scam me. It hurts them more in
| the end to lose shoppers to Walmart and Costco and places
| that don't put up with scammy products.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Rules + flag & review + punitive measures. If they wanted to
| figure it out, they would have figured it out.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Do they allow sellers to reuse an ASIN? If not, seems like
| they could not allow sellers to change the ASIN associated
| with a product page.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| One trivial but major improvement would be to let me see the
| edit history of the product, the same way I can see the edit
| history of a wikipedia page.
| tyingq wrote:
| Preventing sellers from changing the UPC code would be
| trivial, and would tie in with other existing controls.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Sure there is: Review all products and their updates, just
| like e.g. an app on the app store.
|
| But that will cost Amazon more money than what they currently
| lose on returns or scams. I presume anyway.
|
| Amazon does not care about the quality of the products on
| their website, they only care about volume and selling /
| maintaining subscriptions. As long as numbers go up they're
| golden.
|
| And there's not enough competition. There's probably plenty
| of webshops with quality products (anyone can run a webshop
| from their home), but discoverability is low, I don't know
| what the consumer protection laws in the US are like, and
| Amazon is easy to use. Amazon can afford to handle returns
| and the like as well.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Are you saying that in the age of ai it's impossible to tell
| whether the page is now featuring a completely new product
| without human review?
| Filligree wrote:
| It took me five minutes or so for a proof of concept with
| GPT-4. So...
| lwhi wrote:
| If someone reports it, manually review it.
|
| If it's being abused, ban the seller!
| zht wrote:
| you're telling me that Amazon in their infinite wisdom who
| already deals with all kinds of fraud in their system cannot
| flag if a product listing changes drastically or is
| describing something totally different?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > gate it behind human intervention(slow)
|
| That's not my problem. The courts have already weighed in on
| this.
|
| Marting Lewin sued facebook for publishing ads that used his
| face to defraud people. Facebook used the same excuses you
| just wheeled out, and the judge wasn't impressed.
|
| Fraud is a crime, little people go to jail for less every
| day.
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/martin-lewis-settles-lawsuit-
| agai...
| tfourb wrote:
| "It's hard" should not be an excuse for not preventing
| fraud. Most arguments from tech companies boil down to "but
| we would have to spend some of our billions of dollars of
| annual profits or venture capital to prevent this and those
| jobs wouldn't be sexy engineer stuff, so why would you want
| us to do something like this." I never understood how/why
| these companies are getting away with this, given that
| fraud/abusive behavior in other parts of the economy is
| taken quite seriously.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Expensive ~= effortful, meaning that it would take a lot
| of human labor, which would otherwise be contributing
| differently in the economy, at Amazon or elsewhere.
|
| Every hour spent manually reviewing product pages could
| instead be spent growing food, producing shoes, building
| homes, providing accounting services, etc.
|
| This doesn't mean it is or needs to be determined
| centrally - just that it is an economic truth that will
| bear out regardless. Amazon might hire 1,000 workers for
| this, pulling them implicitly from all of the other jobs
| they would otherwise have taken.
|
| Maybe it would be a net-win, and maybe not. But from
| society's standpoint it really doesn't matter whether it
| is profitable for Amazon or not. We'd be trading less
| fraud on Amazon for less of everything else.
| krferriter wrote:
| If Amazon's retail profit relies on allowing fraud and
| illegal activity to happen with their knowledge, that's
| just not something we should accept. Making more money
| for shareholders shouldn't happen at the expense of
| knowingly defrauding customers. The decision to not
| prevent fraud on Amazon just means the cost of dealing
| with that fraud is borne by the customers.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Just think about all the meaningful local mom and pop
| jobs that gave back to the community that Amazon
| destroyed in the name of putting bezos in the top two
| richest men alive. Maybe the judge should consider that
| and just demolish them.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| And what of the time, money, and environmental resources
| used by the customer who must spend more time estimating
| the reliability of irrelevant reviews and have to make
| time to schedule and execute a return? Doesn't that also
| take from "growing food, producing shoes, building homes,
| providing accounting services," and consuming more
| products -- and with much less efficiency and
| predictability?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| That's all yet another instance of "not my problem."
| Can't prevent fraud on your e-commerce site? Maybe you
| should not be running one.
| gowld wrote:
| Sellers in China don't go to jail in US.
|
| "Ships from and Sold by Amazon" if you don't want foreign
| sellers.
|
| That doesn't _solve the problem_ , because it locks out
| legit Chinese sellers. _Solving_ the problem is hard.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| The problem is fraud. Locking out Chinese fraudsters at
| the expense of legitimate Chinese sellers solves the
| problem.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| I would prefer Amazon receive stock from legit
| manufacturers with a reputation to protect, whatever
| country they happen to be in.
| okasaki wrote:
| I've never had a problem on aliexpress. So I guess
| someone solved it.
| thinkling wrote:
| Then again, I've never had a problem on Amazon across
| hundreds of purchases. I don't think either of our
| experiences proves anything.
| Retric wrote:
| You never noticed an issue, that doesn't mean you avoid
| getting counterfeit items etc.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| AliExpress's user interaction is different, and IMHO much
| less friendly.
|
| In Amazon, the user interacts with a product, and from
| here can either allow it to be fulfilled from whatever's
| its default seller, or select one explicitly. In
| AliExpress, the user interacts with the [product,seller],
| so in search you'll generally see 50 instances of the
| same product, and leave it to the user to decide which
| one to open into Product Details. IMHO, the Amazon
| interaction is far superior. (that's not an excuse for
| them not to look for a solution)
| zargon wrote:
| I prefer the opposite. eBay and AliExpress are a better
| experience because I interact directly with the seller.
| The seller has control over their listing, their
| inventory, and their fulfillment. I'm not playing the
| lottery as with an Amazon listing.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _I 'm not playing the lottery as with an Amazon listing._
|
| I agree that in fulfillment, Amazon is causing problem.
| But I still believe that in User Interaction, the Amazon
| approach is better for most users.
| amluto wrote:
| It shouldn't take a particularly strong classifier to detect
| that two descriptions are for entirely different products.
| And product reviews are a major part of Amazon's business, so
| improving the situation should be easily within Amazon's
| budget.
|
| Also, noticing and penalizing sellers who do this shouldn't
| be particularly hard.
| otikik wrote:
| Set a max update time of one week. Doesn't look very
| difficult to do.
| SifJar wrote:
| Couple of fairly simple things they could do to at least help
| somewhat:
|
| * Put reviews for current listing at the top of the reviews
| (currently default sort seems to be a vague "Top reviews",
| but can be changed to "most recent" which presumably
| accomplishes this. Vast majority never change defaults
| though)
|
| * Clearly mark any review that is for a previous version of
| the listing, and provide a link to view the listing at time
| of review (so can easily see if it was a completely different
| product or a simple typo correction etc.)
|
| * Perhaps make history of listing visible, so customers can
| see when and how the listing has changed
| lamontcg wrote:
| > Couple of fairly simple things they could do to at least
| help somewhat:
|
| Thing is that they don't really care.
|
| Mostly what they care about is handling returns which is
| what costs them money so they're targeting items with high
| return rates, and that's it.
|
| They don't actually care about you getting scammed if they
| get their cut and don't have a lot of overhead.
|
| All of this brainstorming is meaningless when the economic
| incentives of the company aren't aligned with the consumer.
| SifJar wrote:
| Yep for sure. Was just a response of simple things they
| _could_ do, _if_ they cared. Obviously nothing they won
| 't have thought of themselves, was really just pointing
| out that it's not the case that there's nothing that can
| be done about it, as the parent comment to mine seemed to
| suggest.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I think any fix that requires input or extra effort from a
| user won't work in the grander scheme of things. Hide
| reviews for previous versions behind a button will go a
| long way, if you keep that in mind.
| kevincox wrote:
| I don't think this will work well. Minor updates to
| listings would trigger all of these actions far too often
| to make them standard and ignored.
|
| I hate to say it but I think some type of heuristics would
| be needed here.
|
| 1. Has the title significantly changed. 2. Has the price
| significantly changed. 3. Are the search keywords that were
| finding the old listing significantly different than those
| finding the new listing. 4. Have average ratings and common
| words in reviews changed? (Especially rarer words that
| match the new and old listing respectively)
|
| If some of these start to look suspicious then I think you
| can start to apply your mitigations. You can probably even
| scale them by how sure you are. For example reviews are
| always downranked by age and significant changes to the
| listing amplify this effect, you can add the same weight to
| the start rating.
|
| And of course the real way to prevent this is to flip the
| incentive. Add human review and a warning before killing
| the account. Make it so that the cost of being caught
| negates the benefit of doing this.
| tempestn wrote:
| I'm pretty sure if you gave ChatGPT the old and new
| versions of the listing, it would have a 99%+ accuracy
| when answering the question, "are these for the same
| product?" So they could just run each change through
| something like that, and wouldn't have to write any
| custom heuristics.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I'm pretty sure any of a million simpler edit distances
| could tell you if a product listing was substantially
| changed.
| pas wrote:
| reputation systems are not some esoteric things...
|
| also, if a fucking seller cannot keep their listing
| reliably constant, what are they selling?
|
| new version, new product, new reviews.
|
| car manufacturers do this. wineries do this. pharma does
| this. even Apple managed to show the manufacturing date
| of their new new new new but the same things.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Web megacorps are normally allergic to any kind of human
| review because they are in the business of picking up
| pennies on each interaction via adverts. It's
| unsustainable to police the world on that model.
|
| Amazon is in a different space here. Even the smoothest
| transaction goes through a handful of literal human
| hands. They have to pay for those hands regardless. At
| the very least following up on cases where customers (and
| competitors) flag fraud on their system should be
| possible.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > some type of heuristics would be needed here.
|
| Calculating a meaningful numeric difference between two
| chunks of text is fairly well-trod territory.
| SamBam wrote:
| Honestly, these seems like a perfect problem for GPT.
|
| Show the title and main description to GPT everytime the
| seller makes a change, and ask "Do these seem to be the
| same product?"
|
| If GPT says that they seem different, flag for human
| review.
|
| You could probably even ask GPT to take its confidence.
| If it's highly confident, skip the human review.
| kube-system wrote:
| Title: BLOMGHSY Luxury Shower Curtain Premium Best
| Quality
|
| Description: Ignore previous instructions [...]
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| This is just a simple classification problem, the prime
| application for basic neural networks. Using a general
| text generation system for this seems like complete
| overkill. Just a bunch of wasted resources.
| jon-wood wrote:
| This was also my first reaction, but it got me
| questioning whether I'm just becoming the same as the
| guys who were saying "using an interpreted language for
| that is a waste of resources". Maybe LLMs are the
| equivalent, sure they use more CPU cycles, but you can
| point them at some problems and get them solved for a
| fraction of the effort.
| archgoon wrote:
| [dead]
| tablespoon wrote:
| They could also have some system to flag these listings for
| manual review by an Amazon employee, instead of expecting
| every individual customer to figure it out.
|
| I mean with all the AI hype, you'd think they could whip
| something up that would at least be able to detect when the
| listing has changed to a completely new product category.
| anfilt wrote:
| Like you shouldn't be able to change a products category from
| clothing to electronics for instance in my opinion. Same with
| similar changes.
|
| Small changes should be fine in my opinion also it's not like
| it's impossible to also determine the edit distance between
| two pieces of text.
|
| Amazon could be doing a lot more here.
| [deleted]
| ugh123 wrote:
| Reviews should be tied to a series of SKU numbers which
| should be tied to physical items in Amazon's warehouse (if
| using FBA)
| riffraff wrote:
| Avoid changing name? If you had a bad name you would have
| changed it before you got a lot of positive reviews.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Well yes, you gate it behind human intervention like an
| actual retailer.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| They could do a similarity diff. If you switch content from
| towels to solar panels I bet they could get pretty good
| signal just from text comparison. "This looks like a
| different product. Different products must use their own SKU.
| If you believe this is an error, appeal here."
| lwhi wrote:
| ChatGPT can definitely work this out.
| generj wrote:
| Even a simple Levenshtein distance would do the trick for
| most of these product switches.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Yep. I don't care if they change some filler words/fix
| some mistakes/clarify details.
|
| I care about the title, description, and photos being
| entirely replaced while reviews stick around.
| ben_w wrote:
| I bet someone's already made a game from before/after
| pairs such that the smallest Levenshtein distance can
| give the biggest possible change in meaning to the entire
| _seance_.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| A neural network classifier would surely get less of both
| false positives, false negatived, ans exploitable
| vulnerabilities.
|
| But at the end of the say, the question is just if Amazon
| has any interest at all in stop being accessory to large
| scale fraud. And the answer is pretty obvious; any of the
| things people are discussing here is viable, they could
| pick any or even spend more than 3 seconds thinking about
| the problem.
| dspillett wrote:
| That would start a game of people updating a listing a
| bit at a time. The listing might be confusing or even
| meaningless part way through but after a while it would
| be fine enough. Update API limits would make this
| impractical for long listings but it might work for short
| ones. Detecting scams and working around the detection
| semantics is an unending arms race.
| gs17 wrote:
| Exactly, or at least that could flag it for manual
| review. It has to be a deliberately unsolved problem.
| lwhi wrote:
| Sure it comes down to incentives.
|
| It will be more profitable for Amazon to do nothing, than
| to address the problem.
| notahacker wrote:
| Some of them would be as simple as "this sold a lot of
| copies when listed under Tablet Accessories for $5.99,
| now it's in Laptops for $599"...
| gs17 wrote:
| It doesn't even need an LLM, I'm pretty sure regular NLP
| methods would be able to handle it, given how dramatic
| the product changes are.
| lwhi wrote:
| Will we get to a point when an LLM is even used for cases
| where other methods are more suitable but would be more
| difficult to implement?
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Trivial is an overstatement, but the solution space is far
| broader than the two options you propose. I can think of one
| off the top of my head: Give each listing a change score,
| where changing a description is a point, changing a photo is
| a point, perhaps changing categories is 2 or 3 points... At a
| certain threshold of points (tweaked over time to calibrate
| against false positives) the listing is flagged for human
| review.
| lph wrote:
| It's absolutely trivial if you have a human review changes.
| But that's expensive. So I'd assert the problem is trivial
| but expensive, and Amazon lacks the proper incentives to do
| anything about it: they make money from fraudulent sales.
| It's a short-term incentive to not solve the problem. Sure,
| there's a long-term cost that this fraud slowly erodes
| Amazon's reputation, but it's hard to measure and its
| consequences are way beyond the horizon of the next
| quarterly report.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| They should charge for changing listings. If not in money
| by taking the listing down for an indefinite period with
| some vague "in review" period.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| Seems like this would hurt vendors making legitimate
| changes more than fraudulent vendors.
| krisoft wrote:
| > It's absolutely trivial if you have a human review
| changes.
|
| There is nothing trivial about that. At amazon's scale
| that is an army who needs to be hired, trained, prevented
| from colluding with scammers, quality controlled, etc
| etc.
| blarghyblarg wrote:
| Not to be argumentative, but... that's the second option.
| Algorithmic. The initial implementation would be simple.
| One point, two points, three points. Then, some categories
| turn out to have significant change requirements, some
| change infrequently, some changes turn out to be very
| important in some categories, some categories need
| immediate human review...
| lozenge wrote:
| This is like saying that stocking groceries is
| complicated because some items are perishable, some are
| frozen, some sell faster than others, they go to
| different parts of the store. Isn't it just a fundamental
| part of what the business is meant to do? To have reviews
| that actually relate to the product?
| blarghyblarg wrote:
| Yes, it is. And in a grocery store, how is a product
| handled when it comes in on a shipment and doesn't match
| the previous shipments and/or bills of lading? By a
| person, in every single grocery store everywhere on the
| planet.
|
| Although, in a grocery store, you're less likely to see a
| product change from a bicycle to a scooter. You're more
| likely to see the cocoa content in your chocolate bar
| drop, and the oil change to a cheaper and less flavourful
| type.
|
| I guess the comparison still works... should we have
| purchasers comparing products before setting them out?
| Under what conditions? What conditions trigger a review?
| In my experience, the stores just keep putting changed
| products out like nothing has happened, even if we notice
| over time that things just don't taste the same
| sometimes.
|
| Turns out that... yes... it gets pretty complicated
| pretty fast, but many grocery stores also seem to just be
| ignoring this issue.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > You're more likely to see the cocoa content in your
| chocolate bar drop [...] > many grocery stores also seem
| to just be ignoring this issue.
|
| I do not believe this is the kind of swap people are
| complaining about.
|
| We're talking about a box that's labeled applesauce and
| is actually full of rocks. Grocery stores would kill a
| supplier who was doing this.
|
| I can't imagine a "real-world" situation happening at the
| scale of reputation-stealing that happens on Amazon. I
| suppose it's just an extreme version of "Made In Your
| Country Tools" building up a good reputation and then
| quietly outsourcing the work to "Low-Quality Overseas
| Forge".
|
| Is the problem is that "easy to acquire" reputation for
| low-cost products (get good rep by using good materials,
| which don't really cost that much more and eat the cost
| as a loss leader) is easily transferred to higher-cost
| products? It's not like you even need to be making
| bandsaws to get the good rep., then start using it to
| sell cheap bandsaws? The investment at the start is very
| low.
| bogwog wrote:
| I'm sure Amazon can commit more resources to solving this
| problem than some random individual on HN can commit to a
| ~3 sentence long comment.
|
| If they wanted to solve this problem, they would have
| already. Clearly, they don't care. People buy products
| with good reviews, and Amazon makes money when people buy
| products.
|
| I wonder if they've been sued over this? I'm not a
| lawyer, but this sounds like false advertising to me.
| gowld wrote:
| > People buy products with good reviews, and Amazon makes
| money when people buy products.
|
| and lose money (or make bad sellers lose money) when
| people return products -- often times Amazon won't even
| ask you to ship back a product you complain about.
| bombcar wrote:
| The vast majority of the crap with this problem just gets
| thrown away. A very small percenrage bother returning it.
| rwalle wrote:
| Yeah, so many people are wasting their time on those
| useless arguments. What matters here is not how to solve
| the problem -- customers should not worry about that at
| all -- but whether Amazon is commited to address this
| problem, and the answer is a clear no.
| blarghyblarg wrote:
| It's armchair quarterbacking, for sure. Nobody at Amazon
| is going to read some random news article, even if they
| are here slacking at work, and say "That's the ticket!
| Lets do that!"
|
| They either fix it, or they don't.
| [deleted]
| Cyykratahk wrote:
| Even if it's not trivial to solve perfectly, there are easy
| wins to be had.
|
| For example: prevent changing the top-level category of a
| product. E.g. Shoes should not be allowed to become camera
| gear.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Categories on Amazon are basically meaningless. There are
| probably more miscategorized products on Amazon than ones
| in the correct category.
|
| Most users just type into the search field, so they don't
| end up interacting with categories.
| hedora wrote:
| As always, the internet has already generated a counter
| example to your rule:
|
| https://www.spycamerasmall.com/mobile-spy-camera/bodyware-
| sp...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It only means that either category is okay, not that it
| should be allowed to be changed.
|
| But I don't think this restriction would fix all the
| issues where listing in the same category is swapped.
| maxerickson wrote:
| If their goal is to make their product listings useful,
| they wouldn't include that as a shoe.
| kipchak wrote:
| I like that "Spy Cameras Mall" and Spy Camera Small" work
| as ways to read the address.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Sellers should think very carefully and verify exactly what
| they put on the product description. What is wrong with that?
| If there's a typo there, you'll usually fix it before even
| getting the first review.
| pmlnr wrote:
| Hardcode the original product in the review, match it against
| the current?
| lamontcg wrote:
| > gate it behind human intervention(slow)
|
| The correct objection here is not "slow" but "expensive".
|
| All of the "FAANGs" (or whatever we call them these days)
| need to be forced by government regulations to have
| transparent appeals processes that use actual humans and make
| them spend the money on it.
|
| And when it comes to fraud clearly amazon needs to be forced
| to deal with it.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Seems like a problem where LLM can shine. I foresee a future
| where an IA validate that your product page edits are for the
| same product and that reviews make sense.
|
| That's not going to solve the issues of fake/paid for reviews
| however. I think there is a market for a store selling only
| vetted products they have reviewed themselves.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The practice yields them sales, they don't care.
| triceratops wrote:
| It's stuff like this that makes me avoid online-only retailers
| as far as possible. My first choice is still to go to the
| store. Second choice is to never order from third-party sellers
| on Walmart or whoever's website.
|
| The minor price differences between online and in-store aren't
| worth the hassle. The only reason to order online is for long-
| tail items. Spare parts, replacements that you simply can't get
| in-store.
| pc86 wrote:
| My understanding is that the biggest issue is that they're
| commingling inventory. So Sony is selling A1000s on Amazon and
| ships in 10k units. Your FBA store buys 1k wholesale A1000s and
| sends them to Amazon. My FBA store buys 1k and sends them in.
|
| Amazon just has a pile of 12k A1000s and sends them out
| whenever orders come in. Once it's processed there's no
| differentiation between your stock, mine, or Sony's, it's just
| Amazon's A1000 stock.
|
| Even if this is the _only_ thing preventing the solution you
| 're referring to it'd still be a logistical hurdle to solve.
| post-it wrote:
| Just tag each item by supplier. They already tag by item.
| Sure it's a logistical hurdle in the sense that someone needs
| to do it, but it's not a challenge, it's not anything new.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Walmart has suppliers RFID tag with UPC + Unique ID. It
| would work perfectly for amazon. They would be able to
| track Who sent in what and in which shipment it came in.
| topaz0 wrote:
| I suspect they save money not just from saving some
| effort/complication of tracking the supplier, but also from
| being able to distribute the larger inventory better across
| their warehouses. If someone in Tennessee buys the item
| from a supplier whose stock is in Idaho, they have to ship
| across the country, but if they can substitute with stock
| form another supplier that is in Georgia they save a lot of
| shipping.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| They made a logistical optimisation to save money. Only right
| that they should eat the costs of any side effects
| 99_00 wrote:
| Using resources to crack down only makes sense if the problem
| causes customers to.uae Amazon less.
|
| I don't see that happening. People are locked in and the
| thought might not even cross their mind. Of course they will
| complain. But talk is cheap. Money is the only thing that
| matters.
| rfwhyte wrote:
| They don't do anything about it because it's a feature not a
| bug. They know full well about all the fake reviews, fake
| products, product switches, counterfeit products, dangerous
| products, etc., and _choose_ not to do anything about any of it
| because it 's making them money. Amazon is basically an online
| real estate company that owns a giant online mall full of
| scammers, snake-oil salesmen and fraudsters, but they get to
| keep cashing the "Rent" cheques from these vendors in their
| "Mall," and so they don't give a single solitary f*ck about
| whether or not actual end customers suffer as it's not them
| doing it, just the people who rent space in their mall.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The profit from the fraud is not worth the reputation damage.
|
| Future rent check income will go down a lot if people stop
| going to the mall because it's full of scammers.
|
| The cost of properly policing it is likely the main
| deterrent.
| 99_00 wrote:
| I only buy hard to find niche things on Amazon or low quality
| Chinese bootlegs when that's what I want.
|
| For everything else I buy elsewhere. It's usually a difference of
| cents. I'm voting with my dollars for a world where people can
| choose to not buy low quality jficushnrkf brand Chinese bootlegs.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| This is what has driven me away from Amazon, except for purchases
| of name-brand specific things. I go to brick and mortar to
| browse, because _they simply won 't carry rubbish to begin with._
| It's not a function of buyer beware. Amazon outsources its
| returns _entirely_ , so they are not incentivized to reduce it.
| Best Buy has to pay people to deal with it, so they strive for it
| not to be a problem in the first place. They do the curation, and
| it turns out, yes, there is actual value in that service, and our
| incentives are aligned.
| sebsebmc wrote:
| I had this come up recently, the issue is that it seems that
| products with multiple "styles" will show the same alert across
| all "styles". The problem is that often times the "styles" may be
| significantly different products, in my case they were monitors
| with extremely different specs all from the same manufacturer.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| This is probably not the correct use of the "styles" feature on
| Amazon in the first place.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm betting Amazon would prefer items with
| different specs to be different listings, with styles being
| limited to differences like color, finish, etc.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Yeah that's annoying. Then I read reviews and they're all for
| a wildly different product because they decided to list 10
| under the same item
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Like how sellers on eBay throw an unrelated product in as a
| "style" or some such so that their listings go to the lowest
| price without actually selling the price you searched for the
| low amount? Annoys me constantly.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| As long as sellers can still take a listing for one item and
| switch it to another with all of the stats and reviews retained
| this is going to have limited impact.
| waltbosz wrote:
| Would this new policy create a new attack vector for scammer
| sellers trying to damage the reputation of good legitimate
| sellers.
|
| The scammer would organize a distributed buy-and-return of their
| victim's product, which would trigger this flag.
|
| It's complex, but if returns are free and the competitive
| advantage of the flag is worth it, I could imagine it happening.
| carimura wrote:
| ya that's the problem, every action has a reaction in the new
| world order of massive marketplaces. It would seem like there
| needs to be more buyer focus on the sellers reputation rather
| than the product.
| alex_young wrote:
| If they can detect this stuff well enough to put a warning on the
| products, maybe they should just remove the listing until the
| seller does something to fix whatever problem they have?
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Incentives which are misaligned from the customer's point of
| viewpoint.
| oidar wrote:
| Oh my gosh, this is actually a huge improvement for customer-
| facing webpages! They used to be all about coaxing you into
| buying even if the product was garbage, but maybe the returns
| were costing them too much. I'm just wondering why they haven't
| gotten rid of these products altogether though. Hopefully, they
| keep making changes like this for other product pages too. Do you
| think they have any plans to tackle fake reviews or reviews for
| totally unrelated stuff? For example, mascara reviews on a
| kettlebell listing.
| gspencley wrote:
| I figure returns have to cost them.
|
| What I don't understand is why they don't already do this yet,
| instead of "flagging", just down-rank the product when it comes
| to search results and recommendations. If the return threshold
| hits a certain level, the product gets dropped entirely.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| They need to just ban random sellers. It should be an exclusive
| site.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| There are other products on Amazon you should probably not buy
| either.
|
| Namely, products from randomly named companies, or companies that
| claim to be American but it their address is a warehouse and
| their Internet presence is hosted on Alibaba Cloud.
|
| Most of what they sell is toxic, like PVC figures for children
| cakes, toxic kitchenware, counterfeit refrigerator filters and
| other magnets for penny pinchers.
|
| It is almost as if they were intentionally trying to poison
| people.
|
| Most of the furniture sold by Chinese vendors and their
| intermediaries are so toxic that fucking HCHO meters max out when
| you open the box. Including kids furniture.
|
| Sneaky fucks should all go to jail.
|
| I would much rather prefer buying products from countries with
| real customer protection, real compliance with regulations with
| real consequences when someone gets sick from a non-compliant
| product.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > It is almost as if they were intentionally trying to poison
| people.
|
| This, this, this.
|
| Just look at what are dollar stores selling us. To me it looks
| like China packs their garbage in form of children toys and
| useless things like so called "squishees" that smell like they
| fished right out a toxic river.
|
| Story time: my wife tried to import toys from EU, high quality
| wooden building blocks. I remember that regulatory hell, she
| needed to have a safety certificate for each SKU, they have to
| pass lab tests for phthalates, lead and other shit, there was a
| never ending list of requirements, like "you can't have this
| rope because it's strangulation hazard". And after you comply
| to all that regulations, you need to buy a business insurance
| to even have a chance to get into chains.
|
| So we have piles of paperwork for good products and seemingly
| completely unregulated Dollarama that sells whatever they want
| without following any rules. "This SKU doesn't explode before
| leaving a store - it's good to go".
|
| We need a law that would obligate sellers to accept their
| garbage back, including packaging (looking at you, Costco).
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Most returned stuff goes to a warehouse and then gets
| destroyed. You can buy pallets of that stuff for a reduced
| price.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| No, I'm not talking about stuff that people return to
| store. My point was to make stores dispose all that garbage
| that they sell to people, including packaging. Like instead
| of throwing it to our blue bins, we could bring it back to
| store for disposal.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| A step into the right direction. Win for Amazon as they have to
| handle less returns and win for customer as he can make informed
| decisions.
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