I am not sure if this is for CS, or another forum, so please move it doesn’t suit. It doesn’t seem clear to me.
It seems that amazon.co.uk has a bunch of categories of computer equipment which are basically fakes, and has no means to feed this back. So much so, it’s actually a joke. For instance 16TB SSD External Hard Drive for £99. It isn’t even consistent between the title of 7TB and 16TB which is sells. And sells at a 1/6th of the price of the real price, a normal spinner of that size sells for 2.5 times more. Yet nowhere to feed back this obvious nonsense.
It is even a sponsored first choice of amazon.co.uk.
Seems from here I’ve answered my own question. It appears its fine to sell fakes on the .com one too.
The same with sd cards, ever since I bought a not normal brand: Gigastone sdcard a couple of years ago, and found it to be a clear fake, I check my sd cards. only kingston, sandisk or samsung from amazon with an sd card checker, and I still get fakes which are badged as those brands. That gigastone one still sells on amazon.co.uk despite having been complained about and returned.
It appears that the only mechanism for fakes and property rights exist for amazon now. If someone is selling YOUR stuff which is fake, then you can complain, but not for clear counterfeits.
I guess they make their money from people just thinking those discs really are that crap, and broken, and can’t be bothered returning them.
I’m asking on SD because I do think people on here might be interested. Which @amazonuk wasn’t when I tweeted it to them…
Amazon is full of counterfeit goods and the company makes little effort to verify or police its secondary suppliers (those that Amazon provides fulfillment or support for but are not stocked in their warehouses). I’ve avoided buying any medical supplies, outdoor equipment, and electronics on Amazon because of the high rate of counterfeit and defective products, and in general prefer to deal with either direct distributors or manufacturer-direct sales. Frankly, I’d buy all books at a bookstore or book supplier like Powell’s or Abebooks even if I have to pay shipping costs but there are often books on Amazon.com that cannot be readily found elsewhere.
Typically the sort of outright fraud that @Smid describes is relatively rare. I mean, a 16 TB drive for £99 ($119) should raise an eyebrow. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but there’s a big dose of “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is” with Amazon shopping.
I personally haven’t seen much of the sort of fraud where someone is advertising a 16 TB Western Digital external drive for $285, and then delivering something else.
I tend to stick with Amazon-fulfilled stuff when I can though.
It seems that amazon is perfectly fine with functionality fraud, as long as it isn’t brand fraud. They can sell you a bucket of shit, and call it chocolate, but can’t call it Hersheys (though some europeans might say they are the same, but that’s another thread).
The common thread is that they are “sponsored” items, ie: amazon has been paid extra to promote them. If they have reviews they are all one star. I think they are targetting the tech unsavvy, with complaints of not working on PS4.
Back in 2017 I noticed my 7/8" Craftsman socket was missing from my socket collection. So I bought this replacement from Amazon. Yea, “Craftsman” is definitely stamped on it. But it’s obviously a fake, based on how it’s stamped.
And if you’re looking to buy electronic components to build or repair something (capacitors, chips, etc.) made by a reputable manufacturer, I am convinced most of the stuff out there is counterfeit. This is especially true if the component is obsolete. For new stuff, you should only buy from Mouser or Digi-Key - never Amazon or eBay.
The fake SSD and fake USB flash drives are very common here in the US.
I went to Amazon and searched for “external SSD”. On the first page two of the results were obviously fake. Both were 2TB external drives for under $40. On the second page 6 out 16 results were fakes of the 20TB for $150 type.
My ad blocker is stopping the sponsored links, because those are all normal results.
These are all far into the to-good-to-be-true range for anybody familiar with storage pricing. None of them have good reviews, most of them do not have any reviews, and when they do have reviews it’s almost always “scam”.
Here is one picked reasonably at random: (for the future, when the link breaks, it is a 16TB external SSD for $119, 5% off coupon, 5 reviews, 1 star).
Horticultural fraud is common on Amazon and eBay. There are lots of listings for seeds of roses, hibiscus etc. that are supposed to generate blooms in fantastic rainbow shades that do not exist, either in nature or as a result of hybridization. The fabulous images are photoshopped.
Amazon and eBay do not care about such scams; they’re only interested in keeping seller fees flowing. In my experience, the most you can do is post reviews to alert potential buyers.
One of the tricks is to sell something completely different, gain good reviews, then switch the item and description. For a SSD, look at the five star reviews. It may have, “Great electric toothbrush” or “Wicker basket!”
Another ploy is to actually provide early buyers with the real product so the seller gets good reviews, then swap out to the fakes later.
And of course, there’s shill buyers and reviewers.
Mix and match the above with other scam techniques and it can be months before Amazon gets enough returns and bad reviews to shut down the seller. Who of course just closes up shop and starts again under a new name.
It’s like any scam. They don’t have to make a lot from each scam. They just rinse and repeat!
As a longtime Amazon seller, their message boards (which are now the same format as the Dope’s) are chock-full of people who don’t know how to use capital letters or punctuation, who want our opinion on things like sourcing from AliBaba. We always tell them DON’T, at least us seasoned people do, but yeah, the fraud department on a worldwide scale is like a game of Whack-a-Mole.
It’s not just electronics (which I won’t buy from Amazon unless I’m dealing with the storefront of a reputable vendor). Years ago I bought a modular wooden wine rack, which consisted of a set of short wooden pieces that could be connected in a variety of configurations with dowels. I wanted to buy another one to give as a Christmas gift, but I found that the listing had disappeared from Amazon. A bit of Google searching revealed that the original concept came from a shop in Vermont, which is still selling the racks on their own website.
For a work thing, I need to buy a whole bunch of USB-C hubs with HDMI, gigabit ethernet, and power delivery input. I also need to buy a bunch of 65W USB-C PD transformers.
Because nothing can be trusted on Amazon, I just returned 70+ individual items, because they are not as described.
The USB-C hubs say 10/100/1000 on the box, but the actual hubs are only 10/100. They contain a Realtek 8152 ethernet chip, which is only 10/100. The very similar 8153 is gigabit, but that is not what is inside these hubs.
The USB-C PD transformers say they are 65W on the box, but they are only 55W. The computer they are plugged into complain they are 55W, and sure enough, when the computer needs lots of power, the adapter never asks the wall for more than 0.48 amps (at 120V).
Many of you will think that I should buy a single version of each item, and then if it is satisfactory, buy a bunch more. That is indeed what I thought to do last month, but the satisfactory items I ordered are gone, different, or twice the price now…