I put in an honest review of a WiFi camera I bought from Amazon. It confirmed what other reviews were saying about the difficulty getting it to work and how the seller, a company in China, was trying to bribe you for a good review by withholding the promised memory card until after you gave them a 5 star review. My review was taken down, along with the others and I was barred from reviewing that device again, by the request of the seller. This speaks volumes about the integrity of the reviews on Amazon and I place little value in the ratings and comments.
A thing I noticed on amazon is that vendors are able to switch the actual product listed so that it looks like its got a billion great reviews, but then you read the reviews and it's for a completely different product. You're right. Amazon has become garbage.
This happens because they can add items to the page as options and those reviews are all lumped together. Then they delete the other item and it looks like the new one but with all the old reviews. Amazon doesn't care at all about this and its extremely frustrating.
Good point !! A few years back I was in the market for a digital camera and looked at Amazon reviews and found at the price I could budget for and had great reviews. Curious, I read some of the reviews had the first 20 or so were foe this camera but then I saw reviews for bird seed and other TOTALLY non related items !! Amazon should be held accountable for illegal marketing practices.
A major point of aggravation for me is when Amazon removed the ability for the seller and the buyer to communicate to each other. They also removed the ability for customers to contact each other and reply to reviews, because people could communicate and tell each other why a product sucked and recommend a better product. The same thing also happened when Netflix removed the option for viewers to rate movies and shows with the star system and leave reviews. They do not want their customers to have a voice.
The goal of these platforms is not for users/customers to get what they want/need - the goal is for the platform to make as much money as possible by sponsoring and/or boosting certain listings. In that manner, Amazon and Netflix are working exactly as intended
@@Eclipseballer1994 It's too bad "Fast Eddie" Lampert destroyed Sears. (The Board let him do it). It's what happens when you hire a non-retail guy to run a retailer (such as K-mart or Sears), and when you hire a non-football person to run a football team (Bengals) I welcome anything that offers me way to filter out the "non-name" lookalike products on online retailers.
The problem is people accepting it. Boycott this shit and stop buying from this disgusting organization! And stop Chinese sellers! They should be considered as funding a terrorist organization, since their government is exactly that!
@@Eclipseballer1994 How is Amazon making money if people keep refunding stuff and leaving the platform? You want to have as many clients possible and for those clients to spend as much as possible, and this behavior fails at both.
This is why I go past the 5-star reviews and read the ONE star reviews. If I see a few 1-star reviews with the SAME complaint, then I KNOW exactly how the product will perform!
Sellers are able to have Amazon yank reviews because the reviewers violate the "Community Guidelines" for writing a review. You can not complain about how long it took to get to your doorstep, how the seller jerked you around on a replacement, complain about where it was made, etc. You can only talk about the product. To get the best odds to make a 1 star review stick, laser focus on the essence of why the product sucks and write the review in one or two sentences of basic english(or other language that's relevant here, obviously). The goal is to make sure the arbitrator has to expend the least amount of mental energy to ascertain that no rule was violated when a seller contests a review. @@zenguro
Why even look at the 5 stars to begin with.. I know why I like the product I want to know why I won't like it. Products with no 1 star reviews are a pass.
There should be a class action law suit against Amazon for allowing reviews for past products to be attached to a different product. I said that in a review and I was banned from the review community.
They have a monopoly and pay now local rent or sales tax. They don't care it's basically a branch of the Chinese government destroying the country from the inside
I was looking at something just yesterday,& the Great reviews were ALL for an Unrelated product!!! I’ve been “Wise” to Amazon’s BS for a long time!!! I have been researching everything from measuring spoons to garage freezers, to items for entertaining to cooking out at a fire pit, from gardening oldies & newbies, to preserving foods requiring different methods,& Anything related to Food & Cooking, plus I’m often asked by family & friends to research items they’re looking to purchase, the Best possible products, whether limited budget or not, best place to buy,& best deal on the product, as well as pertinent information gathered regarding the products!!! I’ve been doing this coming up on 10years now😵💫🫣, with monthly items sent to my daughter, in my quest to stock her kitchen with Everything tool & gadget she would need to grow, make/cook, entertaining needs, outdoor kitchen needs, & preserve the best ways for the items-No! I’m Not a Doomsdayer, I’m a Proud Old Lady who gardened, & cooked from scratch my entire life, avoiding as much of our tainted food supply as possible, whose daughter is Far Beyond My talents,& I want Her to have what I could only Dream of having in my kitchen & all things food related, as well as the Mind Boggling advances the internet has opened my eyes to, as well as the Endless items so easy to get, that were impossible to get, or not even invented back in the day!!! I’m on a Very limited budget, & doing big Gifting for b’days & holidays is too hard on me, so I can gift & better coordinate accordingly through the year, with it all starting with a Christmas Gift being a puzzle(sometimes 2!) a month, bc she Loves puzzles,& I was getting a few odds & ends she needed in her kitchen as well! SHE enjoyed the anticipation of her next surprise Sooo much, & asked if we could continue on with items she needed for her kitchen, & I had really enjoyed it as well, so it All began, & has continued on!!! I Highly recommend it for other parents of Grateful children, either getting started, or who Love to cook, but aren’t able or willing to buy for themselves over family, or plain just can’t afford the extra things needed to develop or expand their cooking skills & types of foods!!! The hidden Bonuses are Multiple, especially in this fast paced world!!! Anyways!!! Nobody has mentioned 2 Very Important TELLs-reviews All being Dated within a month or so, whether currently or far back, with No other reviews, & a company running multiple products together in reviews!!! Lots of people don’t catch either, but the latter is missed by most, not noticing you have to look for which product the person bought & is reviewing, under their name!!! Too many don’t even bother looking beyond the ratings either, Or go to other websites, the company itself, or You Tube for reviews, & Don’t bother with price comparisons &/or Sales, or knowing that many times there’s offers of extra items when bought elsewhere!!! I also Highly recommend downloading the app to “Etsy”,& shopping there!!! If you aren’t already, whatever you may Think Etsy is, it’s No where Close to what it actually is!!! Yes! A Lot is Amazing Handmade items offered from talented people around the world, but there’s Sooo much Beyond That, with Vintage item Sellers, farmers, food makers, jewelers, & commercially made products as well, that you have Direct Communication with!!! And like with Amazon, you can make lists of items you are interested in purchasing, but With that, comes many who will offer you a discount, & you get immediate notifications on those items going on sale,& times of the sale’s ending!!! Plus you Are supporting Small Businesses!!!
How many of those reviews are ACTUALLY for this product though? That seems to be the latest scam. They relist completely different items on the same page and amazon doesnt wipe the reviews! So they sell a really cheap decent quality items for a while to farm for good reviews, then switch to a high dollar chinesium p.o.s. Any unsuspecting person clicks the item, sees 4.6 stars with 1000+ reviews and thinks "Wow. this is a good deal"... only to get a fire hazard in the mail or worse. In reality if you actually read through the reviews on, say, the $300 telescope you're looking at, you'll see things like "Best makeup mirror for under $5"...
I saw that on some Higher priced items as well...some ratings didn't matched the product. I have the feeling they sell a cheap good product, update the product page...that update is actually the placing a cheap product with a fully new high priced product.
Another thing i hate about amazon is they don't display reviews per product, they show reviews for that specific product page. Some products have say 3 different colors, red, green and blue. If you then click on say the red one for example, you'll still have all the reviews for the other colors even when they are irrelevant to what you are buying. Obviously colors dont really matter but when these small no name brands do this with products that are completely different from one another, its annoying. You'll see 1k reviews but then 2 of those would actually be for the one you are trying to buy.
I ordered branded microfibres cloths and received cheap alternatives. They weren’t even knock offs, just completely different. My review included photographs and was not allowed because it included information about packaging even though it didn’t.
Thats exactly the scumbag reply SCamazon gave me when I reported the IC sockets I'd recently ordered wich were thrown loose in a box which they themselves then crushed before shipping resulting in broken & bent pins.
A couple weeks ago I received a brand new NVME drive that had the seal on the boxed opened. Also when I search for products the first few pages of popular results are cheap alternatives usually, no name brands. It's unfortunate that low quality and cheap is the most popular items. Shows the state of America. Quality is going down the drain.
@@jeffgendron1959 Whats most disgusting is all the malls & local stores (even chains) are getting shut down en mass for that bullshit. I've done electronics for a living for the past 30+ years and the only "local" parts source left is over an hour away and entirely stocked by the same garbage as found on scamazon. Also charging the most outrageous prices. The place is also notoriously racist, only hiring their own ethnic group and refusing service to all others. That's a fairly large city (3.5 million at last count) the rest of the parts suppliers have been gone for over a decade and there used to be literal piles of them all over the city.
@@jeffgendron1959 Funny thing is I just replied to this and youtube deleted my reply as soon as I submitted it. I've worked in electroics over 30 years and its become impossible. The only remaining parts supplier is now over an hour away and its a sleazy hellhole that massively overcharges & only hires their own ethnic group, they also refuse service to those outside that group too. That's a city of 3.5 million at last count and used to have piles of electronics suppliers until 20 years ago (now down to the 1 chain for the past 10 years)
After buying protein shake from Amazon, and actually receiving a fake product, we have a rule in our house not to buy anything from Amazon that goes in or on the body.
I bought flaxseed oil that intentionally has a puck of flaxseed in the bottom to make the bottle feel very heavy. Supposedly from Canada, but extremely scammy.
Was the shake sold by Amazon or a third-party seller? Usually products shipped AND sold by Amazon are legit, but with third-party sellers, you never know.
It’s amusing that Harbor Freight has been working diligently to increase its performance and quality control on most of its products, increasing its volume and customer satisfaction - while Amazon has been going in the opposite direction.
i fix power plants for a living and most of the people work with buy their tools from there. not because theyre great. theyre not, some of their tools are more dangerous than useful, but some of their things are worth it simply for the warranty. a lot of HARD jobs break any tool, and harbor freight has the most hassle free warranty.
When buying from Amazon I ONLY look at 1, 2 , and 3 star reviews. The percentage of those reviews and their content is where the honesty is. It serves me well.
A lot of 1 star ones are just idiots though - "product was fine but arrived late" types of idiots. 2 and 3 stars are more helpful I agree, but then you're still creating a bias, are you really going to buy something where you only consider 3 stars to be valid? You really have to look at all the reviews.
Only thing I would ever buy from Amazon is shit that can't be found elsewhere (for example, there's that one book I've wanted to get that the (independent) author only sells there). The rest I'll find on better, more specializedplatforms, or just by going to the store myself.
My biggest issue with Amazon lately is they claim to have shipped something, then a couple days later when it should have arrived they send me an email and say they haven't shipped it yet. The initial shipping notification was a lie. This has been happening with increasing frequency.
This is happening to me right now. Ordered and item 4 days ago and it was supposed be here 2 days ago on the day it was supposed to be delivered by 10pm I got a notification at 8pm saying it's delayed for weather until the 13 2 extra days.
That happened to me once, but i blame ups for that more than amazon. Either way i got a $200 mattress for free. I didnt even ask for the discount, amazon customer service lady just said fuck it, its a refund, after waiting 3 weeks before it arrived. Ups sucks ass. Ive never had a good experience with them.
Another big issue on amazon is that 80% of the listings are the same product with different sellers. Thats because they are all made by the same factory and then sold to importers that all list the same garbage on amazon.
That's so obnoxious! Especially when Amazon singles out some of those sellers as featured "small businesses" and makes them out as some little mom and pop operating out of their garage. I completely understand that being a small business doesn't require you to manufacture every part, and there's certainly nothing wrong with making a business by selling other companies' stuff, but don't celebrate them for rebranding the same junk 17 other storefronts have done the exact same with.
@@myfavoriteviewer306 I wonder how Amazon defines "small business"? I ordered some welding equipment from Miller Electric. It was marked "This order supports a small business." Miller Electric is owned by ITW a fortune 500 company. If that counts as a small business, the phrase has lost all meaning.
I know someone who is a Vine reviewer, and she leaves brutally honest reviews as is required by the Vine TOS. The problem she has found is that multiple times she has received something that was actually high quality and she gave it a good review accordingly. Then she went through her reviews a few months later out of curiosity, and the products on some of the listings had changed. So the reviews were for something else entirely and often far worse. The most insidious is reviews for genuine 64GB memory cards which were then changed to those fake 1TB memory cards. Amazon seem to not care. I rarely use Amazon myself and I have been burned by fake reviews, which sucks.
I've been doing Vine for a little bit now, I try to make sure I mention the name of the product I'm reviewing to avoid that issue. I don't think I've come across an item that's changed completely since my review, but I have had a few items disappear, occasionally before I even get them.
I think they just can't check every page for correct updates and the company sells similar products( kids telescope gets replaced with high priced version) , the AI would really need to be sensitive to detect that. Remember in the old days of ebay when you updated the product it actually was blocked and reviewed.
@@MAGAMAN I never buy without reading the reviews AND LOOKING AT THE DATE OF THE REVIEWS. And click on the reviewer. And click on others. Many times, supposedly multiple reviewers are all reviewing the same random items. If I can find that, Amazon certainly can. Straight 5 star reviews? Completely fake. There has to a decent amount of 4 stars. I find a lot of 1 star reviews to be done by idiots. 1 star, I received the wrong product. If it was shipped from Amazon, that's not the seller's fault. But, it counts in the count.
When habitually and deliberately screwing people over in the name of ever increasing profits (which, as a side note, the workers don't get a fair share of) becomes the default mode of operation, we should definitely have a talk about the downsides of the current way we do capitalism, or maybe even capitalism in general.
Take it from someone employed there. There was a HUGE internal culture change when CEO reigns were handed off to Jassy. Prior, customer obsession was the lens everything was viewed through. Afterwards, it was just lip service. It's the reviews that prove this. Years ago, you could trash a product in a review, a company would complain and Amazon would tell them to go kick rocks and they'd leave it up on site. This allowing the customer to say what they felt like saying was so pervasive that even outright silly things such as a customer review of sugar free gummy bears resulting in a bathroom horror story that would have you cry laughing before the end was left up on the site. Companies that got caught botting their reviews would also get their selling privileges revoked. Nowadays, reviews are pruned intensely. Review botting is ignored. They do ridiculous things like asking for a photo to prove something didn't arrive to your house. It's sad, and it'll wreck the company in the end.
Yeah, I used to love Amazon(like 10 years ago), but have now been avoiding using them for years because everything has been getting worse from the website itself to the terrible customer service when you get screwed over by one of their sellers these days.
I know about those sugar free Gummy bears. A friend of mine ate a LOT of them. The alcohol sugar are the problem. Lets put it this way, for days he was in hell on the toilet. He will never eat those again.😱 I was lucky I only had just a couple
I almost filed a police report for theft. They refused to refund $2000 for nearly 2 months. First they said it comes back in 2 weeks, then they said 30 days, then they said longer... Then I told them I'd go to the media and file a police report and make public the records of their incompetence and withholding of my funds. Same day they refunded me. I bought a Corsair XENEON Flex 45" Curved Monitor and returned it for a manufacturing defect... Then they F*CKED with me for nearly 2 months with $2000 in limbo (that they were making interest off of and should be illegal but banks do the same thing, always have) I will NEVER use their services including Prime or order from them ever again.
Exactly why I go into real stores in person to buy stuff like that. But for me its become impossible as all the electronics stores I used to buy parts from are all now long long gone due to the the scumfest practices of scamazon / evilbay / ALIitsucks and their ilk.
How about someone crawling under a Silverado pickup truck, cutting the entire fuel fill hose (inner and outer hoses) in order to quickly remove the gasoline from the truck. Pickup is low on gas, I drove to the station, they gas went right out the bottom. Repair cost was $400 but I did it for under half and it was a PITA job.
I'd never returned anything to Amazon in 6+ years of Prime ordering multiple deliveries per month. In the past year, I've returned 5 items. It's gotten insane.
Yeah started with Amazon what 10+ years ago, never had an issue, really have not ordered anything for the last 2-3 years. I just took a look around there thanks to this video and was surprised at how few brands I did recognize. I could not find many of the brands I had bought in the past. If it wasn't for the Movies and Music channels I probably would drop them. I even noticed that the fast shipping isn't what it use to be either, some prime items are weeks out and orders in the same package over 25 dollars were free but if they came in separate shipments there is a charge in some cases. They use to be cheaper than retail now they are the same price or more in some cases.
I reviewed a bluetooth receiver for my car about 6-7 years ago, I was happy enough with it and gave it a decent review. Cut to about 2 years ago, I decided to read my old reviews to find this one now sitting on a page selling a vaccuum cleaner. They can just edit product pages that have high review scores, leaving the reviews in place even though they're for a totally different product, it's absolutely stupid and shouldn't be legal.
It probably isn't (False Advertisement... Any law in that field really). Problem is.... In the US alone, heavy Amashit Lobbying would just make any lawsuit/LE action go NOWHERE until people forgot, then dumped away. In EU, their nobility has the focus elsewhere, namely do anything to stop any group right of Joseph Stolin from firther getting power in their member states, than focus on hetting this BS out the way. Amashit led by Bezzos will just throw wads and wads of moolah to not do what should be their MINIMUM obligations for their own service platform
So that's why I sometimes can tell when reading a review that it's for a completely different product! I just mistakenly had given Amazon the grace of assuming their platform had a glitch! Evil greed.
You can read about this in the amazon seller forums daily. It's been going on for over 7 years now, with Amazon never plugging the holes. People speculate that amazon employees are in on the take and change product pages for the scammers that sell such fraudulent products. There is so much of it going on now that the entire platform should be shut down as a public hazard.
I also have noticed that Amazon solicits my review on products very quickly after purchase and most reviews are made by people who have purchased items very recently before they've even had it long enough to see if the item is going to hold up/continue to function for any length of time .
Something you didn't mention is item binning. We do a fair amount of repair work on furnace wiring. We have specifically purchased from one listing with high ratings, name brand, specified metal gauge and high temperature rating. We put them into service. Time goes by and we start getting calls related to furnaces, smoke smells, small fires, etc. In every case it was these connectors. We then started comparing the connectors from two purchases from the same listing. Different products, but exact same packaging and specs!! The fake ones were thinner and just couldn't handle the current, so they were overheating and causing cascade failures in the components on which they were installed. Counterfeit products binned together with the real deal on the same listing. You may never know until it's too late. These practices could put people's homes and lives at risk!
If you’re not buying that stuff from like DigiKey or Allied Electronics or Newark or another dependable distributor; you’re really doing it wrong, sorry. For a mainstream business like yours, buy brand name stuff from authorized distributors only. And ignore Amazon.
I have two extensions for Amazon that helps a lot. Fakespot, which looks over reviews for patterns that imply fake reviews and gives you a rating. And cultivate, which tells you where the product is from. And now I have a rule: if a brand isn't consistent on where their products are from, it's a bad product. If the brand (not manufacturer) is from China and has a D or lower on fake spot, it's a bad product. But it would be nice if Amazon would just clean up their store front.
This isn't just an amazon problem, this is a problem everywhere online. It's at the point where I only read negative reviews these days because they're the only ones I can trust to have honest feedback from an actual customer.
Cant even trust them really. There are a good number of brands I know of that have good to great products but because of either rumored actions of the companies or their stances people will bad mouth the companies and products. The idea of "User Reviews" is good, until you realize humans will lie and cheat the system just to spite someone else, which makes the system effectively worthless.
I don't read 5-star reviews. lol I'm close to not reading the 4-star reviews now. And depending on the item, I don't get it at Amazon, if it delays my project, so be it.
Yeah it's everywhere also in indonesia here , to the point if I really like the product I write a ridiculous funny review but a genuine satisfied with the product just so others know this is from real human real customer experience not bot / not paid reviewer etc
Some of the negative reviews are put up by nefarious competitors. In general, I'd skip both the 1-star and 5-star reviews, unless they looked very plausible.
I’m a jewelry artist, made the mistake once of buying jump rings on Amazon, never ever again. They were so flimsy I could bend them with my fingers and the slightest pressure bends them. Practically useless. The “stainless steel nickel free” ear hooks also broke me out badly. Definitely have nickel in them
Oh, you're going to love this. My sister bought my mother a "brand new" vacuum cleaner off of Amazon. We received the box, which was beat to heck. I helped her open it and oh my, I wish I had been recording. Not only was the vacuum used, it was FILTHY. I'm not being hyperbolic. Filth, dirt, and small rocks poured out of the box and all over my mother's floor & covered part of my pants in dirt. The inside of the dust bin had large patches of old, dark dirt & grime hardcore stuck to it. The vacuum itself was covered in scratches and scuffs and in general looked beat to high heck. By all appearances, the vacuum appeared as though it had been used for a lengthy period of time in an industrial setting and instead of throwing it away, someone sold it as "new" on amazon. That incident is why it is now common practice for both my mother and I to record video of any unopened boxes from Amazon as well as record the complete unboxing of anything that we get from Amazon. It's also why I generally prefer to shop elsewhere first, and this played a role in why I cancelled Prime. This whole 4-and-a-half star issue routinely results in "meh" products, but this? This was disgusting. edit: fixed typo
I ordered 'plastic bird spikes' that were installed and returned, then sold to me. Like 30 feet of the stuff. mounting screws still stuck in it. i was not allowed to leave a review with the picture. I kept it as it was re-usable.
I have run into this problem increasingly. I have received several products which are obviously and clearly used - at best - counterfeit at worst. I have a healthy Amazon ordering history with limited returns so they're usually pretty good about making it right, but the fact that this has become as prevalent a strategy by Amazon sellers - without any pushback from Amazon itself - has further driven me to consider Amazon as essentially a slightly better Temu.
I haven't trusted Amazon reviews for 10 years. They first started showing fake reviews and preventing proper filtering by categories for books. 95% of books are 4 or 5 stars and 90% of those are pure dog $hit. Their whole rating system is a pay-to-play scam. It's actually become harder for me to find good books to read since Amazon.
I remember doing a lot of reviews on Amazon where some were reward reviews but there was one seller who offered more money to make my 4 star review to a 5 star review where I refuse because I want people to know about the fixable flaws so I put 4 stars to show there was something wrong. I think I did about 100 to 200 reviews on Amazon which is a lot for someone on a tight budget and post about the flaws on the cheap stuff to keep it last longer for limited budget people.
Bad books are not a new thing... especially when it comes to electronics and computers. That goes back to before the first days of personal computers in the early 70's. Back before then we ordered from places like Allied Electric; Burnstein Appleby; Newark Electronics; and yes ... Radio Shack. Times change. You must continuously pay attention. And buying branded products usually turns out to be pretty stupid. In fact, you can buy Bell and Howell now and get awful stuff, because they went bankrupt and somebody bought their name. Pay attention!
This is EXACTLY why a container of actual, brand name Sta-Kons cost well over 100 dollars. Connectors are something where you definitely get what you pay for. Never stop, Louis. You're really an asset to us all.
Wago as well. You can buy some non name brand Wago and throw them in your wall but when your hot wire slips out while you push an outlet in and turn your breaker on to a pop you know why you shou;d've paid the extra $15 for Wagos.
@@majstealth Deutch connectors are another really expensive connector, and there are starting to be some really convincing fakes available. It really comes down to "if you know, you know" when it comes to this stuff. I wish more youtubers would talk about this stuff, because the vast majority of people out there don't know what they're buying. Louis is only one man, he has only so much reach.
During lockdown in the UK, I used Amazon to buy a lot of tools and DIY items. Most were junk and returned. Drill bits that failed, bent set squares, poor quality screws. When you go to return the low price items, they would often tell you not to bother sending back.
The biggest problem is Amazon have DELIBERATELY removed the option to 'filter by seller' now, so you cannot search for products 'sold and shipped' by Amazon anymore, meaning a much higher risk of buying something counterfeit and/or, quite frankly, crap. Edit: third party sellers are what have ruined Amazon, and it's by Amazon's own choice that this has happened.
All retail sites allow 3rd party sellers. I only buy stuff sold by or shipped buy amazon. I am not going to risk buying crap from a 3rd party seller. There are select items that I will buy.
@@BrooklynBalla Yeah unless you know if that company is legit its super hard. The last thing I bought from a 3rd party seller was a set of crochet towels from some lady/company named deb something. Being that its a gift for a neighbor it was a risk and since they are US based its not a bad deal. One item I tried to buy I never got because the seller went inactive. I may still try and order it again yet doubt they are active. Yet amazon has not taken the item or seller down.
I’ve had no problems with the stuff I’ve ordered from Amazon. I read the product reviews, but I never read the 4 or 5 star reviews. I only read the 1 star reviews. Those are the ones believe more.
For popular products, 1 star review is a good way to target bomb competition product. 2-3 stars are where you see actual users putting complaints to product.
Pro tip: When buying from HD, place an on-line order for delivery or pick-up from your local store so that an employee has to pick the items. Items not in-stock will ship from corporate. Corporate is a separate entity. If you return something that was supplied by corporate at the local store they have to return it to corporate instead of adding it to their inventory at the store, even though everything is on the same invoice.
💯 that is what I started doing after watching a video on the Torque Test Channel of them trying to buy a tool that was supposed to be in stocks. They recommend pick up in store online ordering. If what I'm after is in stock, it takes about 30 minutes for the order to be ready for pickup.
They have wrecked the 'Prices: Low to High' filter, which was the most useful filter for many people. You don't get the same products listed when you choose that filter. And if you filter by 'Recommends', somehow more people have recommended extremely expensive products over cheaper versions of the same thing. The whole filter system is no longer about re-arranging information for customer convenience, but manipulation.
The filters and sorting features get worse and worse every year. I get all these crap sponsored results popping up and the filters and sorting don't really work very well anymore. I want to find what I want to find. I'm buying stuff from you Amazon. You're already making money off me. Stop making me sift through a bunch of sponsored products that I don't want and are garbage in an attempt to make more money.
Agreed. Here's an example. I open up incognito tab to get results unbiased by my past searches and profile. I search for statistics textbook and I get 7,446 results. They should all have prices, right? I sort from low to high and now get 642 results. Where did all the other books go? Now I sort from high to low and I get 688 results. WTF Amazon? Makes no sense!! Now I choose bestsellers and I get 3290 results. So, you're telling me you have 3,290 statistics textbooks books that are bestsellers? This is obviously BS. Now I go back to the default sort of "featured" and I have 7,448 results, 2 more than I started with, btw. This is just one example of how messed up sorting has gotten.
@@RA-lu6mb I'm starting to mistrust them in other ways too. This may be paranoia, but I've noticed that if I wishlist something, or even check it out, then want to purchase later, the price has mysteriously gone up. I know flight companies used to do that, so when I travelled, I'd check prices logged into an account on Firefox, then if I wanted to purchase, I'd use a different account on Chrome. On Amazon, I bookmarked a guitar gizmo a month ago, wanted to finally buy it last week - it had gone up 25 quid! I found it at the lower price with a music company I'd never checked out before. It may be paranoia - we have inflation, and the holiday season, so prices may naturally rise. But 'surge' pricing is becoming widespread - it's normal on Uber, and I think Air BnB - so why not Amazon? If you have shown an interest beforehand, why not stick a couple of Pounds on it and hope the customer doesn't care enough to start looking for a cheaper version.
You also get many many less hits when even using just the "low to high" filter, sometimes even reducing it to just 10% of the stock search, which is asinine. Unfortunately there's not much to do when you live in certain countries and local stores (even online) are literally trying to scalp you far more than any scalper on Amazon, or don't have any products.
Unfortunately this is true and there will be no lawsuit to fix it because the Government in whole is on the side of destroying the market. Every cheap piece of junk we buy is a gift from the U.SA. to China. When China can ship something to the USA for pennies, but it costs American citizens a fortune to send something across the states and even into Canada, you know that the Government is not on your side.
So true... I'm getting really tired of having to wade through a blizzard of cheap Chinese junk to try to find something on Amazon. It's become a HUGE problem!
Yeah, you see a bunch of companies with "names" you can't even pronounce and then try to make sense of the descriptions which often leave out important specs, you know it's crap from China.
Wow I am AMAZED that Louis characterizes HOME DEPOT as carrying quality products! No! NO NO NO! They carry mostly Chinese Garbage themselves! Thye wiped out the mo & pop corner hardware stores which carried quality American hardware by fooling customers into buying this cheap Chinese Garbage! If you buy a toilet part at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR. If you buy a faucet at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR! I learned my lesson and started buying direct from North Carolina, until even North Carolina (Wolverine Brass) was destroyed by cheap chinese shit products !! Wolverine Brass, in business for 100 years, destroyed by ONE-YEAR china-brass, which costs 5x more, isn't ceramic, because wolverine lasts 30 years+ and ONE-YEAR china-brass lasts exactly as long as the name says it does ... Now "American Standard" is 100% chinese-owned, and it's total shit!
Another issue is pricing. Amazon used to have low prices on branded products. Now, you have to check everything . In addition, I have seen prices change between searches. Get interrupted by a phone call, search again, the same product is $3 more now. Honesty, integrity, and transparency will the currency of the 21st century. Amazon better learn that or they will end up like Sears.
Most like to rail on Jeff Bezos, but Amazon's been in the dumps since Andy Jassy became chief. A look into Andy Jassy and his early life should tell you the key things about him.
Yeah, that price switch crap is bizarre! I almost never rebuy anything I've bought just out of spite because they always raise the price thinking you'll rebuy it anyway. Mf'ers!
They buy us these no-name crimps at work. Nothing more frustratining than being soaked with sweat working in a hot enivorment and your crimp slips apart in your hands with barely any tension.
Two problems with amazon reviews: 1) they can be bought by sellers, 2) seller can list something cheap people like for the price (phone case maybe), leave good reviews and then the seller completely repurposes the listing for something expensive that magically has 3k positive reviews 🎉
don't buy shit that doesn't accept returns. Not sure why this whole thread is acting like Amazon is an epidemic of bullshit. I'm probably well past a thousand things I ordered from Amazon last year. Only remember a couple things that were maybe questionable. Sent them back. It's really not a problem at all. Like, a zero issue.
I posted a completely honest poor review of an item I got from Amazon over a year ago and received a warning from Amazon stating something to the affect that I was on some kind of ‘review probation’ with them. I kind of laughed and forgot all about it at the time. Several months ago I received another terrible quality item so reviewed it as such, Amazon then suspended me from reviewing and removed all my other reviews going back years. It’s like they are now consider themselves some kind of censorship authority and only let you say what they want other customers to hear to be sucked into buying bad items.
That’s totally a thing! I only review items that I’ve been critical to (thus explaining the bad rating), but the stuff I,ve like I just give a good rating. Just found out most of my reviews were took down. Some from many years ago.
Thanks for the heads up. I don’t order really anything from them anyway. They used to deliver things within a day or so. Not anymore. You can’t believe anything people post for reviews, even on YELP, Ebay, These companies just don’t want anyone to criticize them in any way.
Happened to me a couple of times. I reviewed a ratchet belt (gave it 2 stars) where the buckle kept coming apart from the belt. They said the review did not meet their standards but wouldn't say why.
I did an honest bad review and have gotten 6 emails from them. They are trying to send me their shitty product for free to take down my video. Last message "Hello, Could you minnd reply us???????? Please believe, communication is the best way to solve problem. I am lookinng forward to your reply. Merry Christmas.
I closed my Amazon account after watching a Panorama (BBC) documentary on the ethics of their business practices. They openly stated that their aim was to build a comprehensive database about everybody on the planet, whether they were an Amazon customer or not. The show also featured a guy who had his own line of motorcycle clothing who decided he wanted do change suppliers. Amazon said "Nah, you can't do that, we own the rights to the product" and that if he tried, they'd take him to court, effectively putting him out of business. Disgusting.
Wow that sounds illegal as hell, they need to get sued!! They cutoff my ability to review products years ago…….despite writing many lengthy honest reviews that would help many people determine the experience of using various products. Now corrupt vendors are running amok censoring people who will not put up with their bullshit and customers can no longer talk to each other, which was one of the best parts of the reviews! At this point I watch several product reviews on UA-cam, I no longer solely trust what is written on Amazon given their actions over the years and poor censorship. I remember in a comment section about cars, some Chinese company was shipping rocks to customers in a box who ordered brake sets. Because the shipping and return times were so long, customers wouldn’t be able to secure refunds. You can’t make this shit up!! 😂😂
To be devils advocate on the rights to the product bit; many fools fail to read and understand their business contracts before signing and then try to blame the other party for being shady after the fact.
I've been a consulting software engineer for 48 years working virtually entirely on top-tier projects for companies like Intel (the first digital video to ever run on PCs), Bell Labs, AT&T, Mayo Clinic (sequencing SARS-CoV-2 genomes), NASDAQ, the NYSE, & half of the major banks & financial institutes on Wall Street (as well as a stint with the alphabet intel agencies on cyberwarfare with a TS//SCI (Code Word) clearance). Although I just retired for the 3rd time at 75, Amazon has been trying to get me to work for them for a rate well into 3 figures an hour for the past 3 years. I refuse to work for any company that has a customer-hostile & worker-hostile corporate culture & will always take a cut in my rate to work for companies with integrity looking for quality systems. American for-profit businesses' software quality has dropped from the top 3 in 2000 to outside of the top 25 (and the money they pay so-called "senior software engineers" is a third of what they paid in the '90s except for small, special systems that truly do need competent programmers like the AWS cloud project they wanted to contract me for. It's website & search algorithms would get you flunked out of a freshman Computer Science class. Jenny Lawson, author of the hilarious book "Furiously Happy," has a website, theblogess.com, where she posts the most bizarre items Amazon suggests would be of interest to her every day. I always get a good laugh out of what their learning-disabled algorithms pick out for me. Bras & romance novels? I'm male & don't cross-dress (or I would have married a woman my own clothes size 😁).
Nowadays when I'm online shopping I check the on site reviews for the lowest ratings because those usually have real user experience of problems regarding the product.
Local guys are too lazy and dumb to do DELIVERY. THAT is the fasting-growing market sector and they COULD do it locally with a small solar-recharged electric van, but their brains are too narrow-minded to do it. "We always ... We never ...."
We have an amazing hardware store in the next county over that has hardware, Hallmark cards, collectibles and their prices competitive and quality is #1. No more Amazon junk.
Only problem? They're small. I go there first b/c I gotta walk my dog, anyway. And they have cookies for them. Or call and ask, which is always nice to have a guy who knows his butt from a hole in the ground.
I am AMAZED that Louis characterizes HOME DEPOT as carrying quality products! No! NO NO NO! They carry mostly Chinese Garbage themselves! They wiped out the mom & pop corner hardware stores which carried quality American hardware by fooling customers into buying this cheap Chinese Garbage! If you buy a toilet part at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR. If you buy a faucet at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR! I learned my lesson and started buying direct from North Carolina, until even North Carolina (Wolverine Brass) was destroyed by cheap chinese garbage products !! Wolverine Brass, in business for 100 years, destroyed by ONE-YEAR china-brass, which costs 5x more, isn't ceramic, and wolverine lasts 30 years+ and ONE-YEAR china-brass lasts exactly as long as the name says it does! Recently I went to ace hardware & bought a nut & bolt and the nut just slides up and down the bolt, no need to twist it !! China Garbage Strikes Again!!
How much do you all want to bet that this product listing from this company will remain up in spite of it being a dangerously poorly manufactured product? Amazon claimed to remove the entire independent repair and refurbishing industry from Amazon for the safety of the customer. Because it was for your safety. I wonder what they'll do here.
All big companies like Amazon, Meta, Google, eBay do sometimes a big purge, but after a while they allow the same practices again, because if they are being strict they start losing money.
After reading through the amazon seller forums about the blatant review manipulation and scams that are posted daily, it's clear that it is unsalvageable. Amazon has allowed itself to be infested with so much fraud (mostly from China) that there should be a historical lawsuit to shut it down as a public hazard. Amazon makes money regardless of who is scammed. They don't care about the buyer or the seller. Unfortunately, nothing will change until people just say no to scamazon.
I was once sent a card with a cheap Amazon purchase offering a $10 gift card for a 5-star review. The product sucked too, so I left a 1-Star review talking about both the bad product and the bribe for a good review. Amazon took the review down because "Comments on the sellers actions are irrelevant to the item", despite those actions meaning that the 5-star reviews are literally purchased, indicating false quality.
I don't even bother leaving reviews on Amazon anymore. It used to be a good system, customers helping out other customers with their choices. But now it's just pointless. Once they blocked an honest 5-star review of mine for unspecified reasons, probably because their bots or whoever third-world employees weren't able to understand what I had written (in my native language). That's where I decided to not waste my time anymore with writing reviews.
i work for amazon and it feels antihuman in its design, it feels like jeff bezos actually hates humans. Working there has led me to never ordering from Amazon online, i feel disrespected and taken advantage of by amazon on a daily basis 🎉
Amazon didn't go to crap until 2015 or 2016. That was when they allowed chinese sellers on the platform. All the junk started showing up then and displacing real products and also killed off many of the regular 3P sellers.
Etsy too has begun to destroy itself. It used to be that you could sell only things you made or items over 20(?) years old. You'd be a fool now if you thought Etsy was still following this rule. I see so much that had to have been imported from a low-wage country. And yet Etsy doesn't care.
China rocks. Not their fault. 100% amazon’s fault. Thousands of shady, scammy people in the USA as well. The platform is the one who bears responsibility.
Why does @riy0h's comment say 4 replies (presumably 5 now that I am replying) but only one (maybe 2 now that I am replying) replies show up? What is UA-cam blocking?
4 months ago or so ago I bought a surge protector on Amazon. When I finally got it, I noticed that the switch felt strange and something was blocking it from turning on. When I pulled the bottom off, I was absolutely mortified to find that it was constructed to just be a small voltage step-down transformer running an LED for the surge protector section, with everything being bare tinned 16 gauge tin wire with everything just being wrapped around screws. It said it was rated for 2000 watts, nothing indicated it was rated for that. I returned it immediately because it was an electrical fire waiting to happen. After a month or so, I decided to go back and write a review for the surge protector, only to find that the entire seller's library had been completely changed, and they were now selling beauty products. That was the final straw for me, and I'm not avoiding that demon site like the plague.
You'd be equally mortified of the power strips being sold at Home Despot, Lowes and Walmart. They're all built down to a cost and often have bare connections like that inside them.
The item ID switcharoo is so insanely common lately, feels like 1/4th or so of the items I look at on Amazon are sold on top of some spoofed ID that had a good rating.
Some products you’ll look at the reviews and it’s all for a completely different product! They can just keep the listing with the good reviews, change the title & picture and everything to a new product, and that’s evidently A-OK.
@@AlchemicSoul That's a common theme across basically all of the online "marketplaces". The seller will put a multi-item listing and have the cheapest item in the listing as the front-runner to get page views.
My experience to date is excellent customer service and delivery. However the products have of late been so poor quality, I hardly use Amazon now., and do not trust the reviews.
@@SalamHerbs-db5nt Or "Wish". The problem is we are making it easier for the Chinese manufacturers to sell their "knockoffs" by purchasing this Chinese Garbage. President Trump knew this and this is why he made harsh trade deals and penalties for the Chinese. It made it more difficult for the Chinese to sell their garbage at such a low price to Americans. A customer could see they could buy a name-brand product for just a small amount more than the Chinese Garbage because of tighter trade deals with China. Once Trump was out of office, Biden and the Democrats rolled back those restrictions and penalties on trade with China and once again, the cheap China crap was "Cheap" in price, once again. China even has its own warehouses in different places in California so they can "beat" the requirements of things being "sold" from American companies vs direct from China. Basically, the game is rigged against American companies trying to manufacture and sell quality products. Oddly, many of these quality products even come from the same China manufacturers making the cheap garbage the difference is in the quality control on what the name-brand products demand with their product vs the cheap garbage China knockoffs.
I bought a phone on Amazon that was specifically marked as unlocked. I plugged in my SIM and it worked. I went on vacation and lo-and-behold. It's locked. But because it's been more than 90 days, Amazon is washing their hands of it. My options are basically a small claims suit at this point.
An unlocked phone means it will accept any SIM card. If your SIM worked on your home network but not when on vacation, that's a roaming issue or a cellular radio band issue and has nothing to do with the phone being unlocked. You either needed to change the settings to enable roaming, make sure your account is set up correctly with your carrier, or make sure your phone has the right cellular radio bands needed for use where you're going to be. Unlocked doesn't mean it will automatically work everywhere, especially if you're traveling internationally.
@reasonitician Because you didn't have service on the network you were trying to use. An unlocked phone refers to the ability to put any active SIM into it. Locked phones are locked to the cellular provider that sells them (i.e. phones that AT&T sells directly are SIM locked to AT&T) If it worked on your cell network at home and then didn't when you were roaming, either your cell carrier doesn't have a roaming agreement where you were traveling, your phone lacked the cellular radio bands to access the network where you were, your account wasn't set up for roaming, or roaming needed to be turned on in the phone settings. Unlocked doesn't mean your phone magically works everywhere automatically. What is your cell provider at home and where were you traveling?
@@dwboston1Bro, you've written a god damn novel trying to explain what's going on, despite being so ungodly uninformed that it hurts. You need to actually read what people say. The phone literally said "I am rejecting this SIM because I'm locked to a network". It's not a radio issue, it's not a roaming issue, it's a fucking anti-feature that should never have existed in the first place.
Thanks to Amazon, I care about brands more now than ever. Unfortunately these fly by night brands have left me distrusting many of the faceless/nameless "brands" on Amazon. I've personally had a handful of bad experiences where the seller has offered me total refunds and to keep the product to ensure I don't leave a bad review.
"Brands" dont matter like they did, these days they are ALL being contract manufactured in China in the same factories, they just put different stickers and things on them
@@HobbyOrganist “brands” may go to the lowest cost factory at the lowest cost spec. But name brands still have a reputation to keep. While some of the stuff is made in the same factories, they may very well be built to higher specs, use higher quality components, or have additional QC steps to greatly increase your odds of getting a working product. Hate to say it, the Chinese are capable of making high quality products, if that’s what the buyer is looking for. Unfortunately they’re also capable of making utter crap and selling it for pennies.
One of the things that always bugs me when I shop on Amazon is that the crap never goes away. It doesn't matter what filter you use or what brands you ask for. The cheap, typically Chinese, garbage is on every single page. It takes hours to find something if you know what you're looking for.
If you try to filter it returns even more crap. I do remember when searching for something was EASY, now you would try to look for an item and would show you even things that are not even related. A few weeks ago I bought a "cheap" heater and it had good reviews and all, still I told my fiancée that probably was going to be not very good, turns out it's even worse, and we only kept it because welp, we need it and don't have time to look for another one. I wanted to buy a really cheap and crappy one we ended spending the double and the thing feels like it's going to fall apart any second, the plastic is worse than something someone could 3dprint... still we kept it. Amazon makes less and less sense and it makes aliexpress being a better option because at least there things are cheap and it's the same shitty quality.
Excellent point. These days, all the search engines have become crap because sellers utilize some sorts of search optimization softwares that make sure their product shows up in search results if it has even the faintest relation to what you searched for.
when shopping online in canada you will find that home depot and walmart are often just repackaging that same garbage at a higher price. but you can also find stuff on the home depot shelf (like DAP spray foam insulation) at half the price of amazon sellers...
I stopped using Amazon last year and my personal finances have improved no end. I treated it like an addiction, which in hindsight I think it was. Went cold turkey and after three months I really didn’t miss it. I encourage people to do the same.
i typically use it more to watch tv shows i enjoy like The Grand Tour, The Tick and Invincible.. since living in poverty and having food stamps, i get it for $6 which i am also 50 miles from the closest Walmart so that can be expensive in both time and fuel. use it how it was designed.. like a swap meet where you tag stuff and buy it when they rock bottom price to move the trash out of inventory to make room for things that will sell, snap up the things out of the trash because even garbage can have something of worth!
it's not just amazon, other retailers like walmart are also now allowing third party products and becoming similarly just an open marketplace to sell things, which has resulted in tons of cheap garbage dropshipper products flooding in
I started noticing all the fake reviews over 10 years ago. I contacted Amazon to advise them that the reviews for some items I was interested in were totally fake. I was asked how I knew this and I told them because the review is not even about the specific product but of some other product totally. Since that time it has increased 100 fold. I no longer trust Amazon products as much of them are Chinese knockoffs…its truly sad how far our country has fallen!
Two words: Consumer Confidence. When customers can no longer be sure what they’re buying, consumers will lose confidence in the market and it will collapse. In a corrupt country like ours with a government that’s never seen a mega-merger it didn’t approve, we have more and more businesses that can’t afford to fail. It also means quality goods become harder to find because low quality goods flood the market. They arrange exclusivity deals with companies like Wal Mart and suddenly the shelves are flooded with low quality garbage all from one or two obscure companies. And because the store depends on those limited brands, they jack up the prices. I went to Wal Mart recently and couldn’t even get a Master Lock padlock. Only one or two brands were available, ugly low quality garbage and not even cheap! Another issue is some products- like the one in the video - are dangerous if they fail. It’s not just 6 bucks wasted, somebody’s house burns down! Again these types of market situations are not new - the government should be regulating against things like this. It’s the reason companies can’t be allowed to get too big. But all the checks and balances that once kept our country functioning have been “deregulated” by extremist, fanatical republicans (and I’m not against all republican ideals per say, some are necessary). But the modern Republican Party isn’t even conservative or republican- it’s a radical authoritarian oligarchy, which uses fear to get the poor and middle class to vote against their own interests, in favor of the rich.
This video nails it. In the past, brick and mortar stores vetted products before putting them in their shelves because they want to avoid returns. This is totally missing now
One issue is, because Amazon is really shitty towards Brands. Often times a Brand sells something on Amazon, Amazon will see it sells well so they come in and produce a "Amazon Essentials" version of it and sell it cheaper while making it appear on top of the list. That makes Brand sellers just not bother with Amazon, they know... the guys that want quality will find them wherever it is they sell their product.
Bingo. I knew a guy who made a decent living selling yoga mats, then Amazon went to the same factory & produced an "Amazon Basics" version & undercut his prices. He couldn't afford to compete.
most of us are buyng crap based on he price so i dont see the issue. assuming most things we actually buy are crap then give it me cheaop, its the same thing anyway 9 times out of 10. If its quality one wants then you buy the brand you want and the cheap stuff is irrelevant.
@@harrysibben7583 In America it is called Amazon Business Sales. I have an account on Amazon Business Sales and one on just regular Amazon. I have noticed even my search results for the same things are different. It's like they know that people in "The Trades" or I think you call them, "Tradies", know the difference between quality products and Chinese Garbage LOL. However, if I scroll down low enough, I will encounter the Chinese Crap on the Amazon Business Sales as well. It's just the more quality name-brand products are listed first in the "search". But if no one is selling the quality brand-name products then all you get in the search results is Chinese Garbage LOL. Other websites have this same issue, especially Walmart with their sellers outside of just Walmart. In America, they call them "Pro-Sellers" or 3rd Sellers". Basically, they are doing the Amazon trick and allowing other sellers to sell thru their website on products Walmart may not carry OR Walmart does carry and Walmart is so much cheaper on the price you will want to order it from Walmart LOL. It all stems down to sh*tty search systems within those websites. They don't give you the option of filtering out the garbage even though in some instances you should be able to filter the garbage out. Same thing with Ebay where people are just inserting keywords in their descriptions and thus their no-brand name garbage gets included with the quality products.
When I do shop on Amazon I always check who the seller is and make sure it's coming from a brand I recognize for things like this. Had to do this recently for 3M command strips because none of the stores I went to had the size I wanted in stock. Had to wade through lots of knock offs to find the real 3M ones though. Luckily many of the knockoffs did have bad reviews saying they were garbage so I did not fall victim.
There's another issue: It's known that some "companies" would put up a listing for an item on Amazon, wait until it got a lot of good reviews, then completely change the listing (which kept the reviews for the previous listing) and then sell the new, super junky item, under the old listing's reviews.
I see this all the time on Amazon and it drives me crazy. I'll be reading the reviews and realize the reviews are for a different model or sometimes a completely different item altogether. I wish there was an easy way to report this.
Profit is all that matters. Honesty, integrity, ethics, and quality are for Chumps! 💪😎✌️ Ya gotta cheat people if ya wanna get ahead! Mo' munneh means mo' munneh. "Customers" are a dime a dozen. Health is wealth, might is right.
The other day I was looking for a pendrive, and a lot of reviews mentioned the lenght of the hose. Turned out the reviews belonged to an air compressor hose replacement (of exceptional quality, according to the reviews). The seller had changed the product to a crappy pendrive, but kept the hundreds of old, 5 stars reviews.
Yeah, and affecting his employees in some cases, his fulfillment centres worked people literally to death. He spends is "lottery winnings" as he called it on di**o-shaped rockets instead of reinvesting that money into the places his business owned and people working for him.
Well, if people with money that feel they have the right to tell you how to live your life bothers you, I have some unfortunate, life-shattering news about politics/politicians that is really going to ruin your day..... 🤣🤣🤣
You are spot on! I cancelled Prime and stopped using Amazon as my go to e-store. Chinese junk in literally every category with nearly no oversight by Amazon and these sellers are free to break whichever rule they wish. I recently bought a tablet and the seller falsified more than half of the listed specs, even key items like the amount of memory and display resolution. My rule is simple, no matter the price, if it's junk or fake specs, I will return the item. Luckily, I am near Kohl's and Whole Food, so I just pop in to return without incurring too much out of pocket cost. Incidentally, I travel to China for work and even visit factories. The surprising thing is that most Chinese people don't buy local no-name junk. Most of the factories' outputs are purely going to Amazon to be sold in the west!! Amazon is absolutely the dumping ground for crap that even Chinese people won't want.
It's worse than that, they are sending this junk here to fill up our landfills and reduce e-waste polution of Chinese mainland. It's literally *intentionally* malicious. Same with certain substances I can't name because youtube will shadowban me again - the ones that cause a lot of OD deaths. It's a proxy war, they have been on the offensive for a while.
China is a low-to-no trust society. Every Chinaman understands that every other Chinaman is just trying to rip him off for the most money possible - all the time. In the west we're being conned by applying high trust assumptions to these people and they are taking full advantage of it. They literally laugh at how stupid the buyers are.
When I buy things like drives or memory, I search for known brands and try to look for the store. Amazon is notorious for selling fake SD cards that say 256GB but they're really relabelled 2GB. It's turning into a direct pipeline to Chinese fake factories. They're burning down customer trust with all the drop shippers and bad sellers. I didn't even know about the problems for sellers.
The only brand on Amazon you can trust that isn't a huge name is Silicon Power. They're still a name brand, but they have SSD's for dirt cheap compared to other name brands.
This is why I've stopped buying important stuff from Amazon. I still buy books and music that I can't find elsewhere but Amazon has pretty much turned into a dollar store with significant markup. I've noticed this over the last, maybe, year and half.
My rule is 'if it really doesn't matter then I can buy it on Amazon', if it is important at all, then I go to a more reputable site, preferably one dedicated to one product line. There are a few exceptions, but they're only ones where the vendor or manufacturer is well known, e.g. a reputable 'brand name'. In that case I might order from Amazon, or might not, depending on convenience. But ordering anything from Amazon these days entails a degree of risk, if for no other reason then due to decline in packaging quality. The less a 'stupidly basic commodity' the item is, the greater the risk. Sadly Amazon has gone downhill badly the past few years.
I saw a video explaining this. To cut down on this problem, Amazon required sellers to have a trademarked company name. So what's the easiest way to get a trademark? Register a random collection of letters that nobody will even come close to having registered.
@@ItsQueeferSutherland most "brands" on Amazon are now like "Asnyaoygagoaxxanezlevx". It's literally like somebody collapsed and hit their head on the keyboard.
You never know who it's coming from. Is it a real product? Is it something that's been sitting in somebody's unsanitary basement in their house? Who are these millions of shops? You don't know. You don't know what you're getting.
Louis, you've made an excellent presentation here. I applaud your courage to exit Amazon as a seller. and to relate your reasons for doing so. In my experience, after using Amazon for the last 10 years, I have seen the quality of the merchandise deteriorate precipitously. Now, if I am in need of any product where quality concerns are an issue, I review UA-cam videos (such as yours), and then purchase the product from a local purveyor. This keeps my money circulating in the local economy, and assures me of value for my money. Yes, Amazon is very convenient, but I am dismayed by the preponderance of crap that this business panders to an unsuspecting market. I have almost eliminated my purchases from this site. Thank you for the great content.
I stopped shopping on Amazon about two years ago, simply because I don't think one company should dominate online retail. To those who have just made a similar decision, you won't regret it. Welcome to the club!
I did the same, but back in 2019. Nowadays if I want something, I just go directly to the manufacturer's site and buy from them (assuming I can't find it for sale in a store locally) People have gotten too lazy/complacent about just going to one online shop to buy everything... similarly to how Walmart did the same thing with brick and mortar stores and their cheap, low quality items.
So, where do you shop instead? I often shop at Amazon because there is no reasonable alternative. If the choice is Amazon in 1-2 days or a retail store selling the exact same item at a higher price and with a long delay, it would be foolish not to buy from Amazon.
@@Dr.Schlitz Except that Amazon product is going to have a much worse impact in the global economy and climate, which means it will negatively impact YOU, too. And besides, you can often find the product cheaper elsewhere-or just don’t buy it at all! It’s amazing what you realize you don’t need when you learn to go without it. That will save you money, and prevent exploitation of other people and the planet.
I never stopped shopping on Amazon, I never started. I might have bought one item over 10 years ago on Amazon because I couldn't find it anywhere else and didn't know how evil the company was back then but that was about my first and last Amazon purchase ever.
The biggest problem with name brands is that you never know when they will change management and switch from quality to cheap. Rubbermaid and Tupperware jump immediately to mind.
Rubbermaid tubs used to be very flexible and bulletproof. But now they are made from cheap hard plastic that cracks if any flexing force is applied to them. They are just like Sterilite containers that way.
This is why I love shopping at thrift stores. You can find vintage household goods in great condition for less than the price of newer, lower quality stuff. Of course, shopping at thrift stores is hit-or-miss. But they're great if you enjoy the treasure hunt aspect of it.
I bought a Craftsman toolbox from Amazon once. It was made of plastic and I knew that when I bought it, but I assumed it would be thick and rugged. When I received the toolbox, I couldn't believe how cheaply made it was. it looked like a toy toolbox. The plastic was thin and it was warped so much, you couldn't even close the lid properly. The metal clasp was so cheap it bent when you tried to close it, and the "Craftsman" brand was printed on a paper sticker that was slapped on the front of the toolbox. Of course, there were nothing but 4-star reviews for it, so reviews are utterly worthless, and even if you buy "brand name" stuff from Amazon, it doesn't mean you're going to get anything of quality.
As a former retail worker, I can relate to theft being a problem. Unfortunately, it's not easy to stop. If you try to crack down, you get a lot of people blasting you for treating them like thieves, even for reasonable security measures. It's not like I can tell who is a thief and who isn't by looking at them. It's not like a thief will admit their theft, either. Preventing theft is one of the toughest challenges that retail stores currently face.
Go back to the way winn Dixie (or Piggly wiggly?) used to do it- have everything BEHIND the counter, when somebody wants something u go get it for them. 😅😅there..ur welcome!😅😅
The way those little fasteners get stolen is at the checkout. The little baggie nuts and bolts are specialty items costing $1.50 - $3 sometimes. So they take them out of the baggie and go up to the register. "huh whats this thing?" "I'm not really sure, it was in the hardware isle". Rather than going to look for it they ring up some other nut or bolt that costs 5 cents.
Haven’t shopped on Amazon in years, haven’t used eBay in a while too. I’m glad you’re bringing this to people’s attention half the shit from Amazon I can get from Aliexpress for half the price or less and it’s the same quality or better. Most of the crap being made now a days is planned obsolescence and engineered to fail after the warranty period expires that’s why I can’t see myself buying a new car or laptop anytime soon.
@@girohead used all the way, I don't buy those ridiculously shabby designed three or four bay rtx4090's that break the pcb without proper support. I'm not surprised there's a crowd of snake-oil salesmen that loves this garbage. AMD's newest CPU only supports half of the pci-e lanes as my older intel processor. So essentially, if you buy a good motherboard for Ryzen, half of what you plug in will not work.
I've noticed more and more that even if you search for name brands of these kind of products (connectors, fasteners, electrical components/hardware, and even tools) you practically have to know the SKU for the part you want, and even then you get a page and a half of knockoffs before you find the product you want and that's IF you find the brand you want.
That's because, as Corey Doctorow figured out when studying Amazon's monopolistic tactics, half of Amazon's search results are ads (with the first page being *entirely sponsored* results)
I bought a 4-pack of detergent on Amazon. When I got it there were only two. The title said something like "2 x 2 pack", but the main thing was the image which said "4-pack" in the corner. The price was about the same as supermarkets were charging for actual 4-packs. When I went to return it, it said that the item is not eligible for return. I started a live chat, and the agent told me that I am wrong and that it is obviously just a 2-pack. They refused to help. I started another live chat and this time the agent said they would start a return for me. When I got the emails about the return that had just been started for me, they had chosen one of the other items in the order, presumably because they also were unable to open a return request for the detergent. I then had to cancel that, and write a complaint email to Amazon. The complaint email was thankfully answered and they refunded me with no need to return it.
I purchased a odd size (small) lightbulb for a project I was working on. The image on the amazon listing showed a box labeled "10 pack" and the about this item section said 10pc. The listing was $11 which seemed about right for a 10pc order of tiny 12v lightbulbs. I received one tiny lightbulb, in a huge box.
Its sad because everyone probably has an experience like that now - I ordered a really nice looking wax melter, made of wood, and received a cheap dollar-store humidifier instead. It was also rainbow colored with a shiny pink metallic finish, (the whole thing was made of VERY cheap plastic). Probably the funniest but also the shittiest order I ever made. Immediately returned it, left a 1 star review and complained to Amazon. They should have given me extra for having to drive to the UPS store.
FYI. Amazon has started just letting you keep the junk item and giving you the refund. It keeps the seller and Amazon off the hook for cost of the return. Speaks volumes for the profit margin these "shadow" companies are actually making on these products. And, on top of that, I've lost track of all the stories of people who were selling stuff on Amazon only to have their products copied and sold by Amazon. Side note: I have purchased no-name things on Amazon. I bought them because they were inexpensive, I was in a budget crunch, and I needed something in a hurry. And, I've made it a habit to read the crap reviews first--even on quality name brand stuff. Whether luck of draw or what, some of those cheap items are actually pretty good. But, the ones that are crap...more than make up for those good ones. Also, I used to do electronics back in the 80s. And, I got to tell you Louis, I'm not sure I would have caught that crimping problem. Well done.
My favorite is when you buy a crappy Chinese product for, say 40 dollars. Then you get a card in the mail offering you a 40 dollar Amazon gift card to leave a 5 star review. I've had this not once, twice, but four times now.
Sometimes those "no name" products are actually very good. You're buying much the same stuff more directly from the Chinese manufacturer. Rather than paying a local middle-man to mark up the price. But it's basically the Wild West. The reviews can't be trusted. And you never quite know what you're getting, since the brands, products, and listings are constantly changing.
They do that because of all the "earth conscious people." Returning products mean more emissions, by having you keep the product it's a way to say that Amazon delivered a package with low to no cost of emissions and the leads them to being "carbon neutral".
To my surprise I have never had an issue with Amazons products. Though I did not choose the first in the list, but now I will be more careful, and even try to search in local stores. Thanks for the video!
I once left a review on amazon because I received a product that was not only defective (could be assembled because of errors in the manufactiring), but was of the wrong color. Amazon deleted my review because you can't actually criticize the manufacturer in these reviews. Astounding!
Oh actually you can criticize brands on Amazon… just not rich/chinese brands as they have amazon’s direct support. Mom n pop brands, american small business and niche brands get all the bad reviews listed even if they are a mistake. 😂
Amazon and “honest reviews” don’t vibe too well with Amazon. 😂 They cutoff my ability to review products years ago…….despite writing many lengthy honest reviews that would help many people determine the experience of using various products. Now corrupt vendors are running amok censoring people who will not put up with their bullshit and customers can no longer talk to each other, which was one of the best parts of the reviews! At this point I watch several product reviews on UA-cam, I no longer solely trust what is written on Amazon given their actions over the years and poor censorship. I remember in a comment section about cars, some Chinese company was shipping rocks to customers in a box who ordered brake sets. Because the shipping and return times were so long, customers wouldn’t be able to secure refunds. You can’t make this shit up!! 😂😂
@@TheSoulCrisis I grow hot peppers as a hobby (and I'll sometimes grow some pretty flowers and stuff like that too) , and often you'll see fancy, or outright impossible seeds, either for plants that clearly don't exist like Super Mario flytraps and peppers the size of a toddler, or for plants that can't be grown from seeds like French Tarragon, being sold. The pepper seeds are almost always from the same generic red Thai-pepper, not the well known cultivars like Carolina Reaper they're being sold as, and by the time the buyer can tell for sure it's the wrong variety it's far too late.
@@Zeelian I had never even considered buying seeds on amazon. With seeds the seller is the quality. Though most gardeners don't realize the low grade trash they get in packets or as mass retail seedlings. The stuff farmers get is massively better in terms of germination, vigour, and being true to type, but its because they contract for hundreds of pounds, if not tens of tons, of seed and they involve random sampling, controlled storage conditions, and actual insurance companies. (Aside from fancy low volume breeders, always go with cultivars that are currently commercially popular, the seed growers of these cultivars put way more effort into culling sports, avoiding cross pollination, and ensuring high quality seed from healthy plants. Old varieties that are only popular on packet racks are basically grown in a roadside ditch. An exaggeration I admit, but the theme is accurate.)
I always like to say: Amazon has virtually infinite money. If they wanted to solve these problems, they'd be solved by the next quarter. But they don't want to solve these problems, because they don't care about their shopper experience, because they don't make money by pleasing the individual.
Amazon is a monopsony, they want to abuse their power by demanding sellers list lowest price, use amazon shipping, give 30-45% cut, etc. Only Chinese sellers can agree to these things, no sane company would.
You didn't even mention the problem of product swapping. I frequently find products now with tons of great reviews, only to read those reviews and find it they're reviewing a completely different product. Somehow sellers can leave up a product page and completely swap what's actually being sold. I have no idea why Amazon would allow something like that.
They simply add themselves as one of the other options and wait for the "main" person to stop selling item.. they can then be the person listed on the main page of that same item and they don't lose the good reviews left when other person was actually selling real product.. Also when the reviews are for a different product all together all they have to do is add that product to the page and "sell out" of the original item with all those nice reviews.
The Amazon customer service is deteriorating. It hired cheap labor from India and can't solve any problem. Even worse, more and more times, those agents lie to customer and waste much time.
My wife and I got rid of our Amazon account altogether when we saw how they treated their American employees, destroyed small mum and pop stores and clearly showed they did not care. Vote with your wallet people!
Good on ya' Zap! I order from companies with local retail presence like Home Depot and AutoZone - and who pay my neighbors a reasonable wage - when and wherever possible.
Noticed this issue myself. I only purchase items that are sold & shipped by amazon... I refuse to deal with 3rd party sellers because 9 out of 10 times... it's garbage and the seller is no better than a scammer. Then the ones that suddenly change the shipping date from next day to next month... because they're a Chinese seller masquerading as one in my country. It's gotten to the point where 90% of stuff from 3rd party sellers never even showed up after 3-4 weeks... and then you've got to deal with the whole refund process. I've started switching back to local purchases for stuff... this xmas, the only thing I bought for anyone from Amazon was a gift card because my brother in law wanted some new trainers and he got them from Amazon (branded) But I too have noticed that branded goods are getting harder and harder to find online... so I've started going directly to the makers website and looking for direct sales from them, or for a direction to one of their partner sellers. Hey presto... half the garbage problem disappears.
I find myself ordering more and more stuff from small, local (i.e. German in my case) online shops or manufacturer websites. They actually still have the products I want and their prices are usually fine, too.
Thank you for pointing this out. Amazon has just been getting worse and worse. All they had to do was protect the review system. It's been gamed and cheated with their approval.
This is far superior to the normal chair rant video. Not only does it get your point across more effectively, it allows us to formulate ideas on how to actually do our own repairs. I know what I'm doing the next time outdoor equipment eats an extension cord. 3:1 waterproof heatshrink, good crimping from home depot
I bought a "new" PS5 controller that was clearly refurbished. I returned it and bought the real deal at a brick and mortar store for just 10 dollars more. The peace of mind and time saved more than made up for the higher cost. I'm considering not buying anything else from Amazon in the near future
Suggestion: When you do leave a review comment, make sure to mention the product name/description. If you do this and the seller does the "swap product" scam (change the product to a crap listing of something else to steal the reviews), it will be obvious to others who might report it as a fake product.
@@SpaceCadet4JesusYet this very reply of yours didn't state what it was replying to, iństead stating "Thai is exactly what I do", so now your reply can be farmed by the original comment, whose current contest was advice to always mention the reviewed product in reviews to avoid scummy reuse .
@@johndododoe1411, he wasn't reviewing the video. He was discussing one of the subjects of the video. If Louis replaces it with something completely different, Bill Miller's suggestion will be just as valid.
I am 100% with Louis! Amazon has become a marketplace for cheap Chinese garbage like eBay did years ago. Now if I want to get parts regardless if I can get the name brand on Amazon at a principal I will go out of my way and even pay a little bit more to buy them from other vendors. Having principles is important. I choose not to support Amazon and all the garbage sellers
Award-winning author here. I deliberately do not distribute my work via 'Zon. Take one GAEDAEMN guess as to how censored, restricted, and utterly shadowbanned I've been ever since I made that choice. 💪😎✌️ 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
Really feels good to support the underdogs in every field. Choosing local businesses over giants isn't just a tech thing, it's a community thing. Small steps, big impact!
It's such a hard choice though, when the local store costs two or three times as much, so I have to decide to either go to the big box store, or just cancel my project all together because I can't afford all of the parts from a local dealer.
I'm not a wealthy man but I live in a wealthy area where there is a small local hardware store that sells overpriced junk just because they're local doesn't mean that their products are better or of value
I agree with you, Louis. There is a huge risk of purchasing fraudulent items from Amazon. I have left negative reviews of a product and Amazon would not publish it - very sketch. The halcyon days of Amazon are over, I fear. So much garbage on sale.
Thanks for putting this out in public, I live in the countryside and used amazon a lot, but now over the last few years, the quality has gone to hell. Customer service is a joke here in the UK, I can't even e-mail them. I noticed the fake reviews when I bought a keyboard that had 4.9 stars and half of the keys didn't work straight out the box, I go look at the reviews and they were all posted on the same day(the day the product was released). Shopping on Amazon is more risky than going to Glasgow's black market.
I noticed this a while back also. It's important to check the dates that the reviews were posted and even check the reviewer to see if it is a newly created account and if they have reviewed more products. It's necessary to do a bit of investigative work before buying something and unfortunately many people are too lazy nowadays to bother even for their own good.
Or they'll get positive reviews for one product and then swap out the product. Reviews talk about BMBLCRY acrylic paint, but the product listed is HAYSEKSY printer ink. In the age of AI, it can't be difficult for Amazon to detect this practice, and yet they won't.
@@Dwigt_Rortugal Even without those bait-and-switch tactics, the level of inconvenience when it comes to filtering reviews by configuration has to be by design. The amount of times I see vastly different products (by name brands even, this isn't even restricted to those sketchy fake brands) listed as different variations of the same listing is astounding. I know I can scroll all the way down and click on "See more reviews" and filter the reviews there, but that still doesn't show me the breakdown of the ratings for my particular configuration, and then if I want to see a different one I have to go back to the main listing page, change my selection, and do it all over again. Once you start factoring in things like different colors, or other aspects that don't affect the product's functionality, it can be an absolute chore to figure out the ratings for what you actually want to buy.
Just like how crap the Amazon search is, you can never really find just what you are looking for and let alone want to sort the results into price order. The other day I was looking for something and it said 10000'ish results, so I selected low to high price order and then there was suddenly 16
You are so right!!! 😠😠😠 I plead guilty to ordering extremely much and almost exclusively via Amazon. What I have noticed, however, is that I send back a lot more than I used to. So much so that I was warned by Amazon. My response to this was simply, "Then don't sell so much crap on your site!" My suggestion instead of reviews: Return rates should be published for every product!!!
Hey what did your warning say? Ive heard about these warnings but not gotten one yet. Lately i have been returning like 50% of my purchases bc of the kind of issues in the video. Im worried about getting my account shutdown?
@@RT-qz5ci this is what it would say in a yellow warning box “Frequently returned item Check the product details and customer reviews to learn more about this item”
I've been doing mass returns since the dawn of prime. I've ordered a bottle of lock-tite and used it once and then return it because Ole' Jeff can foot the bill for me. They have yet to say anything to me.
Now that grind my gears. People will say “ I did not test it yet, but it arrived really well packed and looks nice”…how the FUCK will I know anything about the product with that kind of review?
I think this is partly because Amazon asks you to review products within a short time after delivery. Many products, especially electronics, take significantly more time than that to be put to the test. It's like, remind me in 2 years, Amazon, and then I'll review it.
People have always been garbage at reviewing. I'd read them like crazy from 2014-2019. People are also notorious for using a product completely incorrectly. Ex. During the pandemic I was reading n95 mask reviews and more than 1 said they were "mismanufactured" because the ear loops were stapled on wrong. ....but they were overhead elastic not meant to go on the ears... People being morons giving completely useless reviews has been a real problem on Amazon for a long time. It seems like they've finally started dealing with that... Only to not account for how sellers might abuse a self reporting system. I had a pretty good way to spot out "reviews from an idiot" and factor that into my assessment of a product. I can't assess a product based on reviews that aren't there.
You are speaking truth bro. As a seller who built a brand for years to have it hijacked and the category taken over by complete trash - im 100% with tou
I remember when I had an addiction to eBay as a university student because they were the first to allow international sellers, stuff was so cheap but sometimes you’d wait months to get it, and I was shocked to find it was a knock off but usable. I was actually relieved when Amazon started selling more than books and I could buy what I needed there… what happened is they became eBay, they wanted to eat eBay’s market and they got what they asked for.
ebay is best for small cheap stuff.. if I just want some fuses or some screws.. some wires.. don't make me shell out $8 for shipping the damn thing, throw it in a first class packet.
i miss old ebay. i bought so many used things in the past, because the sellers were honest and detailed about their wares. they would take pictures of all the dings and scratches. nowadays all you see is the default "signs of cosmetic wear" when you look for the condition of the product. and it seems like most of them are resellers who just don't care about what they are selling.
@@simpson6700 Louis has old videos about his bad experience on eBay as a seller. IIRC he had huge problems with customers scammers and high fees/poor support from the platform. Obviously honest sellers give up when they are taken advantage of from both sides. I had some brief experience trying to sell some used stuff many years ago but it was so time consuming (taking all the photos, write a detailed description, packing and shipping, etc. plus all the managing of the account) and the cut eBay took off my sale was so high that it wasn’t worth it.
@@MaNameizJeff Nothing will make me close a tab from a domestic vendor faster than loading the $20 worth of stuff I need into a cart and then getting quoted $20 for shipping. I've shipped enough stuff to know they're just gouging me on shipping.
Here in Europe its sometimes even worse, where retail shops start to sell the 'fake' products too, including fake certification labels, but rebranded to not appear Chinese, for about about the regular price of a house-brand (but valid) product. Nearly caught my house on fire with an extension-cord from a well-reputed, long standing retailer that had all the expected certifications (and yes, faking those is illegal). Retailer didn't give a F, he's just happy with the margins I guess...
Here in Europe, we have TUKES and kuluttajansuojaliitto, sometimes even Tekniikan Maailma, that does get fake/dangerous products off the market and can fine for repeat offenses. Funny how "Europe" is kinda useless term to describe ... well, anything.
@@woldemunster9244 Well, I could have said EU, since (most) regulations are shared between all EU countries, but it was more to indicate the issue is not exclusively to the USA or international Amazon...
I was in Best Buy the other day and saw a "USB 3.0" portable monitor for $100. It looked more fake than all of the piles of portable monitors on Amazon. USB 3.0? So you mean to tell me that it isn't even using a display standard? I have to use your trash spywa-- I mean software to get it to work and it could stop working at any moment?
Same thing in Latin America, local businesses are flooded with cheap Chinese knockoffs, sporting all sorts of certification labels. Louis thinks Amazon is going down the drain, but that will soon happen to brick and mortar stores too. Government entities, that should monitor the markets and protect consumers from fake products, are just not doing their jobs.
Totally agree. I dumped Amazon pre holiday season. I am so done with their garbage products they are peddling. I sold machine tools & consumable products like Klein for 30 years but when the simplest item hides origin of manufacture, not safety sealed, appears to have been returned I am just done with this service.
I am disabled so I’m forced to shop at Amazon . I have had to many experiences with defective products listed at the same price as other items of the exact same sort . I got safety pins that bent on anything other than gauze , straight pins so tiny and short that they were useless , a pitcher w a handle that disattached the first time I picked it up , earrings where the stud bent the first time I put on the backs , two rice cookers that worked less than 5 times and another that cost ten dollars more but was deceptively advertised as performing multiple tasks that it in fact did not , ceramic candle holders obviously damaged during production as they had significant holes in what was supposed to be a smooth surface , tiny little bits of skin care in what was represented in the photos as a normal size container , and many more . It is very helpful to me now that Amazon includes in some of its item descriptions the phrase “ This item is frequently returned “ . Since these were issued I haven’t gotten another useless item and I also now do what another commentor suggested which is to read the 1 star reviews first .
I’ve been asked by my mom to go make fake reviews for her friends daughter’s Amazon shop. She had no idea why I was so upset and repulsed by the favor. She doesn’t understand
I've been asked by a handful of people, some friends, some bosses, to leave fake reviews. They said their competition does it. I just say "OK" and don't leave it. I hate doing things like that.
I keep trying to get a refund for things they send me that are wrong. This gets problematic when they say explicitly you cannot send back something that has a lithium battery. The last thing I tried to refund was *a lithium battery.* The package arrived ripped into pieces and the item was clearly replaced with a puffy burnt out battery, so obviously that wasn't going to help me. There is also no way to contact them to all about all this. Never again.
@@metalheadmax09 Always call Customer Service for returns, especially when the Seller does things like that. You can report the Seller while you're at it. I often get free return shipping this way, too. Enough reports like this can have the Seller forced to do better or get them barred from Amazon. Good luck!
They literally shipped me an empty bag. They did not heat seal it, so the 1lb of wax fell out in the truck and they left me with a freaking bag. The best part is they say it was delivered because the clown took a photo of the freaking empty bag on my doorstep. Lol, goofs.
@@HectorSaIamanca Sorry to hear that. I've heard of it before in reviews. I hope now you know how to handle these things from my suggestions. A photo of an empty bag should have proved it to Customer Support. You should have also had a claim against the shipping company. The driver should have known the package was empty before dropping it off. Good luck in the future!
Seeing the stolen stuff in store is so very much seen where I live as well. My thoughts on Amazon's change in direction selling crap is simple. They are doing the same as eBay and whatever junk seller site in China is throwing up. It's pushed hard because these items have the best return for Amazon. When your competition is aiming for very low end stuff sadly the only way to compete is do the same.
Don't know why you're putting eBay in this post. You can find exactly what you want on eBay including specific brands. Insinuating that Amazon is following eBay is laughable and just shows that you don't understand the point of the video.
I put in an honest review of a WiFi camera I bought from Amazon. It confirmed what other reviews were saying about the difficulty getting it to work and how the seller, a company in China, was trying to bribe you for a good review by withholding the promised memory card until after you gave them a 5 star review. My review was taken down, along with the others and I was barred from reviewing that device again, by the request of the seller. This speaks volumes about the integrity of the reviews on Amazon and I place little value in the ratings and comments.
I stopped using Amazon for exactly these phony reviews and very crappy products. Now I try to buy American. If I can.
Hahahaha! Holy shit! That's actually a thing? The seller can request bad reviews being taken down? That's just horrific.
I wish there was a way on Amazon to search by country of origin.
This is informative and unfortunate, but not surprising at all.
@@joedirt1965 there is a browser extension that does something similar, and lets you see where items are being shipped from
A thing I noticed on amazon is that vendors are able to switch the actual product listed so that it looks like its got a billion great reviews, but then you read the reviews and it's for a completely different product.
You're right. Amazon has become garbage.
I’ve noticed that this year. It’s bizarre. That never used to happen
This happens because they can add items to the page as options and those reviews are all lumped together. Then they delete the other item and it looks like the new one but with all the old reviews.
Amazon doesn't care at all about this and its extremely frustrating.
Good point !! A few years back I was in the market for a digital camera and looked at Amazon reviews and found at the price I could budget for and had great reviews. Curious, I read some of the reviews had the first 20 or so were foe this camera but then I saw reviews for bird seed and other TOTALLY non related items !! Amazon should be held accountable for illegal marketing practices.
Always read the reviews and check review images.
They add a cheap product as one of the options for £9.99 then the actual item is £49.99 does my head in!!
A major point of aggravation for me is when Amazon removed the ability for the seller and the buyer to communicate to each other. They also removed the ability for customers to contact each other and reply to reviews, because people could communicate and tell each other why a product sucked and recommend a better product. The same thing also happened when Netflix removed the option for viewers to rate movies and shows with the star system and leave reviews. They do not want their customers to have a voice.
The goal of these platforms is not for users/customers to get what they want/need - the goal is for the platform to make as much money as possible by sponsoring and/or boosting certain listings. In that manner, Amazon and Netflix are working exactly as intended
@@Eclipseballer1994 It's too bad "Fast Eddie" Lampert destroyed Sears. (The Board let him do it).
It's what happens when you hire a non-retail guy to run a retailer (such as K-mart or Sears), and when you hire a non-football person to run a football team (Bengals)
I welcome anything that offers me way to filter out the "non-name" lookalike products on online retailers.
The problem is people accepting it.
Boycott this shit and stop buying from this disgusting organization!
And stop Chinese sellers!
They should be considered as funding a terrorist organization, since their government is exactly that!
Same with UA-cam and reddit with not counting dislikes any more. The internet sucks now.
@@Eclipseballer1994 How is Amazon making money if people keep refunding stuff and leaving the platform?
You want to have as many clients possible and for those clients to spend as much as possible, and this behavior fails at both.
This is why I go past the 5-star reviews and read the ONE star reviews. If I see a few 1-star reviews with the SAME complaint, then I KNOW exactly how the product will perform!
Wait until you realize, that sellers can request amazon to remove those ONE star reviews XD
@@zenguro aint no waaayy 💀💀💀
I always look for the most recent reviews!
Sellers are able to have Amazon yank reviews because the reviewers violate the "Community Guidelines" for writing a review. You can not complain about how long it took to get to your doorstep, how the seller jerked you around on a replacement, complain about where it was made, etc. You can only talk about the product. To get the best odds to make a 1 star review stick, laser focus on the essence of why the product sucks and write the review in one or two sentences of basic english(or other language that's relevant here, obviously). The goal is to make sure the arbitrator has to expend the least amount of mental energy to ascertain that no rule was violated when a seller contests a review. @@zenguro
Why even look at the 5 stars to begin with.. I know why I like the product I want to know why I won't like it. Products with no 1 star reviews are a pass.
There should be a class action law suit against Amazon for allowing reviews for past products to be attached to a different product. I said that in a review and I was banned from the review community.
They have a monopoly and pay now local rent or sales tax. They don't care it's basically a branch of the Chinese government destroying the country from the inside
There should be a class action law suit over Amazons entire deceptive review process. Same with Google over its play store and UA-cam over fraud ads.
@@redguyphil1 most of the ads on UA-cam are scams. UA-cam and Google are the single greatest benefactors of the scam industry.
I was looking at something just yesterday,& the Great reviews were ALL for an Unrelated product!!! I’ve been “Wise” to Amazon’s BS for a long time!!! I have been researching everything from measuring spoons to garage freezers, to items for entertaining to cooking out at a fire pit, from gardening oldies & newbies, to preserving foods requiring different methods,& Anything related to Food & Cooking, plus I’m often asked by family & friends to research items they’re looking to purchase, the Best possible products, whether limited budget or not, best place to buy,& best deal on the product, as well as pertinent information gathered regarding the products!!! I’ve been doing this coming up on 10years now😵💫🫣, with monthly items sent to my daughter, in my quest to stock her kitchen with Everything tool & gadget she would need to grow, make/cook, entertaining needs, outdoor kitchen needs, & preserve the best ways for the items-No! I’m Not a Doomsdayer, I’m a Proud Old Lady who gardened, & cooked from scratch my entire life, avoiding as much of our tainted food supply as possible, whose daughter is Far Beyond My talents,& I want Her to have what I could only Dream of having in my kitchen & all things food related, as well as the Mind Boggling advances the internet has opened my eyes to, as well as the Endless items so easy to get, that were impossible to get, or not even invented back in the day!!! I’m on a Very limited budget, & doing big Gifting for b’days & holidays is too hard on me, so I can gift & better coordinate accordingly through the year, with it all starting with a Christmas Gift being a puzzle(sometimes 2!) a month, bc she Loves puzzles,& I was getting a few odds & ends she needed in her kitchen as well! SHE enjoyed the anticipation of her next surprise Sooo much, & asked if we could continue on with items she needed for her kitchen, & I had really enjoyed it as well, so it All began, & has continued on!!! I Highly recommend it for other parents of Grateful children, either getting started, or who Love to cook, but aren’t able or willing to buy for themselves over family, or plain just can’t afford the extra things needed to develop or expand their cooking skills & types of foods!!! The hidden Bonuses are Multiple, especially in this fast paced world!!!
Anyways!!! Nobody has mentioned 2 Very Important TELLs-reviews All being Dated within a month or so, whether currently or far back, with No other reviews, & a company running multiple products together in reviews!!! Lots of people don’t catch either, but the latter is missed by most, not noticing you have to look for which product the person bought & is reviewing, under their name!!! Too many don’t even bother looking beyond the ratings either, Or go to other websites, the company itself, or You Tube for reviews, & Don’t bother with price comparisons &/or Sales, or knowing that many times there’s offers of extra items when bought elsewhere!!! I also Highly recommend downloading the app to “Etsy”,& shopping there!!! If you aren’t already, whatever you may Think Etsy is, it’s No where Close to what it actually is!!! Yes! A Lot is Amazing Handmade items offered from talented people around the world, but there’s Sooo much Beyond That, with Vintage item Sellers, farmers, food makers, jewelers, & commercially made products as well, that you have Direct Communication with!!! And like with Amazon, you can make lists of items you are interested in purchasing, but With that, comes many who will offer you a discount, & you get immediate notifications on those items going on sale,& times of the sale’s ending!!! Plus you Are supporting Small Businesses!!!
You type like you shop at dollar Tree 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Amazon is slowly becoming a "fancy" version of Aliexpress. Nice video! Please continue doing what you are doing.
So true!
Honestly seems like a lot of what is on Amazon these days is just stuff that's been bulk purchased on AliExpress and resold on Amazon at a premium.
I think it's becoming a more expensive version of Temu. Filled with random named Chinese trash at high prices...
Slowly, I think they went that route before Ali
the products ARE from aliexpress
How many of those reviews are ACTUALLY for this product though? That seems to be the latest scam. They relist completely different items on the same page and amazon doesnt wipe the reviews! So they sell a really cheap decent quality items for a while to farm for good reviews, then switch to a high dollar chinesium p.o.s. Any unsuspecting person clicks the item, sees 4.6 stars with 1000+ reviews and thinks "Wow. this is a good deal"... only to get a fire hazard in the mail or worse. In reality if you actually read through the reviews on, say, the $300 telescope you're looking at, you'll see things like "Best makeup mirror for under $5"...
none cause i doubt anyone with a functioning brain would buy from amazon.
This is extremely common and infuriating. Even name brands do this.
I have noticed this too. They are allowed to get away with anything.
I saw that on some Higher priced items as well...some ratings didn't matched the product. I have the feeling they sell a cheap good product, update the product page...that update is actually the placing a cheap product with a fully new high priced product.
Another thing i hate about amazon is they don't display reviews per product, they show reviews for that specific product page. Some products have say 3 different colors, red, green and blue. If you then click on say the red one for example, you'll still have all the reviews for the other colors even when they are irrelevant to what you are buying. Obviously colors dont really matter but when these small no name brands do this with products that are completely different from one another, its annoying. You'll see 1k reviews but then 2 of those would actually be for the one you are trying to buy.
I ordered branded microfibres cloths and received cheap alternatives. They weren’t even knock offs, just completely different. My review included photographs and was not allowed because it included information about packaging even though it didn’t.
They do this with Nike sweatpants so bad I started ordering them directly from Nike's website and just dealing with the hassle that that is
Thats exactly the scumbag reply SCamazon gave me when I reported the IC sockets I'd recently ordered wich were thrown loose in a box which they themselves then crushed before shipping resulting in broken & bent pins.
A couple weeks ago I received a brand new NVME drive that had the seal on the boxed opened. Also when I search for products the first few pages of popular results are cheap alternatives usually, no name brands. It's unfortunate that low quality and cheap is the most popular items. Shows the state of America. Quality is going down the drain.
@@jeffgendron1959 Whats most disgusting is all the malls & local stores (even chains) are getting shut down en mass for that bullshit. I've done electronics for a living for the past 30+ years and the only "local" parts source left is over an hour away and entirely stocked by the same garbage as found on scamazon. Also charging the most outrageous prices. The place is also notoriously racist, only hiring their own ethnic group and refusing service to all others. That's a fairly large city (3.5 million at last count) the rest of the parts suppliers have been gone for over a decade and there used to be literal piles of them all over the city.
@@jeffgendron1959 Funny thing is I just replied to this and youtube deleted my reply as soon as I submitted it. I've worked in electroics over 30 years and its become impossible. The only remaining parts supplier is now over an hour away and its a sleazy hellhole that massively overcharges & only hires their own ethnic group, they also refuse service to those outside that group too. That's a city of 3.5 million at last count and used to have piles of electronics suppliers until 20 years ago (now down to the 1 chain for the past 10 years)
After buying protein shake from Amazon, and actually receiving a fake product, we have a rule in our house not to buy anything from Amazon that goes in or on the body.
I bought flaxseed oil that intentionally has a puck of flaxseed in the bottom to make the bottle feel very heavy. Supposedly from Canada, but extremely scammy.
Honestly a smart move.
@@MushookieMan there needs to be a website to keep these scammers and their products in check
Why would you ever give them another red cent after that?
Was the shake sold by Amazon or a third-party seller? Usually products shipped AND sold by Amazon are legit, but with third-party sellers, you never know.
It’s amusing that Harbor Freight has been working diligently to increase its performance and quality control on most of its products, increasing its volume and customer satisfaction - while Amazon has been going in the opposite direction.
Who would have thought 20 years on that you'd rather shop ar HF than many other retailers!
Never bet your life on a horrible freight product.... oh like... jack stands. Saving a few bucks is not worth your life. @@mikefrachel8292
i fix power plants for a living and most of the people work with buy their tools from there. not because theyre great. theyre not, some of their tools are more dangerous than useful, but some of their things are worth it simply for the warranty. a lot of HARD jobs break any tool, and harbor freight has the most hassle free warranty.
Harbor freight has been doing really well too building lots of stores
@@mikefrachel8292 Well its either there or a Big Box store or Amazon. Not many dedicated Hardware stores left.
When buying from Amazon I ONLY look at 1, 2 , and 3 star reviews. The percentage of those reviews and their content is where the honesty is. It serves me well.
A lot of 1 star ones are just idiots though - "product was fine but arrived late" types of idiots. 2 and 3 stars are more helpful I agree, but then you're still creating a bias, are you really going to buy something where you only consider 3 stars to be valid? You really have to look at all the reviews.
absolutely, and the diction and coherence of those reviews count as well.
Only thing I would ever buy from Amazon is shit that can't be found elsewhere (for example, there's that one book I've wanted to get that the (independent) author only sells there).
The rest I'll find on better, more specializedplatforms, or just by going to the store myself.
Meh, idk if I agree with that logic. A lot of the negative reviews are BS too. I've had great items that people were crying about.
@@highdesertbiker Better a false negative than a false positive here
My biggest issue with Amazon lately is they claim to have shipped something, then a couple days later when it should have arrived they send me an email and say they haven't shipped it yet. The initial shipping notification was a lie. This has been happening with increasing frequency.
This is happening to me right now. Ordered and item 4 days ago and it was supposed be here 2 days ago on the day it was supposed to be delivered by 10pm I got a notification at 8pm saying it's delayed for weather until the 13 2 extra days.
That happened to me once, but i blame ups for that more than amazon. Either way i got a $200 mattress for free. I didnt even ask for the discount, amazon customer service lady just said fuck it, its a refund, after waiting 3 weeks before it arrived. Ups sucks ass. Ive never had a good experience with them.
My experience as well.
Ive had this happen multiple times, and now just had an item i did not pick up from the amazon locker still charged to me.
yeah i get that a lot, and the "sorry, your order is late" thing all the time. like wow glad i paid for amazon prime for free 2 day shipping
Another big issue on amazon is that 80% of the listings are the same product with different sellers. Thats because they are all made by the same factory and then sold to importers that all list the same garbage on amazon.
Everybody wants to be a drop seller for easy cash nowadays.
That's so obnoxious! Especially when Amazon singles out some of those sellers as featured "small businesses" and makes them out as some little mom and pop operating out of their garage. I completely understand that being a small business doesn't require you to manufacture every part, and there's certainly nothing wrong with making a business by selling other companies' stuff, but don't celebrate them for rebranding the same junk 17 other storefronts have done the exact same with.
@@myfavoriteviewer306 I wonder how Amazon defines "small business"?
I ordered some welding equipment from Miller Electric.
It was marked "This order supports a small business."
Miller Electric is owned by ITW a fortune 500 company.
If that counts as a small business, the phrase has lost all meaning.
They are Chinese!
@@prissx784 Not true. Some are Vietnamese or Indian lol.
I know someone who is a Vine reviewer, and she leaves brutally honest reviews as is required by the Vine TOS. The problem she has found is that multiple times she has received something that was actually high quality and she gave it a good review accordingly. Then she went through her reviews a few months later out of curiosity, and the products on some of the listings had changed. So the reviews were for something else entirely and often far worse. The most insidious is reviews for genuine 64GB memory cards which were then changed to those fake 1TB memory cards. Amazon seem to not care. I rarely use Amazon myself and I have been burned by fake reviews, which sucks.
This is extremely common. I have found numerous products on amazon where the reviews do not match the product being sold.
I've been doing Vine for a little bit now, I try to make sure I mention the name of the product I'm reviewing to avoid that issue. I don't think I've come across an item that's changed completely since my review, but I have had a few items disappear, occasionally before I even get them.
I think they just can't check every page for correct updates and the company sells similar products( kids telescope gets replaced with high priced version) , the AI would really need to be sensitive to detect that. Remember in the old days of ebay when you updated the product it actually was blocked and reviewed.
@@MAGAMAN I never buy without reading the reviews AND LOOKING AT THE DATE OF THE REVIEWS. And click on the reviewer. And click on others. Many times, supposedly multiple reviewers are all reviewing the same random items. If I can find that, Amazon certainly can. Straight 5 star reviews? Completely fake. There has to a decent amount of 4 stars. I find a lot of 1 star reviews to be done by idiots. 1 star, I received the wrong product. If it was shipped from Amazon, that's not the seller's fault. But, it counts in the count.
When habitually and deliberately screwing people over in the name of ever increasing profits (which, as a side note, the workers don't get a fair share of) becomes the default mode of operation, we should definitely have a talk about the downsides of the current way we do capitalism, or maybe even capitalism in general.
Take it from someone employed there. There was a HUGE internal culture change when CEO reigns were handed off to Jassy. Prior, customer obsession was the lens everything was viewed through. Afterwards, it was just lip service.
It's the reviews that prove this. Years ago, you could trash a product in a review, a company would complain and Amazon would tell them to go kick rocks and they'd leave it up on site. This allowing the customer to say what they felt like saying was so pervasive that even outright silly things such as a customer review of sugar free gummy bears resulting in a bathroom horror story that would have you cry laughing before the end was left up on the site. Companies that got caught botting their reviews would also get their selling privileges revoked.
Nowadays, reviews are pruned intensely. Review botting is ignored. They do ridiculous things like asking for a photo to prove something didn't arrive to your house.
It's sad, and it'll wreck the company in the end.
Yeah, I used to love Amazon(like 10 years ago), but have now been avoiding using them for years because everything has been getting worse from the website itself to the terrible customer service when you get screwed over by one of their sellers these days.
Taking a picture of a package not arriving is on another level.
And of course,"early life" explains why.
This explains a lot. Isn't the Amazon site a loss leader anyway? It seems like AWS is where they make their money.
I know about those sugar free Gummy bears. A friend of mine ate a LOT of them. The alcohol sugar are the problem. Lets put it this way, for days he was in hell on the toilet. He will never eat those again.😱 I was lucky I only had just a couple
I almost filed a police report for theft. They refused to refund $2000 for nearly 2 months. First they said it comes back in 2 weeks, then they said 30 days, then they said longer... Then I told them I'd go to the media and file a police report and make public the records of their incompetence and withholding of my funds. Same day they refunded me. I bought a Corsair XENEON Flex 45" Curved Monitor and returned it for a manufacturing defect... Then they F*CKED with me for nearly 2 months with $2000 in limbo (that they were making interest off of and should be illegal but banks do the same thing, always have) I will NEVER use their services including Prime or order from them ever again.
i don't know why you didn't just call your bank and have them reverse the transaction
Exactly why I go into real stores in person to buy stuff like that. But for me its become impossible as all the electronics stores I used to buy parts from are all now long long gone due to the the scumfest practices of scamazon / evilbay / ALIitsucks and their ilk.
Ripping open bags to steal screws is just...wow. That's a level of petty theft I've never even considered.
This is really screwed up...
Ok ill see myself out
You considered thieving?
@@tonysheerness2427 You know that's not what they meant
How about someone crawling under a Silverado pickup truck, cutting the entire fuel fill hose (inner and outer hoses) in order to quickly remove the gasoline from the truck. Pickup is low on gas, I drove to the station, they gas went right out the bottom. Repair cost was $400 but I did it for under half and it was a PITA job.
It's screwed up.
I'd never returned anything to Amazon in 6+ years of Prime ordering multiple deliveries per month. In the past year, I've returned 5 items. It's gotten insane.
Imagine getting empty envelopes or bubble packaging because Amazon shippers didn't know how to seal the package to the begin with LOL!
Amazon to me feels more and more like a chinese bazar.
@@Tazmanian_Ninjaso many weird off brands
@@Tazmanian_Ninja A more expensive version ofTemu!
Yeah started with Amazon what 10+ years ago, never had an issue, really have not ordered anything for the last 2-3 years.
I just took a look around there thanks to this video and was surprised at how few brands I did recognize. I could not find many of the brands I had bought in the past.
If it wasn't for the Movies and Music channels I probably would drop them. I even noticed that the fast shipping isn't what it use to be either, some prime items are weeks out and orders in the same package over 25 dollars were free but if they came in separate shipments there is a charge in some cases.
They use to be cheaper than retail now they are the same price or more in some cases.
I reviewed a bluetooth receiver for my car about 6-7 years ago, I was happy enough with it and gave it a decent review. Cut to about 2 years ago, I decided to read my old reviews to find this one now sitting on a page selling a vaccuum cleaner. They can just edit product pages that have high review scores, leaving the reviews in place even though they're for a totally different product, it's absolutely stupid and shouldn't be legal.
It probably isn't (False Advertisement... Any law in that field really).
Problem is....
In the US alone, heavy Amashit Lobbying would just make any lawsuit/LE action go NOWHERE until people forgot, then dumped away.
In EU, their nobility has the focus elsewhere, namely do anything to stop any group right of Joseph Stolin from firther getting power in their member states, than focus on hetting this BS out the way.
Amashit led by Bezzos will just throw wads and wads of moolah to not do what should be their MINIMUM obligations for their own service platform
I noticed the same thing on many products.
It's very common that reviews are for a product that is not the one you are looking at.
So that's why I sometimes can tell when reading a review that it's for a completely different product! I just mistakenly had given Amazon the grace of assuming their platform had a glitch! Evil greed.
I don't buy the products with reviews that are mismatched.
You can read about this in the amazon seller forums daily. It's been going on for over 7 years now, with Amazon never plugging the holes. People speculate that amazon employees are in on the take and change product pages for the scammers that sell such fraudulent products. There is so much of it going on now that the entire platform should be shut down as a public hazard.
I also have noticed that Amazon solicits my review on products very quickly after purchase and most reviews are made by people who have purchased items very recently before they've even had it long enough to see if the item is going to hold up/continue to function for any length of time .
Something you didn't mention is item binning. We do a fair amount of repair work on furnace wiring. We have specifically purchased from one listing with high ratings, name brand, specified metal gauge and high temperature rating. We put them into service. Time goes by and we start getting calls related to furnaces, smoke smells, small fires, etc. In every case it was these connectors. We then started comparing the connectors from two purchases from the same listing. Different products, but exact same packaging and specs!! The fake ones were thinner and just couldn't handle the current, so they were overheating and causing cascade failures in the components on which they were installed. Counterfeit products binned together with the real deal on the same listing. You may never know until it's too late. These practices could put people's homes and lives at risk!
If you’re not buying that stuff from like DigiKey or Allied Electronics or Newark or another dependable distributor; you’re really doing it wrong, sorry. For a mainstream business like yours, buy brand name stuff from authorized distributors only. And ignore Amazon.
@@absurdengineering it's true they shouldn't have bought for amazon, but that doesn't take away from the validity of their criticism.
😯😡
But they r making money so they don't care, flat out
This is COMMON on Amazon! The counterfeiters are rampant!
I have two extensions for Amazon that helps a lot. Fakespot, which looks over reviews for patterns that imply fake reviews and gives you a rating. And cultivate, which tells you where the product is from. And now I have a rule: if a brand isn't consistent on where their products are from, it's a bad product. If the brand (not manufacturer) is from China and has a D or lower on fake spot, it's a bad product.
But it would be nice if Amazon would just clean up their store front.
underrated comment ftw! thank you so much for this!!
Thanks for the tip.
Thanks for the advice sensei!
Thanks for the extension names!
Cultivate has a bunch of very obviously botted 5star reviews, and the rest don't fill me with confidence.
This isn't just an amazon problem, this is a problem everywhere online. It's at the point where I only read negative reviews these days because they're the only ones I can trust to have honest feedback from an actual customer.
Cant even trust them really. There are a good number of brands I know of that have good to great products but because of either rumored actions of the companies or their stances people will bad mouth the companies and products. The idea of "User Reviews" is good, until you realize humans will lie and cheat the system just to spite someone else, which makes the system effectively worthless.
Even those are often paid/botted by a competitor.
I don't read 5-star reviews. lol I'm close to not reading the 4-star reviews now.
And depending on the item, I don't get it at Amazon, if it delays my project, so be it.
Yeah it's everywhere also in indonesia here , to the point if I really like the product I write a ridiculous funny review but a genuine satisfied with the product just so others know this is from real human real customer experience not bot / not paid reviewer etc
Some of the negative reviews are put up by nefarious competitors.
In general, I'd skip both the 1-star and 5-star reviews, unless they looked very plausible.
I’m a jewelry artist, made the mistake once of buying jump rings on Amazon, never ever again. They were so flimsy I could bend them with my fingers and the slightest pressure bends them. Practically useless. The “stainless steel nickel free” ear hooks also broke me out badly. Definitely have nickel in them
probably more than that, they probably have all kinds of Chinese factory toxins like fibreglass and lead
Oh, you're going to love this. My sister bought my mother a "brand new" vacuum cleaner off of Amazon. We received the box, which was beat to heck. I helped her open it and oh my, I wish I had been recording. Not only was the vacuum used, it was FILTHY. I'm not being hyperbolic. Filth, dirt, and small rocks poured out of the box and all over my mother's floor & covered part of my pants in dirt. The inside of the dust bin had large patches of old, dark dirt & grime hardcore stuck to it. The vacuum itself was covered in scratches and scuffs and in general looked beat to high heck. By all appearances, the vacuum appeared as though it had been used for a lengthy period of time in an industrial setting and instead of throwing it away, someone sold it as "new" on amazon. That incident is why it is now common practice for both my mother and I to record video of any unopened boxes from Amazon as well as record the complete unboxing of anything that we get from Amazon. It's also why I generally prefer to shop elsewhere first, and this played a role in why I cancelled Prime. This whole 4-and-a-half star issue routinely results in "meh" products, but this? This was disgusting.
edit: fixed typo
I ordered an electric massager online like what my barber uses. It was clearly used and reboxed.
I ordered 'plastic bird spikes' that were installed and returned, then sold to me. Like 30 feet of the stuff. mounting screws still stuck in it. i was not allowed to leave a review with the picture. I kept it as it was re-usable.
That's disgusting. Probably a return scam, even. We cancelled Prime earlier this year. It's not worth it anymore.
I have run into this problem increasingly. I have received several products which are obviously and clearly used - at best - counterfeit at worst. I have a healthy Amazon ordering history with limited returns so they're usually pretty good about making it right, but the fact that this has become as prevalent a strategy by Amazon sellers - without any pushback from Amazon itself - has further driven me to consider Amazon as essentially a slightly better Temu.
Did it suck?
I haven't trusted Amazon reviews for 10 years. They first started showing fake reviews and preventing proper filtering by categories for books. 95% of books are 4 or 5 stars and 90% of those are pure dog $hit. Their whole rating system is a pay-to-play scam. It's actually become harder for me to find good books to read since Amazon.
I remember doing a lot of reviews on Amazon where some were reward reviews but there was one seller who offered more money to make my 4 star review to a 5 star review where I refuse because I want people to know about the fixable flaws so I put 4 stars to show there was something wrong.
I think I did about 100 to 200 reviews on Amazon which is a lot for someone on a tight budget and post about the flaws on the cheap stuff to keep it last longer for limited budget people.
NATO's secret armies well worth a read of how America took over Europe and fkd everything.
Bad books are not a new thing... especially when it comes to electronics and computers. That goes back to before the first days of personal computers in the early 70's. Back before then we ordered from places like Allied Electric; Burnstein Appleby; Newark Electronics; and yes ... Radio Shack. Times change. You must continuously pay attention. And buying branded products usually turns out to be pretty stupid. In fact, you can buy Bell and Howell now and get awful stuff, because they went bankrupt and somebody bought their name. Pay attention!
My sister is a writer and gets very upset when someone leaves a 4-star review. That's how fucked the rating system is.
I eventually gave up and used Libby to borrow from local libraries.
This is EXACTLY why a container of actual, brand name Sta-Kons cost well over 100 dollars. Connectors are something where you definitely get what you pay for. Never stop, Louis. You're really an asset to us all.
same with molex, anderson etc etc. they cost money but they just work, which is 3 times woth the money.
Wago as well. You can buy some non name brand Wago and throw them in your wall but when your hot wire slips out while you push an outlet in and turn your breaker on to a pop you know why you shou;d've paid the extra $15 for Wagos.
Yeah, connectors for hobby stuff I buy new old stock on eBay or direct from an authorized distributor.
@@majstealth Deutch connectors are another really expensive connector, and there are starting to be some really convincing fakes available. It really comes down to "if you know, you know" when it comes to this stuff. I wish more youtubers would talk about this stuff, because the vast majority of people out there don't know what they're buying. Louis is only one man, he has only so much reach.
@@AtracBreezy Wago are worthless. I hate them as they do suck. Wire nuts are still the best when it comes to joining to 2 wires.
During lockdown in the UK, I used Amazon to buy a lot of tools and DIY items. Most were junk and returned. Drill bits that failed, bent set squares, poor quality screws. When you go to return the low price items, they would often tell you not to bother sending back.
The biggest problem is Amazon have DELIBERATELY removed the option to 'filter by seller' now, so you cannot search for products 'sold and shipped' by Amazon anymore, meaning a much higher risk of buying something counterfeit and/or, quite frankly, crap.
Edit: third party sellers are what have ruined Amazon, and it's by Amazon's own choice that this has happened.
💩party sellers were forced on Amazon by the Obama government
All retail sites allow 3rd party sellers. I only buy stuff sold by or shipped buy amazon. I am not going to risk buying crap from a 3rd party seller. There are select items that I will buy.
@@kameljoe21 Same here.The only third part sellers I buy from are the ones that are run by the actual company that makes the product.
@@BrooklynBalla Yeah unless you know if that company is legit its super hard. The last thing I bought from a 3rd party seller was a set of crochet towels from some lady/company named deb something. Being that its a gift for a neighbor it was a risk and since they are US based its not a bad deal.
One item I tried to buy I never got because the seller went inactive. I may still try and order it again yet doubt they are active. Yet amazon has not taken the item or seller down.
Bought a waterproof apron for work. It had a powder on it that gave me a bad rash. The seller? Chinese. No surprise there 😑
I’ve had no problems with the stuff I’ve ordered from Amazon. I read the product reviews, but I never read the 4 or 5 star reviews. I only read the 1 star reviews. Those are the ones believe more.
This is the way to navigate Amazons bullshit sellers.
For popular products, 1 star review is a good way to target bomb competition product. 2-3 stars are where you see actual users putting complaints to product.
Yep and if it’s a recent 1 or 2 star review believe it because the product is usually trash 🗑️.
same ! its saved me from at leas 3-4 bad purchase
@@hermezkonradtrue…. I go to reviews and click most recent.. if shows vine I don’t buy it if not I consider the 10 most recent
Pro tip: When buying from HD, place an on-line order for delivery or pick-up from your local store so that an employee has to pick the items. Items not in-stock will ship from corporate. Corporate is a separate entity. If you return something that was supplied by corporate at the local store they have to return it to corporate instead of adding it to their inventory at the store, even though everything is on the same invoice.
*Solid advice. Thank you.*
💯 that is what I started doing after watching a video on the Torque Test Channel of them trying to buy a tool that was supposed to be in stocks. They recommend pick up in store online ordering. If what I'm after is in stock, it takes about 30 minutes for the order to be ready for pickup.
Thank you Louis for calling this stuff out. I hardly use Amazon, but I've noticed the dip in quality when searching for decent products.
They have wrecked the 'Prices: Low to High' filter, which was the most useful filter for many people. You don't get the same products listed when you choose that filter.
And if you filter by 'Recommends', somehow more people have recommended extremely expensive products over cheaper versions of the same thing. The whole filter system is no longer about re-arranging information for customer convenience, but manipulation.
The filters and sorting features get worse and worse every year. I get all these crap sponsored results popping up and the filters and sorting don't really work very well anymore. I want to find what I want to find.
I'm buying stuff from you Amazon. You're already making money off me. Stop making me sift through a bunch of sponsored products that I don't want and are garbage in an attempt to make more money.
Agreed. Here's an example. I open up incognito tab to get results unbiased by my past searches and profile. I search for statistics textbook and I get 7,446 results. They should all have prices, right?
I sort from low to high and now get 642 results. Where did all the other books go? Now I sort from high to low and I get 688 results. WTF Amazon? Makes no sense!!
Now I choose bestsellers and I get 3290 results. So, you're telling me you have 3,290 statistics textbooks books that are bestsellers? This is obviously BS. Now I go back to the default sort of "featured" and I have 7,448 results, 2 more than I started with, btw.
This is just one example of how messed up sorting has gotten.
@@RA-lu6mb
I'm starting to mistrust them in other ways too.
This may be paranoia, but I've noticed that if I wishlist something, or even check it out, then want to purchase later, the price has mysteriously gone up. I know flight companies used to do that, so when I travelled, I'd check prices logged into an account on Firefox, then if I wanted to purchase, I'd use a different account on Chrome.
On Amazon, I bookmarked a guitar gizmo a month ago, wanted to finally buy it last week - it had gone up 25 quid!
I found it at the lower price with a music company I'd never checked out before.
It may be paranoia - we have inflation, and the holiday season, so prices may naturally rise. But 'surge' pricing is becoming widespread - it's normal on Uber, and I think Air BnB - so why not Amazon? If you have shown an interest beforehand, why not stick a couple of Pounds on it and hope the customer doesn't care enough to start looking for a cheaper version.
You also get many many less hits when even using just the "low to high" filter, sometimes even reducing it to just 10% of the stock search, which is asinine. Unfortunately there's not much to do when you live in certain countries and local stores (even online) are literally trying to scalp you far more than any scalper on Amazon, or don't have any products.
Unfortunately this is true and there will be no lawsuit to fix it because the Government in whole is on the side of destroying the market. Every cheap piece of junk we buy is a gift from the U.SA. to China. When China can ship something to the USA for pennies, but it costs American citizens a fortune to send something across the states and even into Canada, you know that the Government is not on your side.
So true... I'm getting really tired of having to wade through a blizzard of cheap Chinese junk to try to find something on Amazon. It's become a HUGE problem!
Yeah, you see a bunch of companies with "names" you can't even pronounce and then try to make sense of the descriptions which often leave out important specs, you know it's crap from China.
May I point out the obvious? Shop in person...? They're not even cheap for garbage now.
Wow I am AMAZED that Louis characterizes HOME DEPOT as carrying quality products! No! NO NO NO! They carry mostly Chinese Garbage themselves! Thye wiped out the mo & pop corner hardware stores which carried quality American hardware by fooling customers into buying this cheap Chinese Garbage! If you buy a toilet part at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR. If you buy a faucet at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR! I learned my lesson and started buying direct from North Carolina, until even North Carolina (Wolverine Brass) was destroyed by cheap chinese shit products !! Wolverine Brass, in business for 100 years, destroyed by ONE-YEAR china-brass, which costs 5x more, isn't ceramic, because wolverine lasts 30 years+ and ONE-YEAR china-brass lasts exactly as long as the name says it does ... Now "American Standard" is 100% chinese-owned, and it's total shit!
Etsy has this problem now too.
its always been a problem.
Another issue is pricing. Amazon used to have low prices on branded products. Now, you have to check everything . In addition, I have seen prices change between searches. Get interrupted by a phone call, search again, the same product is $3 more now. Honesty, integrity, and transparency will the currency of the 21st century. Amazon better learn that or they will end up like Sears.
Amazon’s bread & butter is servers hosting websites and the Feds. AWS hosts all the government data.
Most like to rail on Jeff Bezos, but Amazon's been in the dumps since Andy Jassy became chief.
A look into Andy Jassy and his early life should tell you the key things about him.
Oh no not Sears 😂
Yeah, that price switch crap is bizarre! I almost never rebuy anything I've bought just out of spite because they always raise the price thinking you'll rebuy it anyway. Mf'ers!
Easy fix. Put any likely item in your cart, then resume search. You need to outwit them.
They buy us these no-name crimps at work. Nothing more frustratining than being soaked with sweat working in a hot enivorment and your crimp slips apart in your hands with barely any tension.
Two problems with amazon reviews: 1) they can be bought by sellers, 2) seller can list something cheap people like for the price (phone case maybe), leave good reviews and then the seller completely repurposes the listing for something expensive that magically has 3k positive reviews 🎉
don't buy shit that doesn't accept returns. Not sure why this whole thread is acting like Amazon is an epidemic of bullshit. I'm probably well past a thousand things I ordered from Amazon last year. Only remember a couple things that were maybe questionable. Sent them back. It's really not a problem at all. Like, a zero issue.
If u read the reviews it would be pretty obvious 😉
I posted a completely honest poor review of an item I got from Amazon over a year ago and received a warning from Amazon stating something to the affect that I was on some kind of ‘review probation’ with them. I kind of laughed and forgot all about it at the time. Several months ago I received another terrible quality item so reviewed it as such, Amazon then suspended me from reviewing and removed all my other reviews going back years. It’s like they are now consider themselves some kind of censorship authority and only let you say what they want other customers to hear to be sucked into buying bad items.
That’s totally a thing! I only review items that I’ve been critical to (thus explaining the bad rating), but the stuff I,ve like I just give a good rating. Just found out most of my reviews were took down. Some from many years ago.
Thanks for the heads up. I don’t order really anything from them anyway. They used to deliver things within a day or so. Not anymore. You can’t believe anything people post for reviews, even on YELP, Ebay, These companies just don’t want anyone to criticize them in any way.
Me too and they banned me for life.
Happened to me a couple of times. I reviewed a ratchet belt (gave it 2 stars) where the buckle kept coming apart from the belt. They said the review did not meet their standards but wouldn't say why.
I did an honest bad review and have gotten 6 emails from them. They are trying to send me their shitty product for free to take down my video. Last message
"Hello, Could you minnd reply us????????
Please believe, communication is the best way to solve problem.
I am lookinng forward to your reply.
Merry Christmas.
I closed my Amazon account after watching a Panorama (BBC) documentary on the ethics of their business practices. They openly stated that their aim was to build a comprehensive database about everybody on the planet, whether they were an Amazon customer or not. The show also featured a guy who had his own line of motorcycle clothing who decided he wanted do change suppliers. Amazon said "Nah, you can't do that, we own the rights to the product" and that if he tried, they'd take him to court, effectively putting him out of business. Disgusting.
Google and Facebook do this to an extent too and it’s scary and impressive.
No such thing as privacy anymore it seems
Wow that sounds illegal as hell, they need to get sued!!
They cutoff my ability to review products years ago…….despite writing many lengthy honest reviews that would help many people determine the experience of using various products. Now corrupt vendors are running amok censoring people who will not put up with their bullshit and customers can no longer talk to each other, which was one of the best parts of the reviews!
At this point I watch several product reviews on UA-cam, I no longer solely trust what is written on Amazon given their actions over the years and poor censorship.
I remember in a comment section about cars, some Chinese company was shipping rocks to customers in a box who ordered brake sets. Because the shipping and return times were so long, customers wouldn’t be able to secure refunds. You can’t make this shit up!! 😂😂
@@sleepykittyMMD By commenting here, you've already lost a lot of privacy. We're beholden to the devices and service we use, and it's our fault
To be devils advocate on the rights to the product bit; many fools fail to read and understand their business contracts before signing and then try to blame the other party for being shady after the fact.
I've been a consulting software engineer for 48 years working virtually entirely on top-tier projects for companies like Intel (the first digital video to ever run on PCs), Bell Labs, AT&T, Mayo Clinic (sequencing SARS-CoV-2 genomes), NASDAQ, the NYSE, & half of the major banks & financial institutes on Wall Street (as well as a stint with the alphabet intel agencies on cyberwarfare with a TS//SCI (Code Word) clearance). Although I just retired for the 3rd time at 75, Amazon has been trying to get me to work for them for a rate well into 3 figures an hour for the past 3 years. I refuse to work for any company that has a customer-hostile & worker-hostile corporate culture & will always take a cut in my rate to work for companies with integrity looking for quality systems. American for-profit businesses' software quality has dropped from the top 3 in 2000 to outside of the top 25 (and the money they pay so-called "senior software engineers" is a third of what they paid in the '90s except for small, special systems that truly do need competent programmers like the AWS cloud project they wanted to contract me for. It's website & search algorithms would get you flunked out of a freshman Computer Science class. Jenny Lawson, author of the hilarious book "Furiously Happy," has a website, theblogess.com, where she posts the most bizarre items Amazon suggests would be of interest to her every day. I always get a good laugh out of what their learning-disabled algorithms pick out for me. Bras & romance novels? I'm male & don't cross-dress (or I would have married a woman my own clothes size 😁).
Nowadays when I'm online shopping I check the on site reviews for the lowest ratings because those usually have real user experience of problems regarding the product.
This is why we need a small business revival. A local hardware store would probably be a better alternative to large retail box stores
Local guys are too lazy and dumb to do DELIVERY. THAT is the fasting-growing market sector and they COULD do it locally with a small solar-recharged electric van, but their brains are too narrow-minded to do it. "We always ... We never ...."
We have an amazing hardware store in the next county over that has hardware, Hallmark cards, collectibles and their prices competitive and quality is #1. No more Amazon junk.
Only problem? They're small. I go there first b/c I gotta walk my dog, anyway. And they have cookies for them. Or call and ask, which is always nice to have a guy who knows his butt from a hole in the ground.
I am AMAZED that Louis characterizes HOME DEPOT as carrying quality products! No! NO NO NO! They carry mostly Chinese Garbage themselves! They wiped out the mom & pop corner hardware stores which carried quality American hardware by fooling customers into buying this cheap Chinese Garbage! If you buy a toilet part at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR. If you buy a faucet at home depot, GOOD LUCK GETTING IT TO LAST ONE YEAR! I learned my lesson and started buying direct from North Carolina, until even North Carolina (Wolverine Brass) was destroyed by cheap chinese garbage products !! Wolverine Brass, in business for 100 years, destroyed by ONE-YEAR china-brass, which costs 5x more, isn't ceramic, and wolverine lasts 30 years+ and ONE-YEAR china-brass lasts exactly as long as the name says it does! Recently I went to ace hardware & bought a nut & bolt and the nut just slides up and down the bolt, no need to twist it !! China Garbage Strikes Again!!
Sure, the issue is that everything will be twice the price. It's why they all closed in the first place.
How much do you all want to bet that this product listing from this company will remain up in spite of it being a dangerously poorly manufactured product? Amazon claimed to remove the entire independent repair and refurbishing industry from Amazon for the safety of the customer. Because it was for your safety. I wonder what they'll do here.
"your safety" = brand deal with Apple, not actually your safety
It is definitely still up. One of the reviews from last year says that it is complete junk...and they gave it 5 stars.
All big companies like Amazon, Meta, Google, eBay do sometimes a big purge, but after a while they allow the same practices again, because if they are being strict they start losing money.
After reading through the amazon seller forums about the blatant review manipulation and scams that are posted daily, it's clear that it is unsalvageable. Amazon has allowed itself to be infested with so much fraud (mostly from China) that there should be a historical lawsuit to shut it down as a public hazard. Amazon makes money regardless of who is scammed. They don't care about the buyer or the seller. Unfortunately, nothing will change until people just say no to scamazon.
We care about --your safety-- our money and climbing graphs
I was once sent a card with a cheap Amazon purchase offering a $10 gift card for a 5-star review. The product sucked too, so I left a 1-Star review talking about both the bad product and the bribe for a good review. Amazon took the review down because "Comments on the sellers actions are irrelevant to the item", despite those actions meaning that the 5-star reviews are literally purchased, indicating false quality.
I had this same exact experience. It's absolute bullshit
I don't even bother leaving reviews on Amazon anymore. It used to be a good system, customers helping out other customers with their choices. But now it's just pointless. Once they blocked an honest 5-star review of mine for unspecified reasons, probably because their bots or whoever third-world employees weren't able to understand what I had written (in my native language). That's where I decided to not waste my time anymore with writing reviews.
Besides that, they read the reviews, so BAD reviews never get shown.
i work for amazon and it feels antihuman in its design, it feels like jeff bezos actually hates humans. Working there has led me to never ordering from Amazon online, i feel disrespected and taken advantage of by amazon on a daily basis 🎉
Amazon didn't go to crap until 2015 or 2016. That was when they allowed chinese sellers on the platform. All the junk started showing up then and displacing real products and also killed off many of the regular 3P sellers.
Etsy too has begun to destroy itself. It used to be that you could sell only things you made or items over 20(?) years old. You'd be a fool now if you thought Etsy was still following this rule. I see so much that had to have been imported from a low-wage country. And yet Etsy doesn't care.
They doubled-down after banning reviews for silly reasons. Then they banned email login confirmation and require smart phone numbers to be harvested.
China rocks. Not their fault. 100% amazon’s fault. Thousands of shady, scammy people in the USA as well. The platform is the one who bears responsibility.
I still found really good stuff around that era, but agree that’s where the dominoes started to fall.
Why does @riy0h's comment say 4 replies (presumably 5 now that I am replying) but only one (maybe 2 now that I am replying) replies show up? What is UA-cam blocking?
4 months ago or so ago I bought a surge protector on Amazon. When I finally got it, I noticed that the switch felt strange and something was blocking it from turning on.
When I pulled the bottom off, I was absolutely mortified to find that it was constructed to just be a small voltage step-down transformer running an LED for the surge protector section, with everything being bare tinned 16 gauge tin wire with everything just being wrapped around screws. It said it was rated for 2000 watts, nothing indicated it was rated for that. I returned it immediately because it was an electrical fire waiting to happen.
After a month or so, I decided to go back and write a review for the surge protector, only to find that the entire seller's library had been completely changed, and they were now selling beauty products.
That was the final straw for me, and I'm not avoiding that demon site like the plague.
You'd be equally mortified of the power strips being sold at Home Despot, Lowes and Walmart. They're all built down to a cost and often have bare connections like that inside them.
The item ID switcharoo is so insanely common lately, feels like 1/4th or so of the items I look at on Amazon are sold on top of some spoofed ID that had a good rating.
Some products you’ll look at the reviews and it’s all for a completely different product! They can just keep the listing with the good reviews, change the title & picture and everything to a new product, and that’s evidently A-OK.
@@AlchemicSoul That's a common theme across basically all of the online "marketplaces". The seller will put a multi-item listing and have the cheapest item in the listing as the front-runner to get page views.
I thought I was slowly loosing my mind but it turns out Amazon has turned into just another wall mart with even worse customer service..
Another ali express
My experience to date is excellent customer service and delivery. However the products have of late been so poor quality, I hardly use Amazon now., and do not trust the reviews.
@@SalamHerbs-db5nt Or "Wish". The problem is we are making it easier for the Chinese manufacturers to sell their "knockoffs" by purchasing this Chinese Garbage. President Trump knew this and this is why he made harsh trade deals and penalties for the Chinese. It made it more difficult for the Chinese to sell their garbage at such a low price to Americans.
A customer could see they could buy a name-brand product for just a small amount more than the Chinese Garbage because of tighter trade deals with China. Once Trump was out of office, Biden and the Democrats rolled back those restrictions and penalties on trade with China and once again, the cheap China crap was "Cheap" in price, once again.
China even has its own warehouses in different places in California so they can "beat" the requirements of things being "sold" from American companies vs direct from China. Basically, the game is rigged against American companies trying to manufacture and sell quality products. Oddly, many of these quality products even come from the same China manufacturers making the cheap garbage the difference is in the quality control on what the name-brand products demand with their product vs the cheap garbage China knockoffs.
No, Amazon has turned into K-Mart. Much worse! Their fate will be the same.
@@SalamHerbs-db5nt bingo!
I bought a phone on Amazon that was specifically marked as unlocked. I plugged in my SIM and it worked. I went on vacation and lo-and-behold. It's locked. But because it's been more than 90 days, Amazon is washing their hands of it.
My options are basically a small claims suit at this point.
You always have another option: Don't buy on Amazon in the first place!
An unlocked phone means it will accept any SIM card. If your SIM worked on your home network but not when on vacation, that's a roaming issue or a cellular radio band issue and has nothing to do with the phone being unlocked. You either needed to change the settings to enable roaming, make sure your account is set up correctly with your carrier, or make sure your phone has the right cellular radio bands needed for use where you're going to be. Unlocked doesn't mean it will automatically work everywhere, especially if you're traveling internationally.
@@dwboston1Bro, the phone literally said "Network locked"
@reasonitician Because you didn't have service on the network you were trying to use. An unlocked phone refers to the ability to put any active SIM into it. Locked phones are locked to the cellular provider that sells them (i.e. phones that AT&T sells directly are SIM locked to AT&T) If it worked on your cell network at home and then didn't when you were roaming, either your cell carrier doesn't have a roaming agreement where you were traveling, your phone lacked the cellular radio bands to access the network where you were, your account wasn't set up for roaming, or roaming needed to be turned on in the phone settings. Unlocked doesn't mean your phone magically works everywhere automatically.
What is your cell provider at home and where were you traveling?
@@dwboston1Bro, you've written a god damn novel trying to explain what's going on, despite being so ungodly uninformed that it hurts. You need to actually read what people say.
The phone literally said "I am rejecting this SIM because I'm locked to a network". It's not a radio issue, it's not a roaming issue, it's a fucking anti-feature that should never have existed in the first place.
Thanks to Amazon, I care about brands more now than ever. Unfortunately these fly by night brands have left me distrusting many of the faceless/nameless "brands" on Amazon. I've personally had a handful of bad experiences where the seller has offered me total refunds and to keep the product to ensure I don't leave a bad review.
I agree with you !
"Brands" dont matter like they did, these days they are ALL being contract manufactured in China in the same factories, they just put different stickers and things on them
@@HobbyOrganist “brands” may go to the lowest cost factory at the lowest cost spec. But name brands still have a reputation to keep. While some of the stuff is made in the same factories, they may very well be built to higher specs, use higher quality components, or have additional QC steps to greatly increase your odds of getting a working product.
Hate to say it, the Chinese are capable of making high quality products, if that’s what the buyer is looking for. Unfortunately they’re also capable of making utter crap and selling it for pennies.
i take the product or refund, and still leave a honest review usually
One of the things that always bugs me when I shop on Amazon is that the crap never goes away. It doesn't matter what filter you use or what brands you ask for. The cheap, typically Chinese, garbage is on every single page. It takes hours to find something if you know what you're looking for.
If you try to filter it returns even more crap. I do remember when searching for something was EASY, now you would try to look for an item and would show you even things that are not even related.
A few weeks ago I bought a "cheap" heater and it had good reviews and all, still I told my fiancée that probably was going to be not very good, turns out it's even worse, and we only kept it because welp, we need it and don't have time to look for another one. I wanted to buy a really cheap and crappy one we ended spending the double and the thing feels like it's going to fall apart any second, the plastic is worse than something someone could 3dprint... still we kept it. Amazon makes less and less sense and it makes aliexpress being a better option because at least there things are cheap and it's the same shitty quality.
@@kotarldoI’ve noticed this too.
Excellent point. These days, all the search engines have become crap because sellers utilize some sorts of search optimization softwares that make sure their product shows up in search results if it has even the faintest relation to what you searched for.
when shopping online in canada you will find that home depot and walmart are often just repackaging that same garbage at a higher price. but you can also find stuff on the home depot shelf (like DAP spray foam insulation) at half the price of amazon sellers...
XiXiPi owns America. When 2049 arrives, you will truly understand!
I stopped using Amazon last year and my personal finances have improved no end. I treated it like an addiction, which in hindsight I think it was. Went cold turkey and after three months I really didn’t miss it. I encourage people to do the same.
Lol it’s a major addiction
Spend money with your local small businesses as much as possible, it's good for your community, and that's good for you!
There are about 3 places to shop online now; eBay, Walmart and Amazon. And in town there is Big Box stores. All the small shops out of business.
There are a few mom n pop stores in my area. As far as the online ones, I'd have to go back to ebay, between all 3
i typically use it more to watch tv shows i enjoy like The Grand Tour, The Tick and Invincible.. since living in poverty and having food stamps, i get it for $6 which i am also 50 miles from the closest Walmart so that can be expensive in both time and fuel. use it how it was designed.. like a swap meet where you tag stuff and buy it when they rock bottom price to move the trash out of inventory to make room for things that will sell, snap up the things out of the trash because even garbage can have something of worth!
This is so unbelievably true. I'm done with them. Thank you for letting us know
it's not just amazon, other retailers like walmart are also now allowing third party products and becoming similarly just an open marketplace to sell things, which has resulted in tons of cheap garbage dropshipper products flooding in
THIS. Yup, Newegg and other places have become a haven for scammers.
This is how the Video Game debacle of 1983 happened. The systems got flooded with shovel ware and it all collapsed.
I started noticing all the fake reviews over 10 years ago. I contacted Amazon to advise them that the reviews for some items I was interested in were totally fake. I was asked how I knew this and I told them because the review is not even about the specific product but of some other product totally. Since that time it has increased 100 fold. I no longer trust Amazon products as much of them are Chinese knockoffs…its truly sad how far our country has fallen!
Two words: Consumer Confidence. When customers can no longer be sure what they’re buying, consumers will lose confidence in the market and it will collapse. In a corrupt country like ours with a government that’s never seen a mega-merger it didn’t approve, we have more and more businesses that can’t afford to fail. It also means quality goods become harder to find because low quality goods flood the market. They arrange exclusivity deals with companies like Wal Mart and suddenly the shelves are flooded with low quality garbage all from one or two obscure companies. And because the store depends on those limited brands, they jack up the prices. I went to Wal Mart recently and couldn’t even get a Master Lock padlock. Only one or two brands were available, ugly low quality garbage and not even cheap! Another issue is some products- like the one in the video - are dangerous if they fail. It’s not just 6 bucks wasted, somebody’s house burns down! Again these types of market situations are not new - the government should be regulating against things like this. It’s the reason companies can’t be allowed to get too big. But all the checks and balances that once kept our country functioning have been “deregulated” by extremist, fanatical republicans (and I’m not against all republican ideals per say, some are necessary). But the modern Republican Party isn’t even conservative or republican- it’s a radical authoritarian oligarchy, which uses fear to get the poor and middle class to vote against their own interests, in favor of the rich.
@@catsooey well said.
This video nails it. In the past, brick and mortar stores vetted products before putting them in their shelves because they want to avoid returns. This is totally missing now
One issue is, because Amazon is really shitty towards Brands. Often times a Brand sells something on Amazon, Amazon will see it sells well so they come in and produce a "Amazon Essentials" version of it and sell it cheaper while making it appear on top of the list. That makes Brand sellers just not bother with Amazon, they know... the guys that want quality will find them wherever it is they sell their product.
I live in Australia and I also noticed there is a seller that is called "Amazon Commercial Sales". They sell branded products.
Bingo. I knew a guy who made a decent living selling yoga mats, then Amazon went to the same factory & produced an "Amazon Basics" version & undercut his prices. He couldn't afford to compete.
Amazon is copying the Chinese.
most of us are buyng crap based on he price so i dont see the issue. assuming most things we actually buy are crap then give it me cheaop, its the same thing anyway 9 times out of 10. If its quality one wants then you buy the brand you want and the cheap stuff is irrelevant.
@@harrysibben7583 In America it is called Amazon Business Sales. I have an account on Amazon Business Sales and one on just regular Amazon. I have noticed even my search results for the same things are different. It's like they know that people in "The Trades" or I think you call them, "Tradies", know the difference between quality products and Chinese Garbage LOL.
However, if I scroll down low enough, I will encounter the Chinese Crap on the Amazon Business Sales as well. It's just the more quality name-brand products are listed first in the "search". But if no one is selling the quality brand-name products then all you get in the search results is Chinese Garbage LOL.
Other websites have this same issue, especially Walmart with their sellers outside of just Walmart. In America, they call them "Pro-Sellers" or 3rd Sellers". Basically, they are doing the Amazon trick and allowing other sellers to sell thru their website on products Walmart may not carry OR Walmart does carry and Walmart is so much cheaper on the price you will want to order it from Walmart LOL.
It all stems down to sh*tty search systems within those websites. They don't give you the option of filtering out the garbage even though in some instances you should be able to filter the garbage out. Same thing with Ebay where people are just inserting keywords in their descriptions and thus their no-brand name garbage gets included with the quality products.
When I do shop on Amazon I always check who the seller is and make sure it's coming from a brand I recognize for things like this. Had to do this recently for 3M command strips because none of the stores I went to had the size I wanted in stock. Had to wade through lots of knock offs to find the real 3M ones though. Luckily many of the knockoffs did have bad reviews saying they were garbage so I did not fall victim.
There's another issue: It's known that some "companies" would put up a listing for an item on Amazon, wait until it got a lot of good reviews, then completely change the listing (which kept the reviews for the previous listing) and then sell the new, super junky item, under the old listing's reviews.
I see this all the time on Amazon and it drives me crazy. I'll be reading the reviews and realize the reviews are for a different model or sometimes a completely different item altogether. I wish there was an easy way to report this.
This is annoying af…….I never understood why this was happening.
Profit is all that matters. Honesty, integrity, ethics, and quality are for Chumps! 💪😎✌️ Ya gotta cheat people if ya wanna get ahead! Mo' munneh means mo' munneh. "Customers" are a dime a dozen. Health is wealth, might is right.
Yep seen that before.
The other day I was looking for a pendrive, and a lot of reviews mentioned the lenght of the hose. Turned out the reviews belonged to an air compressor hose replacement (of exceptional quality, according to the reviews). The seller had changed the product to a crappy pendrive, but kept the hundreds of old, 5 stars reviews.
I don't buy from Amazon. When Bezos started thinking that his money made him an authority on how I needed to live my life, that was it.
Yeah, and affecting his employees in some cases, his fulfillment centres worked people literally to death. He spends is "lottery winnings" as he called it on di**o-shaped rockets instead of reinvesting that money into the places his business owned and people working for him.
Well, if people with money that feel they have the right to tell you how to live your life bothers you, I have some unfortunate, life-shattering news about politics/politicians that is really going to ruin your day.....
🤣🤣🤣
@@Big74Mike2012 The difference is Amazon won't shoot you for refusing to give them money... yet.
@@Big74Mike2012 This is not news, nor is it life-shattering. The difference is that no one elected Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg or any of their ilk. 🤣🤣🤣
You are spot on! I cancelled Prime and stopped using Amazon as my go to e-store. Chinese junk in literally every category with nearly no oversight by Amazon and these sellers are free to break whichever rule they wish. I recently bought a tablet and the seller falsified more than half of the listed specs, even key items like the amount of memory and display resolution. My rule is simple, no matter the price, if it's junk or fake specs, I will return the item. Luckily, I am near Kohl's and Whole Food, so I just pop in to return without incurring too much out of pocket cost. Incidentally, I travel to China for work and even visit factories. The surprising thing is that most Chinese people don't buy local no-name junk. Most of the factories' outputs are purely going to Amazon to be sold in the west!! Amazon is absolutely the dumping ground for crap that even Chinese people won't want.
It's worse than that, they are sending this junk here to fill up our landfills and reduce e-waste polution of Chinese mainland. It's literally *intentionally* malicious. Same with certain substances I can't name because youtube will shadowban me again - the ones that cause a lot of OD deaths. It's a proxy war, they have been on the offensive for a while.
Well said.
Yeah exactly, Stop ✋ buying online ,fuc!!!themselves 🙄, look around for bargains in Store.
China is a low-to-no trust society. Every Chinaman understands that every other Chinaman is just trying to rip him off for the most money possible - all the time. In the west we're being conned by applying high trust assumptions to these people and they are taking full advantage of it. They literally laugh at how stupid the buyers are.
When I buy things like drives or memory, I search for known brands and try to look for the store. Amazon is notorious for selling fake SD cards that say 256GB but they're really relabelled 2GB. It's turning into a direct pipeline to Chinese fake factories. They're burning down customer trust with all the drop shippers and bad sellers. I didn't even know about the problems for sellers.
The only brand on Amazon you can trust that isn't a huge name is Silicon Power. They're still a name brand, but they have SSD's for dirt cheap compared to other name brands.
This is why I've stopped buying important stuff from Amazon. I still buy books and music that I can't find elsewhere but Amazon has pretty much turned into a dollar store with significant markup. I've noticed this over the last, maybe, year and half.
My rule is 'if it really doesn't matter then I can buy it on Amazon', if it is important at all, then I go to a more reputable site, preferably one dedicated to one product line. There are a few exceptions, but they're only ones where the vendor or manufacturer is well known, e.g. a reputable 'brand name'. In that case I might order from Amazon, or might not, depending on convenience. But ordering anything from Amazon these days entails a degree of risk, if for no other reason then due to decline in packaging quality. The less a 'stupidly basic commodity' the item is, the greater the risk. Sadly Amazon has gone downhill badly the past few years.
Don't remember the last time I bought a book or music. This is why we have libraries :) Rip city lol
The fact that there is so much Amazon exclusive stuff these days is also an issue.
If the "brand name" looks like it was created by drawing letters from a scrabble bag, then it is likely poor quality or fake.
I saw a video explaining this. To cut down on this problem, Amazon required sellers to have a trademarked company name. So what's the easiest way to get a trademark? Register a random collection of letters that nobody will even come close to having registered.
Lol, that is so true!
That explains why new drugs hitting the market sound like they're named after sci-vi villains and the planets they live on.
You mean you don't trust a genuine Chingbo brakepad in your car?
@@ItsQueeferSutherland most "brands" on Amazon are now like "Asnyaoygagoaxxanezlevx". It's literally like somebody collapsed and hit their head on the keyboard.
Great video. I agree, Amazon has become the dumping ground for all of the garbage products on the planet.
almost all from china. don't buy anything from china.
Like a trashy flea-market sometimes--depends on the product.
@trinleywangmo
Yes and well said.
Merry Christmas to you and yours today!
You never know who it's coming from. Is it a real product? Is it something that's been sitting in somebody's unsanitary basement in their house? Who are these millions of shops? You don't know. You don't know what you're getting.
They happily sell non-listed stuff ... not UL listed. Hazardous from a a fire/life/safety standpoint.
Louis, you've made an excellent presentation here. I applaud your courage to exit Amazon as a seller. and to relate your reasons for doing so. In my experience, after using Amazon for the last 10 years, I have seen the quality of the merchandise deteriorate precipitously. Now, if I am in need of any product where quality concerns are an issue, I review UA-cam videos (such as yours), and then purchase the product from a local purveyor. This keeps my money circulating in the local economy, and assures me of value for my money. Yes, Amazon is very convenient, but I am dismayed by the preponderance of crap that this business panders to an unsuspecting market. I have almost eliminated my purchases from this site. Thank you for the great content.
I stopped shopping on Amazon about two years ago, simply because I don't think one company should dominate online retail. To those who have just made a similar decision, you won't regret it. Welcome to the club!
I did the same, but back in 2019. Nowadays if I want something, I just go directly to the manufacturer's site and buy from them (assuming I can't find it for sale in a store locally)
People have gotten too lazy/complacent about just going to one online shop to buy everything... similarly to how Walmart did the same thing with brick and mortar stores and their cheap, low quality items.
So, where do you shop instead? I often shop at Amazon because there is no reasonable alternative. If the choice is Amazon in 1-2 days or a retail store selling the exact same item at a higher price and with a long delay, it would be foolish not to buy from Amazon.
@@Dr.Schlitz
Except that Amazon product is going to have a much worse impact in the global economy and climate, which means it will negatively impact YOU, too.
And besides, you can often find the product cheaper elsewhere-or just don’t buy it at all! It’s amazing what you realize you don’t need when you learn to go without it.
That will save you money, and prevent exploitation of other people and the planet.
Me too, and because of the way they treat their workers.
I never stopped shopping on Amazon, I never started. I might have bought one item over 10 years ago on Amazon because I couldn't find it anywhere else and didn't know how evil the company was back then but that was about my first and last Amazon purchase ever.
The biggest problem with name brands is that you never know when they will change management and switch from quality to cheap. Rubbermaid and Tupperware jump immediately to mind.
Rubbermaid tubs used to be very flexible and bulletproof. But now they are made from cheap hard plastic that cracks if any flexing force is applied to them. They are just like Sterilite containers that way.
This is why I love shopping at thrift stores. You can find vintage household goods in great condition for less than the price of newer, lower quality stuff. Of course, shopping at thrift stores is hit-or-miss. But they're great if you enjoy the treasure hunt aspect of it.
I bought a Craftsman toolbox from Amazon once. It was made of plastic and I knew that when I bought it, but I assumed it would be thick and rugged. When I received the toolbox, I couldn't believe how cheaply made it was. it looked like a toy toolbox. The plastic was thin and it was warped so much, you couldn't even close the lid properly. The metal clasp was so cheap it bent when you tried to close it, and the "Craftsman" brand was printed on a paper sticker that was slapped on the front of the toolbox. Of course, there were nothing but 4-star reviews for it, so reviews are utterly worthless, and even if you buy "brand name" stuff from Amazon, it doesn't mean you're going to get anything of quality.
Sometimes it's even dangerous, like the new Pyrex being non oven-safe. So many unnescessary accidents happened because people mistrust the brand.
This just happened with the wal mart (George) t shirts. They increased the price a dollar and now they're made in Haiti and they suck.
As a former retail worker, I can relate to theft being a problem. Unfortunately, it's not easy to stop. If you try to crack down, you get a lot of people blasting you for treating them like thieves, even for reasonable security measures. It's not like I can tell who is a thief and who isn't by looking at them. It's not like a thief will admit their theft, either. Preventing theft is one of the toughest challenges that retail stores currently face.
To prevent theft retail stores must move back to over the counter sales as it was done for centuries.
@@dmitryk7320 The problem with over-the-counter sales is long lines and waiting, which discourages customers from shopping there in the first place.
Go back to the way winn Dixie (or Piggly wiggly?) used to do it- have everything BEHIND the counter, when somebody wants something u go get it for them.
😅😅there..ur welcome!😅😅
@@ghoulbuster1obvious troll is obvious.
The way those little fasteners get stolen is at the checkout. The little baggie nuts and bolts are specialty items costing $1.50 - $3 sometimes. So they take them out of the baggie and go up to the register. "huh whats this thing?" "I'm not really sure, it was in the hardware isle". Rather than going to look for it they ring up some other nut or bolt that costs 5 cents.
Haven’t shopped on Amazon in years, haven’t used eBay in a while too. I’m glad you’re bringing this to people’s attention half the shit from Amazon I can get from Aliexpress for half the price or less and it’s the same quality or better. Most of the crap being made now a days is planned obsolescence and engineered to fail after the warranty period expires that’s why I can’t see myself buying a new car or laptop anytime soon.
Exactly, I refuse to upgrade my iphone until absolutely mandatory (complete loss) and I'll probably still buy used or get a hand-me-down.
@@girohead used all the way, I don't buy those ridiculously shabby designed three or four bay rtx4090's that break the pcb without proper support. I'm not surprised there's a crowd of snake-oil salesmen that loves this garbage. AMD's newest CPU only supports half of the pci-e lanes as my older intel processor. So essentially, if you buy a good motherboard for Ryzen, half of what you plug in will not work.
I got LED lamps from Aliexpress that are higher quality than the ones I got from Amazon. Both were about the same price.
I've noticed more and more that even if you search for name brands of these kind of products (connectors, fasteners, electrical components/hardware, and even tools) you practically have to know the SKU for the part you want, and even then you get a page and a half of knockoffs before you find the product you want and that's IF you find the brand you want.
That's because, as Corey Doctorow figured out when studying Amazon's monopolistic tactics, half of Amazon's search results are ads (with the first page being *entirely sponsored* results)
I bought a 4-pack of detergent on Amazon. When I got it there were only two. The title said something like "2 x 2 pack", but the main thing was the image which said "4-pack" in the corner. The price was about the same as supermarkets were charging for actual 4-packs. When I went to return it, it said that the item is not eligible for return. I started a live chat, and the agent told me that I am wrong and that it is obviously just a 2-pack. They refused to help. I started another live chat and this time the agent said they would start a return for me. When I got the emails about the return that had just been started for me, they had chosen one of the other items in the order, presumably because they also were unable to open a return request for the detergent. I then had to cancel that, and write a complaint email to Amazon. The complaint email was thankfully answered and they refunded me with no need to return it.
I was supposed to get a 12 pack of canned corn beef hash for about 30 dollars, and I received 1.
I purchased a odd size (small) lightbulb for a project I was working on. The image on the amazon listing showed a box labeled "10 pack" and the about this item section said 10pc. The listing was $11 which seemed about right for a 10pc order of tiny 12v lightbulbs. I received one tiny lightbulb, in a huge box.
Its sad because everyone probably has an experience like that now - I ordered a really nice looking wax melter, made of wood, and received a cheap dollar-store humidifier instead. It was also rainbow colored with a shiny pink metallic finish, (the whole thing was made of VERY cheap plastic). Probably the funniest but also the shittiest order I ever made. Immediately returned it, left a 1 star review and complained to Amazon. They should have given me extra for having to drive to the UPS store.
FYI. Amazon has started just letting you keep the junk item and giving you the refund. It keeps the seller and Amazon off the hook for cost of the return. Speaks volumes for the profit margin these "shadow" companies are actually making on these products. And, on top of that, I've lost track of all the stories of people who were selling stuff on Amazon only to have their products copied and sold by Amazon.
Side note: I have purchased no-name things on Amazon. I bought them because they were inexpensive, I was in a budget crunch, and I needed something in a hurry. And, I've made it a habit to read the crap reviews first--even on quality name brand stuff. Whether luck of draw or what, some of those cheap items are actually pretty good. But, the ones that are crap...more than make up for those good ones. Also, I used to do electronics back in the 80s. And, I got to tell you Louis, I'm not sure I would have caught that crimping problem. Well done.
This isn't a solution! This can be very dangerous depending on said product!
My favorite is when you buy a crappy Chinese product for, say 40 dollars. Then you get a card in the mail offering you a 40 dollar Amazon gift card to leave a 5 star review. I've had this not once, twice, but four times now.
Sometimes those "no name" products are actually very good. You're buying much the same stuff more directly from the Chinese manufacturer. Rather than paying a local middle-man to mark up the price.
But it's basically the Wild West. The reviews can't be trusted. And you never quite know what you're getting, since the brands, products, and listings are constantly changing.
They do that because of all the "earth conscious people." Returning products mean more emissions, by having you keep the product it's a way to say that Amazon delivered a package with low to no cost of emissions and the leads them to being "carbon neutral".
@@Ryashon01 That sure sounds nice anyways.
To my surprise I have never had an issue with Amazons products. Though I did not choose the first in the list, but now I will be more careful, and even try to search in local stores.
Thanks for the video!
I once left a review on amazon because I received a product that was not only defective (could be assembled because of errors in the manufactiring), but was of the wrong color. Amazon deleted my review because you can't actually criticize the manufacturer in these reviews. Astounding!
Oh actually you can criticize brands on Amazon… just not rich/chinese brands as they have amazon’s direct support. Mom n pop brands, american small business and niche brands get all the bad reviews listed even if they are a mistake. 😂
Amazon and “honest reviews” don’t vibe too well with Amazon. 😂
They cutoff my ability to review products years ago…….despite writing many lengthy honest reviews that would help many people determine the experience of using various products. Now corrupt vendors are running amok censoring people who will not put up with their bullshit and customers can no longer talk to each other, which was one of the best parts of the reviews!
At this point I watch several product reviews on UA-cam, I no longer solely trust what is written on Amazon given their actions over the years and poor censorship.
I remember in a comment section about cars, some Chinese company was shipping rocks to customers in a box who ordered brake sets. Because the shipping and return times were so long, customers wouldn’t be able to secure refunds. You can’t make this shit up!! 😂😂
You can, but you need to use weasel-words to do it.
@@TheSoulCrisis I grow hot peppers as a hobby (and I'll sometimes grow some pretty flowers and stuff like that too) , and often you'll see fancy, or outright impossible seeds, either for plants that clearly don't exist like Super Mario flytraps and peppers the size of a toddler, or for plants that can't be grown from seeds like French Tarragon, being sold.
The pepper seeds are almost always from the same generic red Thai-pepper, not the well known cultivars like Carolina Reaper they're being sold as, and by the time the buyer can tell for sure it's the wrong variety it's far too late.
@@Zeelian I had never even considered buying seeds on amazon. With seeds the seller is the quality. Though most gardeners don't realize the low grade trash they get in packets or as mass retail seedlings. The stuff farmers get is massively better in terms of germination, vigour, and being true to type, but its because they contract for hundreds of pounds, if not tens of tons, of seed and they involve random sampling, controlled storage conditions, and actual insurance companies. (Aside from fancy low volume breeders, always go with cultivars that are currently commercially popular, the seed growers of these cultivars put way more effort into culling sports, avoiding cross pollination, and ensuring high quality seed from healthy plants. Old varieties that are only popular on packet racks are basically grown in a roadside ditch. An exaggeration I admit, but the theme is accurate.)
I always like to say: Amazon has virtually infinite money. If they wanted to solve these problems, they'd be solved by the next quarter. But they don't want to solve these problems, because they don't care about their shopper experience, because they don't make money by pleasing the individual.
Amazon is a monopsony, they want to abuse their power by demanding sellers list lowest price, use amazon shipping, give 30-45% cut, etc. Only Chinese sellers can agree to these things, no sane company would.
They really don't have any competition that can deliver items at such short notice so not surprising.
You didn't even mention the problem of product swapping. I frequently find products now with tons of great reviews, only to read those reviews and find it they're reviewing a completely different product. Somehow sellers can leave up a product page and completely swap what's actually being sold. I have no idea why Amazon would allow something like that.
Guess...
$$$$
I have an idea: a certain greedy Lex Luthor clone wants to bathe in money.
Because they are sleazy money grubbers.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823
They simply add themselves as one of the other options and wait for the "main" person to stop selling item.. they can then be the person listed on the main page of that same item and they don't lose the good reviews left when other person was actually selling real product.. Also when the reviews are for a different product all together all they have to do is add that product to the page and "sell out" of the original item with all those nice reviews.
The Amazon customer service is deteriorating. It hired cheap labor from India and can't solve any problem. Even worse, more and more times, those agents lie to customer and waste much time.
My wife and I got rid of our Amazon account altogether when we saw how they treated their American employees, destroyed small mum and pop stores and clearly showed they did not care.
Vote with your wallet people!
Nice. I’m the same. It’s astounding how many people ignore the ethics of Amazon.
This post needs more bald eagles.
If you do that with every large business that has overtaken mum and pop stores, you'd never go shopping again.
Good on ya' Zap! I order from companies with local retail presence like Home Depot and AutoZone - and who pay my neighbors a reasonable wage - when and wherever possible.
Yeah, I stopped buying after I saw the Amazon delivery person run to my door and then run back to her car.
Noticed this issue myself. I only purchase items that are sold & shipped by amazon... I refuse to deal with 3rd party sellers because 9 out of 10 times... it's garbage and the seller is no better than a scammer. Then the ones that suddenly change the shipping date from next day to next month... because they're a Chinese seller masquerading as one in my country.
It's gotten to the point where 90% of stuff from 3rd party sellers never even showed up after 3-4 weeks... and then you've got to deal with the whole refund process.
I've started switching back to local purchases for stuff... this xmas, the only thing I bought for anyone from Amazon was a gift card because my brother in law wanted some new trainers and he got them from Amazon (branded)
But I too have noticed that branded goods are getting harder and harder to find online... so I've started going directly to the makers website and looking for direct sales from them, or for a direction to one of their partner sellers.
Hey presto... half the garbage problem disappears.
eBay is doing that now
I find myself ordering more and more stuff from small, local (i.e. German in my case) online shops or manufacturer websites. They actually still have the products I want and their prices are usually fine, too.
Completely agree. I've been on Amazon for more than 20 yrs now and the decline you're describing is real and evident. Good review!
6:45 the "abnormal high heart rate" mention on that fitness watch really drives home the point of how much these fake products bothers you
Thank you for pointing this out. Amazon has just been getting worse and worse. All they had to do was protect the review system. It's been gamed and cheated with their approval.
It is getting very difficult to find the actual product that I am looking for on Amazon due to having to wade through all the sponsored garbage items.
Same here. Amazon is getting greedy. All those sponsored products are being paid for by the seller. I just automatically pass all that crap up.
The internet has become nothing but sponsored CHINESE garbage.
This is far superior to the normal chair rant video. Not only does it get your point across more effectively, it allows us to formulate ideas on how to actually do our own repairs.
I know what I'm doing the next time outdoor equipment eats an extension cord.
3:1 waterproof heatshrink, good crimping from home depot
I bought a "new" PS5 controller that was clearly refurbished. I returned it and bought the real deal at a brick and mortar store for just 10 dollars more. The peace of mind and time saved more than made up for the higher cost. I'm considering not buying anything else from Amazon in the near future
Suggestion: When you do leave a review comment, make sure to mention the product name/description. If you do this and the seller does the "swap product" scam (change the product to a crap listing of something else to steal the reviews), it will be obvious to others who might report it as a fake product.
Thai is exactly what I do and it resolves any confusion.
@@SpaceCadet4JesusYet this very reply of yours didn't state what it was replying to, iństead stating "Thai is exactly what I do", so now your reply can be farmed by the original comment, whose current contest was advice to always mention the reviewed product in reviews to avoid scummy reuse .
@@johndododoe1411 Darn it, I hate when that happens. 😡
@@johndododoe1411, he wasn't reviewing the video. He was discussing one of the subjects of the video. If Louis replaces it with something completely different, Bill Miller's suggestion will be just as valid.
I am 100% with Louis! Amazon has become a marketplace for cheap Chinese garbage like eBay did years ago. Now if I want to get parts regardless if I can get the name brand on Amazon at a principal I will go out of my way and even pay a little bit more to buy them from other vendors.
Having principles is important. I choose not to support Amazon and all the garbage sellers
Award-winning author here. I deliberately do not distribute my work via 'Zon. Take one GAEDAEMN guess as to how censored, restricted, and utterly shadowbanned I've been ever since I made that choice. 💪😎✌️
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
This is the solution in our "free market" of high exploitation and low enforcement. Buy the quality stuff. Let the rest fail.
*out of principle
Ebay isn't as bad though.
Really feels good to support the underdogs in every field. Choosing local businesses over giants isn't just a tech thing, it's a community thing. Small steps, big impact!
home depot is the underdog getting robbed by thieves sadly.😭😢😭
It's such a hard choice though, when the local store costs two or three times as much, so I have to decide to either go to the big box store, or just cancel my project all together because I can't afford all of the parts from a local dealer.
What about if your community sucks too? I would point out the stat, but everybody would get mad
Small businesses are just as predatory. Theres nothing inherently better about a business having below a certain amount of employees
I'm not a wealthy man but I live in a wealthy area where there is a small local hardware store that sells overpriced junk just because they're local doesn't mean that their products are better or of value
I agree with you, Louis. There is a huge risk of purchasing fraudulent items from Amazon. I have left negative reviews of a product and Amazon would not publish it - very sketch. The halcyon days of Amazon are over, I fear. So much garbage on sale.
Thanks for putting this out in public, I live in the countryside and used amazon a lot, but now over the last few years, the quality has gone to hell. Customer service is a joke here in the UK, I can't even e-mail them. I noticed the fake reviews when I bought a keyboard that had 4.9 stars and half of the keys didn't work straight out the box, I go look at the reviews and they were all posted on the same day(the day the product was released). Shopping on Amazon is more risky than going to Glasgow's black market.
I noticed this a while back also. It's important to check the dates that the reviews were posted and even check the reviewer to see if it is a newly created account and if they have reviewed more products. It's necessary to do a bit of investigative work before buying something and unfortunately many people are too lazy nowadays to bother even for their own good.
Or they'll get positive reviews for one product and then swap out the product. Reviews talk about BMBLCRY acrylic paint, but the product listed is HAYSEKSY printer ink. In the age of AI, it can't be difficult for Amazon to detect this practice, and yet they won't.
@@Dwigt_Rortugal Even without those bait-and-switch tactics, the level of inconvenience when it comes to filtering reviews by configuration has to be by design. The amount of times I see vastly different products (by name brands even, this isn't even restricted to those sketchy fake brands) listed as different variations of the same listing is astounding.
I know I can scroll all the way down and click on "See more reviews" and filter the reviews there, but that still doesn't show me the breakdown of the ratings for my particular configuration, and then if I want to see a different one I have to go back to the main listing page, change my selection, and do it all over again. Once you start factoring in things like different colors, or other aspects that don't affect the product's functionality, it can be an absolute chore to figure out the ratings for what you actually want to buy.
Wait, there is a black market in Glasgow?
I wish I knew when my dad lived there for 12 years.
Just like how crap the Amazon search is, you can never really find just what you are looking for and let alone want to sort the results into price order. The other day I was looking for something and it said 10000'ish results, so I selected low to high price order and then there was suddenly 16
You are so right!!! 😠😠😠
I plead guilty to ordering extremely much and almost exclusively via Amazon. What I have noticed, however, is that I send back a lot more than I used to. So much so that I was warned by Amazon. My response to this was simply, "Then don't sell so much crap on your site!" My suggestion instead of reviews: Return rates should be published for every product!!!
Some products have those warning now. “Frequently returned items”
Hey what did your warning say? Ive heard about these warnings but not gotten one yet. Lately i have been returning like 50% of my purchases bc of the kind of issues in the video. Im worried about getting my account shutdown?
@@RT-qz5ci this is what it would say in a yellow warning box
“Frequently returned item
Check the product details and customer reviews to learn more about this item”
@@RT-qz5ci Same - me too
I've been doing mass returns since the dawn of prime. I've ordered a bottle of lock-tite and used it once and then return it because Ole' Jeff can foot the bill for me.
They have yet to say anything to me.
A problem with reviews is that a lot of people review products upon receipt based on how they look, but before they have put them to the test.
Now that grind my gears. People will say “ I did not test it yet, but it arrived really well packed and looks nice”…how the FUCK will I know anything about the product with that kind of review?
I think this is partly because Amazon asks you to review products within a short time after delivery. Many products, especially electronics, take significantly more time than that to be put to the test. It's like, remind me in 2 years, Amazon, and then I'll review it.
To be fair, the opposite reviews exist too "package arrived damaged, 0 stars" ... both are terribly annoying.
People have always been garbage at reviewing. I'd read them like crazy from 2014-2019. People are also notorious for using a product completely incorrectly.
Ex. During the pandemic I was reading n95 mask reviews and more than 1 said they were "mismanufactured" because the ear loops were stapled on wrong. ....but they were overhead elastic not meant to go on the ears...
People being morons giving completely useless reviews has been a real problem on Amazon for a long time. It seems like they've finally started dealing with that... Only to not account for how sellers might abuse a self reporting system.
I had a pretty good way to spot out "reviews from an idiot" and factor that into my assessment of a product. I can't assess a product based on reviews that aren't there.
@@SoulDevouredYes, N95 has one strap that goes on to the upper head.
You are speaking truth bro. As a seller who built a brand for years to have it hijacked and the category taken over by complete trash - im 100% with tou
I remember when I had an addiction to eBay as a university student because they were the first to allow international sellers, stuff was so cheap but sometimes you’d wait months to get it, and I was shocked to find it was a knock off but usable. I was actually relieved when Amazon started selling more than books and I could buy what I needed there… what happened is they became eBay, they wanted to eat eBay’s market and they got what they asked for.
ebay is best for small cheap stuff.. if I just want some fuses or some screws.. some wires.. don't make me shell out $8 for shipping the damn thing, throw it in a first class packet.
i miss old ebay. i bought so many used things in the past, because the sellers were honest and detailed about their wares. they would take pictures of all the dings and scratches. nowadays all you see is the default "signs of cosmetic wear" when you look for the condition of the product. and it seems like most of them are resellers who just don't care about what they are selling.
@@simpson6700 Louis has old videos about his bad experience on eBay as a seller. IIRC he had huge problems with customers scammers and high fees/poor support from the platform. Obviously honest sellers give up when they are taken advantage of from both sides. I had some brief experience trying to sell some used stuff many years ago but it was so time consuming (taking all the photos, write a detailed description, packing and shipping, etc. plus all the managing of the account) and the cut eBay took off my sale was so high that it wasn’t worth it.
@@MaNameizJeff Nothing will make me close a tab from a domestic vendor faster than loading the $20 worth of stuff I need into a cart and then getting quoted $20 for shipping. I've shipped enough stuff to know they're just gouging me on shipping.
Here in Europe its sometimes even worse, where retail shops start to sell the 'fake' products too, including fake certification labels, but rebranded to not appear Chinese, for about about the regular price of a house-brand (but valid) product.
Nearly caught my house on fire with an extension-cord from a well-reputed, long standing retailer that had all the expected certifications (and yes, faking those is illegal). Retailer didn't give a F, he's just happy with the margins I guess...
Here in Europe, we have TUKES and kuluttajansuojaliitto, sometimes even Tekniikan Maailma, that does get fake/dangerous products off the market and can fine for repeat offenses.
Funny how "Europe" is kinda useless term to describe ... well, anything.
@@woldemunster9244 Well, I could have said EU, since (most) regulations are shared between all EU countries, but it was more to indicate the issue is not exclusively to the USA or international Amazon...
I was in Best Buy the other day and saw a "USB 3.0" portable monitor for $100. It looked more fake than all of the piles of portable monitors on Amazon.
USB 3.0? So you mean to tell me that it isn't even using a display standard? I have to use your trash spywa-- I mean software to get it to work and it could stop working at any moment?
@@woldemunster9244My thoughts exactly, this kind of crap would be recalled so fast. Let's see what they find from the Christmas favorites this year.
Same thing in Latin America, local businesses are flooded with cheap Chinese knockoffs, sporting all sorts of certification labels. Louis thinks Amazon is going down the drain, but that will soon happen to brick and mortar stores too. Government entities, that should monitor the markets and protect consumers from fake products, are just not doing their jobs.
Totally agree. I dumped Amazon pre holiday season. I am so done with their garbage products they are peddling. I sold machine tools & consumable products like Klein for 30 years but when the simplest item hides origin of manufacture, not safety sealed, appears to have been returned I am just done with this service.
Also hidden is the lack of UL listing bug/logo. Hazardous.
I get returns about half the time from Amazon. Same from Lowe's, by the way.
I am disabled so I’m forced to shop at Amazon . I have had to many experiences with defective products listed at the same price as other items of the exact same sort . I got safety pins that bent on anything other than gauze , straight pins so tiny and short that they were useless , a pitcher w a handle that disattached the first time I picked it up , earrings where the stud bent the first time I put on the backs , two rice cookers that worked less than 5 times and another that cost ten dollars more but was deceptively advertised as performing multiple tasks that it in fact did not , ceramic candle holders obviously damaged during production as they had significant holes in what was supposed to be a smooth surface , tiny little bits of skin care in what was represented in the photos as a normal size container , and many more . It is very helpful to me now that Amazon includes in some of its item descriptions the phrase “ This item is frequently returned “ . Since these were issued I haven’t gotten another useless item and I also now do what another commentor suggested which is to read the 1 star reviews first .
I’ve been asked by my mom to go make fake reviews for her friends daughter’s Amazon shop. She had no idea why I was so upset and repulsed by the favor. She doesn’t understand
I think this is what Amazon has turned into, a quick way for overseas companies and drop-ship creators to make a buck off perceived value.
I was UPSET and REPULSED... stfu and go support your mom's friend with her mediocre goods.
Nice yeah I cancelled my prime membership to force myself to only buy a few tiny select things from amazon and wait just wait for the free shipping.
I've been asked by a handful of people, some friends, some bosses, to leave fake reviews. They said their competition does it. I just say "OK" and don't leave it. I hate doing things like that.
Family asking you to lie is always a bad thing to do.
You can really get screwed when Amazon doesn't credit you for items you actually returned.
I keep trying to get a refund for things they send me that are wrong. This gets problematic when they say explicitly you cannot send back something that has a lithium battery. The last thing I tried to refund was *a lithium battery.* The package arrived ripped into pieces and the item was clearly replaced with a puffy burnt out battery, so obviously that wasn't going to help me. There is also no way to contact them to all about all this. Never again.
Doesn't matter if you use a major credit card. Capital One is awesome with that.
@@metalheadmax09 Always call Customer Service for returns, especially when the Seller does things like that. You can report the Seller while you're at it. I often get free return shipping this way, too. Enough reports like this can have the Seller forced to do better or get them barred from Amazon. Good luck!
They literally shipped me an empty bag. They did not heat seal it, so the 1lb of wax fell out in the truck and they left me with a freaking bag. The best part is they say it was delivered because the clown took a photo of the freaking empty bag on my doorstep. Lol, goofs.
@@HectorSaIamanca Sorry to hear that. I've heard of it before in reviews. I hope now you know how to handle these things from my suggestions. A photo of an empty bag should have proved it to Customer Support. You should have also had a claim against the shipping company. The driver should have known the package was empty before dropping it off. Good luck in the future!
Seeing the stolen stuff in store is so very much seen where I live as well. My thoughts on Amazon's change in direction selling crap is simple. They are doing the same as eBay and whatever junk seller site in China is throwing up. It's pushed hard because these items have the best return for Amazon. When your competition is aiming for very low end stuff sadly the only way to compete is do the same.
Oh wow really? I've never seen it over here in Europe.
How do you know that it is stolen?
GOOD NIGHT SISTA
@nobodyimportant7804 after enough things get stolen from shops they start locking things up behind glass and cages
Don't know why you're putting eBay in this post. You can find exactly what you want on eBay including specific brands. Insinuating that Amazon is following eBay is laughable and just shows that you don't understand the point of the video.