Zipp Speed is a really high quality bike component brand (although always be wary of buying bike components off the internet, there are tons of fakes), but yea the rest of them are totally trash.
My bad for getting that wrong. Pinning for accuracy. That said, it's kind of messed up that you have to scroll through 6 columns of 13 bullshit brands to get to the one item that is good. That does not show up until the 6th column. :( Here's what shows up when you search for bicycle quick release skewer before you get a real answer 1) zacro 2) unisky 3) no name 4) no name 5) no name 6) deer-u 7) mawave 8) quwei 9) zacro 10) PINGTANYOUYU(no really, pingtanyouyu) 11) unisky 12) zsling 13)ARMYJY 14) VIARON 15)choooem 16) meuey 17) OUKENS
This is the first hearing of them, however, as a Trek owner, it is certainly a mess when trying to purchase parts to maintain my bike. Shoot, even just shopping for stuff to enhance astethics or enhance my experience, is an exercise in mild self frustration.
@@jed-henrywitkowski6470 I know the feeling. I crashed my bike recently (broke my arm too aaaaaahhh) and I need to find another seat so I almost HAVE to go to Bike World to get it.
Another big issue with Amazon reviews is that sellers can completely change a product's listing page to show a completely different product, and they get to keep the previous reviews...
Yeah. Look at old reviews for a game controller, or something, and find stuff about how great of a scarf this is. This is not really the worst though. At least that is obvious. What bad is when they switch to selling a crappy knockoff of the same product. AND several different vendors selling under the same listing. Some of the vendors might be fine. Others not. And they are all grouped up under the same reviews. Which vendor you are actually buying from can be manually selected but it's kind of hidden away and easy to forget to even check (Even if you could trust the actual vendor reviews. HAH).
Also having two different versions of a product on the same page and the reviews are combined. This week - comparing steam inhalers - a vendor sold both a plug in version and a cordless one. Reviews were kind of polarized. Looking more closely I realized the almost all of the negative reviews were for the cordless version. So as a single listing, the cordless would have had a bad rating. But because reviews were lumped together and the corded version had lots of positive reviews, it made it look like the cordless one was rated better.
The reviews get even worse since there are reviews that show up on products that aren't even an option above that you are looking for. Reviews for other products are shown on wrong products, sometimes similar and sometimes not even close. That's why I check what the product they are reviewing is. I've had a product page for PLA filament and have been shown reviews for other types of filament from other products from other companies that are not PLA Filament. It is horrible.
A good tip: Sort reviews by newest first to see honest reviews. Sort by oldest to see if they have changed the item being sold to garner fake reviews from selling another item.
@@CircleOfMagicBriar If it was a standard layout, then companies would abuse reviews and game the system. This tip only works because it's not something they're expecting.
Great Comment I do the same thing. Also people should leave comments...descriptive comments of what they bought, how it works, and a Picture of the item. Leave a comment after you actually use the item too. The more of us that actually do that makes it safer for us the Buyer. I personally ignore the 5 Star comments I tend to read the 2- 4 stars of people that left a descriptive comment and even better with an image. You can tell a real comment if someone bought it and used it and actually posted an image.
Thanks, don't know how I never thought of that. I usually look at 2 - 4 star reviews and try to figure it out from there. But this sounds both quicker and probably more reliable lol
TL;DR: I avoid Amazon like the plague that it is but when I have no other choice I only pay attention to written reviews. I always read the one- two- and three-star reviews first. Some of those are idiots who don't know what they're doing with the thing they bought and some of them are almost certainly fake reviews from competitors. Some of them are legit and you can generally tell the difference. I don't pay any attention to any review that doesn't have a written review. Stars mean nothing. I have to say that I've seen some 5-star reviews that were clearly real people who knew what they were doing. There are some big vendors on Amazon still it's just almost impossible to find them because Amazon's search is just a waste. You can enter a specific brand name that you just saw a product from into the search and it won't show up. It's crazy.
I still remember the glory days of Amazon. 1 day shipping, legit brands, real reviews. I hate how they combine reviews of completely different products now just to obfuscate
As someone who uses amazon about once a year or less, I now find the browsing/shopping experience on par with aliexpress (which I also use about once a year). In other words the mission is "trying to not get scammed". I find the search results unreliable, products that look like sh** but they have good ratings, actual straight up scams. For instance I wanted to buy a cable for my high end headphones, finally found something that looked like a decent option, bought it and guess what, the gauge of the wire was not what they claimed. So in the end I spent 1h trying to get a good cable and got a shit cable for almost the price of a good one (I even searched for specific quality brands but did not find them)
Just to add on that, in my country ppl are starting to use other platforms rather than amazon, they prefer regional/state shops where prices are a bit higher but reviews are not faked, customer support is great and the search engine works like a charm. As a direct consequence of this the largest regional platform grew massively in the last years, they now have basically anything one could need, and interestingly enough the customers themselves are pushing this company to be more transparent (and the company listens!!!). So far so good then!
i miss the days when amazon prime ACTUALLY sent stuff in two days. lately it seems like the prime items i buy take two days to get shipped out and another two days to arrive even if the listing says its eligible for prime next day
Can confirm, I was able to get a $100 voucher after a company offered me $25 to remove my negative review. Product was only $60 so they offered me $25 I said no, then $50 and I said no and finally they offered me $100 to remove it and change it so I did and actually received the money! Then I changed that shit right back 😂
@@jamese9283So I'm guessing you dislike it when people kill killers in self-defense? Cause they're stooping to their level right? What a stupid ideal to have in this world. Have fun getting fucked by everyone else.
My mom recently bought a scam energy saver on Amazon. When I looked over the reviews I discovered a whole bunch of 5 star reviews that weren't even about the product ....they were for kitchen gagets and other random appliances. When I told her it was a scam and to get your money back the seller magically disappeared.
Sellers can combine listings to have the reviews for both items show up under the item, and then just delete the option to order the old option that had all the good reviews. It is a known issue that needs to be fixed but hasn't because they want to make things easy for sellers. Downside is too many sellers take advantage and abuse the tools they are given
Wonderfully put. Last time I made a mistake like this I bought a soldering iron with next to 5 stars which doesn’t get hot enough and the stand is prone to toppling too which can actually cause fires! Nothing of the sort, of course, was mentioned in the product reviews
Things have gotten so out of hand at Amazon that I don't even waste my time reading the 4 and 5 star reviews. I go straight to the 1 and 2 star reviews for accuracy.
Unfortunately a lot of the bad reviews aren't honest either; they might come from competitors or from chronically angry people. I think the clearest tell is an extreme bimodal distribution - all 5s and 1s.
@@strnbrg59 Yeah, I've noticed a lot of 1-2 star reviews from folks who are clueless about technology too. Especially when they're trying to pair a bluetooth device they just purchased. Those reviews are pretty easy to filter out and they are usually a one or two sentence rant, such as "this device sucks" which doesn't provide any useful info about the build quality or performance.
It's crazy when you read low reviews and realize they're full of people angry that their brand new laptop stopped working when they put it in the dishwasher, or something. I love when I check those and realize the customer had no idea what they were even buying. I can't even begin to explain how many times I checked the reviews for books of crochet patterns I was interested in buying and saw people giving the product a negative review because they bought a book of patterns and they don't know how to read them. A lot of them see "beginner friendly" and expect a step-by-step youtube tutorial that explains every step of the process and don't grasp that it actually means the patterns are a lot simpler and less involved than the more advanced patterns.
Amazon's fake reviews have caused me to start searching up items from weird brand names on aliexpress, and unsurprisingly, it almost always turns up there for way cheaper.
i feel your pain, i buy stuff from aliexpress aswell and most of the time it's the same quality but at half of price if not lower. The only downside being out of us is that for some products i have to wait 2-3-4 weeks to arrive
It’s because the drop-shipping craze went nuts on Amazon, and people realized they could do practically no work and make a 200-300% profit. They buy on Ali express, shop for free direct to Amazon, the warehouse does all the work, they make a profit, and Amazon takes a commission. It’s a joke, and I’m tired of it.
And the fake reviews on Aliexpress are a lot more amusing. "5-stars - it doesnt work", "5-stars - it came but havent tried it yet will test later", "4-stars i dont like it", "1-star its good"
Amazon forgets that what set them apart when they started in 1994 was their intense attention to empowering customers to find and safely purchase the books that they wanted.
And they cannot do that anymore either - My gf few years back (2020s) have ordered a book to prepare for MBA exams - The book that arrived was about "white supremacy" highly political, quasi scientific praising nazi movement etc. Amazon ofc returned the money back, and told us to keep the book, so we burned it.
Another issue to bring up with Amazon, and this has already been covered, is the drop shipping type sales. People buy garbage off Alibaba, Aliexpress, Temu, etc. and make a brand name to sell it. In this case, crimp connectors.
I wrote extensive, fair and thoughtful reviews often with photos. All of them were removed and to this day, they've provided no specific details as to why. Their "customer service" just won't get back to you. I canceled my Prime membership and should have long ago and do not regret it. They are bad for our local economies and for America in general. I'm glad I had water splashed in my face to wake me up. If you want to watch a show, sign up for the free 30 days and cancel at day 29.
On Amazon, the seller wanted me to delete my negative review, otherwise they will not refund me for their fake product. This is how they keep selling bad products and having positive reviews.
@@vipervidsgamingplus5723 :) Since they tried to bribe me and also sent a fake product, I felt morally okay to play them. So I made them pay, and left my review online. They were super furious!
AMAZON is notorious for withholding reviews about products that are negative or if you complain about prime. I did a video unboxing of a hairdryer on my primary channel that came damaged. Could’ve happened during shipping. I don’t know however when I made the purchase it was a prime purchase that took almost 2 weeks to come. When I did the review during the unboxing, I made reference to Amazon prime, and when I submitted the video for my review on the product and the service, they would not publish it. They said that my video violated their community guidelines, and they would not post it. So AMAZON in my opinion has lost all credibility. And just an FYI be very careful if you have to return an item or you need a refund.
10 years ago I used to spend several hundred per month on Amazon. Now I spend maybe a few hundred per year. Good job Amazon, you are helping small business rebound where I'm living because everyone hates amazon now
This makes me so happy 😁 for 20 years i been dreaming of Amazon tanking, and small business to pop back up. Maybe using the internet buying bulk together.
In my locality, Amazon tends to rely more and more on cheaper (and way worse) third party shippers too. I've had items thrown, lost, delivered to the wrong address, impossible to track, etc. It's come to the point where I instantly cancel my order if it's delivered by anything other than regular postal services or directly by Amazon.
There was a video on another channel about third party drivers delivering to the wrong address. Probably the most interesting part was all of the drivers commenting. The gist is that their gps software they are required to use is imprecise and doesn't mark a package as delivered until they drive to the spot that the gps directs them to, even if the address doesn't match, and they have such tight time schedules that taking the time to then take it across the street or wherever the correct address is would blow that schedule.
@@confidential5897which is why we find the American way weird, it is illegal to drop a package anywhere but where the customer directs to and regardless of tracking, customer's signature is final. GPS off by 500m but marked as delivered with signature and photo? That's an issue not an issme. But if all I got is the GPS and its coords are final, no customer feedback, I'll drop wherever FBI fudges my gps signal to.
@@confidential5897that is absolutely correct. Worst part is that Amazon knows this. They continue the practice to keep wages low and to constantly terminate reputable DSP's that cost more money. Driver's move but the companies get worse. Amazon keeps ignoring customer and driver complaints, Amazon rep continues to plummet
You have no idea how deep this goes. Like nail polish has completeley ruined my wifes nails, nails raising off their beds type stuff. And has burned like first degree burned her lips with lip stain. I return it, leave detailed feedback, no contact, leave a bad review, no contact, still rated 4.5 out of 5. Amazon bin stores are great, amazon itself is straight ass these days.
I've noticed the serious downturn in named quality products in Amazon search results too. The same junk product sold through 20 rebrand companies that are probably all owned by a single Chinese manufacturer drowning out the well made products.
As a previous 2 year driver, I can attest to the downward spiral of Amazon. Most DSP’s (which are 3rd party direct supervisors over drivers) don’t care about the staff anymore and just push numbers because of the “fear” of contract cancellation. No more bonuses, rewards, or overtime. They are hiring anyone with a pulse and expect them to meet the needs of Amazons daily goals with only ONE day of training.
I'm in the UK, and a few years ago a nearby local authority gave grant help to Amazon to establish a local 'fulfilment centre' in the hope of providing local jobs. To be fair, I strongly suspect palms were crossed. Not long ago, that same local authority announced they wished no further association with what the entire community now accept as a sweatshop.
I haven't worked at Amazon, or as a delivery driver, but I do work in the trades and I feel that there's a similar thing going on with many businesses/corporations employing labourers - seemingly they've ended up over-competing on pricing and thus they've decided to just hire warm bodies for as little as possible, hoping that it will be enough to maintain some level of service without breaking the intended budget while worker conditions and the service provided go down the toilet.
For years I had rotating 6 month credit line on Amazon that I never paid off because it was a massive interest free loan for all the stuff I buy from them. Two months ago I paid it down to zero and have effectively stopped buying from them. They know something has changed especially seeing the emails they send me to get me to start spending again. When most of what is on there is junk AND the shenanigans of things changing price while in my cart, getting back on the horse to use Amazon isn't something I'll be doing. I'll be canceling prime next year because I didn't catch the renewal in time.
@@MAGAMANTry living in Puerto Rico, US territory, 30 minutes from Florida by air, we can't get things shipped here because most businesss only use UPS and *they* only want to ship to the continuous 48. Despite it's flaws, USPS has never treated us like we weren't paying US citizens.
I'd like to make the argument that Amazon isn't even customer focused now. If they were they wouldn't be removing bad reviews in order to sell these trash items. I looked there for bath towels last night and after looking through the reviews on several I decided it would be best just to go to Walmart.
I tried leaving a negative review for a scalpel where the blades wouldn't fit because the handle receiver wasn't made properly making it incredibly dangerous. Amazon took the review down and banned me from reviewing that product. I've e-mailed them and explained but haven't heard back. Usually they unban you pretty quick once you explain.
It's scary how large corporations can manipulate reviews on places like amazon and even google. A friend of mine works for a call centre that raises funds for Canadian charities. The branch manager threatened employees with disciplinary action if they didn't leave a 5 star review on google. All those reviews are up there, but any reviews mentioning workplace harassment and wage theft are frequently shadowbanned.
Meh, this isn't new, Louis railed against this from Yelp! _years_ ago. The corporations are just less secretive about it now because they realized there's just no consequences for them. (It's just like how people think cops have gotten really bad recently but they've always been bad, they were just covering it up in the past, now they're mask-off with their corruption.)
This identical thing happened at the restaurant & casino I worked at & LOVED for 5 years, I made unbelievable money, but then sadly the incredible kind hearted adored by public & ALL employees manager left & a spoiled rich brat bro started managing it, w/o a whole lotta knowledge then devastatingly bought it with daddies money & ran it like a psychopath nepotistic tyrant & when I left I tried to go to the known god awful corrupt YELP & other similar places (if memory serves something sounding like Tomato 🍅 or…?) Well ‘’shockingly’’ these equally psychopathic places who are all about controlling perceived value - review platforms would NOT allow me to get my forced compliance fake review removed & I tried to escalate it by taking the time to write to the psychos of Yelp & to the garbage gatekeepers of Google & to To mato or whatever thee eff… to get the fake review removed & was of course 💯 ignored. It’s wild because I felt a huge pressure of guilt right when I was submitting it & quite a few of us objected to this demand but essentially we’re verbally abused & accused of not wanting to see our selves & coworkers succeed, which was wild b/c we were ALLLWAYS BUSY… like too busy, it was nuts!! Nothing is more true than the statement of : People Quit their BOSSES NOT their jobs!! But when the company feels like any warm body will do…. Well then…. That’s a hard & pointless lesson!!
Worst thing Amazon ever did (Qualification: To the meatbag shopping experience on their site) after ruining their search, filter and sorting functions was getting rid of replies to reviews.
I bought a shade cloth for my garden off of amazon. They are made of loosely woven strips of plastic that filters light to a certain stated percentage of its original intensity. This shade cloth was not UV treated and started to break down into dust before one season was even up. Countless microplastics in my food garden. My review was twice removed for breaking their code of conduct. I may have used a swear word in the first but I was 100% certain to be clean and factual in the second one that was removed.
Try your local hardware store. My local Ace caries precut sizes are made here, and they also have huge rolls for team members to cut the customer a custom size.@@everythingmatters6308
@@everythingmatters6308 I went with a natural fiber shade cloth made from burlap by Dewitt. It's pretty strong like 60%+ so not ideal for food crops, lucky it's going over a greenhouse with tropical plants in it. The green house was right next to my food crops though. I've heard great things about Green House Mega Store from grower buddies. A quick glance tells me they offer an 8 year warranty against UV damage so it's good on that end.
@@michaeleconomides4054To be fair, "shit" is generally considered swearing, and an acronym with it inside doesn't make it better. But in any case, censoring that word/acronym is a far more sensible option than to remove a review altogether; for example, Steam does that. I've seen sellers with 100% feedback who simply got all non 5 star reviews deleted. That's not normal.
You just confirmed my suspicions of amazon. I knew the review system was broken(they include fake 5 star reviews) but I never would have guessed Amazon would allow the vendor to have a took that literally can delete 1 star review like the one you gave.
Partly because of this, I usually go to a specialty store and get whatever hardware I need there instead of the crap on Amazon. The staff are always knowledgeable and can recommend good brands.
Back in the physical store days, shops didn't have unlimited selling space. To get your product into the store you would have to get past the "buyer" for that department. This is a person whose entire job it is to pick products that people want to buy, don't get returned all that often, don't catch on fire, etc. It didn't mean that everything in the store was high-quality, but there were some minimal standards. You couldn't buy a toaster that wasn't UL listed, etc. Amazon has basically no filter on what it will sell you, so of course it is full of the worst possible junk. Do you really think some guy over in China cares whether there is lead in the paint he uses to paint your kid's toy? It isn't his kid. And even if he did have some morals, he is competing with people who have none in a race to see who can sell the stuff cheapest. And if he ever gets caught and the product gets banned, he will just create a new company and keep selling the same thing. People are starting to figure this out. They want a curated selection to choose from, they want somebody to filter out the dangerous garbage ahead of time. Choice isn't valuable if all the choices are junk.
What I hate the most is the lack of verifiable information in our entire economy. And Amazon's crappy "platform economy" is just making that problem obvious. For example, there are all these random German companies (I'm from Germany) getting a "small vendor" tag alongside all sorts of Chinese companies. As a German, I don't want random Chinese crap, I would rather like random German crap, Thank you very much. But here is the issue: The "German company" is most likely just some importer, getting their "branded" products from the same exact factory the Chinese vendors get their stuff from. Who knows, right? There is just no trustworthy way to check. There is no way to even filter for countries-of-origin on the platform, not even where a company comes from. I have to check manually every time I click on an item/seller. Honestly, I would really like for there to be a law here in the EU that requires companies to make transparent their ENTIRE product chain, from raw material to finished product. In the age of digitalization, factory automation, and cryptographic verification - there is no real technological challenge in that. It would simply be a bureaucratic inconvenience until the system gets established. I want to see whether a company used Swiss, German, American, or Chinese steel to make their stainless-steel drinking cups, and where the ore came from. I want to know where the exact bike chain I bought was assembled and packaged. I want to know precisely where the tomatoes came from to make the Ketchup I bought. How can I make informed consumer decisions (beyond just buying the cheapest item), if I receive no reliable information about anything (other than price)? Knowing this information would drastically change my purchasing decisions. Here is another example how it affects consumer decisions: Earlier this year, I was looking for a sturdy tub to wash stuff in (big dog, clothing, etc.) on Amazon. I didn't really find anything good, so I started looking for anything that could hold water and some weight, like planter boxes, tubs to clean metals grills in, portable outdoor showers, and so on. And it was all garbage! It all looked cheap as hell, and the larger tubs/boxes were very expensive. Until, buried underneath other results, I found a local plastic-mold company selling professional food-grade temperature-resistant feed/water/washing troughs for farms. Ordered it - and I got the most sturdy plastic tub I have ever put my eyes on. It came so clean, I probably could have eaten from it right out of the box. No plastic smell. Just super sturdy hard plastic. Plastic walls so thick, it easily held the weight of a heavy-weight person jumping around in it. And it was cheaper than almost all other options. Perfection. Had I not looked for so long, I would have ended up with some cheap trash made somewhere else, for twice the money. If Amazon had better filters for countries-of-origin and seller country, I would have found this result much earlier, and the company would likely receive many more orders.
For automotive parts in the USA, Opticat Online (an automotive parts catalog) often has the country of origin listed. You can then use this info when ordering the part from a reputable vendor.
__ I liked the tub story. As for whether any of us should hold our breath and hope for corporate honesty, I can actually name off the top of my head the nine companies that most profited from doing direct business with the Nazis. Plenty of other companies profited immensely from the Nazis, like General Motors and obviously Volkswagen that hippies enjoyed so much. But the nine biggies haven't stopped Americans from enjoying Jewish screams in their products: Chase Manhattan, Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, Ford, Kodak, MGM, Random House, Woolworths. Dang, that's only eight. But I'm not gonna look them up. Oh, duh, General Electric. The guys who permanently polluted the bottom of the Hudson River with heavy chemicals. Good times.
Why would you want to buy a more expensive item from a German company if, as you say, the German company is sourcing the item from a Chinese company and you can buy the same item, made by the same Chinese company, but half the price because it’s being sold under a different brand name?
I've bought some cheap products from Amazon (primarily to review them on RUclips and point them out as junk). It's extremely common for the seller to offer gift cards, refunds, free products, etc. for a 5 star review.
2-5 years ago I would sometimes be contacted by vendors, offering me refund if I deleted a review that was 3 stars or less. Has not happened lately, not sure why. Could be because amazon has cracked down on it. Or the opposite, they have found a cheaper way to fudge with their reviews.
Amazon has been acting incredibly scummy and corrupt, lately. They've removed (at least) two of my recent critical reviews of faulty/defective products. Get the feeling they're running interference for bad sellers.
Hey Louis, I am currently an Amazon Vine Tester and I can tell you the products I receive are mostly crap and often broken or will break in my test. The problem is that the German Government came up with an idea of gathering information about the income tax for the Vine products which I received because in their opinion it's an extra income. Now I will probably face a higher tax after my tax declaration for products which did not function well or were broken before or within my testing. And I have to explain to them that those products are never worth the amount which are written in the product information or went directly into the trash. Also I am one of the Vine Testers who often give 1 - 2 star reviews with pictures/video proof which in many cases are also published. I also managed to bring some products down which got removed from Amazon after my reviews. It's something.
I was a Vine reviewer too, for a whole ten weeks, until yesterday when I received an email telling me that my (honest and genuine) reviews do not meet the community standards, but no further details as to why not, and that ALL my reviews have been deleted (over 350 reviews going back over a decade) and that I am banned from making any further reviews from my account, which I have had for over 20 years. A mate summed it up as "they just want obedient little drones in their cult of materialism" and not reviewers who go on about climate change and psychopaths lol. I have taken the decision now to delete my Amazon account and not to give them any further business.
I'm an Amazon Vine reviewer as well coming into my one year anniversary and I'm actually pretty happy with the program. Like you, I've received junk items I've tossed but also some really terrific items as well. I make a real effort in giving bonafide reviews, including photos with texts and videos giving occasional one or two star reviews and update when an item fails prematurely but I admit I don't update as often as I should. Amazon puts the Vine reviewers through evaluation every six months to continue in the program. Overall, I think this Vine program works, helps the customer decide and prevents a higher return rate. Note, I tried to make a personal purchase of a camping cot once but didn't because Amazon put a warning under the product of a high return rate.
Amazon asked if I wanted to become a Vine reviewer. I quickly did my research and discovered that the manufacturers would send you something to review and value the full retail value of that item. They would write that off and you get a 1099 in return meaning you got paid "income" at the full retail value of that product If you review $10,000 worth of junk products a year that, that is income taxes you owe on S10,000 of income. I declined in becoming Vine tester/reviewer. I also ignore any Vine reviews on products where the product was given free. I wish Amazon had a way to block all the Vine reviews where they received the product for free.
I always check the negative reviews first. In most cases the worst reviews will reveal exactly what I'm trying to avoid or don't like about a certain brand.
problem with that is there are also fake negative reviews from competitors, every single product has more than enough bad reviews to scare almost anyone from buying. its just impossible to really know without buying which is a pain.
I had a seller contact me offering $20 for a 5 star review. I gave the product 1 star and used a screenshot of the mail as a picture. Amazon deleted the review a few days later. Apparently my review violated some policy since my picture wasn't of the product...
Louis is the definition of a person who just wants to mind his own business but has to constantly deal with the world trampling over his and everyone else's.
Louis what I have noticed with many websites that are selling portals which have reviews attached the very fine print always tends to read a list of conditions. And it's pretty simple, don't mention price, other brands, other stores, weblinks, or personal info. Then it usually reads that the site has the final discretion on what's posted. They will be using keyword lists to pull down anything negative or low ranked. The way around this is simple, re-do the review and written is a passive aggressive style. AI bots can't handle the human condition, humour or cryptic wordplay. That's how you leave a truthful negative review that will not get flagged off the site. I'm sure with your high IQ you could pull off an amazing positive / negative review that will rank high in the reading list.
what annoys me about the reviews, they include the PAID REVIEWS. So, if they're paid reviews and feedback which is short for compromised for a product, why even include them??
This is NOT correct. The rating given has no impact on if it is approved by amazon or not. There are still things that will cause a review to not be approved but they're all very reasonable and often times you can still mention things like packaging and it will still be put up. Amazon does not want reviews focused on packaging or shipping times because that is an issue they caused and has nothing to do with the seller for most items. There are plenty of actual problems with the system that could be called out, so there is no reason to spread misinformation like this to shit on amazon
@@Meow4B getting sent the wrong thing is am amazon issue and not an issue with the specific product or seller. That is why they rejected that review. The other one was rejected because you said walmart but if you just said it could be bought at other big box stores for cheaper then it would be approved I've written hundreds of reviews for amazon and never have them rejected because I follow their guidelines
@@Meow4B Your review got rejected because saying a product can be had for cheaper at another retailer is not a review of the product. Amazon’s review system has a LOT of problems, but Amazon rejecting a review that says “This is cheaper at another retailer” is a you problem. Amazon wants you to stick to reviewing the product itself, not the fulfillment process, not how much the product is at competing retailers, etc. - and they’re actually quite clear about this. Now if you want to leave complaints about the seller, Amazon actually has a separate review process for that. But the best practice when buying items off Amazon is to stick with “sold by Amazon” and not just “shipped by Amazon”. Amazon will ship you all kinds of garbage, but the stuff they sell under their own name is generally legit.
One important thing that Amazon seems to have forgotten is people go to a shop thinking that the shop has done its due diligence about the products it sells.
I get the impression that in some cases, these sellers initially sell a reasonably good quality product, which is why people leave so many good reviews. Then, after a while, they start selling poorer quality versions, and so people who buy the product are not getting the same quality product as those who initially left positive reviews. I purchased a pretty nice gown for around $30 on Amazon. I really like it and still use it, and there's a many good reviews for that product. However, I noticed that months after I purchased the product, the seller changed the price to over $100!! And the same positive reviews are still on there!! So unsuspecting consumers may believe the product is actually worth that inflated price because of all the positive reviews.
Welcome to America, everyone does this. Costco, Walmart, Target and the rest. They bring a great product and sell it for a normal price. Then bring in garbage and run a sale to blow it out.
I saw that when shopping for an american made cooking pot, great reviews, and then one day they change manufacturing to China, and the a flood bad reviews.
At least her husband didn't complain she bought it wrong. That's what I hate on the simple surveys...you need to separate seller, product and shipment. Still people are stupid...they would rate a 60 ft rope 1* because they needed 70ft and it's to Short
@@krasky These reviews drive me insane. You aren't supposed to review the courier service wtf! Idk if it's actual idiots leaving reviews like that or if it's some kind of fake review game to pump up the numbers.
I was banned from writing reviews. It was after only my third product review; two were positive, one was negative. I suspect it was because I use a vpn on my phone. I emailed them and all they said was, roughly speaking, "Here are the terms of service, you are no longer allowed to leave reviews." I replied asking why and they said the same thing and that they wouldn't be responding to further emails. I wasn't rude or inappropriate in any way, I thought it was some kind of small bug, no big deal. I tried explaining I was using a vpn and maybe that was the issue, they never responded. Ironically, I've purchased multiple great products since then but I obviously can't leave reviews to let others know how much I liked them...
either create a new account or submit a request that your account is bugged. Try and get a different team of people looking at your issue. Big companies have terrible intercompany comunnication.
I wrote a review for a TV who's manufacturer starts with Sam*. The review was scathing and 100% accurate. I got an email telling me that I was essentially bullying Sam* and the review won't post. After that no matter the type of review on other stuff I wrote it would get rejected. Have you also noticed that you can no longer comment on the reviews of other users? That is especially egregious.
@@internetmovieguysounds like guild wars 2 and ArenaNet. They banned me because I logged into my account for 10 minutes, that’s it. I have 2,000+ Steam games never banned from any. They told me “your account was flagged for malicious activity, it is not a mistake, we will not escalate this matter or look into it further.” So yeah, I don’t do GW2 or anything from those companies anymore
The mistake people make is in thinking they're Amazon's customers. They're not. The scammers are Amazon's customers. The people who shop on Amazon are the product.
In the vast digital marketplace dominated by the retail giant Amazon, a common misconception prevails among its user base. Many believe that they are direct customers of this e-commerce behemoth, reveling in the convenience and accessibility it offers. However, a closer examination of the dynamics at play reveals a profound truth: those who engage in transactions on Amazon are not the primary clientele; instead, they unwittingly transform into the product in this intricate web of commerce. The crux of the matter lies in the unexplored reality that the true patrons of Amazon are not the diligent shoppers seeking the latest gadgets or trendiest fashion items. Instead, the ones who perpetuate this vast online marketplace are the scammers, opportunists, and third-party sellers whose dubious practices thrive within the digital labyrinth. The unsuspecting consumers who flock to Amazon with their diverse shopping needs are inadvertently cast into the role of the product itself.
It's a nightmare for parents, especially with young kids/babies. I'm genuinely surprised there's been no fatalities yet given some of the downright dangerous toys, teethers etc we've seen given as presents over the years.
most teethers contain toxic chemicals (plenty of studies done since 2010) but they are not fatal, same for other stuff, it's bad but it's "cancer" level of bad where you eventually get some complex bad effect years later and not "instant sick/drop" where you can quickly correlate the object with the issue caused
@@marcogenovesi8570 Yeah, I had read about that, I'm not the most paranoid about carcinogens but we just ended up using teething biscuits in the end. The noticeable issue I found was more down to small parts & poor quality construction. For example we had one teether that had little solid plastic shapes in the middle and the outer, softer material started to break away after a short time revealing them. We've also been given a lot of toys in the past with thin, weak, plastic that breaks sharp & very small screws that have come out... Most of the time the stuff is only slightly cheaper than a product with a legitimate safety mark (not the Chinese CE knock off they made to look like it).
They should make edible teethers for human babies like how they make rawhide bones for dogs. I don't like the idea of plastic teething toys because it confuses babies about what should go in your mouth vs inedible objects that shouldn't.
@jjcatsura current flows between the path of least resistance from live to neutral (or live to ground), a fork shorts them so that's where current will go. That's more of a fire hazard than shock hazard
I would say that most of us have instinctively known that Amazon, as a company was basically garbage, but I appreciate the receipts you provide here. You make us smarter shoppers. Thanks.
I noticed this with a RGB controller I bought. It was labeled incorrectly so I put 5V on my RGB's ground pin and it killed my whole CPU cooler. Posted photos and everything. Can't find my review anymore and it was *months* ago
Dang, guy. I am so glad I found your channel. The authenticity is off the charts, this is legit, basically unfiltered you. If I were a gambling man, I would wager this is pretty close to how you would be discussing the subject in person. And you manage to put some humorous spin on it while you are at it. And it is educational. Keep up the great work. 🤘
Welcome to the real world LR is one of the few fellowmIT pros that I not only respect but trust info from him and that's very hard to do after decades in IT the # of fakes wannabes and ftards is staggering And that sadly applies to other places as well like amzn
I remember when my dad bought a roomba off of Amazon. He did so because it had great reviews and it was on a crazy sale (iirc it was 50% off?). When he showed me the product (before it arrived, i.e. the store page) i knew it was too good to be true. And it was. The reason why there were so many good reviews is because within the roomba's box was a little letter that basically stated that if you wrote a 5 star review of the product, you would get a free $20 gift card. Pathetic, but hey, it worked.
I see lots of sellers do this, mostly from China. They say leave a 5 star review, if not you need to contact them. IDGAF I just ignore it and leave the review I intended to leave, I can't be arsed to contact them so they can try and change the review with a bribe.
Do it Louis - buy them all and prove them all to be garbage!! One of my highlights of 2023 was finding your great channel Louis! Thank you for 'being Louis'!
I'm so glad I stumbled across your channel because I've been very annoyed by these same situations! You inspired me to go through all my amazon purchases and leave reviews (both good and bad for that matter). Great vid brother
The review you left had a hyperlink, they remove reviews with hyperlinks. Also typically reviews with the word "crap" Would be removed. The bigger problem with the reviews is that the sellers constantly change the item being sold under that listing. So you'll see reviews for a completely different item that are very positive and then after they gather a few 100 positive reviews for that item, they change the item listing to something completely different than what was being sold before.
Though they really should just not let you post reviews with hyperlinks to begin with then. That way, people would at least be able to edit their reviews to comply with whatever review guidelines there are supposed to be.
I bought a counterfeit red dot sight. After getting my money back I started investigating. I found that the company had at least 3 ads for the same product that were $1 different in price. When they get a few bad reviews they relist and start over. Amazon is aware of this but doesn't care.
I said diarrhea and "leakage" in an Amazon review for a well known diet aide and the review got rejected. I was brutally honest and told the truth and the truth got rejected.
This is so true! I had the same situation, I left a 1 star review, it was well written, didn't use any bad language etc and Amazon REMOVED it because it "breaks the policy" 😮😂 then I figured what a scam amazon is. I stopped using Amazon for over an year, my life is just as good, even better without using it. I prefer to pay 3 bucks more and buy a better product from a local shop. If it weren't for AWS amazon would be bankrupt anyway! Comes to show what a bad business is.
Yup. Rampant for yeeeaaars. But 'Zon has more money than God, so... it's permitted and permanent. They own it all, set all the rules, and they can do whatever they wish. 💪😎✌️ Everyone else needs to stay in their lanes.
Recently read a book called "surrounded by idiots". I feel that's the world we live in. Good thing I don't trust anyone or anything easily, and glad to say I NEVER bought anything from Amazon. Saved me from a lot of headache and frustration.
The best way to read Amazon reviews is to start with the 1 star and decide if you want to continue (bottom up). Those are the most honest reviews, at least from my experience. Edit: Amazon doesn't allow links to anything in their reviews, so that's why your review is absent.
I do that, too, but I start with the 3-star ones. There's a lot of noise in the one-star stuff with overly pissed-off people bitching about shipping delays and other stuff out of the vendors' control and all I want to know about is the product. 3-star reviews seem to be people who think the product is okay, but have some issues and I look for the overall theme. Sometimes that theme is "well, but I don't know if I care about that" and I'll take a shot, and sometimes that theme is "well, that's exactly what I want to use this for!" and I don't.
You clearly have not come across the anti-pattern where an item has 1,2,3 star reviews but when you click on them there aren't any reviews there. The only reviews are the 4's and 5's. Nothing like being gas lit by the company that wants your money,
no, because then you get all the morons who bought the wrong product, didn't read the user manual, or are blaming shipping damage on the product. Customers can also be at fault for the mess that the review system is in.
I've noticed that Amazon collects together all reviews for similar products and then posts them all for each of the products, regardless of maker or quality or even amount of time on the market. My evidence: One product I bought that wasn't what was described was winter gloves. I needed insulated driving gloves ASAP because I lost one glove late in the winter season so stores had very little winter stock available. I couldn't find on Amazon the ones with Thinsulate and I really needed winter driving gloves, so I read reviews and bought gloves that customers recommended for being able to keep your hands warm in sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temps. When I received the gloves, I wondered if they would get you through the winter in Miami or LA because they were so thin. I kept them because I really needed gloves. Amazon is becoming more scammy every week that goes by. Add to Louis' list my anecdote about a product with tons of positive reviews not matching the product received. (Of course I have more stories. Don't we all?)
I thought the reviews for other product scams worked like this. Sell a popular item that will get lots of positive reviews then switch that product to something else. I suppose if you are paying for reviews they can just copy from one review to a different review. What you are suggesting implies Amazon is in on the review scam.
After I'd seen this video, I received a small container of Loctite superglue from Amazon. It had a false bottom about 1/3rd the way up the container, invisible from the pics. There is barely a tablespoon's worth of actual glue! So in the spirit of your channel, I wrote a review, letting people know about this. Next day I got approval, and I just checked, and there it is! There are over 15,000 reviews, and 98% are positive, so I'm on a lonely path here, but I'm glad I had my say. ;-) Have a great Holiday and New Year Louis!
Don't be so sure. I was wary about ordering from Amazon but after my sister told me our niece ordered from them several times without problems I decided to try it. So I placed a few orders in the last few months, all of them for books. But there was a problem with my last order in which I ordered the book "Complete Spanish Step by Step Premium Second Edition" by Barbara Bregstein. Despite the fact that I specifically requested a new book there was evidence it was used. In the guide to pronunciation near the beginning of the book there were some entries circled by pencil. But then I discovered a more serious problem; page 8 was followed by pages 73 to 104, and after that the pages started at 41 but then appeared okay. So pages 9 to 40 are missing and were replaced by a duplicate of pages 73 to 104. I checked a local bookstore and found one copy but it didn't have that problem so I bought it and will return Amazon's copy.
Here's what I expect from the "Crimp review": One of these products will actually be quite decent for some reason. Then following the release of your video, many people will order that one from Amazon, at which point the vendor will sneakily replace it with a much, much shittier and cheaper to produce variant.
Or (what might already have happened) the others try to be as close as possible to the name and appearance of that good product to still be able to sell their junk. Or (that's what I read about Temu) that vendor pushes the supplier to lower prices that aren't enough to still offer an product that's ok. People often talk about diminishing returns when it comes to expensive products. But in my opinion that also exists on the other end of the price scale: At some point you have to give up a lot of quality for a little lower price.
Its crazy how everything good comes to an end. I remember ebay at the start. Its trash now. Same with Amazon, wikipedia, google, youtube, and anything else that get too big.
One note about Amazon reviews. The more text/photos/video footage you have, the longer it will take for the review to be approved and posted. They do not go up in real time. I've had it take up to three weeks before one of my reviews was finally posted (I've done a few hundred on Amazon). They do send notifications showing if it was or was not approved, but that's probably going straight into the spam box with most people.
There are a lot of good points in this video, but i really hope your comment gets more upvotes. Review approvals take a good amount of time - as you said, sometimes weeks (esp. when you add videos/photos). These days, i think a low star review basically triggers an immediate refund offer, which, if you accept, i think removes your review as they classify the refund as part of a defective product. It’s an easy way to boost ratings and mess up the utility of reviews.
Told Louis this as well, I think his assumption is that it's an instantaneous review upload when it's not. Sometimes it does take days or weeks for them to be uploaded & actually submitted
Thanks much, and I agree. More and more, at least for the type products that I buy, it is obvious they are made in Red China and will be of inferior quality. For the first time in years I am seriously considering not renewing my Amazon Prime membership. Free, fast shipping doesn't compensate for low quality.
Thanks for the Video. :) This is exactly the point, why I read all the negative reviews at first, before I even consider reading positive ones. Doesn't matter if it's Amazon, Steam or whatever.
you are absolutely right. I received a gift certificate to amazon from the same seller that I bought an item from but could only redeem it if I leave them a positive review. I then proceeded to write a negative review to expose them. I solely bought the product because it had so many good reviews but it turns out they were all fake positive reviews from other who were bribed to leave them a good review. my review was also rejected and was not posted.
I had those types of sellers where I made those reviews then changed it after getting the gift card code. The deal was to make a 5 star review but never said I couldn't change it to a 3 star review later on.🤭
Electronics and jewelry are the two worst offenders, I've found. Amazon is still awfully tempting if you can find name brand at the right price, but often now you're playing against the algorithm which will adjust prices up to 20% more expensive based on how often you've been buying and if they think they can gouge you. It's no longer an "everyday low price" kind of site!
@@AcidArmy_ Tried linking an article, but RUclips apparently didn't like that. Google/Bing Project Nessie and the new Amazon "Dynamic Pricing Strategy" to learn more. Amazon is even being sued by several states and the federal govt. for these practices.
there was an article somewhere that said that your Amazon search results are tailored to your search history. As a test, I looked at my search results and my sons and they were totally different@@AcidArmy_
Yup. Amazon has been a garbage bin (sells up to 90%+ Chinese tofu junk) for so long I hardly get anything on there (never read reviews there, let alone any place that has them since you cannot trust them ever), maybe some small things but everything else I try to get at local stores and the product webpages themselves if I can.
I like how name brand products by the original patent holder wind up being 90 entries down, but the junk knock off stolen chinese products show up on top every time.
There is a much bigger issue underlying that in how China handles intellectual property. As far as I understand it, you aren't able to own an "idea" in China. So they can completely knock off some American product that is patented and even copy part of the name and there's nothing anyone can do.
@@Sophistry0001 This is what we get for allowing communism to take over china after WWII, instead of helping our allies, the Chinese Nationalists (who were exiled to Taiwan). Imagine if all of mainland China was run like Taiwan with the freedoms they have and good relationship we have with them.
@@aevangel1 insanely sad history on this one.One American missionary who operated deep inside China helping to defeat the Japanese was murdered after the war on Mao's orders. He had operated covertly directing American bombing operations from the ground. He operated single-handedly as if an operator... His death not only was never avenged, you never even heard about him. An American hero, never honored. We deserve hell.
@@Sophistry0001It's beyond legal, copying things from "the best" is a part of the culture there - to the extent that 15 of 20 kids in a class could hand in the same homework essay, and not be marked down for it. IP theft is a way of life, boosted by the CCP as a form of economic warfare.... so yeah, this is what we get. If you send literally any engineering drawing or design to a Chinese company, you should expect them to be immediately shared with anyone who might get benefit. A lot of engineers found this out 20+ years ago, but governments were criminally asleep at the wheel. Oh, and most the stuff you see on Amazon are sponsored listings now, first few pages, which of course the Chinese use to crowd out competition. And they get reduced shipping rates due to "developing nation" status, so it is often cheaper for them to send from China compared to internally with many nations. It's a total mess.
@@Sophistry0001 China is communist, no one can own anything. The government owns everything and the people "share" the wealth, in theory. In practice, different divisions of the Chinese government scam and lie to other bodies of government. And of course that extends to the people. But eh, china is like 2 billion strong so they have the numbers to overthrow their communist government, but then again their scamming ways are highly successful. Their dirty snakes but I gotta admit, they slithered their way to a lot of money.
One of the few no bullshit ytbers and human beings out there. I can't wait to see part three of this which I hope turns into a regular series on the channel.
You get what you pay for, hence I only buy books on Amazon. Trust is earned, Amazon has no trust, you hit the nail on the head on all your points. EDIT: I want to see you buy all that trash and show it for what it is worth. That would be a good video, but yes I did learn something, so thank you!
You get what you pay for isn't even true anymore, you can pay $50 for garbage, or $5 for garbage, there's no quality anymore, just garbage, and more expensive garbage.
It's not even a "get what you pay for" situation, amazon is far more expensive. A a quick test I searched for a basic wire crimping tool, I took the top 8 recommended by amazon, 8 from a large chain store, and 8 from a small chain with an online vendor nearby. Amazon averaged $36 aud, the chain store $30 aud and the small business was $28 aud and the chain and local vendor were all name brand products where as amazon was chinesium, so not only are you paying more you are getting something far worse. The only thing amazon offers that better places do not is the convenience of having it in one place that is easily searchable, a problem search engines solved in the 90s.
The only thing I would and do buy from Amazon is books. And that quickly taught me to be very critical of reviews and not trusting them. I have read books with incredible reviews that were some of the worst garbage ever and books with medium to bad reviews that were incredible.
I never read any review higher than 3 when shopping amazon. I just figure that all of the 5's are people that didn't vet the product, or people that got paid to "pump tires" rather than tell the truth of their findings. I have been approached in email by listers who noticed I left a 1 or 2 star review with pictures who bribed me to remove my unfavorable review and instead write something shiny, but completely false. Ever since that experience I swore off any review that was 4 or more stars.
I always first read the 2-3 star reviews. I used to check FakeSpot (you don't need the app - use the website) but don't bother with it anymore - I suppose they are now also controlled OR can't make sense anymore with the absurd level of review corruption. And: "A good tip: Sort reviews by newest first to see honest reviews. Sort by oldest to see if they have changed the item being sold to garner fake reviews from selling another item." (from comment by testing2741)
I have a nitpick at 1:50. If 40 amps is going in one end, you're gonna get 40 amps out of the other end; current doesn't just disappear. A poor connection will result in a large voltage drop due to high resistance, and the combination of voltage drop and current yields power consumption that's converted into heat. Otherwise, love your videos. Keep up the good fight.
@@AvianArmada yes he did talk about the resistance causing power loss and potential fires. My nitpick is with the current. If 40 amps is flowing into a crimp connector, then 40 amps is coming out.
Amazon is the same all over. I'm making some nice storage and organizing totes and need some #5 two way zippers. There seems to be an endless supply of cheap zippers that fall apart with very limited use, but ZERO high quality YKK zippers listed. I don't want to spend 15 hours on a beautiful shaving kit knowing the zipper will need to be replaced after a few months of use. Thank goodness there are reliable independent vendors still in business.
Not on Amazon which hasn't been just an online retailer for decades. They're also a movie studio, a streaming service (Prime and Twitch), and most importantly, a cloud computing company which is where they actually make money. Nearly every single website you've visited since 2006 is powered by AWS. Lots of world governments and even stock exchanges heavily rely on AWS. It's basically impossible to boycott Amazon, they're everywhere.
Wow! That problem is even worse than I suspected! Thank you so much for exposing this. This is absolutely ridiculous & pathetic!!! It's already so messed up that there are so many take "positive" reviews; but they are also suppressing "negative" reviews on super crap products... Yeah, I really well not be using Amazon anymore at all! And so petty the way they treated you... I already despise Jeff Bozos, it is despicable how low Amazon has sunk!
I've recently started using Aliexpress more than eBay. I only use eBay for things like video-games from sellers in my country and Aliexpress for dollarstore Chinesium junk. Hopefully some other site will come around by the time that Aliexpress' prices for cheap Chinesium junk get way too high like eBay's has.
It's better but I moved away from ebay also. Even when you search for local items specifically only from your country, or only within 100km I would notice the recipients name of my payment was xing, li, hua, ect, the product would take a month to arrive, and be in that stereotypical chinese grey plastic with chinese post marking all over it and looking nothing like the thing I purchased. Now I just purchase from local stores as most of them now have an online vendor and there are plenty of them if you use the right search criteria in a simple web search.
Ebay also have some of the same cheap Chinese products being sold as new on their listings. The only thing Ebay is still great for is finding used items.
I submitted a less than stellar review for a generator hookup outlet. I left specific feedback on the problem, why it was potentially unsafe and also posted photographs showing the problem. I was contacted by the vendor and offered a refund, keep the product and we will ship you another one if I edited the review and made it positive or removed the review completely. Needless to say I did not comply and they continued to send me so many emails I finally had to block them. I will however give them credit. They did post the review and it still there and can be viewed by anyone.
Was the product the offered to send you an updated product that remedied the safety issues you highlighted or was it the same product that was faulty? If the initial product you received was faulty then perhaps they realized this and were going to send you a properly safe replacement???🤔
@@fookingsog Haha... yeah, like the seller suddenly caught morals because ONE person left a bad review? 🤔 I've had this happen to me a number of times, and they only only offer to send you the same piece of garbage for free. I fell for it once, and the replacement they sent was just as defective as the first one. I've ignored all such offers after that.
@@fookingsog As far as I can tell based on later reviews it was the same product with the same issue. Problem is you insert the cable going to the generator and twist to lock. Depending on the tolerances of the outlet you received and the brand of the generator cable it will not always lock in. That can potentially cause the cable to get pulled out or fall out while the generator is running. We tested several of the outlets against a few different brand cables and roughly about a 30% chance the cable would not lock in.
@amputeemarksman9846 Surely the sockets of the generator were within spec whilst the cables were out if spec!!!--which would make complete sense!!! I understand completely!!! I run a generator during power outages and the twist-lock is the only way to go when you need a positive connection! I purchased the Yodotek L5-30P --> L5-30P 50 foot extension cable, Amazon # B08P5ZFH5X in conjunction with two SUA2300i A-IPOWER inverter Generators paralleled together. Worked really well!!!
I tried to buy a replacement GFCI for my "brand name" pressure washer. Guess what? Doesn't exist on Amazon but for some reason there are dozens of Chinese knockoffs that'll probably electrocute me or burn my house down. I use "brand name" because our friends at YT deletes my text if I mention brand names. We really are in an insane dystopia on so many levels.
Amazon reviews have to get approved before appearing on the site and sometimes this takes a bit. I leave reviews for many things and sometimes it takes a week or 2 to get the email that says your review is live. I never had a review rejected and I’ve been fairly critical of items
Wow. You really don’t sit on the fence, do you😂. Really enjoyed your rant. Too many of us shop with our eyes wide shut, so glad you took the time to give us a jolt ⚡
Congrats on 2M Subscribers! Do not waste money on buying these crimps. Many are the very same product sold under different vendor titles...some of which are the same business (using different titles/accounts). I do not trust Amazon reviews, nor the Q&A they used to offer, because it's obviously flawed. I also think the confusing reviews and answers are allowed to stand in order to keep the consumer confused and allow for excuses when the item purchased doesn't work as expected, is dangerous or a failure.
"Many are the very same product sold under different vendor titles" Or their producs change from batch to batch because the supplier might change or has changed the spec.
My own personal rules for Amazon: 1. Only buy things which are the exact same product across all retailers. 2. Only buy it from Amazon if it's significantly cheaper than all other retailers. 3. Never purchase something sold by a third party. 4. Never sign up for Amazon Prime. If it can wait two days, it can wait a little longer. 5. Never pay anything for faster shipping. 6. Always get the product replaced for free if there is even the slightest sign of damage during shipping. 7. Never accept any free offer that is included with the purchase.
I am guilty of ordering from Amazon, but I have no other means to obtain BattleTech in Poland, as the only alternative is ordering in the USA, paying very expensive shipping and on top of that being slapped with 23% import tax (VAT) on both items and shipping...
I suspect that your one-star review was rejected because it contained a link to an external site. Perhaps if you uploaded that short section of video to the review platform, it would have gone through. That being said, I agree with you 100% regarding the dearth of quality products on Amazon. I recently searched for a replacement battery for my cell phone as the original has swelled and the back popped off. Lots of cheap batteries from brands I've never heard of with much higher capacities if you believe the listing. All with over 4.5 star reviews. I had to really search through the reviews to figure out that these were either low quality garbage or used batteries with new labels over the top of them. I ended up going directly to a phone repair company with their own branded replacement batteries. If they sell me junk, they actually have something to lose. Even if you comparison shop and select a name brand product, there is a chance that what you receive will be a Chinese knockoff.
Thank you for this. I couldn't figure out why even my Prime brought up "identical junk with different names". Knowing that my return ends up in a landfill does not give me much reason to renew next year. It was nice while it lasted...
I once had a review removed/suppressed because I used bad language. Also, on that product page, one of the reviews is 5 stars, yet is calling it junk. In all my years shopping and reviewing items on Amazon, it does not surprise that people are also an issue here.
I've been shopping on Amazon since way back when they only sold books in the mid 1990s....I agree with everything you've stated about the quality of 'stuff' they put out front in order to sell, however, the one thing that Amazon does in order to mitigate your feelings of buying junk is this: They give you a choice of getting a credit or refund. Most people, when they have this option, will not bother to take the time to write about how crappy the product is....With the refund or credit, you use it for another product....which most likely will be crappy or shoddily made....the circle of crappy products--refund or credit---buy another weird named crappy cheap product---refund or credit, etc etc etc...will go around and around as long as the customer THINKS they will hit the lottery and get a quality product...for a cheap price.
The cost of that awesome return policy is that few other merchants can give that 'customer service' and ultimately the prices (for consumers and the cut it takes from real sellers) on Amazon have slowly increased over the years to pay for the general cost of that return policy.
Commerce can now be summed up in 4 words… Marketing prioritized over product. No need to innovate or even offer a decent product if you can fool a customer into buying cheap trash in a fancy package.
Your overall point is spot on as usual. Keep in mind low-quality crimpers with bigger offsets could very well produce the desired result when combined with said low-quality crimp connectors. Wouldn't surprise me at all. In any case, save your money, or - entertain us, I'm still watching! 🤷♂😂
Last time I bought a random brand item from Amazon, it was supposed to be "new" but the inner packaging was torn and, unsurprisingly, it didn't work. Of course they asked me for a 5 star review in exchange for a gift card or something (btw never do this, they will just sell your email address to spam lists),
Zipp Speed is a really high quality bike component brand (although always be wary of buying bike components off the internet, there are tons of fakes), but yea the rest of them are totally trash.
My bad for getting that wrong. Pinning for accuracy.
That said, it's kind of messed up that you have to scroll through 6 columns of 13 bullshit brands to get to the one item that is good. That does not show up until the 6th column. :(
Here's what shows up when you search for bicycle quick release skewer before you get a real answer
1) zacro
2) unisky
3) no name
4) no name
5) no name
6) deer-u
7) mawave
8) quwei
9) zacro
10) PINGTANYOUYU(no really, pingtanyouyu)
11) unisky
12) zsling
13)ARMYJY
14) VIARON
15)choooem
16) meuey
17) OUKENS
LMAO gotta love amazon for that 😍
Its not just a good product, its literally SRAM's high end wheel brand.@@rossmanngroup
This is the first hearing of them, however, as a Trek owner, it is certainly a mess when trying to purchase parts to maintain my bike. Shoot, even just shopping for stuff to enhance astethics or enhance my experience, is an exercise in mild self frustration.
@@jed-henrywitkowski6470 I know the feeling. I crashed my bike recently (broke my arm too aaaaaahhh) and I need to find another seat so I almost HAVE to go to Bike World to get it.
Another big issue with Amazon reviews is that sellers can completely change a product's listing page to show a completely different product, and they get to keep the previous reviews...
100%
Yeah. Look at old reviews for a game controller, or something, and find stuff about how great of a scarf this is. This is not really the worst though. At least that is obvious. What bad is when they switch to selling a crappy knockoff of the same product. AND several different vendors selling under the same listing. Some of the vendors might be fine. Others not. And they are all grouped up under the same reviews. Which vendor you are actually buying from can be manually selected but it's kind of hidden away and easy to forget to even check (Even if you could trust the actual vendor reviews. HAH).
Seen that many time, is my first clue to AVOID seller... If your gonna be shady with the pre-sale, I can imagine how the purchase and product will be.
Also having two different versions of a product on the same page and the reviews are combined. This week - comparing steam inhalers - a vendor sold both a plug in version and a cordless one. Reviews were kind of polarized. Looking more closely I realized the almost all of the negative reviews were for the cordless version. So as a single listing, the cordless would have had a bad rating. But because reviews were lumped together and the corded version had lots of positive reviews, it made it look like the cordless one was rated better.
The reviews get even worse since there are reviews that show up on products that aren't even an option above that you are looking for. Reviews for other products are shown on wrong products, sometimes similar and sometimes not even close. That's why I check what the product they are reviewing is. I've had a product page for PLA filament and have been shown reviews for other types of filament from other products from other companies that are not PLA Filament. It is horrible.
A good tip: Sort reviews by newest first to see honest reviews. Sort by oldest to see if they have changed the item being sold to garner fake reviews from selling another item.
There should be the first and last 5 reviews showcased in a box
@@CircleOfMagicBriar If it was a standard layout, then companies would abuse reviews and game the system. This tip only works because it's not something they're expecting.
Great Comment I do the same thing. Also people should leave comments...descriptive comments of what they bought, how it works, and a Picture of the item. Leave a comment after you actually use the item too. The more of us that actually do that makes it safer for us the Buyer. I personally ignore the 5 Star comments I tend to read the 2- 4 stars of people that left a descriptive comment and even better with an image. You can tell a real comment if someone bought it and used it and actually posted an image.
Thanks, don't know how I never thought of that. I usually look at 2 - 4 star reviews and try to figure it out from there. But this sounds both quicker and probably more reliable lol
TL;DR: I avoid Amazon like the plague that it is but when I have no other choice I only pay attention to written reviews.
I always read the one- two- and three-star reviews first. Some of those are idiots who don't know what they're doing with the thing they bought and some of them are almost certainly fake reviews from competitors. Some of them are legit and you can generally tell the difference. I don't pay any attention to any review that doesn't have a written review. Stars mean nothing.
I have to say that I've seen some 5-star reviews that were clearly real people who knew what they were doing.
There are some big vendors on Amazon still it's just almost impossible to find them because Amazon's search is just a waste. You can enter a specific brand name that you just saw a product from into the search and it won't show up. It's crazy.
I still remember the glory days of Amazon. 1 day shipping, legit brands, real reviews. I hate how they combine reviews of completely different products now just to obfuscate
True. Or when they list a technically different product/version of it as "color"
Oh the good ol days. Amazon products suck now
As someone who uses amazon about once a year or less, I now find the browsing/shopping experience on par with aliexpress (which I also use about once a year). In other words the mission is "trying to not get scammed". I find the search results unreliable, products that look like sh** but they have good ratings, actual straight up scams.
For instance I wanted to buy a cable for my high end headphones, finally found something that looked like a decent option, bought it and guess what, the gauge of the wire was not what they claimed. So in the end I spent 1h trying to get a good cable and got a shit cable for almost the price of a good one (I even searched for specific quality brands but did not find them)
Just to add on that, in my country ppl are starting to use other platforms rather than amazon, they prefer regional/state shops where prices are a bit higher but reviews are not faked, customer support is great and the search engine works like a charm. As a direct consequence of this the largest regional platform grew massively in the last years, they now have basically anything one could need, and interestingly enough the customers themselves are pushing this company to be more transparent (and the company listens!!!). So far so good then!
i miss the days when amazon prime ACTUALLY sent stuff in two days. lately it seems like the prime items i buy take two days to get shipped out and another two days to arrive even if the listing says its eligible for prime next day
Can confirm, I was able to get a $100 voucher after a company offered me $25 to remove my negative review. Product was only $60 so they offered me $25 I said no, then $50 and I said no and finally they offered me $100 to remove it and change it so I did and actually received the money! Then I changed that shit right back 😂
Legendary
Yeah, you scammed the scammer and sank to their level.
@@jamese9283who gives a shit
our hero :D
@@jamese9283So I'm guessing you dislike it when people kill killers in self-defense? Cause they're stooping to their level right? What a stupid ideal to have in this world. Have fun getting fucked by everyone else.
My mom recently bought a scam energy saver on Amazon. When I looked over the reviews I discovered a whole bunch of 5 star reviews that weren't even about the product ....they were for kitchen gagets and other random appliances. When I told her it was a scam and to get your money back the seller magically disappeared.
Sellers can combine listings to have the reviews for both items show up under the item, and then just delete the option to order the old option that had all the good reviews. It is a known issue that needs to be fixed but hasn't because they want to make things easy for sellers. Downside is too many sellers take advantage and abuse the tools they are given
don’t refunds come from amazon the company?
@@cellie_bellie idk all I know is when she tired to do a return Amazon says there is no record of that seller or product so she can't return it
Ive noticed that too its rlly confusing and annoying
Ur mother is dumb af and can't even contact the Amazon support smh
Amazon went from being a marketplace platform for independent merchants to a flea market vendor. Thank you Louis for this information.
The amount of counterfeit goods it allows has surely gotta be the subject of litigation at some point??
100%
@@InnuendoXPNah. Big tech are unofficial arms of Gvmnt. They can do whatever they want usually.
Wonderfully put. Last time I made a mistake like this I bought a soldering iron with next to 5 stars which doesn’t get hot enough and the stand is prone to toppling too which can actually cause fires! Nothing of the sort, of course, was mentioned in the product reviews
they've already butted heads for allowing and promoting the sale of radioactive products @@InnuendoXP
Things have gotten so out of hand at Amazon that I don't even waste my time reading the 4 and 5 star reviews. I go straight to the 1 and 2 star reviews for accuracy.
Unfortunately a lot of the bad reviews aren't honest either; they might come from competitors or from chronically angry people.
I think the clearest tell is an extreme bimodal distribution - all 5s and 1s.
@@strnbrg59 Yeah, I've noticed a lot of 1-2 star reviews from folks who are clueless about technology too. Especially when they're trying to pair a bluetooth device they just purchased. Those reviews are pretty easy to filter out and they are usually a one or two sentence rant, such as "this device sucks" which doesn't provide any useful info about the build quality or performance.
It's crazy when you read low reviews and realize they're full of people angry that their brand new laptop stopped working when they put it in the dishwasher, or something. I love when I check those and realize the customer had no idea what they were even buying. I can't even begin to explain how many times I checked the reviews for books of crochet patterns I was interested in buying and saw people giving the product a negative review because they bought a book of patterns and they don't know how to read them.
A lot of them see "beginner friendly" and expect a step-by-step youtube tutorial that explains every step of the process and don't grasp that it actually means the patterns are a lot simpler and less involved than the more advanced patterns.
Exactly what I do if I need to check how good the product is.
same
Amazon's fake reviews have caused me to start searching up items from weird brand names on aliexpress, and unsurprisingly, it almost always turns up there for way cheaper.
i feel your pain, i buy stuff from aliexpress aswell and most of the time it's the same quality but at half of price if not lower. The only downside being out of us is that for some products i have to wait 2-3-4 weeks to arrive
It’s because the drop-shipping craze went nuts on Amazon, and people realized they could do practically no work and make a 200-300% profit. They buy on Ali express, shop for free direct to Amazon, the warehouse does all the work, they make a profit, and Amazon takes a commission. It’s a joke, and I’m tired of it.
Fake reviews don't exist anymore. They're very good at preventing them.
@@3DJapanu are a moron.
And the fake reviews on Aliexpress are a lot more amusing. "5-stars - it doesnt work", "5-stars - it came but havent tried it yet will test later", "4-stars i dont like it", "1-star its good"
Amazon forgets that what set them apart when they started in 1994 was their intense attention to empowering customers to find and safely purchase the books that they wanted.
200% bozos is too busy playing yachts and eating tacos
everything has its end, it is what it is
And they cannot do that anymore either - My gf few years back (2020s) have ordered a book to prepare for MBA exams - The book that arrived was about "white supremacy" highly political, quasi scientific praising nazi movement etc. Amazon ofc returned the money back, and told us to keep the book, so we burned it.
Another issue to bring up with Amazon, and this has already been covered, is the drop shipping type sales. People buy garbage off Alibaba, Aliexpress, Temu, etc. and make a brand name to sell it. In this case, crimp connectors.
I haven't trusted Amazon reviews for 3 years. This isn't news to me, but I'm glad you're addressing it.
Same. I wouldn’t trust AMAZON now as far as I could throw them.
They're getting as phony as Temu and AliExpress reviews. All 3 companies now selling mostly garbage.
I wrote extensive, fair and thoughtful reviews often with photos. All of them were removed and to this day, they've provided no specific details as to why. Their "customer service" just won't get back to you. I canceled my Prime membership and should have long ago and do not regret it. They are bad for our local economies and for America in general. I'm glad I had water splashed in my face to wake me up. If you want to watch a show, sign up for the free 30 days and cancel at day 29.
On Amazon, the seller wanted me to delete my negative review, otherwise they will not refund me for their fake product.
This is how they keep selling bad products and having positive reviews.
I'd take the review down, get the refund, then put the review back up with screenshots of the email and the original post.
@@vipervidsgamingplus5723 :) Since they tried to bribe me and also sent a fake product, I felt morally okay to play them. So I made them pay, and left my review online. They were super furious!
I've had a seller stalk me for reviews. When I finally lost my rag and told them I'll report them to Amazon they left me alone.
Tip: leave reviews after getting your refund
AMAZON is notorious for withholding reviews about products that are negative or if you complain about prime. I did a video unboxing of a hairdryer on my primary channel that came damaged. Could’ve happened during shipping. I don’t know however when I made the purchase it was a prime purchase that took almost 2 weeks to come. When I did the review during the unboxing, I made reference to Amazon prime, and when I submitted the video for my review on the product and the service, they would not publish it. They said that my video violated their community guidelines, and they would not post it. So AMAZON in my opinion has lost all credibility. And just an FYI be very careful if you have to return an item or you need a refund.
10 years ago I used to spend several hundred per month on Amazon. Now I spend maybe a few hundred per year. Good job Amazon, you are helping small business rebound where I'm living because everyone hates amazon now
Good thing... I don't trust Jeff Bezos and his company..
This makes me so happy 😁 for 20 years i been dreaming of Amazon tanking, and small business to pop back up. Maybe using the internet buying bulk together.
I haven't bought a single thing from Amazing in the past 7 years, it garbage now. lol
Haha. I have spent a massive $0.00 on Amazon. Why? I didn’t trust their products, which are expensive.
Same here, i used to receive Amazon packages at least 3 times a week 10 years ago. Now, they are lucky if I buy one thing per month.
In my locality, Amazon tends to rely more and more on cheaper (and way worse) third party shippers too. I've had items thrown, lost, delivered to the wrong address, impossible to track, etc. It's come to the point where I instantly cancel my order if it's delivered by anything other than regular postal services or directly by Amazon.
There was a video on another channel about third party drivers delivering to the wrong address. Probably the most interesting part was all of the drivers commenting. The gist is that their gps software they are required to use is imprecise and doesn't mark a package as delivered until they drive to the spot that the gps directs them to, even if the address doesn't match, and they have such tight time schedules that taking the time to then take it across the street or wherever the correct address is would blow that schedule.
@@confidential5897which is why we find the American way weird, it is illegal to drop a package anywhere but where the customer directs to and regardless of tracking, customer's signature is final.
GPS off by 500m but marked as delivered with signature and photo? That's an issue not an issme.
But if all I got is the GPS and its coords are final, no customer feedback, I'll drop wherever FBI fudges my gps signal to.
@@confidential5897that is absolutely correct. Worst part is that Amazon knows this. They continue the practice to keep wages low and to constantly terminate reputable DSP's that cost more money. Driver's move but the companies get worse. Amazon keeps ignoring customer and driver complaints, Amazon rep continues to plummet
You have no idea how deep this goes. Like nail polish has completeley ruined my wifes nails, nails raising off their beds type stuff. And has burned like first degree burned her lips with lip stain. I return it, leave detailed feedback, no contact, leave a bad review, no contact, still rated 4.5 out of 5. Amazon bin stores are great, amazon itself is straight ass these days.
I've noticed the serious downturn in named quality products in Amazon search results too. The same junk product sold through 20 rebrand companies that are probably all owned by a single Chinese manufacturer drowning out the well made products.
As a previous 2 year driver, I can attest to the downward spiral of Amazon. Most DSP’s (which are 3rd party direct supervisors over drivers) don’t care about the staff anymore and just push numbers because of the “fear” of contract cancellation. No more bonuses, rewards, or overtime. They are hiring anyone with a pulse and expect them to meet the needs of Amazons daily goals with only ONE day of training.
Yep. I worked for them last year. Was a shit show
I'm in the UK, and a few years ago a nearby local authority gave grant help to Amazon to establish a local 'fulfilment centre' in the hope of providing local jobs. To be fair, I strongly suspect palms were crossed.
Not long ago, that same local authority announced they wished no further association with what the entire community now accept as a sweatshop.
I haven't worked at Amazon, or as a delivery driver, but I do work in the trades and I feel that there's a similar thing going on with many businesses/corporations employing labourers - seemingly they've ended up over-competing on pricing and thus they've decided to just hire warm bodies for as little as possible, hoping that it will be enough to maintain some level of service without breaking the intended budget while worker conditions and the service provided go down the toilet.
Everything I hated about eBay is now rampant on Amazon. I'm not sure where I will go but I have cut back a lot.
Heck, nowadays eBay is better than Amazon as a platform. At least you can still find what you're searching for.
Buy directly from the manufacturers.
@@MAGAMAN Good luck on that one.
A lot of manufacturer's won't sell direct to end users.
For years I had rotating 6 month credit line on Amazon that I never paid off because it was a massive interest free loan for all the stuff I buy from them. Two months ago I paid it down to zero and have effectively stopped buying from them. They know something has changed especially seeing the emails they send me to get me to start spending again. When most of what is on there is junk AND the shenanigans of things changing price while in my cart, getting back on the horse to use Amazon isn't something I'll be doing. I'll be canceling prime next year because I didn't catch the renewal in time.
@@MAGAMANTry living in Puerto Rico, US territory, 30 minutes from Florida by air, we can't get things shipped here because most businesss only use UPS and *they* only want to ship to the continuous 48. Despite it's flaws, USPS has never treated us like we weren't paying US citizens.
I'd like to make the argument that Amazon isn't even customer focused now. If they were they wouldn't be removing bad reviews in order to sell these trash items.
I looked there for bath towels last night and after looking through the reviews on several I decided it would be best just to go to Walmart.
I tried leaving a negative review for a scalpel where the blades wouldn't fit because the handle receiver wasn't made properly making it incredibly dangerous. Amazon took the review down and banned me from reviewing that product. I've e-mailed them and explained but haven't heard back. Usually they unban you pretty quick once you explain.
I wonder if you can send the email around to people that possibly use it.
It's scary how large corporations can manipulate reviews on places like amazon and even google. A friend of mine works for a call centre that raises funds for Canadian charities. The branch manager threatened employees with disciplinary action if they didn't leave a 5 star review on google. All those reviews are up there, but any reviews mentioning workplace harassment and wage theft are frequently shadowbanned.
Meh, this isn't new, Louis railed against this from Yelp! _years_ ago. The corporations are just less secretive about it now because they realized there's just no consequences for them. (It's just like how people think cops have gotten really bad recently but they've always been bad, they were just covering it up in the past, now they're mask-off with their corruption.)
@mitchellpeterson
And the first reply to your comment has been shadowbannned.
if every single employee makes the same choice none of this could happen
@@horseathalt7308
This identical thing happened at the restaurant & casino I worked at & LOVED for 5 years, I made unbelievable money, but then sadly the incredible kind hearted adored by public & ALL employees manager left & a spoiled rich brat bro started managing it, w/o a whole lotta knowledge then devastatingly bought it with daddies money & ran it like a psychopath nepotistic tyrant & when I left I tried to go to the known god awful corrupt YELP & other similar places (if memory serves something sounding like Tomato 🍅 or…?) Well ‘’shockingly’’ these equally psychopathic places who are all about controlling perceived value - review platforms would NOT allow me to get my forced compliance fake review removed & I tried to escalate it by taking the time to write to the psychos of Yelp & to the garbage gatekeepers of Google & to To mato or whatever thee eff… to get the fake review removed & was of course 💯 ignored. It’s wild because I felt a huge pressure of guilt right when I was submitting it & quite a few of us objected to this demand but essentially we’re verbally abused & accused of not wanting to see our selves & coworkers succeed, which was wild b/c we were ALLLWAYS BUSY… like too busy, it was nuts!!
Nothing is more true than the statement of : People Quit their BOSSES NOT their jobs!! But when the company feels like any warm body will do…. Well then…. That’s a hard & pointless lesson!!
This comment says 4 replies. I see one 😮
Worst thing Amazon ever did (Qualification: To the meatbag shopping experience on their site) after ruining their search, filter and sorting functions was getting rid of replies to reviews.
Indeed! Next will be: only 5 star ratings allowed.
Oh right. I forgot you used to be able to do that.
Getting rid of replies to reviews was an awful decision. That was the beginning of the end for me.
Product was perfect, but shipping took two days. ★☆☆☆☆
yeah, it's really annoying that I can no longer sort my search by price anymore.
I bought a shade cloth for my garden off of amazon. They are made of loosely woven strips of plastic that filters light to a certain stated percentage of its original intensity.
This shade cloth was not UV treated and started to break down into dust before one season was even up. Countless microplastics in my food garden. My review was twice removed for breaking their code of conduct. I may have used a swear word in the first but I was 100% certain to be clean and factual in the second one that was removed.
This was on my list to buy. Do you have any brand you recommend?
Try your local hardware store. My local Ace caries precut sizes are made here, and they also have huge rolls for team members to cut the customer a custom size.@@everythingmatters6308
@@everythingmatters6308 I went with a natural fiber shade cloth made from burlap by Dewitt. It's pretty strong like 60%+ so not ideal for food crops, lucky it's going over a greenhouse with tropical plants in it. The green house was right next to my food crops though.
I've heard great things about Green House Mega Store from grower buddies. A quick glance tells me they offer an 8 year warranty against UV damage so it's good on that end.
I had a negative review removed for using "pos", they said it was vulgar language even though it's just an acronym (similar to bs)
@@michaeleconomides4054To be fair, "shit" is generally considered swearing, and an acronym with it inside doesn't make it better. But in any case, censoring that word/acronym is a far more sensible option than to remove a review altogether; for example, Steam does that. I've seen sellers with 100% feedback who simply got all non 5 star reviews deleted. That's not normal.
You just confirmed my suspicions of amazon.
I knew the review system was broken(they include fake 5 star reviews) but I never would have guessed Amazon would allow the vendor to have a took that literally can delete 1 star review like the one you gave.
Welcome to hell
Partly because of this, I usually go to a specialty store and get whatever hardware I need there instead of the crap on Amazon. The staff are always knowledgeable and can recommend good brands.
The staff having knowledge and advice really is an underappreciated part of a brick and mortar shop these days.
Back in the physical store days, shops didn't have unlimited selling space. To get your product into the store you would have to get past the "buyer" for that department. This is a person whose entire job it is to pick products that people want to buy, don't get returned all that often, don't catch on fire, etc. It didn't mean that everything in the store was high-quality, but there were some minimal standards. You couldn't buy a toaster that wasn't UL listed, etc. Amazon has basically no filter on what it will sell you, so of course it is full of the worst possible junk. Do you really think some guy over in China cares whether there is lead in the paint he uses to paint your kid's toy? It isn't his kid. And even if he did have some morals, he is competing with people who have none in a race to see who can sell the stuff cheapest. And if he ever gets caught and the product gets banned, he will just create a new company and keep selling the same thing. People are starting to figure this out. They want a curated selection to choose from, they want somebody to filter out the dangerous garbage ahead of time. Choice isn't valuable if all the choices are junk.
It's an unholy race to the bottom.
What I hate the most is the lack of verifiable information in our entire economy. And Amazon's crappy "platform economy" is just making that problem obvious.
For example, there are all these random German companies (I'm from Germany) getting a "small vendor" tag alongside all sorts of Chinese companies. As a German, I don't want random Chinese crap, I would rather like random German crap, Thank you very much. But here is the issue: The "German company" is most likely just some importer, getting their "branded" products from the same exact factory the Chinese vendors get their stuff from. Who knows, right? There is just no trustworthy way to check.
There is no way to even filter for countries-of-origin on the platform, not even where a company comes from. I have to check manually every time I click on an item/seller.
Honestly, I would really like for there to be a law here in the EU that requires companies to make transparent their ENTIRE product chain, from raw material to finished product. In the age of digitalization, factory automation, and cryptographic verification - there is no real technological challenge in that. It would simply be a bureaucratic inconvenience until the system gets established.
I want to see whether a company used Swiss, German, American, or Chinese steel to make their stainless-steel drinking cups, and where the ore came from. I want to know where the exact bike chain I bought was assembled and packaged. I want to know precisely where the tomatoes came from to make the Ketchup I bought.
How can I make informed consumer decisions (beyond just buying the cheapest item), if I receive no reliable information about anything (other than price)?
Knowing this information would drastically change my purchasing decisions.
Here is another example how it affects consumer decisions:
Earlier this year, I was looking for a sturdy tub to wash stuff in (big dog, clothing, etc.) on Amazon.
I didn't really find anything good, so I started looking for anything that could hold water and some weight, like planter boxes, tubs to clean metals grills in, portable outdoor showers, and so on. And it was all garbage! It all looked cheap as hell, and the larger tubs/boxes were very expensive.
Until, buried underneath other results, I found a local plastic-mold company selling professional food-grade temperature-resistant feed/water/washing troughs for farms. Ordered it - and I got the most sturdy plastic tub I have ever put my eyes on. It came so clean, I probably could have eaten from it right out of the box. No plastic smell. Just super sturdy hard plastic. Plastic walls so thick, it easily held the weight of a heavy-weight person jumping around in it. And it was cheaper than almost all other options. Perfection.
Had I not looked for so long, I would have ended up with some cheap trash made somewhere else, for twice the money.
If Amazon had better filters for countries-of-origin and seller country, I would have found this result much earlier, and the company would likely receive many more orders.
Where was the high quality tub manufactured?
For automotive parts in the USA, Opticat Online (an automotive parts catalog) often has the country of origin listed. You can then use this info when ordering the part from a reputable vendor.
__
I liked the tub story. As for whether any of us should hold our breath and hope for corporate honesty, I can actually name off the top of my head the nine companies that most profited from doing direct business with the Nazis. Plenty of other companies profited immensely from the Nazis, like General Motors and obviously Volkswagen that hippies enjoyed so much. But the nine biggies haven't stopped Americans from enjoying Jewish screams in their products: Chase Manhattan, Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, Ford, Kodak, MGM, Random House, Woolworths. Dang, that's only eight. But I'm not gonna look them up. Oh, duh, General Electric. The guys who permanently polluted the bottom of the Hudson River with heavy chemicals. Good times.
@@craigmcpherson1455 From context: somewhere in Germany.
Why would you want to buy a more expensive item from a German company if, as you say, the German company is sourcing the item from a Chinese company and you can buy the same item, made by the same Chinese company, but half the price because it’s being sold under a different brand name?
I've bought some cheap products from Amazon (primarily to review them on RUclips and point them out as junk). It's extremely common for the seller to offer gift cards, refunds, free products, etc. for a 5 star review.
Honestly, I'd make a 5-star review bashing the item. That seems to be the best way around this issue.
5/5 "👌It stinks."
2-5 years ago I would sometimes be contacted by vendors, offering me refund if I deleted a review that was 3 stars or less. Has not happened lately, not sure why. Could be because amazon has cracked down on it. Or the opposite, they have found a cheaper way to fudge with their reviews.
@@Code7UnltdThat's still not ideal for those who glance at star ratings, but don't read the actual reviews.
Amazon has been acting incredibly scummy and corrupt, lately. They've removed (at least) two of my recent critical reviews of faulty/defective products. Get the feeling they're running interference for bad sellers.
Hey Louis, I am currently an Amazon Vine Tester and I can tell you the products I receive are mostly crap and often broken or will break in my test. The problem is that the German Government came up with an idea of gathering information about the income tax for the Vine products which I received because in their opinion it's an extra income. Now I will probably face a higher tax after my tax declaration for products which did not function well or were broken before or within my testing. And I have to explain to them that those products are never worth the amount which are written in the product information or went directly into the trash. Also I am one of the Vine Testers who often give 1 - 2 star reviews with pictures/video proof which in many cases are also published. I also managed to bring some products down which got removed from Amazon after my reviews. It's something.
Good job! It Sucks you are being penalized for it
I was a Vine reviewer too, for a whole ten weeks, until yesterday when I received an email telling me that my (honest and genuine) reviews do not meet the community standards, but no further details as to why not, and that ALL my reviews have been deleted (over 350 reviews going back over a decade) and that I am banned from making any further reviews from my account, which I have had for over 20 years. A mate summed it up as "they just want obedient little drones in their cult of materialism" and not reviewers who go on about climate change and psychopaths lol. I have taken the decision now to delete my Amazon account and not to give them any further business.
What a great job, tasting alcohol, getting hammed, then smashing those rating buttons. Ha-Ha-Ha
I'm an Amazon Vine reviewer as well coming into my one year anniversary and I'm actually pretty happy with the program. Like you, I've received junk items I've tossed but also some really terrific items as well. I make a real effort in giving bonafide reviews, including photos with texts and videos giving occasional one or two star reviews and update when an item fails prematurely but I admit I don't update as often as I should. Amazon puts the Vine reviewers through evaluation every six months to continue in the program. Overall, I think this Vine program works, helps the customer decide and prevents a higher return rate. Note, I tried to make a personal purchase of a camping cot once but didn't because Amazon put a warning under the product of a high return rate.
Amazon asked if I wanted to become a Vine reviewer. I quickly did my research and discovered that the manufacturers would send you something to review and value the full retail value of that item. They would write that off and you get a 1099 in return meaning you got paid "income" at the full retail value of that product If you review $10,000 worth of junk products a year that, that is income taxes you owe on S10,000 of income. I declined in becoming Vine tester/reviewer. I also ignore any Vine reviews on products where the product was given free. I wish Amazon had a way to block all the Vine reviews where they received the product for free.
I always check the negative reviews first. In most cases the worst reviews will reveal exactly what I'm trying to avoid or don't like about a certain brand.
Yup. Taught my son that too. Look at 1 and 2 star reviews and sort by most recent....
That's how I read reviews too.
problem with that is there are also fake negative reviews from competitors, every single product has more than enough bad reviews to scare almost anyone from buying. its just impossible to really know without buying which is a pain.
competitors on trash products?🤣@@johndoe-dj3iy
I had a seller contact me offering $20 for a 5 star review. I gave the product 1 star and used a screenshot of the mail as a picture. Amazon deleted the review a few days later. Apparently my review violated some policy since my picture wasn't of the product...
That's why you have to take a picture of the product next to the Bribe Email bc technically the product is being shown. 😂
Louis is the definition of a person who just wants to mind his own business but has to constantly deal with the world trampling over his and everyone else's.
Louis what I have noticed with many websites that are selling portals which have reviews attached the very fine print always tends to read a list of conditions. And it's pretty simple, don't mention price, other brands, other stores, weblinks, or personal info. Then it usually reads that the site has the final discretion on what's posted. They will be using keyword lists to pull down anything negative or low ranked. The way around this is simple, re-do the review and written is a passive aggressive style. AI bots can't handle the human condition, humour or cryptic wordplay. That's how you leave a truthful negative review that will not get flagged off the site. I'm sure with your high IQ you could pull off an amazing positive / negative review that will rank high in the reading list.
now I understand the 5-star reviews saying the product is junk.
what annoys me about the reviews, they include the PAID REVIEWS. So, if they're paid reviews and feedback which is short for compromised for a product, why even include them??
This is NOT correct. The rating given has no impact on if it is approved by amazon or not. There are still things that will cause a review to not be approved but they're all very reasonable and often times you can still mention things like packaging and it will still be put up. Amazon does not want reviews focused on packaging or shipping times because that is an issue they caused and has nothing to do with the seller for most items.
There are plenty of actual problems with the system that could be called out, so there is no reason to spread misinformation like this to shit on amazon
@@Meow4B getting sent the wrong thing is am amazon issue and not an issue with the specific product or seller. That is why they rejected that review. The other one was rejected because you said walmart but if you just said it could be bought at other big box stores for cheaper then it would be approved
I've written hundreds of reviews for amazon and never have them rejected because I follow their guidelines
@@Meow4B Your review got rejected because saying a product can be had for cheaper at another retailer is not a review of the product. Amazon’s review system has a LOT of problems, but Amazon rejecting a review that says “This is cheaper at another retailer” is a you problem. Amazon wants you to stick to reviewing the product itself, not the fulfillment process, not how much the product is at competing retailers, etc. - and they’re actually quite clear about this.
Now if you want to leave complaints about the seller, Amazon actually has a separate review process for that. But the best practice when buying items off Amazon is to stick with “sold by Amazon” and not just “shipped by Amazon”. Amazon will ship you all kinds of garbage, but the stuff they sell under their own name is generally legit.
One important thing that Amazon seems to have forgotten is people go to a shop thinking that the shop has done its due diligence about the products it sells.
I get the impression that in some cases, these sellers initially sell a reasonably good quality product, which is why people leave so many good reviews. Then, after a while, they start selling poorer quality versions, and so people who buy the product are not getting the same quality product as those who initially left positive reviews.
I purchased a pretty nice gown for around $30 on Amazon. I really like it and still use it, and there's a many good reviews for that product. However, I noticed that months after I purchased the product, the seller changed the price to over $100!! And the same positive reviews are still on there!! So unsuspecting consumers may believe the product is actually worth that inflated price because of all the positive reviews.
Welcome to America, everyone does this. Costco, Walmart, Target and the rest. They bring a great product and sell it for a normal price. Then bring in garbage and run a sale to blow it out.
I saw that when shopping for an american made cooking pot, great reviews, and then one day they change manufacturing to China, and the a flood bad reviews.
"I bought this for my husband. He hasn't used it yet. 5 stars". Got to love how people have not used it yet but give it 5 *.
"Arrived at time. - 5 stars!", "Shipping company s*cks! - 1 star!"
@@krasky Einstein level intelligence intensifies.
At least her husband didn't complain she bought it wrong.
That's what I hate on the simple surveys...you need to separate seller, product and shipment.
Still people are stupid...they would rate a 60 ft rope 1* because they needed 70ft and it's to Short
@@krasky These reviews drive me insane. You aren't supposed to review the courier service wtf! Idk if it's actual idiots leaving reviews like that or if it's some kind of fake review game to pump up the numbers.
... or FedEx damaged my product - 1 Star.
Subscribed. This seems one of the rare videos where the RUclipsr is very honest.
Thank you sir, we need more of you in the world.
Great video. This one of the main reasons I created my channel. Got tired of the junk and the fake positive reviews on Amazon
I was banned from writing reviews.
It was after only my third product review; two were positive, one was negative.
I suspect it was because I use a vpn on my phone.
I emailed them and all they said was, roughly speaking, "Here are the terms of service, you are no longer allowed to leave reviews."
I replied asking why and they said the same thing and that they wouldn't be responding to further emails. I wasn't rude or inappropriate in any way, I thought it was some kind of small bug, no big deal.
I tried explaining I was using a vpn and maybe that was the issue, they never responded.
Ironically, I've purchased multiple great products since then but I obviously can't leave reviews to let others know how much I liked them...
either create a new account or submit a request that your account is bugged. Try and get a different team of people looking at your issue. Big companies have terrible intercompany comunnication.
@@internetmovieguyI thought about it, but it isn't worth it to me.
I wrote a review for a TV who's manufacturer starts with Sam*. The review was scathing and 100% accurate. I got an email telling me that I was essentially bullying Sam* and the review won't post. After that no matter the type of review on other stuff I wrote it would get rejected. Have you also noticed that you can no longer comment on the reviews of other users? That is especially egregious.
Stop buying their crap if that's how they behave
@@internetmovieguysounds like guild wars 2 and ArenaNet. They banned me because I logged into my account for 10 minutes, that’s it. I have 2,000+ Steam games never banned from any.
They told me “your account was flagged for malicious activity, it is not a mistake, we will not escalate this matter or look into it further.”
So yeah, I don’t do GW2 or anything from those companies anymore
The mistake people make is in thinking they're Amazon's customers. They're not. The scammers are Amazon's customers. The people who shop on Amazon are the product.
In the vast digital marketplace dominated by the retail giant Amazon, a common misconception prevails among its user base. Many believe that they are direct customers of this e-commerce behemoth, reveling in the convenience and accessibility it offers. However, a closer examination of the dynamics at play reveals a profound truth: those who engage in transactions on Amazon are not the primary clientele; instead, they unwittingly transform into the product in this intricate web of commerce.
The crux of the matter lies in the unexplored reality that the true patrons of Amazon are not the diligent shoppers seeking the latest gadgets or trendiest fashion items. Instead, the ones who perpetuate this vast online marketplace are the scammers, opportunists, and third-party sellers whose dubious practices thrive within the digital labyrinth. The unsuspecting consumers who flock to Amazon with their diverse shopping needs are inadvertently cast into the role of the product itself.
🤯
Your words to God's ear, especially with respect to politicians and their supposed "constituencies."
It's a marketplace - Amazon screws over both sides to maximize its profits
Very well said. And it aligns with reality more than Amazon operating like a legitimate business. What a fall from grace.
It's a nightmare for parents, especially with young kids/babies. I'm genuinely surprised there's been no fatalities yet given some of the downright dangerous toys, teethers etc we've seen given as presents over the years.
most teethers contain toxic chemicals (plenty of studies done since 2010) but they are not fatal, same for other stuff, it's bad but it's "cancer" level of bad where you eventually get some complex bad effect years later and not "instant sick/drop" where you can quickly correlate the object with the issue caused
@@marcogenovesi8570 Yeah, I had read about that, I'm not the most paranoid about carcinogens but we just ended up using teething biscuits in the end.
The noticeable issue I found was more down to small parts & poor quality construction. For example we had one teether that had little solid plastic shapes in the middle and the outer, softer material started to break away after a short time revealing them.
We've also been given a lot of toys in the past with thin, weak, plastic that breaks sharp & very small screws that have come out... Most of the time the stuff is only slightly cheaper than a product with a legitimate safety mark (not the Chinese CE knock off they made to look like it).
They should make edible teethers for human babies like how they make rawhide bones for dogs. I don't like the idea of plastic teething toys because it confuses babies about what should go in your mouth vs inedible objects that shouldn't.
@jjcatsura current flows between the path of least resistance from live to neutral (or live to ground), a fork shorts them so that's where current will go. That's more of a fire hazard than shock hazard
@@Iquey in the before times, the "teethers" were bread crusts or bread sticks.
I would say that most of us have instinctively known that Amazon, as a company was basically garbage, but I appreciate the receipts you provide here. You make us smarter shoppers. Thanks.
Louis is literally petty enough to pull amazon's card on this one and prove that dozen of products are junk with fake reviews and i am HERE for it
I noticed this with a RGB controller I bought. It was labeled incorrectly so I put 5V on my RGB's ground pin and it killed my whole CPU cooler. Posted photos and everything. Can't find my review anymore and it was *months* ago
Dang, guy. I am so glad I found your channel. The authenticity is off the charts, this is legit, basically unfiltered you. If I were a gambling man, I would wager this is pretty close to how you would be discussing the subject in person. And you manage to put some humorous spin on it while you are at it. And it is educational. Keep up the great work. 🤘
Welcome to the real world LR is one of the few fellowmIT pros that I not only respect but trust info from him and that's very hard to do after decades in IT the # of fakes wannabes and ftards is staggering
And that sadly applies to other places as well like amzn
I remember when my dad bought a roomba off of Amazon. He did so because it had great reviews and it was on a crazy sale (iirc it was 50% off?). When he showed me the product (before it arrived, i.e. the store page) i knew it was too good to be true. And it was. The reason why there were so many good reviews is because within the roomba's box was a little letter that basically stated that if you wrote a 5 star review of the product, you would get a free $20 gift card.
Pathetic, but hey, it worked.
it's prohibited now
@@muller101doesn't stop them, I get things like that from plenty of "no name" sellers.
I see lots of sellers do this, mostly from China. They say leave a 5 star review, if not you need to contact them. IDGAF I just ignore it and leave the review I intended to leave, I can't be arsed to contact them so they can try and change the review with a bribe.
Do it Louis - buy them all and prove them all to be garbage!!
One of my highlights of 2023 was finding your great channel Louis!
Thank you for 'being Louis'!
I'm so glad I stumbled across your channel because I've been very annoyed by these same situations! You inspired me to go through all my amazon purchases and leave reviews (both good and bad for that matter). Great vid brother
The review you left had a hyperlink, they remove reviews with hyperlinks. Also typically reviews with the word "crap" Would be removed. The bigger problem with the reviews is that the sellers constantly change the item being sold under that listing. So you'll see reviews for a completely different item that are very positive and then after they gather a few 100 positive reviews for that item, they change the item listing to something completely different than what was being sold before.
how amazon allows them to pull this shit is outrageous!
Though they really should just not let you post reviews with hyperlinks to begin with then. That way, people would at least be able to edit their reviews to comply with whatever review guidelines there are supposed to be.
I bought a counterfeit red dot sight. After getting my money back I started investigating. I found that the company had at least 3 ads for the same product that were $1 different in price. When they get a few bad reviews they relist and start over. Amazon is aware of this but doesn't care.
I said diarrhea and "leakage" in an Amazon review for a well known diet aide and the review got rejected. I was brutally honest and told the truth and the truth got rejected.
This is so true! I had the same situation, I left a 1 star review, it was well written, didn't use any bad language etc and Amazon REMOVED it because it "breaks the policy" 😮😂 then I figured what a scam amazon is. I stopped using Amazon for over an year, my life is just as good, even better without using it. I prefer to pay 3 bucks more and buy a better product from a local shop. If it weren't for AWS amazon would be bankrupt anyway! Comes to show what a bad business is.
Amazon actively protects scammers because they drive profit and Jeff Bozo wants to fund his space-road-trips.
Same thing has happened to me multiple times
Don't forget on how they used the sales data of brands to copy/paste their best selling products and offered them below their cost price.
Yup. Rampant for yeeeaaars. But 'Zon has more money than God, so... it's permitted and permanent. They own it all, set all the rules, and they can do whatever they wish. 💪😎✌️ Everyone else needs to stay in their lanes.
Recently read a book called "surrounded by idiots". I feel that's the world we live in. Good thing I don't trust anyone or anything easily, and glad to say I NEVER bought anything from Amazon. Saved me from a lot of headache and frustration.
You’re 100 percent correct.There are deceptive practices on Amazon that have been going on for a few years now.
Louis, I wish there is more people like you so we can change something in this country. Thank you one more time for everything you do for all of us.
The best way to read Amazon reviews is to start with the 1 star and decide if you want to continue (bottom up). Those are the most honest reviews, at least from my experience. Edit: Amazon doesn't allow links to anything in their reviews, so that's why your review is absent.
I do that, too, but I start with the 3-star ones. There's a lot of noise in the one-star stuff with overly pissed-off people bitching about shipping delays and other stuff out of the vendors' control and all I want to know about is the product. 3-star reviews seem to be people who think the product is okay, but have some issues and I look for the overall theme. Sometimes that theme is "well, but I don't know if I care about that" and I'll take a shot, and sometimes that theme is "well, that's exactly what I want to use this for!" and I don't.
You clearly have not come across the anti-pattern where an item has 1,2,3 star reviews but when you click on them there aren't any reviews there. The only reviews are the 4's and 5's. Nothing like being gas lit by the company that wants your money,
no, because then you get all the morons who bought the wrong product, didn't read the user manual, or are blaming shipping damage on the product. Customers can also be at fault for the mess that the review system is in.
@@russoft lol gotta love those 5 star reviews that go "I bought it for my son he hasn't opened it yet but I think he'll love it!"
I've noticed that Amazon collects together all reviews for similar products and then posts them all for each of the products, regardless of maker or quality or even amount of time on the market.
My evidence: One product I bought that wasn't what was described was winter gloves. I needed insulated driving gloves ASAP because I lost one glove late in the winter season so stores had very little winter stock available. I couldn't find on Amazon the ones with Thinsulate and I really needed winter driving gloves, so I read reviews and bought gloves that customers recommended for being able to keep your hands warm in sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temps. When I received the gloves, I wondered if they would get you through the winter in Miami or LA because they were so thin. I kept them because I really needed gloves. Amazon is becoming more scammy every week that goes by.
Add to Louis' list my anecdote about a product with tons of positive reviews not matching the product received. (Of course I have more stories. Don't we all?)
oh wow, that really shady business practices if true. outright lies.
I thought the reviews for other product scams worked like this. Sell a popular item that will get lots of positive reviews then switch that product to something else. I suppose if you are paying for reviews they can just copy from one review to a different review. What you are suggesting implies Amazon is in on the review scam.
'Zon is about as reliable and trustworthy as Amber Heard.
After I'd seen this video, I received a small container of Loctite superglue from Amazon.
It had a false bottom about 1/3rd the way up the container, invisible from the pics.
There is barely a tablespoon's worth of actual glue!
So in the spirit of your channel, I wrote a review, letting people know about this. Next day I got approval, and I just checked, and there it is! There are over 15,000 reviews, and 98% are positive, so I'm on a lonely path here, but I'm glad I had my say. ;-)
Have a great Holiday and New Year Louis!
Amazon started out as a book store, and soon books will probably be the only thing that isn't a scam on Amazon.
Don't be so sure. I was wary about ordering from Amazon but after my sister told me our niece ordered from them several times without problems I decided to try it. So I placed a few orders in the last few months, all of them for books. But there was a problem with my last order in which I ordered the book "Complete Spanish Step by Step Premium Second Edition" by Barbara Bregstein. Despite the fact that I specifically requested a new book there was evidence it was used. In the guide to pronunciation near the beginning of the book there were some entries circled by pencil. But then I discovered a more serious problem; page 8 was followed by pages 73 to 104, and after that the pages started at 41 but then appeared okay. So pages 9 to 40 are missing and were replaced by a duplicate of pages 73 to 104. I checked a local bookstore and found one copy but it didn't have that problem so I bought it and will return Amazon's copy.
@@brucea9871 That's so fucked up man.
Here's what I expect from the "Crimp review": One of these products will actually be quite decent for some reason.
Then following the release of your video, many people will order that one from Amazon, at which point the vendor will sneakily replace it with a much, much shittier and cheaper to produce variant.
It happens like clockwork!
Or (what might already have happened) the others try to be as close as possible to the name and appearance of that good product to still be able to sell their junk.
Or (that's what I read about Temu) that vendor pushes the supplier to lower prices that aren't enough to still offer an product that's ok.
People often talk about diminishing returns when it comes to expensive products. But in my opinion that also exists on the other end of the price scale: At some point you have to give up a lot of quality for a little lower price.
Its crazy how everything good comes to an end. I remember ebay at the start. Its trash now. Same with Amazon, wikipedia, google, youtube, and anything else that get too big.
Google "enshittification". It's a real thing that's happening
Is wiki trash now? It seems better than it used to be, but that may just be my perception. Let me know.
One note about Amazon reviews. The more text/photos/video footage you have, the longer it will take for the review to be approved and posted. They do not go up in real time. I've had it take up to three weeks before one of my reviews was finally posted (I've done a few hundred on Amazon). They do send notifications showing if it was or was not approved, but that's probably going straight into the spam box with most people.
It's a bad assumption that it goes straight to spam. You don't know what you are talking about.
@@LordZordidit's also the least important part of their comment and doesn't detract from their primary point
@@Voyajer. I think it's important to state. It does not detract any value from the rest of the comment.
There are a lot of good points in this video, but i really hope your comment gets more upvotes. Review approvals take a good amount of time - as you said, sometimes weeks (esp. when you add videos/photos). These days, i think a low star review basically triggers an immediate refund offer, which, if you accept, i think removes your review as they classify the refund as part of a defective product. It’s an easy way to boost ratings and mess up the utility of reviews.
Told Louis this as well, I think his assumption is that it's an instantaneous review upload when it's not. Sometimes it does take days or weeks for them to be uploaded & actually submitted
Thanks much, and I agree. More and more, at least for the type products that I buy, it is obvious they are made in Red China and will be of inferior quality. For the first time in years I am seriously considering not renewing my Amazon Prime membership. Free, fast shipping doesn't compensate for low quality.
Thanks for the Video. :)
This is exactly the point, why I read all the negative reviews at first, before I even consider reading positive ones. Doesn't matter if it's Amazon, Steam or whatever.
you are absolutely right. I received a gift certificate to amazon from the same seller that I bought an item from but could only redeem it if I leave them a positive review. I then proceeded to write a negative review to expose them. I solely bought the product because it had so many good reviews but it turns out they were all fake positive reviews from other who were bribed to leave them a good review. my review was also rejected and was not posted.
I had those types of sellers where I made those reviews then changed it after getting the gift card code.
The deal was to make a 5 star review but never said I couldn't change it to a 3 star review later on.🤭
@@night-x6793 haha, good to know. I'll do that next time.
@@LONE-SOUL Just hope Amazon doesn't catch on that I'm scamming a scamming seller so they don't remove the editing option.
You are an asset to the world. Please don’t get assassinated or demonetized out here. Keep up the good work and I hope you stay safe out there.
Electronics and jewelry are the two worst offenders, I've found. Amazon is still awfully tempting if you can find name brand at the right price, but often now you're playing against the algorithm which will adjust prices up to 20% more expensive based on how often you've been buying and if they think they can gouge you. It's no longer an "everyday low price" kind of site!
Where can I read more about the algorithm increasing your prices like that??
Probably talking rubbish.
Just log in with a VPN and you'd see that's false.
@@AcidArmy_ Tried linking an article, but RUclips apparently didn't like that. Google/Bing Project Nessie and the new Amazon "Dynamic Pricing Strategy" to learn more. Amazon is even being sued by several states and the federal govt. for these practices.
there was an article somewhere that said that your Amazon search results are tailored to your search history. As a test, I looked at my search results and my sons and they were totally different@@AcidArmy_
Yup. Amazon has been a garbage bin (sells up to 90%+ Chinese tofu junk) for so long I hardly get anything on there (never read reviews there, let alone any place that has them since you cannot trust them ever), maybe some small things but everything else I try to get at local stores and the product webpages themselves if I can.
I think you hit the nail on the head, good companies don't wanna deal with Amazon's BS
I like how name brand products by the original patent holder wind up being 90 entries down, but the junk knock off stolen chinese products show up on top every time.
There is a much bigger issue underlying that in how China handles intellectual property. As far as I understand it, you aren't able to own an "idea" in China. So they can completely knock off some American product that is patented and even copy part of the name and there's nothing anyone can do.
@@Sophistry0001 This is what we get for allowing communism to take over china after WWII, instead of helping our allies, the Chinese Nationalists (who were exiled to Taiwan).
Imagine if all of mainland China was run like Taiwan with the freedoms they have and good relationship we have with them.
@@aevangel1 insanely sad history on this one.One American missionary who operated deep inside China helping to defeat the Japanese was murdered after the war on Mao's orders. He had operated covertly directing American bombing operations from the ground. He operated single-handedly as if an operator... His death not only was never avenged, you never even heard about him. An American hero, never honored. We deserve hell.
@@Sophistry0001It's beyond legal, copying things from "the best" is a part of the culture there - to the extent that 15 of 20 kids in a class could hand in the same homework essay, and not be marked down for it. IP theft is a way of life, boosted by the CCP as a form of economic warfare.... so yeah, this is what we get. If you send literally any engineering drawing or design to a Chinese company, you should expect them to be immediately shared with anyone who might get benefit. A lot of engineers found this out 20+ years ago, but governments were criminally asleep at the wheel.
Oh, and most the stuff you see on Amazon are sponsored listings now, first few pages, which of course the Chinese use to crowd out competition. And they get reduced shipping rates due to "developing nation" status, so it is often cheaper for them to send from China compared to internally with many nations. It's a total mess.
@@Sophistry0001 China is communist, no one can own anything. The government owns everything and the people "share" the wealth, in theory. In practice, different divisions of the Chinese government scam and lie to other bodies of government. And of course that extends to the people. But eh, china is like 2 billion strong so they have the numbers to overthrow their communist government, but then again their scamming ways are highly successful. Their dirty snakes but I gotta admit, they slithered their way to a lot of money.
One of the few no bullshit ytbers and human beings out there. I can't wait to see part three of this which I hope turns into a regular series on the channel.
You get what you pay for, hence I only buy books on Amazon. Trust is earned, Amazon has no trust, you hit the nail on the head on all your points. EDIT: I want to see you buy all that trash and show it for what it is worth. That would be a good video, but yes I did learn something, so thank you!
You get what you pay for isn't even true anymore, you can pay $50 for garbage, or $5 for garbage, there's no quality anymore, just garbage, and more expensive garbage.
It's not even a "get what you pay for" situation, amazon is far more expensive. A a quick test I searched for a basic wire crimping tool, I took the top 8 recommended by amazon, 8 from a large chain store, and 8 from a small chain with an online vendor nearby. Amazon averaged $36 aud, the chain store $30 aud and the small business was $28 aud and the chain and local vendor were all name brand products where as amazon was chinesium, so not only are you paying more you are getting something far worse.
The only thing amazon offers that better places do not is the convenience of having it in one place that is easily searchable, a problem search engines solved in the 90s.
I even stopped buying books from them. They kept arriving damaged.
I mean Kindle books, yes I agree I wouldn't buy physical books from them for sure.@@always_serpico
This video marks the transition point towards Project Farm style content. And im here for it 100%
The only thing I would and do buy from Amazon is books. And that quickly taught me to be very critical of reviews and not trusting them. I have read books with incredible reviews that were some of the worst garbage ever and books with medium to bad reviews that were incredible.
I never read any review higher than 3 when shopping amazon. I just figure that all of the 5's are people that didn't vet the product, or people that got paid to "pump tires" rather than tell the truth of their findings. I have been approached in email by listers who noticed I left a 1 or 2 star review with pictures who bribed me to remove my unfavorable review and instead write something shiny, but completely false. Ever since that experience I swore off any review that was 4 or more stars.
I always first read the 2-3 star reviews. I used to check FakeSpot (you don't need the app - use the website) but don't bother with it anymore - I suppose they are now also controlled OR can't make sense anymore with the absurd level of review corruption. And: "A good tip: Sort reviews by newest first to see honest reviews. Sort by oldest to see if they have changed the item being sold to garner fake reviews from selling another item." (from comment by testing2741)
If the product is really good, 5 stars should be given. It is a pitty to penalize a good company and all the junk companies get the 5 stars.
I pretty much do the same. I skim through the low stars and get an idea for longevity, doa, and return issues.
Sold all my amazon stock after the last video. You summarized my nagging suspicions and made me realize just how bad Amazon has become. Thank you.
I have a nitpick at 1:50. If 40 amps is going in one end, you're gonna get 40 amps out of the other end; current doesn't just disappear. A poor connection will result in a large voltage drop due to high resistance, and the combination of voltage drop and current yields power consumption that's converted into heat. Otherwise, love your videos. Keep up the good fight.
He said that a few seconds later...
@@AvianArmada yes he did talk about the resistance causing power loss and potential fires. My nitpick is with the current. If 40 amps is flowing into a crimp connector, then 40 amps is coming out.
@@semvhu1494 kk
I was about to remind Louis of Kirchhoff's law too :)
Amazon is the same all over. I'm making some nice storage and organizing totes and need some #5 two way zippers. There seems to be an endless supply of cheap zippers that fall apart with very limited use, but ZERO high quality YKK zippers listed. I don't want to spend 15 hours on a beautiful shaving kit knowing the zipper will need to be replaced after a few months of use. Thank goodness there are reliable independent vendors still in business.
love the rainy window in bg, sooo cozy :)
Amazon will likely only allow 5 star reviews to be shown in the future kind of like RUclips went with only showing thumbs up on videos.
They took our freedom!
I'm happy that this year, I bought my gifts through independent retailers, direct from the creators, or in person at stores in my town.
Boycotts work.
People need to realize the power and influence we have as consumers (if well organized).
👊
Not on Amazon which hasn't been just an online retailer for decades. They're also a movie studio, a streaming service (Prime and Twitch), and most importantly, a cloud computing company which is where they actually make money. Nearly every single website you've visited since 2006 is powered by AWS. Lots of world governments and even stock exchanges heavily rely on AWS. It's basically impossible to boycott Amazon, they're everywhere.
I appreciate you for calling them out on their bullshit. This video needs to be viewed more than 100k times
Wow! That problem is even worse than I suspected!
Thank you so much for exposing this.
This is absolutely ridiculous & pathetic!!!
It's already so messed up that there are so many take "positive" reviews; but they are also suppressing "negative" reviews on super crap products...
Yeah, I really well not be using Amazon anymore at all!
And so petty the way they treated you...
I already despise Jeff Bozos, it is despicable how low Amazon has sunk!
Based on what Amazon is doing I've decided to move back to eBay as it's much easier to stop BS sellers
I've recently started using Aliexpress more than eBay. I only use eBay for things like video-games from sellers in my country and Aliexpress for dollarstore Chinesium junk. Hopefully some other site will come around by the time that Aliexpress' prices for cheap Chinesium junk get way too high like eBay's has.
It's better but I moved away from ebay also. Even when you search for local items specifically only from your country, or only within 100km I would notice the recipients name of my payment was xing, li, hua, ect, the product would take a month to arrive, and be in that stereotypical chinese grey plastic with chinese post marking all over it and looking nothing like the thing I purchased.
Now I just purchase from local stores as most of them now have an online vendor and there are plenty of them if you use the right search criteria in a simple web search.
I have found many items are actually cheaper in the store. I got lucky but it seems the Amazon prices are not competitive
Ebay also have some of the same cheap Chinese products being sold as new on their listings. The only thing Ebay is still great for is finding used items.
I submitted a less than stellar review for a generator hookup outlet. I left specific feedback on the problem, why it was potentially unsafe and also posted photographs showing the problem. I was contacted by the vendor and offered a refund, keep the product and we will ship you another one if I edited the review and made it positive or removed the review completely. Needless to say I did not comply and they continued to send me so many emails I finally had to block them. I will however give them credit. They did post the review and it still there and can be viewed by anyone.
Was the product the offered to send you an updated product that remedied the safety issues you highlighted or was it the same product that was faulty? If the initial product you received was faulty then perhaps they realized this and were going to send you a properly safe replacement???🤔
@@fookingsog Haha... yeah, like the seller suddenly caught morals because ONE person left a bad review? 🤔
I've had this happen to me a number of times, and they only only offer to send you the same piece of garbage for free. I fell for it once, and the replacement they sent was just as defective as the first one. I've ignored all such offers after that.
@@fookingsog As far as I can tell based on later reviews it was the same product with the same issue. Problem is you insert the cable going to the generator and twist to lock. Depending on the tolerances of the outlet you received and the brand of the generator cable it will not always lock in. That can potentially cause the cable to get pulled out or fall out while the generator is running. We tested several of the outlets against a few different brand cables and roughly about a 30% chance the cable would not lock in.
That’s crazy. I wrote a bad review for DOA products and can’t even get Amazon to let me contact them. Amazon removed the “contact seller” feature.
@amputeemarksman9846 Surely the sockets of the generator were within spec whilst the cables were out if spec!!!--which would make complete sense!!! I understand completely!!! I run a generator during power outages and the twist-lock is the only way to go when you need a positive connection! I purchased the Yodotek L5-30P --> L5-30P 50 foot extension cable, Amazon # B08P5ZFH5X in conjunction with two SUA2300i A-IPOWER inverter Generators paralleled together. Worked really well!!!
I tried to buy a replacement GFCI for my "brand name" pressure washer. Guess what? Doesn't exist on Amazon but for some reason there are dozens of Chinese knockoffs that'll probably electrocute me or burn my house down. I use "brand name" because our friends at YT deletes my text if I mention brand names. We really are in an insane dystopia on so many levels.
CCP intervention
Amazon reviews have to get approved before appearing on the site and sometimes this takes a bit. I leave reviews for many things and sometimes it takes a week or 2 to get the email that says your review is live. I never had a review rejected and I’ve been fairly critical of items
Wow. You really don’t sit on the fence, do you😂. Really enjoyed your rant. Too many of us shop with our eyes wide shut, so glad you took the time to give us a jolt ⚡
Congrats on 2M Subscribers! Do not waste money on buying these crimps. Many are the very same product sold under different vendor titles...some of which are the same business (using different titles/accounts). I do not trust Amazon reviews, nor the Q&A they used to offer, because it's obviously flawed. I also think the confusing reviews and answers are allowed to stand in order to keep the consumer confused and allow for excuses when the item purchased doesn't work as expected, is dangerous or a failure.
"Many are the very same product sold under different vendor titles"
Or their producs change from batch to batch because the supplier might change or has changed the spec.
My own personal rules for Amazon:
1. Only buy things which are the exact same product across all retailers.
2. Only buy it from Amazon if it's significantly cheaper than all other retailers.
3. Never purchase something sold by a third party.
4. Never sign up for Amazon Prime. If it can wait two days, it can wait a little longer.
5. Never pay anything for faster shipping.
6. Always get the product replaced for free if there is even the slightest sign of damage during shipping.
7. Never accept any free offer that is included with the purchase.
I am guilty of ordering from Amazon, but I have no other means to obtain BattleTech in Poland, as the only alternative is ordering in the USA, paying very expensive shipping and on top of that being slapped with 23% import tax (VAT) on both items and shipping...
I suspect that your one-star review was rejected because it contained a link to an external site. Perhaps if you uploaded that short section of video to the review platform, it would have gone through. That being said, I agree with you 100% regarding the dearth of quality products on Amazon. I recently searched for a replacement battery for my cell phone as the original has swelled and the back popped off. Lots of cheap batteries from brands I've never heard of with much higher capacities if you believe the listing. All with over 4.5 star reviews. I had to really search through the reviews to figure out that these were either low quality garbage or used batteries with new labels over the top of them.
I ended up going directly to a phone repair company with their own branded replacement batteries. If they sell me junk, they actually have something to lose. Even if you comparison shop and select a name brand product, there is a chance that what you receive will be a Chinese knockoff.
Thank you for this.
I couldn't figure out why even my Prime brought up "identical junk with different names".
Knowing that my return ends up in a landfill does not give me much reason to renew next year.
It was nice while it lasted...
I once had a review removed/suppressed because I used bad language.
Also, on that product page, one of the reviews is 5 stars, yet is calling it junk. In all my years shopping and reviewing items on Amazon, it does not surprise that people are also an issue here.
I've been shopping on Amazon since way back when they only sold books in the mid 1990s....I agree with everything you've stated about the quality of 'stuff' they put out front in order to sell, however, the one thing that Amazon does in order to mitigate your feelings of buying junk is this: They give you a choice of getting a credit or refund. Most people, when they have this option, will not bother to take the time to write about how crappy the product is....With the refund or credit, you use it for another product....which most likely will be crappy or shoddily made....the circle of crappy products--refund or credit---buy another weird named crappy cheap product---refund or credit, etc etc etc...will go around and around as long as the customer THINKS they will hit the lottery and get a quality product...for a cheap price.
The sad thing is there are extremely well-made products mixed into the garbage at a great price. It makes me think of dumpster diving!
The cost of that awesome return policy is that few other merchants can give that 'customer service' and ultimately the prices (for consumers and the cut it takes from real sellers) on Amazon have slowly increased over the years to pay for the general cost of that return policy.
Commerce can now be summed up in 4 words… Marketing prioritized over product.
No need to innovate or even offer a decent product if you can fool a customer into buying cheap trash in a fancy package.
I've stopped writing reviews. On any site. Unless I absolutely love the product, my review will never see the light of day.
Google reviews is the worst!
Your overall point is spot on as usual. Keep in mind low-quality crimpers with bigger offsets could very well produce the desired result when combined with said low-quality crimp connectors. Wouldn't surprise me at all. In any case, save your money, or - entertain us, I'm still watching! 🤷♂😂
Last time I bought a random brand item from Amazon, it was supposed to be "new" but the inner packaging was torn and, unsurprisingly, it didn't work. Of course they asked me for a 5 star review in exchange for a gift card or something (btw never do this, they will just sell your email address to spam lists),