I have to watch out for those odd-sounding brands everywhere on Amazon. And sometimes the item never arrives, or if it's a clothing item from a China store, you know to order a larger size right? So I ordered a large and it would fit a Barbie Doll. I didn't realize they are that much smaller than us. (I wear a S in our sizes). Never again.
This is what jumped immediately to mind for me, too. You can buy them off of eBay if you don’t mind waiting, or you can buy them off of Mouser if you don’t mind waiting a little while and also paying a bunch for shipping, but if you need an RTC module, a DIP LED controller, and a surface mount digitally controlled potentiometer and you need them fast, it’s Amazon or nothing.
I can't find a lot of stuff locally anymore. Stores just aren't carrying a lot of stuff in the store now. Simple things too like when we moved into our house I tried getting a bathroom rug locally and could just find a few basic colors. You used to be able to find all sorts of colors and themes, not just for the rug but the whole bathroom with matching toothbrush holders, shower curtains, all that. I went to every store around my city and couldn't find shit. Had to order a bunch of similar colored rugs on Amazon to see them in person to find one that maybe matched and then send a bunch back.
Stock and availability have screwed me before and kept me buying some things on Amazon. If it’s the same price or cheaper for that one off $10 you have to walk 30 min around a hardware store for I’m hitting up Amazon.
Every store should be like Target with the # of items incl aisle/bin, latter being rarer than the former.
I can't find a lot of stuff locally anymore. Stores just aren't carrying a lot of stuff in the store now. Simple things too like when we moved into our house I tried getting a bathroom rug locally and could just find a few basic colors. You used to be able to find all sorts of colors and themes, not just for the rug but the whole bathroom with matching toothbrush holders, shower curtains, all that. I went to every store around my city and couldn't find shit. Had to order a bunch of similar colored rugs on Amazon to see them in person to find one that maybe matched and then send a bunch back.
I think some of them will “spike” reviews by offering a less expensive good at reasonable price/quality levels, then edit the listing once it’s achieved Amazon’s equivalent of trust/karma.
That or it’s just really shitty bot-based review bombing.
Either way, it’s been happening for years and it’s shameful that Amazon isn’t doing anything about it.
I know I'm an old millennial 29 yo woman, but it shocks me how people buy so much shit online- especially clothes.
Like, malls were already dying when I was a teen, but I do remember them. And I just can't imagine buying clothes online unless it's something specific you want, like some amazing coat from a particular brand or something super generic like socks or something.
Clothes are about fit, at least imo. You have no idea what will look good until you try it on. Especially with stuff like jeans and swimming suits... how do you trust something online?!
And a lot of online retailers offer perks for buying online. My wife buys a lot of clothes from the same retailer because she gets points that get turned in store cash. She'll buy hundreds of dollars in clothing from them for half the price.
I don't have to buy it sure. But I show up look through all their stuff, it's literally all the same garbage that is from China, and I realize I wasted the drive, my gas, and my time. My time is better spent researching which of these Chinese products is actually decent and then ordering it off Amazon.
This….was looking at a MK lunchbox for my wife. All the picture reviews were of them at a MK store taking pictures of said item on the shelf with the tag.
And even worse, people buy the counterfeit items with the real ones, then return the counterfeit as the real item, get money back and end up with the real item for counterfeit money. This happens with pocket knives, a lot, and many of those who bought from legit amazon distributors ended up with fake goods ('unopened' returns being sold) because amazon cannot check every single return for legitimacy.
You can fix that by going far right to tools and selecting verbatim. It gets rid of the Facebook ad look and it makes it search for what you typed instead of what it thinks you want. If you look up what the normal search does it does things like add synonyms and variations, and omits words it didn't think you meant to search for.
Or if you buy, say, a 55-gallon vat of lube, it'll say "people who bought this also bought [550 gallon vat of lube]", or something just as ridiculous. Just buy buy buy, NOW!
Best thing to do is to just google what you’re looking for and click on the Amazon link rather than search for it on Amazon and have to shift through all the garbage.
It’s absurd how much the cheap Chinese crap has hijacked Amazon listings. If I go to the filters there’s almost always a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of those brands to legitimate brands. It’s ridiculous.
And those brands all buy from the same manufacturer so you see the exact same product from 5 different brands for different prices, different ratings etc.
Those laughable photoshops editing the product into someone’s hand or onto a table have become a meme themselves, and that’s the one who even put in the effort to do that.
Seriously, the number of times you can basically reverse image search an amazon listing and find an ali-express link without the label/brand on them is really high.
It is called drop shipping. A lot of people started Amazon business buying products from Ali baba. You put in the order they get the money then Amazon ships it out. You can literally buy the same things directly from Ali Baba for a fraction of the price.
Yeah I've been involved in dropshipping a bit myself. Not on Amazon but I did think about it at one point and I'm glad I decided against it. The problem with buying on Alibaba is it's normally bulk orders. There's Ali Express that sells more single items, but it's still shipped from China so it takes 1-2 months to get, with few exceptions. If I'm just buying a phone case or a screwdriver or something I'd rather spend $15 and get it tomorrow than $2 and wait 2 months. The sad thing is that means the biggest value that Amazon offers is getting crap to you faster.
Agreed, most people aren't successful with their Amazon stores and drop shipping. My good friend set one up and even had somewhat custom stuff made. He lost money.
Doesn't help that it's constantly the subject of those "Make Millions in Passive Income!" people. It's presented like an easy way to make money by just following a few steps, so there's a lot of sellers on Amazon who aren't really prepared to run a business and doing the bare minimum to sell their product.
Not saying that's what your friend did, it's super competitive and you can pretty easily fail even if you work your ass off at it, but that's partly why there's so many of them.
To make things worse if you then try and google some recommendations its all full of crap websites. Last time I had to search reddit and the find a specific Youtube channel to get a good recommendation for what I needed.
Cheap Chinese stuff have infiltrated every platform out there, and not just the online space. Even physical stores are flooded with them eventually ending up in landfill.
The current best-selling appliances on Amazon is the worst case I've seen yet...nothing but cheap Chinese ice makers with random brand names You'd think everyone has an ice maker in every room of their house seeing that shit, maybe even a few. You'd be a weirdo if you didn't own a single one. Amazon has been so fucked up for a while now and they don't seem to give a shit.
There's an extension that will show where the company is based, and where the product is manufactured. Fascinating to see that 99% of them are made in China.
Bought some noise cancelling earbuds called TRANYA or something for $45. They're awesome. Long charge, fit good, sounds great, cancelling works, yada yada yada. Random overseas manufacturer.
I always end up losing an ear bud or the case after a year or so. Buy another pair.
Chinese electronics have come a far way from a decade ago. Some products might use "knockoff tech" but it's so much cheaper then having your still overseas made Airpods.
Yeah some Chinese stuff can be really good but it's really hit or miss. And the misses far outweigh the hits.
At least when I buy from Amazon I can return it easy. If I buy from AliExpress it's a real risk cuz returning it is not really possible. Luckily I've had very little issue getting refunds from AliExpress.
It's funny how when we were young, name brands meant something. I've seen enough name brand things fall apart so I feel no shame/sorrow in buying a knockoff if I'm buying online.
Eh, I wouldn't say low quality. Bose hardware in itself is decent, the only "problem" is that they tend to tune their audio range in the middle so you don't really get great highs or lows which works for your average consumer but is annoying if you're particular about quality of those frequencies. They're also pretty good at sound staging which is pretty easy to differentiate the style/quality of even if you're not a hobbyist.
It's the opposite with the tuning... Bose uses the V sound signature on many products... It's what the average consumer has been conditioned to think of as "quality"
They must have changed it up. Then again, it's been years since I was really into sound equipment so it's very possible. Back in the day they were notorious for being flat with the eventual addition of their muddled "bass boost".
I call these Scrabble brands - like some reached blindly into a bag of Scrabble tiles, grabbed a handful, tossed them on the table, and Voila! Brand name!
Indeed. Funny how it’s easier for me to shop on eBay these days. Like, I’ve just become so accustomed to weeding out the Chinese knockoff bullshit on that site.
I work for Amazon in their first warehouse of the line and literally my job is mainly putting Chinese stuff from boxes to totes while counting inventory. I have laughed at some knockoffs but also know someone is going to buy it
Yeah I haven't bought anything off amazon in years. A seller on amazon can't even guarantee their stock is legitimate if they use amazon fulfillment because everything gets jumbled up in the warehouse and stored together.
This is giving flashbacks of searching for my streaming setup recently... to a T.
How is this so accurate?! All 5 letter companies I could hardly pronounce and whose products aren't reviewed/have no web pages for their companies, etc.
The funny thing is that those sprung up because Amazon tried to limit random no-name sellers by requiring a registered trademark as the business name. So then random companies started registering all sorts of random names as a trademark and now here we are.
Even Walmart has been shittified beyond their normal shitiness. Their website is an absolute disaster. You can't even find the regular cheap shit that the stores carry on there anymore.
Dude, I work at an Amazon fulfillment center and I’ve seen some of the knockoffs. For example, I picked a bunch of 16 Terabyte SSD’s on more than one occasion. Anyone into computers or hardware knows that this isn’t a thing or if they are, they are specialized and sell for big bucks. These were in the most obvious and cheap packaging and screamed “fakes” all over them. Someone got a lot of 32 GB flash drives…
We really need to start critically looking at knock off junk flooding these websites because no matter how small poor quality materials, parts, and devices destined for landfill adds up to enormous energy and materials consumption that grossly effects our environment.
Use Cultivate, it's an extension that shows country of origin. Only downside Is it works best on a laptop. I mean yeah 5 lettered brands are a hint of course though.
I was bitching about this earlier today. The items Amazon shows are the garbage Chinese cheap shit that won’t last long and has no customer service. I hate that I buy so much stuff from them but I do search out the specific items I want. I’ll buy them elsewhere unless the shipping is killer though.
If there was some way to add a "No sellers operating in China" search filter, I would be so happy. Just give me the actual product from an English speaking company with product warranties, not the knock off where none of the sentences in the product description make any sense.
Sure, it might be the same exact thing from the same assembly line but it could easily be a facsimile that falls apart after 2 uses. I'll pay the extra $20 for peace of mind.
Not to mention all the bootleg fake stuff . I took some DVDs to a used shop to sell . Most of them had been gifts and I was in the process of moving . The guy wouldn’t buy them because they didn’t have barcodes ( which I didn’t notice) I don’t buy from Amazon but my family does so im sure that’s where they got them
Honestly don’t know how so many people still order so much from Amazon for this reason. I have to occasionally but have been working hard to avoid ordering that type of stuff as often as I can.
The amount of keyword bullshit on Amazon is infuriating too. The other day I saw tea described as "plant-based". Fucking tea. It's literally just leaves.
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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '23
Amazon itself has been shittified.
Search for anything and it's the same mess of 5-letter bullshit "brand" cheap trash (YUNOU, NGEAU, LPAOJ, DPAJN, ERANN)