I agree it's strange. A lot of the article is about how Amazon can avoid liability, protect the actual seller from liability, and continue selling an unsafe product. I don't think the Amazon part itself is clickbait.
"The lithium-ion battery in the laptop sitting next to him had ignited, setting his couch on fire. Battery cells were flying all over the living room, leaking acid."
Lithium-ion cells do not contain acid. The electrolyte is composed of salts, solvents, and additives.
I've never had an 18650 Li-ion cell go off on me, but I have had LiPo cells decompose while still strapped to my drone and those produce copious amounts of thick smoke (which I'm told is not great for you in confined spaces)
You know that, I know that, probably most people reading this have enough chemistry to know that and understand. However the average person doesn't know that. I wouldn't expect the reporter to know that.
Calling the contents an acid which the average person knows is dangerous is arguably better than being precise but confusing people into not realizing the true danger.
I don't agree. I expect a reporter from a legitimate news organization (as opposed to some random blogger) to research it and find out. I'm sure 5 minutes of googling would have produced that knowledge.
The reporter could have substituted "chemicals" for "acid", which would have been less imprecise, but is still a scary enough word for average readers to interpret as dangerous.
Lowering expectations/standards for journalism is a slippery slope.
It’s supposedly “news”, not editorializing. It’s their responsibility to get the facts right.
Acids aren’t inherently dangerous. And I know plenty of “average” people that know that vinegar is an acid and swear by it as a household cure-all to a fault. Same goes for carbolic acid.
This is all stupid when we have perfectly correct adjectives in the English language to use like caustic, toxic, noxious, incendiary, poisonous etc.
> Kerchner suggested that the real enemy is e-cigarette manufacturers, which have designed devices around 18650 cells.
> Korean company that makes LG-branded lithium-ion batteries, sent a letter to sellers and distributors of e-cigarette devices and equipment, telling them, “Individual consumer use and handling of 18650 cells is a dangerous misuse of the cells that can lead to severe burns and disfigurement.” It asked companies to stop selling LG 18650 cells, and to tell customers who had bought the cells in the past that they should dispose of them safely.
> Many Amazon sellers reported receiving emails last August saying Amazon had prohibited the sale of cylindrical-lithium-ion batteries, including the 18650.
I know 18650 cells normally come in battery packs with charging and protection circuit, and that even in the DIY electronics community, it's not recommended to build the battery management circuitry by yourself, unless you know what's you are doing.
But even if purchasing raw, unprotected 18650 cells is not recommended. Still, if a device is using these raw 18650 cells, it means the proper circuitry must have been already included in the device. If properly designed, a device with 18650 cells replaced should be as safe as the original one. So there should be no reason to disallow an individual customer to remove a dead 18650 from a device, purchase a new cell and replace it. I've personally seen raw 18650 cells found in flashlights and RC toys, replacing them is a routine procedure.
One of the three possibilities:
* 1. Most individual customers have no idea about the safety when handling these raw cells, and are handling and charging them in a reckless and dangerous manner, for example, using a low-quality, generic charger, or exposing them to mechanical shocks, high temperature, etc.
* 2. 18650 cells are inherently unsafe to be used with e-cigarette due to the nature of this application, or they are not safe to replace (easy to break something in this process), or many e-cigarette units do not perform battery management properly.
* 3. It's difficult to distinguish between good and counterfeit 18650 cells, due to the potential hazards, it's better for Amazon to ban them altogether?
As a result, Amazon and some battery manufacturers banned their selling to individual customers to avoid accidents and incidents due to the above unfortunate reasons. Otherwise, I think purchasing a new 18650 cell and replace the dead ones in your electronics should be perfectly acceptable.
Any comment?
Edit: So far, the conclusion seems to be a mix of all three issues:
1. The biggest problem is #3. It's difficult to find legitimate, authentic 18650 cells. As tristor pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19839673), it's a notorious problem in the hobbyist community and e-cigarette community. If even people who know what they are doing are having trouble finding authentic cells, offering them to average customers is risky. zrobotics added (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19839977) that the counterfeit problem is a supply-chain level issue!
> My normal port of call, Digikey, doesn't appear to carry any actual name-brand cells. I see adafruit & sparkfun, hopefully they source decent cells but who knows. There's also Jauch Quartz, who I've never heard of.
teilo also agrees (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19839869) that the proliferation of poorly-made budget 18650s as well as counterfeit re-wraps of junk 18650s sold as quality brands such as LG.
2. Problem #2 is a secondary cause. teilo said a lot of poorly designed devices that lack correct pro...
Definitely #3. Counterfeit 18650 cells is a serious problem and anyone who has delved deeply into the e-cig/vaping community is already aware of this and doesn't purchase batteries through Amazon or any other service where counterfeits are commonplace.
Counterfeiting of batteries generally, and counterfeiting on Amazon generally, have become critical path problems for a lot of hobbyist communities where having a quality supply chain is safety critical. This is not new. It's true as well in things, such as the car community, where many online supply chains are corrupted with counterfeit safety-critical items like wheels and brake calipers.
One of the realities of the world is that "you get what you pay for" is actually true. This has become clear specifically around the batteries issue and also in the car community where specialist online retailers who charge a premium are the go-to places to buy safety-critical components, specifically and exactly because anyone who cares does not want to accept the risk of a safety-critical item failing to save a few bucks. On the flip-side, many people in hobbyist communities are ignorant cheapskates and unfortunately their penny-pinching drive helps to proliferate counterfeiting.
Definitely true. There are also instances of companies charging premium prices for lower quality products in many hobbyist communities. I'd say the clear corollary to "you get what you pay for" is caveat emptor "buyer beware".
As an aside, I know it's typically discouraged from commenting about downvotes, but within minutes my comment in the thread was heavily downvoted and I don't understand why?
It is also a slogan I am personally hoping catches on in certain industries like the gaming industry - but with different emphasis. That if you pay for something, you're going to get it. So stop paying for it if you don't want to get it. Gamers pay for tremendous abuse to be done to them, and then walk around wide-eyed and mystified why they're being mistreated. Then they pay for more of it.
> Definitely #3. Counterfeit 18650 cells is a serious problem and anyone who has delved deeply into the e-cig/vaping community is already aware of this
> a lot of hobbyist communities where having a quality supply chain is safety critical.
Thanks, it makes lots of sense.
Personally, I do play with electronics, but mainly radio and digital devices, not hobbyists RC toys and models. So I didn't know counterfeit cells in the supply chain is so serious, that it's even a trouble in the hobbyists community (where most people know what they're doing).
When playing with homebrew electronics, I actively avoid lithium-ion batteries and use Ni-MH when possible, as I know one mistake can be fatal. I realized my decision is correct and I should continue doing it.
You don't need much knowledge to recognize whether 18650 cell is genuine. Just measure the capacity under different loads (say 0.5A, 1A), and check whether its weight is around ~45g (off the top my head). Get something like iMax b6 (dis)charger which is rock solid and cheap :) I've been using it for years.
Additionally, you can rely on other reviews.
When I buy 18650, I thoroughly review it for others.
Usually, the ones that come with some other items are cheap 18650 with low capacity and with sand (counterfeit / faking weight).
I want to point out something for everyone: there are cheap Chinese 18650 which are solid! For example, I've personally used official Liitokala batteries and the ones that I used are 100% genuine, high-capacity 18650.
As with everything else with life, you need to be careful and check reviews before you buy something.
Does it matter how thoroughly you check individual items and reviews when the next person who orders the same item on Amazon might receive a different product? We can't even trust known-good sellers anymore because their inventory gets mixed up with anything that has the same SKU, both genuine and counterfeit.
Point taken. No clue how can you approach this problem (when the seller himself sends different products to different people). That's scary, but shouldn't such a seller go out of business relatively fast? After couple of bad grades and feedback, surely nobody else will order. But yeah, the first buyers are burnt like this.
These are fly-by-night "companies," if they go out of business/get banned they just open a new account under a new name next week.
>And it’s easy for third-party retailers to disappear after selling a defective or dangerous product, even if they pop up a few weeks later under a different name and address, again selling dangerous products.
I think the supply chain problem is the manufacturer's fault. All the 18650s I've bought come with some disclaimer on the box like "not for sale to individuals" or "not for sale for e-cigarette use". So the only way people can buy them is from a fly-by-night vendor that has to lie to the manufacturer and say "oh uh we're putting them in battery packs" and then turn around and sell them to individuals.
Every time a counterfeit 18650 blows up, I blame LG, Samsung, Panasonic, etc. for this policy. It's the root of the problem.
He didn't handle 18650s. He bought a battery pack for his laptop that was supposedly an HP replacement, except it was either counterfeit or refurbished by a third party.
This doesn't surprise me. I don't order batteries from Amazon because all of the batteries I've gotten from them have been counterfeit. It is not worth buying that item from them because of the risk of fire and malfunction. And the way they commingle stock from unrelated sellers makes it very easy to buy an OEM battery that is actually a counterfeit.
In my opinion they are criminally negligent for not informing customers that counterfeit or third-party batteries can result in explosion or fire, and they should stop selling batteries entirely.
And it's pretty clear both from what happened here and from my own experience that they simply don't care about counterfeiting on their network.
> He didn't handle 18650s. He bought a battery pack for his laptop that was supposedly an HP replacement, except it was either counterfeit or refurbished by a third party.
If you reread the article, you'll see that the article mentioned a series of related issues, one was about the defective laptop (and other off-the-shelf) battery packs. I think everyone knows something about it already, even the great kernel hacker Alan Cox was a victim! His 3rd-party laptop battery pack exploded in 2006.
But the article mentioned another issue as well, which is the purchasing and handling 18650 cells by individuals (mainly for e-cigarettes), which I found was something new and different. Thus I posted the discussion above.
There are two parts to this, and the article seems to conflate them. First is there are a lot of poorly designed devices that lack current protection. In the eCig world one can point to the mechanical mods which are basically a battery directly attached to a coil, with nothing but a switch in between. Dangerous and stupid. There are some very good eCig devices that have excellent current and reverse-bias protection, but they cost more.
The other problem, and one that is more distinctly Amazon, is the proliferation of poorly-made budget 18650s as well as counterfeit re-wraps of junk 18650s sold as quality brands such as LG. Often these are low-drain devices that should only be used for things like flashlights, but are sold as if they are high-current-drain batteries. This is also driven by the demand for eCig batteries. The side effect of this is that these junk batteries end up being purchased for non-eCig devices.
The best advice is: Don't buy lithium batteries on Amazon. It is not worth the risk.
Trouble is, it's actually not all that easy to purchase a legitimate 18650. My normal port of call, Digikey, doesn't appear to carry any actual name-brand cells [0]. I see adafruit & sparkfun, hopefully they source decent cells but who knows. There's also Jauch Quartz, who I've never heard of. Their datasheets [1] certainly don't inspire confidence, this is definitely a rebranded cell and I have no idea who actually manufactures this. So while I'm into hobby electronics and have done lithium powered projects, I don't immediately know where I can go to get a genuine Samsung cell that I can trust to meet it's specs.
I think this isn't so much a battery problem as an Amazon problem. Banning the sale of individual cells just means that the only batteries available to the average consumer are the worst-of-the-worst aliexpress grade garbage. People are obviously buying these cells, banning them just means that the only remaining sources will be illegitimate. And Amazon has this problem with a lot of products; searching "Arduino" returns entirely knockoff boards for me on the first page and I have heard it's nearly-impossible to find an Apple charger that meets electrical standards. I wonder how long Amazon can burn through goodwill before consumers begin to regard them as equivalent to Ebay/aliexpress?
So while I personally really appreciate being able to cheaply source things directly from China, I also understand what I'm getting into and temper my expectations. I think many people have the false expectation that if they purchase something from a reputable retailer like Amazon the product will be safe & within spec, which for certain products isn't the case.
Absolutely, you need to be dealing with a specialty vendor that understands their own supply chain. I’ve had good experiences with batteryspace.com (AA Portable Power). Not affiliated.
Amazon’s logistics advantage is huge, but unless I absolutely need it tomorrow they’re rarely the best option. Oddly enough, there are a few resellers of marked up Chinese electronics that have established a certain amount of brand trust with me - “DROK” and “SMAKN” come to mind. Brands that provide a reasonable amount of curation to help you avoid the absolute worst crap, but are small enough not to attract counterfieters themselves. It’s an odd niche that Amazon’s failure of inventory control has created.
I can certainly agree about DROK-branded products, they've been great for the price. Apparently the brand is well-known enough to warrant counterfeiters: I ordered 2 5V buck converters and didn't pay enough attention to the seller. The description said DROK but I received some generic boost converters, all of which were inoperable. It wasn't worth going through a return for such a cheap item, I treated it as a cheap lesson on being careful in Amazon.
It just shocked me that someone felt the brand was trusted enough to justify faking.
Google mooch battery guide. He's a member of the vaping comunity and tests batteries for vaping which usually need high current (and capacity) ratings.
He also has links to trusted suppliers of liion batteries.
> searching "Arduino" returns entirely knockoff boards for me on the first page
Something to be aware of - there are mainly three classes of Arduino boards in the marketplace:
1. Name-brand Arduinos (ie - those marketed and sold, or resold, that come from Arduino.cc)
2. Knock-off Arduinos
3. Counterfeit Arduinos
Many in the hobby understand what #1 is, and I encourage everyone just getting into the Arduino to purchase an actual Arduino Uno first, just to support the community and to get a solid "reference" product.
Where many get confused, though, is on what the difference is between #2 and #3 products. What is the difference between a "knock-off" and a "counterfeit" Arduino?
Ultimately, it comes down to copyrights and trademarks. Arduino has a specific set of marks, verbiage, colors, and symbol placement that they put on their boards, which are designed to convey the notion that "this is a genuine Arduino board".
Any third-party board that attempts to replicate this design in part or entirety is infringing on that, and should be considered a counterfeit board. This extends somewhat to using the name "Arduino" and especially "Uno"; it has long been a "thing" that if you build a custom Arduino for sale, that Arduino.cc would like you to name it something else, and ideally not include the suffix "-uino" (mainly because it makes no sense from the standpoint of the Italian language, IIRC). Using the name "Uno", IIRC, is also verboten, as it is a protected trademark of Arduino.cc as well.
Beyond that, the Arduino as a device is completely open-source; anyone can take the reference schematic and board designs and start making them in his or her basement and nobody will care - unless you start using those trademarked and copyrighted items/symbols/etc.
So if you see a board like that, try to report it to the community. There are ways to do this on the site to report it directly to Arduino.cc (or there were, last I looked). Alternatively, find a thread about this issue (they are all over the Arduino.cc forums) and post what you know there, or start a new thread if all the old ones are "dead".
So how do you tell a counterfeit from a knockoff? Well - a true knockoff can look identical in shape and placement of parts, but what you really want to look for is the lack of use of those IP protected items already mentioned. Look for boards that aren't colored the same, that don't use the same markings, that are named differently. Look for vendors/sellers of the products who almost seemingly go out of their way to differentiate their products from the actual Arduino boards.
Tons of them are out there, many offer options not available at all on the original Arduino Uno boards (for instance, on the QFP 328 there are extra analog input pins not found on the PDIP version - some boards bring those extra pins out to headers!). You can find boards with extra integrated peripherals, ones that don't follow the Arduino header layout at all, plus specialized products meant for a particular market, but which could be repurposed for your own use if you wanted to (popular examples are the various ATMega-based 3D printer and CNC controller boards available - there are also a few specialty robotics controllers on the market. There used to be, but not so much anymore as things have migrated toward ARM and other embedded controllers - boards that were meant for multi-rotor drones and the like).
You will find boards out there that "skate the line" - they may use similar colors, similar (but not the same) markings or symbols, etc; for those you'll have to use your best judgement and conscience to decide on buying.
Also note that there are certain boards which exist as only knockoff or "counterfeit"; one can even be hesitant about the latter. These are boards that used to be made by Arduino.cc, but have since been stopped. Take for instance, the Arduino Pro Mini:<...
It seems to be: lots of #3; a fair amount of #1 (people shorting spare batteries carried in pockets, for example); and a not insignificant amount of #2 (protected vs unprotected cells is not something people should need to know).
The problem with the batteries in relation to vaping has to do with the application. The only stories I have seen where one of these blew up was in an application where there was no regulation. Which is extremely stupid(since it’s unregulated you get more “clouds”). There are countless regulated options on the market that make these batteries as safe as using them in a phone or laptop.
They're 3rd party sellers. Putting the blame on Amazon is a bit like blaming the postal service for all the faulty products they send. Being the most popular service as a common denominator doesn't make it the root cause of a problem.
Given how difficult it is to distinguish an Amazon product from a "3rd party" product from Amazon, not sure what the difference is here. Postal services don't advertise and serve as brokers for transactions, masking the identity of the seller.
I rarely shop on Amazon. I just looked around and you are right it's not easy to see the seller information. But I wouldn't consider this the root cause of faulty products. I see it more as a global problem (can also happen on AliExpress for example). There have always been cheap white label products coming from China. They've just become more easily available than they used to be thanks to services like Amazon.
Problem is we are used to legitimate American-based retailers doing some vetting of cheap Chinese white label products for safety. We know it's probably not going to be the highest build quality, we know it might not last, but we expect it to be safe! When you buy a cheap Chinese-made UL rated charger from Walmart, you can be pretty sure it's actually UL rated. In Amazon's case its close to a free-for-all but has the outward appearance of a legitimate American-based retailer.
Amazon's supply chain is compromised. There are fakes and counterfeits all over the site. Its been this way for years and Amazon hasn't done anything to fix it.
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I've been buying books directly from publishers and buying other stuff from more specialty shops (Adafruit, Digikey for Electronics, Newegg / Microcenter for computer parts, Target / Walmart for general merchandise)
The very quick decline in quality of Amazon products has led me to start shopping elsewhere. I don't spend an insignificant amount at Amazon. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this. When I can buy higher quality goods from my local dollar store or cheaper Chinese stuff directly from AliExpress with better service and quality, what's Amazon's benefit? It doesn't matter how fast something arrives if it costs me my health, home, or breaks within a single use.
Based on their privacy policy, it looks like they gather aggregate browsing data, which they may be monetizing. But they say that all data gathered is at the aggregate level.
Maker of Shoptimate here. As said by others, the business model is simply affiliate links.
The gathering of browser data in the privacy policy is to cover things taken by my Apache logs or click statistics (which I sometimes need to charge stores that pay me per click). But I don't monetize this in any shape or form.
Thanks for responding! That totally makes sense. I am a bit wary about these sorts of things because even my small-time (under 100k users) Chrome extension has had offers for data collection/infiltration. So when I read a privacy policy that doesn't disclaim browsing history monetization, I figure it's probably because it's happening. Glad to hear that's not the case!
I've moved (back) to buying higher priced electronics from places like Best Buy. The prices are usually the same anyway for the name brand stuff, and I'm less worried about fakes. Last week bought a new smart watch and headphones and they arrived 2 days after ordering.
BB has started using their retail stores as a distributed shipping system, so they ship packages from very close to you and have pretty good delivery times, as long as it's something carried in a store. Pretty smart move.
I think Target may be moving in that direction as well? They've started doing free 2-day shipping as well, I would not be surprised if that's how they're doing it. They seem like they're making a genuine attempt to compete with Amazon too.
One of the problem I face with Amazon in some other country is that they drop price of the product after I've already made a purchase and price difference is often $10 on $40 item.
I am forced to return the item and cause Amazon so much loss, when Amazon can just offer price matching upto a week but no they don't do that
Second, Amazon tells me that there is lightening offer on some product but the price has only changed like 1% and Amazon compares it with the fake price which it never before charged in its store.
I don't always do it, many times a product is slightly damaged or has some issues but I still keep it if I get a good price and don't want hassle to return it specially after I've installed it in my house already.
But when price also changes and there are issues, this leaves me no other option but to return the package. (Which I really hate)
Why should anyone have “goodwill” when dealing with an entity that abuses its employees and focuses solely on profit? My goal is to get the product at the lowest possible price from them.
I'm starting to be on the same boat, though not necessarily for the same reasons. Amazon Basics is still pretty strong... it's when you get to third party stuff that it becomes a real minefield.
The amount of third party sellers re-using listings for multiple products to pad their reviews is honestly astonishing. Searching for a lightning to 3.5mm jack leads to this as the #2 result:
Not only does this not work (as discovered by my SO), but all of the reviews for it are for phone cases, utility knives, etc. In the past month or two, this has been happening WAY too often. It's gotten to the point, like you've said, where AliExpress has become more reliable. That seems insane to me.
eBay has a similar issue where sellers list, in the same listing, a high price item (eg a 3D printer) along with a low price item (a roll of filament). So then when you search for a certain keyword and search by price you'll see those listings gaming the system first
I have started using minimum prices on my queries to filter this out. List an item for $1-499, you're no longer in my results.
(I would really just like a way to filter out multiple-product listings entirely. The only valid use-case is like, multiple colors or something. 99% of the time they're used to game search results and the prices are almost never good enough to be worth manually sorting through 200 identical listings vs just filtering them out entirely. But at least minimum price queries filter out one way they are abused.)
Also, filter to US sellers only. Usually if you buy from China then the savings aren't that huge, you'll be waiting a month to get your item, and if the item ends up not working then it's impossible to return it. On some items you are going to be getting the same junk anyway, but from a bulk importer shipping from the US, but other items with definite name-brands it does cut out a lot of the junk listings.
> When I can buy higher quality goods from my local dollar store or cheaper Chinese stuff directly from AliExpress with better service and quality, what's Amazon's benefit? It doesn't matter how fast something arrives if it costs me my health, home, or breaks within a single use.
or when you order something from amazon while not having prime, choose free shipping and have it artificially delayed so that it comes 2 weeks later. not much different than ordering the same item from aliexpress for cheaper and waiting those same weeks for the free shipping.
Packaging? As in neither your neighbor nor the delivery guy know there is a $500 SSD in that little package. What other company is able / willing to pack such a huge variety of products into its own branded boxes?
Amazon started by winning on price, now it's winning on convenience. Find whatever you need, get it within 2 days. For a lot of products quality / price isn't that important to you.
Getting a counterfeit product isn’t very convenient, nor is wading through mountains of shit trying to find what you want to purchase. Their convenience factor is rapidly fading.
It's very clear that Amazon is doing all the time quite deep optimizations to all its processes, with the obvious goal of maximizing profit.
Of course, should the whole thing turn into a giant screwball of hidden links between manufacturer and end user, impossible to debug when things go wrong - well, that's just a collateral. As long as the decision makers get their bonuses, it's all good. /s
Same. For me it seems like Amazon is getting much too cozy with their market share and are starting to price goods in a monopolistic way- I can get equivalent or higher quality stuff at local stores for a better price.
Looks like there is hard ceiling in scalability of centralized internet platforms where things go nuts with enormous size of varied social (mis)behavour.
Just like with real authoritarian societes, they need expensive control and justice mechanism including strong censorship aparatus, otherwise the platform risks collapse or fragmentation.
Trust can't be scaled easily.
This gives me hope that the online world won't be eaten by few entities and will evolve back into more distributed federation, with local trust plus solid standards as lesson learned.
Last year, before the Economic downturn, people were talking about FAANG like it was a dangerous monopoly.
I think we should let this play out.
No one stays the leader forever, and big companies have their own problems.
Be a smart consumer and stop buying from bad companies. You don't need an Apple product, you don't need to buy from Amazon, you don't need all of your searches to come from Google. And Facebook is almost dead.
This could also be seen the other way: Facebook, Google, and Amazon have been increasingly user-hostile, yet impacts are minimal as their monopolistic tendencies enforce user lock-in. Even Facebook, with the most competition and negative publicity is only down 15% from its 52 week high; how many people not in the tech industry use a Google alternative for even search, let alone email or maps?
> Is there anything more to Amazon than a) fast shipping and b) you can buy anything there for relatively cheap
Service.
I had some headphones that broke after just over a year, but were still in warranty, and the manufacturer was being awkward about repairing them. Amazon refunded them the next day.
I also recently had some bulbs stop working after about six months, but as I'd ordered a two-pack and a single, and two had stopped working, I wasn't sure how to do a refund. Amazon just refunded all tree three.
The dropshippers are likely to be the last straw for me. Filtering out all the promoted listings and fake-review-based listings is enough of a chore. Filtering out all of the duplicates as well is just too much. I shouldn't have to work my way down to the third page of listings to find the first one that legitimately deserves its high ranking.
Really it highlights the problems with trying to please everyone being an unwinnable position. Some want Amazon to act more like middleware that doesn't care about what it sells viewing any intervention as an abuse. Others want it better vetted like a more traditional store. Even if they took a firm aligned stance one way or another it wouldn't stop complaints.
I ordered Redkin shampoo and got a knock off just last week. Bottle was the wrong color and my girlfriend could tell right away that it wasn't the genuine product.
At this point I'm not sure I'm going to be keeping my Amazon Prime. It no longer pays for itself when I can't be sure that what I'm ordering is going to be legit.
Isn't 18650 essentially a generic part number, with numerous providers? These batteries don't even have to have the same capacity (I've seen many 2700mAh, 3000mAh and 3300mAh), just same package. I'd wager that this is the most common form of a lithium battery available on the market.
Technically it is only form factor. The common CR2032 coin cell uses the same number system.
The first 2 digits are the diameter in millimeters, the remaining digits are the height in tenths of milimeters. So a CR2032 is 20mm across and 3.2mm tall. The "CR" portion is what indicates the battery chemistry.
The correct IEC notation for would be ICR18/650 where the first two letters specify the specific anode and cathode material (I've picked the letters most commonly seen in examples). Those letters are absolutely critical in determining the nominal voltage, because without them, we could even be describing say an alkaline disposable cell of the same shape (LR18/650 would be such an non-rechargeable alkaline battery of the same shape).
> Amazon declined to discuss any of these specific cases, but has denied the allegations in court filings, saying it was not the seller of these products.
So Pirate Bay is responsible for posting a link even if it's not serving the illegal content but Amazon is not responsible for doing the same and even shipping the offensive items?
>In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said, “Safety is important to Amazon and we want customers to shop with confidence on our stores. Third-party sellers are required to comply with all relevant laws and regulations when listing items for sale in our stores. When sellers don’t comply with our terms, we work quickly to take action on behalf of customers.”
>Amazon often doesn’t own or even touch the products bought and sold on its site—so in Amazon’s view, it’s not liable for defective products. In its response to David Jarrett’s legal complaint, the company said in a court filing that his alleged injuries “were caused by acts or omissions of third-persons or entities over which Amazon has no control.”
Is it just me or are those completely contradictory? Both of those statements can't be true. You can't both reassure customers of the quality and safety of items sold on your platform AND say you have "no control" of your platform.
They're not quite contradictory: notice that Amazon doesn't claim that they actively look for offenders; just that once they become aware of them, they'll take action. Though I'd argue that their "Safety is important" language is indeed bullshit.
I've been shifting my buying away from Amazon toward smaller niche retailers that actually manage their own inventory. When I do opt for a free-for-all marketplace, I've found eBay to have a much more trustworthy reputation system.
It really depends on what I'm buying. It seems like many product areas have niche retailers online, though finding the right one can be tricky (for instance, I ordered a couple of Z-wave products from one company and fulfillment seemed decent, but now they haven't answered a support email, so I'm less confident with them...).
I'm also trying to find brick-and-mortar when possible.
There are a ton of them. When looking for xyz: xyz.com xyzwarehouse.com xyzdepot.com... Generally I go for the one that has other information about the product (how to use it...) on their website as it is worth supporting someone to write that stuff down.
For many other niches, finding an active subreddit is a good way to find reputable vendors in that space.
E-cig users are especially vulnerable to counterfeit lithium-ion cells. For one, we tend to draw way more current from them than most other consumer electronics devices. Two, the batteries are in our face or pocket all the time.
I've found eBay to have a much more trustworthy reputation system.
I cannot overstate the irony I find in this reversal: In the early days of Amazon vs. eBay in online retail, a huge brand point for Amazon was its reliability and trustworthiness for consumers vs. the "free-for-all"(!) of early-days eBay. And I agree, the change has been rather dramatic, for both companies.
Meanwhile both are competing for the worse searching/discovery system possible. Great feeling when you factually know the product you're looking for is there but you can't get to it easily because their suggestions keep pushing other stuff to you.
As an aside, I feel like Ebay is one of those few "early behemoths" that actually figured out why they were working: you could know how reliable this john smith has been as a seller. And when internet payment was still terrible, they doubled down on it with Paypal (say what you want about paypal as a seller, but as a buyer it's still gold today, so ten years ago ...).
Most selling communities that survived here in France either have also their own reputation system, or they're cash in hands.
I find it kind of funny when compared to more "modern" tech giants like, say, Twitter; a company which has no idea why their product works.
How is that ironic? On Ebay you're buying products from a seller that isn't Ebay. The same product will be listed multiple times by different sellers. On amazon it's exactly the opposite. I go to Amazon to buy from Amazon. The same product is listed with multiple sellers and even products explicitly marked with "shipped by Amazon" are actually just random sellers using Amazon's fulfillment service. It is very hard to differentiate between legitimate sellers and Amazon. Therefore random sellers effectively get to sell under the same reputation as Amazon and can just sell fakes without any repercussion. On Ebay information about the trustworthiness of the seller is immediately shown to you on the product page and therefore sellers who sell fake products will lose their reputation and future sales.
> They're not quite contradictory: notice that Amazon doesn't claim that they actively look for offenders; just that once they become aware of them, they'll take action.
Maybe not contradictory, but according to the article it isn't true. They know the batteries can explode, but haven't done anything.
> When I do opt for a free-for-all marketplace, I've found eBay to have a much more trustworthy reputation system.
I just wanted to second this. I've been doing a lot of buying and selling on ebay recently and have had nothing but excellent experiences. Even when things (inevitably) go wrong they seem to be handled fairly.
This is a fairly recent development btw (I've been a member since 2002). I'd urge anyone who has been avoiding ebay due to their reputation from 10 years ago to give it a second chance. Either they've changed or Amazon has lowered the bar so far that ebay doesn't seem so bad these days!
I've had more problem with products manufactured for/by Amazon then anything else (Amazon basics and Amazon Fire tablets for example). Even the warranty service for the kid's Fire tablet was really bad. Luckily I never had a battery explode yet.
I tried selling a beauty product with AA batteries from Amazon on Amazon as a third party and the AA batteries from amazon triggered some safety review - I had to share safety data about the batteries and Amazon said their own MSDS didn't meet their standards for me to sell their batteries on their platform.
> Amazon would not put him in touch with the seller and never assumed blame for the fire.
You can't have it both ways. Either you're just a platform, and have no liability, in which case you need to make it clear who the seller was, and how you can reach him, or you own up to selling people dangerous devices.
The culture that produces this sort of behaviour is rotten, and is everything but customer-focused.
I've never gotten this overwhelming trust and reliance on Amazon. I'll check prices there, and buy if it makes sense. And I respect CCC for an item's price history, taking into account it's going to be generally a bit higher with a few deep discounts.
But I don't understand this idea that it's standard to just go to Amazon, type in the name of something, and click buy. That has never been sensible! And the way it's talked about, I can't think it's solely out of laziness. Either people aren't comfortable visiting multiple web stores, can't fathom making a shopping list to hit shipping minimums, or the sunk cost of Prime is a hell of a drug?
And what really amazes me is that I always see these comparisons to eBay, that assume eBay is some place where you always receive counterfeit junk. In my experience, you know exactly what type of seller you're dealing with on eBay - traditional merchant / professional refurbisher / private individual / China direct / etc. Because eBay puts this up and front, it's very plain to see. Most sellers want to please, and for the ones that don't (mainly individual sellers who don't want to eat the shipping cost), you open a case and do a bit of rigmarole, but still eventually get your money back. (And if you're buying inexpensive sundries like toiletries where you don't want even the possibility of that hassle, just go to a B&M vendor's website directly)
Whereas it seems Amazon works to obscure the actual supplier. The article is about an "HP battery for about $15". That is not an "HP battery", but rather an unbranded third party battery made to fit in an HP laptop. For this type of product especially, you're lucky to find one that retains charge any longer than the return period. Co-mingling seems like practically begging unaccountable suppliers to slip the quality even further!
Buying this kind of thing you either seek out someone trying to make a new brand for replacements (who will have navigated the Chineseum), or for less popular stuff (I just replaced a Nexus 6 battery), you try to sniff out a decent seller who won't be selling the factory rejects.
It's all work, and if you aren't willing to do it yourself, you can pay for it by buying a replacement battery from the manufacturer from a legitimate distribution channel, eg no co-mingling! Obscuring that this work even exists seems to be Amazon's goal, and it's no wonder that as time goes on more sellers are exploiting this.
PS I'm actually in the market for 16850 cells sometime soon. Those seem counterfeit-worthy enough that I'll actually ask here if anyone has links to favorite trustworthy suppliers!
By stating they're just a platform, Amazon is decreasing the quality and trust of their brand. 3 to 5 years ago, Amazon was the place to find the best product in any category. Just put in a few keywords, make sure to restrict by 5-star reviews and eventually you will see the rare gem you were looking for. Now, if they present to themselves as a platform, it puts them on par with Facebook, where rankings and presence can be gamed by social engineering or hackers.
Most of the problem is Amazon’s third party sellers IMO. I just recently got sent a counterfeit PS4 controller from a third party seller, even though it had Prime. I would never buy bare lithium cells from Amazon, but I do buy SD cards as long as they’re from Amazon directly (and then make sure to test them thoroughly for defects).
Yup. The problem is a bunch of cheap junk by third party sellers. That's where you have to tread with great care and when it comes to something potentially dangerous I wouldn't even touch it.
It’s not just batteries. I had an Amazon purchased USB wall charger start smoking and burning the enclosure. Fortunately we were home when it happened.
I won’t buy any non NRTL certified (i.e. UL, TUV, etc) electronics that plug into AC power. Of course it could still be counterfeit, but these chargers were not NRTL certified.
The Belkin ones are UL certified, and I bought several of those with no issues after 2 years. Problem is Amazon does not list NRTL certification, so it’s a crap shoot.
The NRTL certification is a big deal at my employer. We can't buy anything over 48 VDC that isn't certified, or we will lose our insurance for the facility.
I'm surprised home insurers are not cracking down on this stuff. I'd like to know the statistics of house fires caused by cheap electronics.
These are a good example. CE, FCC, RoHS have nothing to do with safety (I'm I'll bet those are fake markings too too). You are plugging in the cheapest Chinesium into a 120V, 15A circuit
This "Amazon Basics" one is pretty funny. "Note: product is certified according to a UL standard (not by UL)." Does this mean Amazon is liable when your house burns down?
IMHO brands like Belkin are past the sweet spot, heading into the territory where the brand itself is too long-term trusted, so they can start skimping on quality for what you're paying. Take apart a consumer APC power strip for a good WTF. (And sure, I get that stamped metal strips still meet UL. But UL is like the bare minimum)
I feel bad pumping specific brands, but I've become an Anker fan for chargers. I was a fan of Aukey, but that's since faded from having one physically break (obviously then taking it apart), and their lackluster USB C implementation that feels too close to rebadged Chineseum. Monoprice is still good for cables, but has unfortunately gone down the high-overhead free-shipping path.
I've never understood why there isn't a fairly simple company out there manufacturing quality lithium ion cells for older tech. For instance, I have an original Sony PSP. There's nothing wrong with it. Except for the fact that it is impossible to find a battery for it and the original ones wore out long ago. I faced the same thing with my Neato Botvac when it's NiCad battery died, although I was lucky enough to be able to find an adapted LiIon battery to replace it (which also extended its operating time, enabled it to charge faster, etc. Nice upgrade!). My mom is having a very difficult time finding a new battery for her first-gen Dell XPS 13. Every time I go online to shop for a battery, it feels like a fight with 99% of the products on offer being dodgy. It's almost as bad as the bedding industry which is perplexingly corrupt and soaked neck-deep in black PR.
Super. My whole family is using old thinkpads with third party batteries. The batteries all pass DRM, perform well, and cost something that seemed sane to me, like 35-50 USD.
I dislike the wishy-washy passive construction in their summary graf:
> In the massive global network of manufacturers, distributors, sellers, and resellers, it can be nearly impossible to tell who’s actually responsible for getting any given product into your living room.
...because it completely diffuses any sense of responsibility. It's not that "it can be impossible to tell who’s actually responsible." It's that this global network was deliberately designed to make it impossible to hold anyone accountable; as far as Amazon's concerned, that's a feature, not a bug.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadLithium-ion cells do not contain acid. The electrolyte is composed of salts, solvents, and additives.
Calling the contents an acid which the average person knows is dangerous is arguably better than being precise but confusing people into not realizing the true danger.
The reporter could have substituted "chemicals" for "acid", which would have been less imprecise, but is still a scary enough word for average readers to interpret as dangerous.
Lowering expectations/standards for journalism is a slippery slope.
Acids aren’t inherently dangerous. And I know plenty of “average” people that know that vinegar is an acid and swear by it as a household cure-all to a fault. Same goes for carbolic acid.
This is all stupid when we have perfectly correct adjectives in the English language to use like caustic, toxic, noxious, incendiary, poisonous etc.
"...or whatever the colloquial term is for the shit that they put in batteries these days. 'Acid' is what we used to call it."
> Korean company that makes LG-branded lithium-ion batteries, sent a letter to sellers and distributors of e-cigarette devices and equipment, telling them, “Individual consumer use and handling of 18650 cells is a dangerous misuse of the cells that can lead to severe burns and disfigurement.” It asked companies to stop selling LG 18650 cells, and to tell customers who had bought the cells in the past that they should dispose of them safely.
> Many Amazon sellers reported receiving emails last August saying Amazon had prohibited the sale of cylindrical-lithium-ion batteries, including the 18650.
I know 18650 cells normally come in battery packs with charging and protection circuit, and that even in the DIY electronics community, it's not recommended to build the battery management circuitry by yourself, unless you know what's you are doing.
But even if purchasing raw, unprotected 18650 cells is not recommended. Still, if a device is using these raw 18650 cells, it means the proper circuitry must have been already included in the device. If properly designed, a device with 18650 cells replaced should be as safe as the original one. So there should be no reason to disallow an individual customer to remove a dead 18650 from a device, purchase a new cell and replace it. I've personally seen raw 18650 cells found in flashlights and RC toys, replacing them is a routine procedure.
One of the three possibilities:
* 1. Most individual customers have no idea about the safety when handling these raw cells, and are handling and charging them in a reckless and dangerous manner, for example, using a low-quality, generic charger, or exposing them to mechanical shocks, high temperature, etc.
* 2. 18650 cells are inherently unsafe to be used with e-cigarette due to the nature of this application, or they are not safe to replace (easy to break something in this process), or many e-cigarette units do not perform battery management properly.
* 3. It's difficult to distinguish between good and counterfeit 18650 cells, due to the potential hazards, it's better for Amazon to ban them altogether?
As a result, Amazon and some battery manufacturers banned their selling to individual customers to avoid accidents and incidents due to the above unfortunate reasons. Otherwise, I think purchasing a new 18650 cell and replace the dead ones in your electronics should be perfectly acceptable.
Any comment?
Edit: So far, the conclusion seems to be a mix of all three issues:
1. The biggest problem is #3. It's difficult to find legitimate, authentic 18650 cells. As tristor pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19839673), it's a notorious problem in the hobbyist community and e-cigarette community. If even people who know what they are doing are having trouble finding authentic cells, offering them to average customers is risky. zrobotics added (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19839977) that the counterfeit problem is a supply-chain level issue!
> My normal port of call, Digikey, doesn't appear to carry any actual name-brand cells. I see adafruit & sparkfun, hopefully they source decent cells but who knows. There's also Jauch Quartz, who I've never heard of.
teilo also agrees (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19839869) that the proliferation of poorly-made budget 18650s as well as counterfeit re-wraps of junk 18650s sold as quality brands such as LG.
2. Problem #2 is a secondary cause. teilo said a lot of poorly designed devices that lack correct pro...
Counterfeiting of batteries generally, and counterfeiting on Amazon generally, have become critical path problems for a lot of hobbyist communities where having a quality supply chain is safety critical. This is not new. It's true as well in things, such as the car community, where many online supply chains are corrupted with counterfeit safety-critical items like wheels and brake calipers.
One of the realities of the world is that "you get what you pay for" is actually true. This has become clear specifically around the batteries issue and also in the car community where specialist online retailers who charge a premium are the go-to places to buy safety-critical components, specifically and exactly because anyone who cares does not want to accept the risk of a safety-critical item failing to save a few bucks. On the flip-side, many people in hobbyist communities are ignorant cheapskates and unfortunately their penny-pinching drive helps to proliferate counterfeiting.
"You get what you pay for" is far from guaranteed.
As an aside, I know it's typically discouraged from commenting about downvotes, but within minutes my comment in the thread was heavily downvoted and I don't understand why?
> a lot of hobbyist communities where having a quality supply chain is safety critical.
Thanks, it makes lots of sense.
Personally, I do play with electronics, but mainly radio and digital devices, not hobbyists RC toys and models. So I didn't know counterfeit cells in the supply chain is so serious, that it's even a trouble in the hobbyists community (where most people know what they're doing).
When playing with homebrew electronics, I actively avoid lithium-ion batteries and use Ni-MH when possible, as I know one mistake can be fatal. I realized my decision is correct and I should continue doing it.
Additionally, you can rely on other reviews.
When I buy 18650, I thoroughly review it for others.
Usually, the ones that come with some other items are cheap 18650 with low capacity and with sand (counterfeit / faking weight).
I want to point out something for everyone: there are cheap Chinese 18650 which are solid! For example, I've personally used official Liitokala batteries and the ones that I used are 100% genuine, high-capacity 18650.
As with everything else with life, you need to be careful and check reviews before you buy something.
>And it’s easy for third-party retailers to disappear after selling a defective or dangerous product, even if they pop up a few weeks later under a different name and address, again selling dangerous products.
Every time a counterfeit 18650 blows up, I blame LG, Samsung, Panasonic, etc. for this policy. It's the root of the problem.
This doesn't surprise me. I don't order batteries from Amazon because all of the batteries I've gotten from them have been counterfeit. It is not worth buying that item from them because of the risk of fire and malfunction. And the way they commingle stock from unrelated sellers makes it very easy to buy an OEM battery that is actually a counterfeit.
In my opinion they are criminally negligent for not informing customers that counterfeit or third-party batteries can result in explosion or fire, and they should stop selling batteries entirely.
And it's pretty clear both from what happened here and from my own experience that they simply don't care about counterfeiting on their network.
If you reread the article, you'll see that the article mentioned a series of related issues, one was about the defective laptop (and other off-the-shelf) battery packs. I think everyone knows something about it already, even the great kernel hacker Alan Cox was a victim! His 3rd-party laptop battery pack exploded in 2006.
* https://slashdot.org/story/06/09/24/062217/alan-coxs-explodi...
But the article mentioned another issue as well, which is the purchasing and handling 18650 cells by individuals (mainly for e-cigarettes), which I found was something new and different. Thus I posted the discussion above.
The other problem, and one that is more distinctly Amazon, is the proliferation of poorly-made budget 18650s as well as counterfeit re-wraps of junk 18650s sold as quality brands such as LG. Often these are low-drain devices that should only be used for things like flashlights, but are sold as if they are high-current-drain batteries. This is also driven by the demand for eCig batteries. The side effect of this is that these junk batteries end up being purchased for non-eCig devices.
The best advice is: Don't buy lithium batteries on Amazon. It is not worth the risk.
I think this isn't so much a battery problem as an Amazon problem. Banning the sale of individual cells just means that the only batteries available to the average consumer are the worst-of-the-worst aliexpress grade garbage. People are obviously buying these cells, banning them just means that the only remaining sources will be illegitimate. And Amazon has this problem with a lot of products; searching "Arduino" returns entirely knockoff boards for me on the first page and I have heard it's nearly-impossible to find an Apple charger that meets electrical standards. I wonder how long Amazon can burn through goodwill before consumers begin to regard them as equivalent to Ebay/aliexpress?
So while I personally really appreciate being able to cheaply source things directly from China, I also understand what I'm getting into and temper my expectations. I think many people have the false expectation that if they purchase something from a reputable retailer like Amazon the product will be safe & within spec, which for certain products isn't the case.
[0] https://www.digikey.com/products/en/battery-products/batteri...
[1] https://www.jauch.com/downloadfile/5bf56dddc28a94cce2e93a717...
Amazon’s logistics advantage is huge, but unless I absolutely need it tomorrow they’re rarely the best option. Oddly enough, there are a few resellers of marked up Chinese electronics that have established a certain amount of brand trust with me - “DROK” and “SMAKN” come to mind. Brands that provide a reasonable amount of curation to help you avoid the absolute worst crap, but are small enough not to attract counterfieters themselves. It’s an odd niche that Amazon’s failure of inventory control has created.
It just shocked me that someone felt the brand was trusted enough to justify faking.
Google mooch battery guide. He's a member of the vaping comunity and tests batteries for vaping which usually need high current (and capacity) ratings.
He also has links to trusted suppliers of liion batteries.
If you arefrom Europe, I can vouch for nkon.nl
Something to be aware of - there are mainly three classes of Arduino boards in the marketplace:
1. Name-brand Arduinos (ie - those marketed and sold, or resold, that come from Arduino.cc)
2. Knock-off Arduinos
3. Counterfeit Arduinos
Many in the hobby understand what #1 is, and I encourage everyone just getting into the Arduino to purchase an actual Arduino Uno first, just to support the community and to get a solid "reference" product.
Where many get confused, though, is on what the difference is between #2 and #3 products. What is the difference between a "knock-off" and a "counterfeit" Arduino?
Ultimately, it comes down to copyrights and trademarks. Arduino has a specific set of marks, verbiage, colors, and symbol placement that they put on their boards, which are designed to convey the notion that "this is a genuine Arduino board".
Any third-party board that attempts to replicate this design in part or entirety is infringing on that, and should be considered a counterfeit board. This extends somewhat to using the name "Arduino" and especially "Uno"; it has long been a "thing" that if you build a custom Arduino for sale, that Arduino.cc would like you to name it something else, and ideally not include the suffix "-uino" (mainly because it makes no sense from the standpoint of the Italian language, IIRC). Using the name "Uno", IIRC, is also verboten, as it is a protected trademark of Arduino.cc as well.
Beyond that, the Arduino as a device is completely open-source; anyone can take the reference schematic and board designs and start making them in his or her basement and nobody will care - unless you start using those trademarked and copyrighted items/symbols/etc.
So if you see a board like that, try to report it to the community. There are ways to do this on the site to report it directly to Arduino.cc (or there were, last I looked). Alternatively, find a thread about this issue (they are all over the Arduino.cc forums) and post what you know there, or start a new thread if all the old ones are "dead".
So how do you tell a counterfeit from a knockoff? Well - a true knockoff can look identical in shape and placement of parts, but what you really want to look for is the lack of use of those IP protected items already mentioned. Look for boards that aren't colored the same, that don't use the same markings, that are named differently. Look for vendors/sellers of the products who almost seemingly go out of their way to differentiate their products from the actual Arduino boards.
Tons of them are out there, many offer options not available at all on the original Arduino Uno boards (for instance, on the QFP 328 there are extra analog input pins not found on the PDIP version - some boards bring those extra pins out to headers!). You can find boards with extra integrated peripherals, ones that don't follow the Arduino header layout at all, plus specialized products meant for a particular market, but which could be repurposed for your own use if you wanted to (popular examples are the various ATMega-based 3D printer and CNC controller boards available - there are also a few specialty robotics controllers on the market. There used to be, but not so much anymore as things have migrated toward ARM and other embedded controllers - boards that were meant for multi-rotor drones and the like).
You will find boards out there that "skate the line" - they may use similar colors, similar (but not the same) markings or symbols, etc; for those you'll have to use your best judgement and conscience to decide on buying.
Also note that there are certain boards which exist as only knockoff or "counterfeit"; one can even be hesitant about the latter. These are boards that used to be made by Arduino.cc, but have since been stopped. Take for instance, the Arduino Pro Mini:<...
3rd party seller merchandise commingles with Amazon products, leading to counterfeits... EVEN on "Sold by Amazon" and "Fulfilled by Amazon" products.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/amazo...
Amazon's supply chain is compromised. There are fakes and counterfeits all over the site. Its been this way for years and Amazon hasn't done anything to fix it.
--------
I've been buying books directly from publishers and buying other stuff from more specialty shops (Adafruit, Digikey for Electronics, Newegg / Microcenter for computer parts, Target / Walmart for general merchandise)
I recently wanted a blue alarm clock. Amazon was 20$. Walmart Online 10$.
I still use Amazon to price check, but I've started price checking numerous competitors.
Here is a study we did for baby items, but it was clear online>brick and mortar. Walmart>Amazon https://efficiencyiseverything.com/target-vs-amazon-vs-walma...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shoptimate/pr...
The gathering of browser data in the privacy policy is to cover things taken by my Apache logs or click statistics (which I sometimes need to charge stores that pay me per click). But I don't monetize this in any shape or form.
I think Target may be moving in that direction as well? They've started doing free 2-day shipping as well, I would not be surprised if that's how they're doing it. They seem like they're making a genuine attempt to compete with Amazon too.
I am forced to return the item and cause Amazon so much loss, when Amazon can just offer price matching upto a week but no they don't do that
Second, Amazon tells me that there is lightening offer on some product but the price has only changed like 1% and Amazon compares it with the fake price which it never before charged in its store.
But when price also changes and there are issues, this leaves me no other option but to return the package. (Which I really hate)
The amount of third party sellers re-using listings for multiple products to pad their reviews is honestly astonishing. Searching for a lightning to 3.5mm jack leads to this as the #2 result:
https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Charging-Headphone-Splitter-...
Not only does this not work (as discovered by my SO), but all of the reviews for it are for phone cases, utility knives, etc. In the past month or two, this has been happening WAY too often. It's gotten to the point, like you've said, where AliExpress has become more reliable. That seems insane to me.
It links to this article from last year that seems to go into more detail about that particular method too: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...
(I would really just like a way to filter out multiple-product listings entirely. The only valid use-case is like, multiple colors or something. 99% of the time they're used to game search results and the prices are almost never good enough to be worth manually sorting through 200 identical listings vs just filtering them out entirely. But at least minimum price queries filter out one way they are abused.)
Also, filter to US sellers only. Usually if you buy from China then the savings aren't that huge, you'll be waiting a month to get your item, and if the item ends up not working then it's impossible to return it. On some items you are going to be getting the same junk anyway, but from a bulk importer shipping from the US, but other items with definite name-brands it does cut out a lot of the junk listings.
or when you order something from amazon while not having prime, choose free shipping and have it artificially delayed so that it comes 2 weeks later. not much different than ordering the same item from aliexpress for cheaper and waiting those same weeks for the free shipping.
Packaging? As in neither your neighbor nor the delivery guy know there is a $500 SSD in that little package. What other company is able / willing to pack such a huge variety of products into its own branded boxes?
Of course, should the whole thing turn into a giant screwball of hidden links between manufacturer and end user, impossible to debug when things go wrong - well, that's just a collateral. As long as the decision makers get their bonuses, it's all good. /s
Just like with real authoritarian societes, they need expensive control and justice mechanism including strong censorship aparatus, otherwise the platform risks collapse or fragmentation.
Trust can't be scaled easily.
This gives me hope that the online world won't be eaten by few entities and will evolve back into more distributed federation, with local trust plus solid standards as lesson learned.
I think we should let this play out.
No one stays the leader forever, and big companies have their own problems.
Be a smart consumer and stop buying from bad companies. You don't need an Apple product, you don't need to buy from Amazon, you don't need all of your searches to come from Google. And Facebook is almost dead.
Is there anything more to Amazon than a) fast shipping and b) you can buy anything there for relatively cheap* (probably because it's from China)
* I've found Amazon lately is a lot costlier than local department stores for random things.
Service.
I had some headphones that broke after just over a year, but were still in warranty, and the manufacturer was being awkward about repairing them. Amazon refunded them the next day.
I also recently had some bulbs stop working after about six months, but as I'd ordered a two-pack and a single, and two had stopped working, I wasn't sure how to do a refund. Amazon just refunded all tree three.
Who wants this other than shady marketplace sellers?
At this point I'm not sure I'm going to be keeping my Amazon Prime. It no longer pays for itself when I can't be sure that what I'm ordering is going to be legit.
https://www.amazon.com/Headlamp-Headlight-Rechargeable-Water...
Still for sale on Amazon. So it’s just bare 18650’s they won’t sell anymore?
The first 2 digits are the diameter in millimeters, the remaining digits are the height in tenths of milimeters. So a CR2032 is 20mm across and 3.2mm tall. The "CR" portion is what indicates the battery chemistry.
The correct IEC notation for would be ICR18/650 where the first two letters specify the specific anode and cathode material (I've picked the letters most commonly seen in examples). Those letters are absolutely critical in determining the nominal voltage, because without them, we could even be describing say an alkaline disposable cell of the same shape (LR18/650 would be such an non-rechargeable alkaline battery of the same shape).
So Pirate Bay is responsible for posting a link even if it's not serving the illegal content but Amazon is not responsible for doing the same and even shipping the offensive items?
>Amazon often doesn’t own or even touch the products bought and sold on its site—so in Amazon’s view, it’s not liable for defective products. In its response to David Jarrett’s legal complaint, the company said in a court filing that his alleged injuries “were caused by acts or omissions of third-persons or entities over which Amazon has no control.”
Is it just me or are those completely contradictory? Both of those statements can't be true. You can't both reassure customers of the quality and safety of items sold on your platform AND say you have "no control" of your platform.
I've been shifting my buying away from Amazon toward smaller niche retailers that actually manage their own inventory. When I do opt for a free-for-all marketplace, I've found eBay to have a much more trustworthy reputation system.
I'm also trying to find brick-and-mortar when possible.
E-cig users are especially vulnerable to counterfeit lithium-ion cells. For one, we tend to draw way more current from them than most other consumer electronics devices. Two, the batteries are in our face or pocket all the time.
I cannot overstate the irony I find in this reversal: In the early days of Amazon vs. eBay in online retail, a huge brand point for Amazon was its reliability and trustworthiness for consumers vs. the "free-for-all"(!) of early-days eBay. And I agree, the change has been rather dramatic, for both companies.
As an aside, I feel like Ebay is one of those few "early behemoths" that actually figured out why they were working: you could know how reliable this john smith has been as a seller. And when internet payment was still terrible, they doubled down on it with Paypal (say what you want about paypal as a seller, but as a buyer it's still gold today, so ten years ago ...).
Most selling communities that survived here in France either have also their own reputation system, or they're cash in hands.
I find it kind of funny when compared to more "modern" tech giants like, say, Twitter; a company which has no idea why their product works.
Maybe not contradictory, but according to the article it isn't true. They know the batteries can explode, but haven't done anything.
I just wanted to second this. I've been doing a lot of buying and selling on ebay recently and have had nothing but excellent experiences. Even when things (inevitably) go wrong they seem to be handled fairly.
This is a fairly recent development btw (I've been a member since 2002). I'd urge anyone who has been avoiding ebay due to their reputation from 10 years ago to give it a second chance. Either they've changed or Amazon has lowered the bar so far that ebay doesn't seem so bad these days!
It's a clown town over there.
You can't have it both ways. Either you're just a platform, and have no liability, in which case you need to make it clear who the seller was, and how you can reach him, or you own up to selling people dangerous devices.
The culture that produces this sort of behaviour is rotten, and is everything but customer-focused.
But I don't understand this idea that it's standard to just go to Amazon, type in the name of something, and click buy. That has never been sensible! And the way it's talked about, I can't think it's solely out of laziness. Either people aren't comfortable visiting multiple web stores, can't fathom making a shopping list to hit shipping minimums, or the sunk cost of Prime is a hell of a drug?
And what really amazes me is that I always see these comparisons to eBay, that assume eBay is some place where you always receive counterfeit junk. In my experience, you know exactly what type of seller you're dealing with on eBay - traditional merchant / professional refurbisher / private individual / China direct / etc. Because eBay puts this up and front, it's very plain to see. Most sellers want to please, and for the ones that don't (mainly individual sellers who don't want to eat the shipping cost), you open a case and do a bit of rigmarole, but still eventually get your money back. (And if you're buying inexpensive sundries like toiletries where you don't want even the possibility of that hassle, just go to a B&M vendor's website directly)
Whereas it seems Amazon works to obscure the actual supplier. The article is about an "HP battery for about $15". That is not an "HP battery", but rather an unbranded third party battery made to fit in an HP laptop. For this type of product especially, you're lucky to find one that retains charge any longer than the return period. Co-mingling seems like practically begging unaccountable suppliers to slip the quality even further!
Buying this kind of thing you either seek out someone trying to make a new brand for replacements (who will have navigated the Chineseum), or for less popular stuff (I just replaced a Nexus 6 battery), you try to sniff out a decent seller who won't be selling the factory rejects.
It's all work, and if you aren't willing to do it yourself, you can pay for it by buying a replacement battery from the manufacturer from a legitimate distribution channel, eg no co-mingling! Obscuring that this work even exists seems to be Amazon's goal, and it's no wonder that as time goes on more sellers are exploiting this.
PS I'm actually in the market for 16850 cells sometime soon. Those seem counterfeit-worthy enough that I'll actually ask here if anyone has links to favorite trustworthy suppliers!
I won’t buy any non NRTL certified (i.e. UL, TUV, etc) electronics that plug into AC power. Of course it could still be counterfeit, but these chargers were not NRTL certified.
https://www.amazon.com/VOJO-Charger-Adaptive-Charging-QUALCO...
The Belkin ones are UL certified, and I bought several of those with no issues after 2 years. Problem is Amazon does not list NRTL certification, so it’s a crap shoot.
The NRTL certification is a big deal at my employer. We can't buy anything over 48 VDC that isn't certified, or we will lose our insurance for the facility.
I'm surprised home insurers are not cracking down on this stuff. I'd like to know the statistics of house fires caused by cheap electronics.
These are a good example. CE, FCC, RoHS have nothing to do with safety (I'm I'll bet those are fake markings too too). You are plugging in the cheapest Chinesium into a 120V, 15A circuit
https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Colorful-Adapter-Replacement-....
This "Amazon Basics" one is pretty funny. "Note: product is certified according to a UL standard (not by UL)." Does this mean Amazon is liable when your house burns down?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0773BHCVD/ref=psdc_2407761011_t1_...
The "safety info" for the above is worthless:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91IWSM8gvRL...
FWIW, here are the actual NRTL makrings
https://www.osha.gov/dts/otpca/nrtl/nrtllist.html
I feel bad pumping specific brands, but I've become an Anker fan for chargers. I was a fan of Aukey, but that's since faded from having one physically break (obviously then taking it apart), and their lackluster USB C implementation that feels too close to rebadged Chineseum. Monoprice is still good for cables, but has unfortunately gone down the high-overhead free-shipping path.
Are there any warning signs for bad cells?
> In the massive global network of manufacturers, distributors, sellers, and resellers, it can be nearly impossible to tell who’s actually responsible for getting any given product into your living room.
...because it completely diffuses any sense of responsibility. It's not that "it can be impossible to tell who’s actually responsible." It's that this global network was deliberately designed to make it impossible to hold anyone accountable; as far as Amazon's concerned, that's a feature, not a bug.