Any persons in engineering worth their salt would not buy metrology equipment from Amazon. Exactly as you said, seems like the problem is Amazon, not equipment or engineers/technicians/etc.
This is good for all of us. Amazon is becoming a place to buy low end essentials and it gives opportunities to smaller businesses to build reputation and sell directly. The only thing that’s missing is a good directory of indie shops. No, Google isn’t a good one. We should build a modern yellow pages.
And then that modern yellow pages will be flooded by tons of "AAAAron's totally serious business" selling you bridges and non-counterfeight merchandise. This has never worked.
Regardless of the make or source of measuring equipment they should be calibrated if used in any kind of regulated process. You can have a brand name caliper that zeros dead on every time on your gauge block but have a parallel error that the calibration lab can spot. The calibration is good for a year if the equipment is treated carefully.
Calibration only verifies the stated accuracy at some conditions. I'm pretty sure Mitutoyo verifies the design and performance across specified temperature and humidity range, which I'm pretty sure the fakes skip.
Tiny differences in the design of precision devices can void the accuracy of measurements (for example, using a resistor of the same value, but with larger temperature coefficient can make the device pass accuracy test at room temperature but fail at slightly lower temperature).
All good points and I agree, but technically both the work piece and the measuring equipment needs to be settled in a controlled environment for the measurement to repeatable. I know this is not typically how calipers are used in practice though.
But even then, component aging and drift is something that is considered by serious manufacturers- Mitutoyo can probably guarantee and back it up with tests, that their design will maintain the accuracy over some time frame.
Of course it doesn't matter for most machine shop uses of calipers- but when it does, there is definitely more to it than meeting stated accuracy once.
Sure, I'm not arguing for using fakes here. Mitutoyo is very respected for a good reason. I have never had one piece of Mitutoyo gear go flaky on me once. A coworker almost made us miss a flight because he refused to hand his Mitutoyo calipers over to security at the check. I'm saying that even if it's a Mitutoyo it has to be calibrated every year.
Defective equipment may not hold a calibration as well, though. Especially for something like a digital caliper which can have all sorts of complicated internal failure modes (in theory). In a field like aerospace, the users of measuring equipment would have an expectation that the design/manufacture of the measuring equipment meets certain standards.
Amazon deliberately obscures that. They can't have it both ways; they present these sellers as part of their store, so they should take responsibility for the goods they sell.
Unfortunately, even buying from Amazon (with eg Amazon.co.uk as seller) doesn't help with this completely, because of Amazon's stock co-mingling setup.
Even buying from Amazon itself is no guarantee because they commingle inventory. The OP should totally escalate to Amazon customer service for a full refund on a fraudulent product, but you get the feeling Amazon is fully aware of the situation and profiting from it, and treats the occasional refund as a cost of doing business.
The inventory mingling is a well known problem. Just search it up. The fact that Amazon won’t fix it and does it on purpose leads to a relatively narrow range of conclusions.
A lot of stuff on amazon/ebay is fake - tools, any kind of parts including automotive and even books (cheap reprints).
All these fakes ends up in brick and mortar stores as well and in some cases you have to pay more than original should costs for poor quality fake without even knowing it.
Amazon / ebay won't move a finger since they get to collect they fees. Removing fake listing is time consuming and even if they will remove it once, those will soon be back in stock again...
You can buy cheap digital calipers for just £5 on ebay these days. Big Clive did a tear down of some that he found and found they were pretty good except for the fact that the digital circuit drains the battery even when it's off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKSSY1gzCEs
This. Unless you are a professional machinist, in which case you know where to buy genuine Starrett, Mitutoyo, B&S, etc. the cheap digital calipers are probably sufficient for your needs. .001” thickness tolerance is fine for even “precision” woodworking for example.
Among woodworkers - and here I'm talking about those who work in fine joinery - the usual take is that if you think you're working to anything finer than 1/64", you're fooling yourself. Your material movement will, by itself, be greater than the tolerances you're aiming for.
For us metric folks, that is 0.4 mm (400 µm) which does seem to be very precise for wood. Good to know, I'm not a woodworker myself although the dream is alive.
They're all-metal, two decimal digits of accuracy, and I've been supremely satisfied. Zero retention is great, feel is good, they're way better than anything I'll ever need as a hobbyist.
There is a difference between no-brand, generic items you can buy for cheap on Aliexpress or Ebay, I'm fine with that, and counterfeit items like this one, which are kind of evil imo, and must be tracked and removed.
I gave up on Amazon and Ebay altogether, and deleted my accounts.
It's just not worth my time having to deal with dishonest sellers and getting zero help.
Those sellers know perfectly how to play the complaint systems of the platforms, and it's destroying the customer experience.
When I want cheap crap, I now buy it where I know it's cheap crap, and when I want quality, I preferably buy it directly from the manufacturer, or from a renowned dealer.
I came across this issue when I was pondering whether to buy the English edition or the Japanese edition of Uncle Bob's Clean Code. Luckily I saw the reviews saying that the English one was counterfeit, so I went with the Japanese one instead.
Sellers on Aliexpress tends to be quite honest about what they are selling, so buying there is reasonably predictable. I have rarely been disappointed by anything I bought from there.
On the other hand, Ebay (and I presume Amazon, I never use them) tends to buy cheap stuff off of Aliexpress, mark it up and resell it, sometimes also faking the brand.
> Sellers on Aliexpress tends to be quite honest about what they are selling
I'm not sure how much is deliberate dishonesty, but there sure is a lack of truth. Product titles are often a mishmash of words copy-pasted in and half irrelevant/misleading, making searching for some things completely impossible. Sellers often use pictures of other companies' products (sometimes multiple different ones), and contradictory specs are not uncommon. They often don't have sufficient English to understand and answer questions trying to clarify. I have rarely been disappointed, but my expectations are always pretty low.
What you say is true. But I have never gotten the impression that this stems from dishonesty. I have the feeling that a lot of the sellers simply don't know how to present their products online, and since everybody else is doing the same thing there is little reason so change.
At least that's the impression I have gotten. I'm willing to accept that others may have had really bad experiences there.
There are tons of shady US sellers on Etsy looking to make a quick buck without any customer service. On there, I bought a poster that was pictured in a frame for $25 and all that came was a wrinkled piece of paper in a tube from a US seller who wouldn't refund a dime.
The honesty of Aliexpress sellers varies. A "blanket hoodie" I bought doesn't even go to my hips.
Many AE sellers, when confronted with insufficient or wrong items delivered, will offer coupons or discounts rather than replacements or refunds. You have to insist on what you want because interacting with Chinese businesses often requires assertiveness.
I'm a diamond-level buyer, so AE pretty much sides with me 99% of the time and since I don't make frivolous disputes.
Aliexpress is a terrible outlet for consumers. The buyer pays the return shipping which is often too expensive to be worth the trouble. At least Amazon/Ebay respect the consumer protection laws and make returns pretty easy.
I'm dealing with an Aliexpress seller that sent me the wrong thing and it's basically not worth shipping back to China. I'm trying to get a few dollars from the seller but they're slippery as hell, want to privately paypal me the money etc. Never again!
> Was it less common before supply chains were exported?
There are factories that run "midnight shifts", where the same workers, on the same production line, spend a night building a batch of counterfeits.
If you rent instead of own the manufacturing line, you are open to this. A design is easy to copy, a factory not that much.
I see all of this as way to tip the scale of profit sharing between the ones with the idea/design and the ones who make the product. Whether it is balanced or not, I can't tell.
A cheap copy that performs well is also in a way pressure to innovate. The factories innovate in making things cheaper, the designers innovate in making things better. Someone who manufactures themself gets to do both.
Not sure why you're getting those bogus downvotes - these 'midnight shifts' are absolutely real, and can cause serious problems.
I know of a specific US-based specialist manufacturer who makes some of the best-in-class products in the world - a LOT of R&D and optimization. The castings and machining were done at a plant in Asia. After shipping their product, they discovered an obvious Asian knock-off selling for 1/3 the price. They immediately called their manufacturing partner and got that shut down, but it was too late - the Chinese competitor already had inventory, customers, marketing, etc., and just switched factories. And there's still debate in the purchasing community about which to buy.
Those 'midnight shifts' literally enabled a new competitor from the starting gate for just a bit of extra temporary profit - straight up theft. (If it was my biz, I'd have not only gotten them to shut down the backdoor selling, but also put as a top priority finding a new manufacturing partner and moving production at the earliest possible date).
Before the rise of Amazon and Ebay, you (almost) always knew when you were buying a counterfeit, because you were getting a great price for the latest Disney VHS from someone selling out the back of a van at the local flea market.
The other option was to go to bricks-and-mortar retailers, where if they had it in stock and if you were willing to pay full retail price, you'd get something that wasn't a counterfeit.
Amazon seems to have pulled off some marketing magic where flea market sellers plus a refund policy equals one of the world's largest companies.
Yup, I tried two times on Amazon, and both times I received cheap fakes. One of the fakes I received was really low grade garbage, and the other is functional but certainly not as precise as it should be.
It seems like every set of calipers is a copy of the same design from ~2005. I wish they'd add a real off switch so I don't have to pull the battery every time I'm done measuring something.
Digital calipers can only measure relative position changes (by counting pulses) and would have to be re-zeroed every time when turned off. Since a well-designed pulse-counting circuit can run for many years on a coin cell, it makes sense not to have an off switch, just like a wristwatch doesn't. The problem is that for some reason the companies making cheap knockoffs don't manage to keep the idle power consumption as low as the name brands.
I need to re-zero every time anyway, so I'd rather not have to replace the battery every few months.
Really, I'd like a mid-range model; not a cheap one or a cheap one sold for more, and not a high-end one, just something that works reliably and repeatably, and doesn't chew through batteries. I have a ~20 year old (guess) set that fits this description, and several newer cheap and crappy ones that do an okay job if you keep spare batteries on hand. It seems impossible to find more like that old one.
This is something I have wondered as well - I have seen several threads relating this idea on HN and elsewhere, and there are numerous comments here saying the same, but I have never heard of anyone receiving counterfeit goods from Amazon in the UK.
I'm wondering if it's not a regional issue with California or something. I live in the Midwest and buy alot off Amazon, and I have never received a counterfeit to my knowledge. Maybe I don't buy enough name brand stuff to notice or maybe it's all too high quality counterfeits but I also know Noone in real life complaining about it.
It depends on the type of goods. E.g., don't even think of buying any kind of battery on Amazon.
It now takes less time to hunt down a reliable specialist online supplier, e.g., [1] than it does to wade through all the fraudulent listings and fake reviews on Amazon to find even a plausibly reliable product/vendor.
At this point, despite being a 20+year loyal Amazon Prime customer, I'm finding It's a better use of my time to find a good vendor, often family owned.
[1] I currently use batteryjunction.com, seems reliable, in my region for quicker shipping, no connection other than customer, and there seemed to be others of similar good quality in other regions.
Trying to get batteries in Ireland is a pain, most places won't ship as the majority of stuff goes by air, just tried batteryjunction and its the same issue there, Amazon has the same issue to be fair
It used to be the case, that when you were either buying direct from Amazon or FBA, it provided some peace of mind. Today it is a lottery. If you haven't come across any issues then you are either too trusting and/or probably not conducting basic tests to check if the products are indeed genuine. As a demo, I would dare anyone to buy a microSD card randomly, and then put it through h2testw/CrystalDiskMark to check for anomalies.
> I was assured by the vendor before purchase that they were the real deal but of course they were not
$62 is half/third of the price from reputable sources, even the other sellers (and Amazon itself) on the Amazon website.
The truth is that many (perhaps most) purchasers wouldn't need or notice the difference between the fake Mitutoyo and rebadged $5 calipers and Amazon makes it very easy for sellers to sell fakes with little or no consequences.
67 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 88.3 ms ] threadI wonder if anyone has been killed already because of Amazon's disregard for a manufacturer's right to his brand.
This is good for all of us. Amazon is becoming a place to buy low end essentials and it gives opportunities to smaller businesses to build reputation and sell directly. The only thing that’s missing is a good directory of indie shops. No, Google isn’t a good one. We should build a modern yellow pages.
Tiny differences in the design of precision devices can void the accuracy of measurements (for example, using a resistor of the same value, but with larger temperature coefficient can make the device pass accuracy test at room temperature but fail at slightly lower temperature).
Of course it doesn't matter for most machine shop uses of calipers- but when it does, there is definitely more to it than meeting stated accuracy once.
- AS9100 certified engineering shop.
How many people saved from Amazons cheap access to equipment?
I'd guess more are saved.
Which means nothing. Same as buying from eBay or AliExpress or Wish.
(Surprised Pikachu face)
What is really lacking is a filter to get rid of all results not sold by amazon.
All these fakes ends up in brick and mortar stores as well and in some cases you have to pay more than original should costs for poor quality fake without even knowing it.
Amazon / ebay won't move a finger since they get to collect they fees. Removing fake listing is time consuming and even if they will remove it once, those will soon be back in stock again...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000098107734.html?spm=a2g0o...
They're all-metal, two decimal digits of accuracy, and I've been supremely satisfied. Zero retention is great, feel is good, they're way better than anything I'll ever need as a hobbyist.
Those sellers know perfectly how to play the complaint systems of the platforms, and it's destroying the customer experience.
When I want cheap crap, I now buy it where I know it's cheap crap, and when I want quality, I preferably buy it directly from the manufacturer, or from a renowned dealer.
If you are going to get questionable Chinese stuff, you might as well skip the middleman and get it from AliExpress, albeit with very slow shipping.
On the other hand, Ebay (and I presume Amazon, I never use them) tends to buy cheap stuff off of Aliexpress, mark it up and resell it, sometimes also faking the brand.
I'm not sure how much is deliberate dishonesty, but there sure is a lack of truth. Product titles are often a mishmash of words copy-pasted in and half irrelevant/misleading, making searching for some things completely impossible. Sellers often use pictures of other companies' products (sometimes multiple different ones), and contradictory specs are not uncommon. They often don't have sufficient English to understand and answer questions trying to clarify. I have rarely been disappointed, but my expectations are always pretty low.
At least that's the impression I have gotten. I'm willing to accept that others may have had really bad experiences there.
The honesty of Aliexpress sellers varies. A "blanket hoodie" I bought doesn't even go to my hips.
Many AE sellers, when confronted with insufficient or wrong items delivered, will offer coupons or discounts rather than replacements or refunds. You have to insist on what you want because interacting with Chinese businesses often requires assertiveness.
I'm a diamond-level buyer, so AE pretty much sides with me 99% of the time and since I don't make frivolous disputes.
I'm dealing with an Aliexpress seller that sent me the wrong thing and it's basically not worth shipping back to China. I'm trying to get a few dollars from the seller but they're slippery as hell, want to privately paypal me the money etc. Never again!
There are factories that run "midnight shifts", where the same workers, on the same production line, spend a night building a batch of counterfeits.
If you rent instead of own the manufacturing line, you are open to this. A design is easy to copy, a factory not that much.
I see all of this as way to tip the scale of profit sharing between the ones with the idea/design and the ones who make the product. Whether it is balanced or not, I can't tell.
A cheap copy that performs well is also in a way pressure to innovate. The factories innovate in making things cheaper, the designers innovate in making things better. Someone who manufactures themself gets to do both.
I know of a specific US-based specialist manufacturer who makes some of the best-in-class products in the world - a LOT of R&D and optimization. The castings and machining were done at a plant in Asia. After shipping their product, they discovered an obvious Asian knock-off selling for 1/3 the price. They immediately called their manufacturing partner and got that shut down, but it was too late - the Chinese competitor already had inventory, customers, marketing, etc., and just switched factories. And there's still debate in the purchasing community about which to buy.
Those 'midnight shifts' literally enabled a new competitor from the starting gate for just a bit of extra temporary profit - straight up theft. (If it was my biz, I'd have not only gotten them to shut down the backdoor selling, but also put as a top priority finding a new manufacturing partner and moving production at the earliest possible date).
The other option was to go to bricks-and-mortar retailers, where if they had it in stock and if you were willing to pay full retail price, you'd get something that wasn't a counterfeit.
Amazon seems to have pulled off some marketing magic where flea market sellers plus a refund policy equals one of the world's largest companies.
I gave up trying.
Really, I'd like a mid-range model; not a cheap one or a cheap one sold for more, and not a high-end one, just something that works reliably and repeatably, and doesn't chew through batteries. I have a ~20 year old (guess) set that fits this description, and several newer cheap and crappy ones that do an okay job if you keep spare batteries on hand. It seems impossible to find more like that old one.
It now takes less time to hunt down a reliable specialist online supplier, e.g., [1] than it does to wade through all the fraudulent listings and fake reviews on Amazon to find even a plausibly reliable product/vendor.
At this point, despite being a 20+year loyal Amazon Prime customer, I'm finding It's a better use of my time to find a good vendor, often family owned.
[1] I currently use batteryjunction.com, seems reliable, in my region for quicker shipping, no connection other than customer, and there seemed to be others of similar good quality in other regions.
Does seem like a big opportunity too! Ofc, need financing for inventory, but maybe partner with an existing supplier...?
No battery issues so far. And they were just recertified, touch up honed and as accurate and repeatable as ever.
Yes, I have quality digital ones too. I like and use them too, but they work fine, until they don't.
$62 is half/third of the price from reputable sources, even the other sellers (and Amazon itself) on the Amazon website.
The truth is that many (perhaps most) purchasers wouldn't need or notice the difference between the fake Mitutoyo and rebadged $5 calipers and Amazon makes it very easy for sellers to sell fakes with little or no consequences.