I want to like Amazon, they're just so damn convenient. But the number of reasons to avoid them is getting longer all the time. Fake/sponsored reviews, never showing me what actually searched for, allowing sellers to reuse old listings, and allowing sellers to add counterfeit and used items to genuine listings are all my main complaints.

Oh and prime video has ads now.

I read about this happening a lot here and elsewhere, and I don't get it. I buy many iDevices from Amazon, for example Apple Watch Ultra (1, 2, 3), and AirPods Pro (1, 2, 3). Most with AppleCare 2 years plan, some without. Also some accessories.

If the item is counterfeit, not only is sometimes the packaging/actual product identifiable by anyone that is actually a tech person, but lets assume that it's identical or whatever.

Unboxing?

When you open the AirPods box for the first time does the iPhone do that animation and say "Set up AirPods..." etc?

When you use it, does it sound at least kinda like the quality you expect from a 200 USD Apple headphone? Does Dolby Atmos work, the stems on both sides, the wireless charge on the box, the Find My features, live translation, transparency, noise cancellation? All of those features are present and working?

Going to settings -> AppleCare and Warranty should show the time of manufacture, of purchase, and the end time for the warranty (or if AppleCare, for AppleCare).

I guess I see a counterfeit passing my step 1: hardware, or maybe step 2: software (really shouldn't tbh? Apple should cover for this).

But the data on AppleCare and Warranty come from Apple's server. Even if they spoofed the serial number that would mean guessing a correct serial number for that same product type and spoofing the date of sale etc on AppleCare&Warranty.

I honestly don't see how this can happen. If the counterfeit is honestly so identical at that point it's just the same product, but even so.

I buy clothes, other tech stuff there. Is it really necessary to instill on me and hundreds of other OCDs the constant existential fear that everything we buy is actually an exactly identical and unverifiable impostor of the real item, but not actually real?

Edit: Just to clarify, I've indeed used warranty/AC+ on most of these items and all were real. For now.

What happened after that? How was it resolved?

The issue is that in many cases, this is not what is being sold on Amazon. There is good chinese brand/product (I love my chinese IEM), but when looking for many household items, you will find the white label, probably not compliant with local regulation, type of product. When it is not an outright scam.

I actually have a recent example : I do woodworking and for the last step of finishing some of the thing I build, I use a mixture of beeswax and linseed oil. Beeswax has been harder and harder to find locally. Not so long ago, every hardware shop had some. Now it has been displaced by synthetic product. So unless you know a local beekeeper, you are sol. So, resigned, I went to Amazon. It had a trove of listing for "100% natural beeswax". Turns out, ALL of them are paraffin dyed to look like beeswax. You can report it to Amazon, they don't care. They will reimburse you, but never remove the listing.

The problem for me is (and this holds across AliExpress as well), if I search for something, I get presented 30 different versions of the same thing, almost all from an unknown brand out of China, all with near-perfect reviews. I don't know if they're all the same thing, just relabeled; some are cheap copies of one original good version (and which one was is the good original); or something else. And if I end up with a cheap knockoff, how to resolve the issue - endless phone calls with a call-center in China and multiple rounds of trans-Pacific shipping? No thanks.

None of that is a knock against Chinese goods. I bought a set of Chinese carbon bicycle wheels last year and they're great. But, I went straight to the source and didn't take chances with AliExpress or Amazon.

My dad likes to tell me how when he was a kid, "Made in Japan" meant "this is garbage." When I was a kid "Made in China" meant, "this is garbage."

Yeah I have a bunch of Chinese products I've bought that are way better than any Western products.

For all sorts of products like various electronic devices and kitchen gadgets, they are just iterating way faster on product feedback.

I think of some product I'd like to have, and discover somebody in China invented it 9 months ago and I can buy it through Amazon for $19. I buy it and use it for six months, then realize I really wish it had some other feature. I check Amazon, and now it's in its third generation with the feature I want plus two others.

I don't get why people are complaining. It's genuinely amazing, and a kind of entrepreneurial spirit I can only respect. Why people get hung up on the random-letter brand names is beyond me, who cares?

I've just ordered a dining table and a set of dining chairs from China using a sourcing agent mixed with TaoBao. It's costing me about £1200 ($1500) so far delivered to the door and if I was to buy this complete setup in the UK, it would cost about £2500. The only problem has been delivery time and the back and forth with the Chinese sourcing agent hasn't been great in terms of communication, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give an extra £1000 to Western retailers that are hellbent on following the Amazon model and ripping off customers.

https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...

> Some clothing manufacturers on Amazon even email me for exact measurements

how do they have your email? this makes me worried

A lot of Chinese name brands are extremely high quality, as good as or better than the American equivalent. Anker is one of the better known examples. However, there is also a lot of unbranded or white label garbage made by the lowest bidder to try to spawn camp popular search terms.

I do wonder whether you're comparing two different versions of chinese products?

IE, you're seeing and buying things they're selling directly, so they need to manage quality control, vs what is being sold on amazon, potentially a 3rd party seller who's cutting corners to make a nicer margin?

You got a link for the clothes?

Most things are made in China anyway. Some of it is counterfeit junk, but often it's the same factory they use to make "American" brands. They just keep the assembly line running and use a different brand name.

> vs. waiting two to four weeks to ship from China.

In UK, the average for my AliExpress orders is now 1 week.

Amazon Prime is quite good, tbh. There’s a whole layer of complexity your life loses when you know you can get life essentials within a few hours with no planning.

A lot of the time when i visit such a listing all the good reviews turn out to be for some unrelated product, the listing was clearly swapped.

There are some differences.

Temu’s UI is unusable. You are constantly presented with roulette wheels for coupons you can’t dismiss. Its dark patterns have dark patterns. AliExpress is only mildly better in that you can dismiss stuff.

Both T and A still have listings for things that will likely result in you getting something entirely different. This usually applies to more expensive and physically larger items. You might order a greenhouse and get a photo of one or a schematic of one. And I don’t mean that the description will make it clear.

Both have a pattern where they might list let’s say an MP3 player which costs $30 but the price on the listing will be $3 because one of the product variants is just the case.

Amazon has comparatively reliable shipping and it’s included with the price on a majority of products if you have a Prime membership. While Temu and AliExpress do have US-based shipping they still don’t guarantee when the thing will arrive and if you are looking at these products the price difference basically disappears.

I am not defending Amazon by any means, but purely on usability it wins hands down.

Theres also no moral reason to support Amazon, they give nothing back to the society their buyers live in, much like the chinese suppliers. Might aswell just go with the cheapest.

You mean you don't want to buy the finest grade $59.95 blender for your kitchen from LONCEVON or ARVAGGCCY or ADVWUXITEKPRO ?

The tricky part now is identifying the individual CN vendors which are not yet well known in the English marketplace, that are also known to make good quality things (and generally they're not cheap), I'll use Sofirn flashlights and headlamps as an example. Mostly not sold via Amazon.

You just buy an Apple product and they send you a fake. They commingle counterfeit stuff with legit products (at least they used to) so it was luck of the draw.

It just shows up in the box. Their inventory is comingled.

You simplify it too much to support your argument. For example, Tefal makes some of its frying pans in France, but AFAIK they also offer some products made in China to capture the cheaper part of the market. Price does not guarantee quality or being made in Europe, but if you target the cheapest, that's what you'll get.

It's important to remember that the support channels a company wants you to use aren't the only options you have. If a company doesn't offer reasonable support you can always go the bezos@amazon.com route and include their highest paid person you can find (read: their still relatively highly paid secretary) so that just skimming over your mail to filter it out will cost them more than half-way decent support. Throw in a CC to a regulator when appropriate. Much better experience than dealing with chatbots or call center wait lines before that.