What's your strategy for online shopping (re: junk on Amazon)

Do you have a strategy? Lately it seems absolutely impossible to sift through the mountains of gibberishly named companies that make up 90% of Amazon search results. If you know the name of a company you can visit their storefront directly, but if I knew exactly what I wanted I wouldn’t need to search.

That’s not even getting into issues with counterfeit products and fake reviews.

So when you’re looking for a “thing” but not necessarily a specific brand or type of that thing, how do you go about it these days? How do you ensure you’re getting what you want from a company that’s at least semi reputable?

If I’m looking for something relatively expensive, I always go to the (well known/recognized) manufacturer’s Amazon store.
Whatever you’re buying, learn what the real thing costs. If it’s wildly underpriced, it’s a fake.

The hard thing is, a lot of those brands that just look like a bunch of random letters, end up being good products. I get 3D filament from a brand called ELEGOO, I just bought a bunch of shorts from “FLYFIREFLY” and some breakout boards from “risingsaplings”. It’s all been good.

My strategy is to go down to the reviews and sort them by “most recent” instead of “top”. I want to see what people have been saying about it over the last few weeks, not what people said about it 6 months ago when it might not have even been the same product listed or which reviews bots may have upvoted to the top. Also, look at the pictures in the reviews and make sure they’re all of the same product. I won’t buy a pair of shorts from an amazon page with reviews from a few months back talking about sunglasses or cell phone cases.

Also, I don’t remember which youtuber I heard about it from, but apparently the reason for the gibberish names is because making sure their brand name is completely/unquestionably unique helps them get through the process of becoming a vendor faster.

ETA, it was probably this video

Sometimes I don’t care. I’m not going to buy New Balance Shoes or deodorant from a weird shop but some solar-powered doo-dad or a tchotchke shelf, it’s fine. I feel like it’s all the same crap coming from the same source, I just need to pick a seller. I tend to look for the number of reviews (the more the better) and then read the reviews. I rarely will buy something with under 500 reviews.

You can use Fakespot to help you analyze the validity of reviews Fakespot | Analyze and identify fake reviews and counterfeits

I also use CamelCamelCamel to help me figure out if something’s “WOW 37% OFF SALE!” price is actually a low price or a lowered version of an inflated price. https://camelcamelcamel.com/

I use search on Amazon to get ideas for the specific thing I want within a general category. That allows me to narrow the search.

When I find something that seems to be what I want, the first thing I do is read the whole listing carefully for inconsistencies. If I am satisfied with the listing information, I make sure it is shipped from Amazon, that it is in stock, and that returns are free.

The only Amazon purchase I have ever been burned on was an item of clothing. I won’t buy clothes on Amazon again, too many pitfalls.

You have to be careful with some of those solar-powered doo-dads.

It’s ultimately from the intersection of trademark laws and global commerce.

First thing, I go for brands that I know and trust. If I can’t find any or the brand article is too expensive for my budget, I look for no-name products that have the most reviews which means a) that is has sold well, and b) gives me a lot of reviews to explore. I usually read some of the 5 star reviews and skim through the one star reviews. It can happen that a popular article has an excellent overall rating, but if 20 one star reviewers tell me that the article has stopped working after a few weeks, I’m skeptical about the consistency of the quality and look for another one. This strategy worked out quite well for me, I can’t remember having squandered my money on amazon for some real junk.

Good to know! Entertaining video too!

I’m actually pretty persnickety when it comes to USB stuff. I’m always afraid of blowing up my phone. I’m glad there’s people like that guy from the video doing deep dives into what kind of electric nonsense is out there.

If you’re not familiar with BigCliveDotCom, watch more of his videos. They’re pretty entertaining for what they are.

If I’m buying something that I know what it is, Amazon is fine.

If I want something I’ve never bought before, say, a home soft serve ice cream maker, I read all the reviews. I look for reasonable negatives. “It didn’t do what I want” means nothing, but “the gears stripped after one use” is worth considering. They still could be lying. And then…I go into review lock. If you read the reviews, nothing is good.

And then in the third group, which is trying to find a new something that isn’t as common anymore. Like a turntable, or an equalizer. In these cases, Amazon seems to push all the “XJESBL” “brand” names to the top of the search results*. Amazon gives the impression that there are no other manufactures of turntables. So, I have no turntable.

*or Denzel Washington movies

Filtering for Prime delivery only gets rid of a lot of crap. And then I’ll always buy direct from Amazon whenever possible. If sold direct by Amazon, it’s much less likely to be fake or past expiry date for food, and zero hassle if there is a problem with the order. Amazon sell most big ticket items themselves, and seem to keep their pricing competitive with third party sellers.

I look at online reviews, discount the obvious phony sites like bestthingamabobreviews.com, check reviews on trusted sites like cnet.com, then remember they got caught using AI to write their reviews, discount them too, check out the Amazon reviews (ignoring any with 5 stars or 1 star), average the rest, go over listings to figure out what’s on sale, realize that it isn’t something I intend to own for the rest of my life, flip a mental coin and order it.

I’ve had good luck just picking what I like. (I’m good at horse racing that way as well)

Shoes are the biggest gamble. I think.

Yeah, the necessary utility is the most important consideration. Important stuff that’s expected to perform will be name brand. Things where the performance isn’t such a consideration can be cheap Chinese crap. I’m not about to buy a no-name USB phone charger for an expensive phone, but I may buy one for my electric toothbrush, for example.

Generally I tend to do the following as a procedure:

  1. Do my best to come up with search terms that actually find the item I’m looking for.
  2. Sort by price, lowest to highest.
  3. Scroll until I find the price break-point between the no-name cheap Chinese knockoffs and the actual legitimate items.
  4. Start looking above that line for real items.

If I’m looking for the cheap Chinese stuff, I usually do the following, except on #4, I generally start looking for the ones with a good amount of reviews, but not an absurd number. I mean, if I’m looking for filters for my robot vac, I’m not going to be impressed when the $5 part has 50,000 five star reviews. But I’ll consider the one with 500 and they average out to 4.3 stars. From there, I generally choose the one that looks like it has a large number of legitimate reviews.

This article from the New York Times (gift link) goes into the phenomenon of these weird Chinese brands with obscure meaningless names. The reason for the weird names seems to be that to sell under Amazon’s Brand Registry program, your brand has to have a registered trademark, and virtually all real words are already trademarked.

In 2020, I suddenly had a lot of time on my hand and no place to go, so I decided to get back into painting models and I purchased an airbrush. You need an air compressor for an airbrush, so I turned to Amazon (the same place I got my airbrush), and settled for a 1/5 horsepower compressor with a tank at around $90 from a company called Tibertech. It was a little confusing, because I found the exact compressor being sold by other companies under a different name. I just assume there a factory in China cranking these suckers out and different companies but their name on it.

My strategy was to look at the technical specifications and go from there. I selected Tibertech because it was inexpensive, I felt protected since it was on Amazon Prime, the specifications matched every other seller who attached their name to the product, and at $90 I was willing to take a chance.

I have a ginormous air compressor that is the main shop AC and the airbrush AC. I had a seal go bad, and during the time I took to fix it, I needed air. So I bought a cheap Harbor Freight tanked compressor that looked about the right size for a painting compressor. $50. It didn’t even last long enough to get the main compressor fixed! Stay away from those oilless compressors! They’re also way too noisy for painting

!) Limit the gift giving circle. I have my brother, my SiL, and my uncle Whom we are visiting for the holidays. They actually get gifts. My second tier gets a dinner on me.

  1. I use Swiss Colony for my uncle because he and his wife entertain a lot, so the variety pack of meats and cheeses and the big can of mixed nuts are very welcome. My SiL I take out to her favorite stores and get her what she wants, and my brother is easy-peasy to please. I use Amazon a lot all year long but not really for the holidays.

I use the same strategies for vetting products once I’m looking at them, where I get overwhelmed and frustrated is on the search page itself. Just so many results to sift through and so little useful information until you commit to digging.