Going by the "How it works" section of the GitHub page (not the web site), it appears to be both whitelists and blacklists, plus heuristics for unknown brands to flag the keyboard-mash brands that are almost certainly junk.
I wonder why in the age of LLMs these brand names continue to exist. I just prompted deepseek in Chinese to give me some novel brand names in english for a lighted dog collar (something I recently searched for and saw the crazy brands), and it gave me a bunch of plausible sounding names. Granted, not particular inspired, but names that an English speaker would recognize as reasonable brand names
They want to sign up for the Amazon Brand Registry[1], which requires a valid US trademark, and these crazy names are approved faster because they're obviously unique. See NYT[2]
Reality: A few years ago this would have been relevant. Most people can only afford the knockoffs now.
My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. The $9 difference is going to come out of my budget to buy authentic brands and buy local stuff.
If you don't like it, make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary, reduce my taxes, and don't pull random geopolitical shit that crashes the S&P500 every other weekend, and then we'll talk.
You're not wrong. People are going to be on about "just cook at home" but the general point still is correct. Life has just become a lot more expensive.
We need to realize that the cost of food at grocery stores has gone up a lot too.
Exactly. My point is the price of everything has gone up, and the authentic "original" brands are no longer affordable. The knockoffs are still affordable, and with them I'm doing great.
I have no incentive to change anything about my spending habits. If the "system" changes itself so that I have a ton more disposable cash lying around then sure I'll re-consider the authentic brands.
About the only situation I still buy authentic brands is if there's an electrical safety or lithium battery involved. But yeah, I'm not spending $52.99 on a nice-looking bike bell ([1] with shipping and taxes) when there's a $10 knockoff of it that looks exactly the same and works just as well.
Back in the days when the original was $5 and the knockoff was $1, I might be willing to pay for the original.
> My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. [...] make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary
I don't know what the date brackets are for your meal ranges there, but the largest component of the price increases in things like takeout meals over the past few years has in fact been wage increases for low-wage workers like the people making your Chipotle meal. In other words, it's more expensive because their salaries have doubled.
If we're being pedantic, investment income comes from a bunch of people who trade pieces of paper for a living deciding that a particular piece of paper is now worth $1 more today than yesterday. Well, okay, it's not paper anymore, just entries in some computer database in New Jersey or Delaware or something.
Investment income--in the form of capital gains--isn't coming from profits, it's coming from the mass delusion in the value of stock assets (which is somewhat correlated with profits, although the existence of stocks like SpaceX or Gamestop show the possible disconnects).
If you wanted to complain about the salaries of billionaires, or the stock grants on the other hand... but you said investment income!
This is the problem with populism; it's thought-terminating. Do the math on this. Liquidate a mega-billionaire to cover Chipotle's payroll. What happens next year?
Cuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier.
The real knockoff problem I see is that you buy what you think is BigBrand and get shipped Knockoff because someone is mingling inventory.
> We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier
We don't know that. Look at Project Farm's review videos, he tests a lot of knock off and brand name products and it's almost always a get what you pay for situation. Knockoffs look similar, but use cheaper materials almost always.
The question is almost always, do you need the quality that you get from name brand. Not "why can I get name brand quality of half price"
I love that guy's reviews for the thought and detail he puts in them. But his voice is like nails on a chalkboard. I'm looking forward to AI letting me swap it with James Earl Jones.
Whenever I see keyboard-mashed company names I know I can go to Temu/AliExpress and get it directly there. You can tell when they are all sourcing from the same batch and instead of paying $40 the same thing is often $3.28 if you don't mind waiting a week.
I used to do this more often, but I find the gap is narrowing a lot. Most of the time I find I don't save enough to justify getting it in two weeks over 1 day.
The Aliexpress of 10 years ago was just ridiculous. One time I ordered something (a USB adapter) for literally a total price of 40¢, and it was delivered. It cost about 35¢ to send a regular US postcard domestically at the time, not counting the price of the postcard.
Now all the 40 cent items cost $2, and have $3 shipping. Or you can buy the same thing on Amazon for $6. Their search also used to be a lot better, today it's worse than Youtube search.
We have a very large Amazon warehouse/center in town, and during my last prime trial I received maybe 5/25 items listed under “2 day shipping” in actually 2 days. Nearly all took 4 or more.
Depends on your own taste for risk, should the knock off brand have worse QC: what big brand gets you is the ability to sue them should their products fail catastrophically or cause you harm:
- Coming from the same factory line with the same quality control, just rebranded (Costco famously does this a lot)
- Factory seconds, goods with very minor defects (sometimes not even in the product itself but in the box etc)
- Manufacturers copying specs and running illicit production lines without the company’s authorization
- Complete knockoffs, where the design was copied but the product is totally different
Ultimately for most of these Amazon brands you have no idea which of these you are getting. Just because a product looks the same doesn’t mean it is the same. And in a lot of cases, e.g. with battery operated electronics the cheaper manufacturers skip a lot of safeguards and it ends up burning your house down.
It's more than likely you're getting the first since Chinese factories simply make more of what the big brand has ordered and sell the rest to drop shippers
I don't think that's necessarily true as a general statement. There are also lots of knockoffs where they clearly aren't actually the exact same product because they're slightly different.
Also one very common subtype of the first option nowadays is that some company is just buying the exact same product from alibaba that you could buy from a random company on amazon or aliexpress, marking it up, and spending a few bucks on an internet presence and advertising to try to seem like a more legit company but doesn't really offer any more support or warranty than the brands that seem like a random combination of letters.
Whereas if it's costco it will at least be easy to get your money back if it dies in six months.
I get so many ads on Instagram for things that are available alibaba but with fancy packaging and a huge markup. This seems like an evolution of the drop shipping hustle.
> Coming from the same factory line with the same quality control, just rebranded (Costco famously does this a lot)
Costco famously shops around aggressively for quality products -- not premium, but not crap -- and usually from big manufacturers who are already making excess supply.
Is common for supermarkets, too. Kraft can only get sub-par cheese one quarter so they make the same product but sell it as a white label option for lower margin. The factory line keeps running, product gets moved, inventory gets cleared, and margin is slightly lower but acceptable.
I don't think commerce (especially at Amazon) works the way you think it does.
There is a very good chance that when you buy something at Amazon that says it's BigBrand ... it's just a knockoff. Or a fake that has infiltrated another part of Amazon's supply chain. There is big money in lying to customers through Amazon.
Depends what it is. I would trust Nike products from Dick's Sporting Goods physical store and from the Nike store online but not Amazon or any other online retailer. I'd be suspicious of perfume from (say) Giorgi Armani because rip-off artists have heard of it but who would rip off an boutique bland like Phlur?
It probably goes deeper than you expect. A friend of mine unknowingly bought counterfeit Darn Tough socks from Amazon, and only found out when he sent them in for warranty repair. Clough42 has a video on YouTube about identifying counterfeit Mitutoyo calipers (though I believe they came from Ebay rather than Amazon).
Well back in the 1980s my mom was a clerk at a Jordan Marsh story that turned into Macy's selling men's clothing.
She would rail against fakes and would show you how the seams and other details were different and how, looking close, the difference was obvious.
My Uncle Dick, the oldest of the brothers, bought three fake Rolexes from the back of a truck on a trip to see my Great Aunt Simone in NYC. He thought he got a steal. Two months later he reported that they didn't run anymore!
Why not go down to your local independent pet store, keep your money local and support your neighbours instead of giving it to directors and shareholders sitting on beaches in French Polynesia?
> Cuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier.
in many cases may even be from the same factory made by the same hands with a slightly different supplier or quality of fabric, or lower QA.
Even better, buy direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon. I've found most of the time you get the same price and free shipping without giving Jeff Bezos a dime.
I often find things are more expensive on the manufacturer's site than they are on Amazon or Ebay. I assume because they know you are ding price comparisons on marketplaces.
This. Amazon has the best checkout and delivery system in the world, and that alone is worth a few extra dollars. The excess crap gets caught in the appropriate filters and I just end up with my item in a box.
> This. Amazon has the best checkout and delivery system in the world, and that alone is worth a few extra dollars.
IIRC amazon yeets you out of their marketplace if you sell items cheaper than on amazon.com. Which you can work around by giving our coupon on your website, but that results in email/sms spam.
Amazons checkout is terrible though. Maybe it's better if you're in the US, but here you're not told the actual price, after currency conversion and shipping costs until the very last minute. Their shipping is awful, because it doesn't integrate with anything, so you can select a pickup point, and shipping is often weeks rather than next day.
I have tried desperately to do this and come up short about 75-80% of the time. I tried for years to buy local also and got screwed over every time I tried. Things just aren't like they used to be where people gave a shit about quality and service.
That hasn't been my experience. They are rarely cheaper, especially once you include the shipping fee. And the shipping experience is lackluster most of the time, and downright frustrating a lot of the time.
I often try to do this, but it's rarely cheaper, and occasionally much worse. I recently bought a beach tent directly from the manufacturer, and when it showed up, it had a big Amazon sticker on it, and didn't actually have the product inside; it was clearly something Amazon had returned to them. Meanwhile, they haven't responded to e-mails and there's no way to return it, so, uh, I just got scammed.
I keep doing it anyway, but it's certainly not because it's a better or cheaper experience.
- Return experience is TERRIBLE. I'm not kidding, with Amazon you've got one click to a QR code and a UPS store dropoff. Some of these mfgs you are jumping hoops for a week plus! And then have to box, buy a label, often pay for shipping and more. IF you can even get in touch with someone.
- Shipping experience is TERRIBLE. How does FedEx stay in business? I'm serious - the express port of their name is a joke. Stuff will randomly get stuck in a warehouse for a week. I've had their call center tell me that for SURE it will be delivered x date (because the online tool shows that date) but the package is still out of state at 9PM. So they'd need to get it in state, then to distribution center and then to a truck to my house by midnight - surprise surprise that didn't happen.
- I've gotten used products from the mfg? Do they get amazon returns back and then try to ship direct with those? How does this work that the new product is under the amazon.com seller and the mfg has the USED?
- You get on more mailing lists going direct. ULINE and friends now ship me these huge catalogs following tiny tiny purchases. Catalogs are still a thing!
It is also often more expensive than Amazon, which is I think is largely due to Anazon's anti-competetive, and possibly illegal "most favored nation" terms, but as a consumer it does discourage avoiding Amazon (which is why Amazon has those terms).
I recently bought a camping tent from Naturehike, a budget but respected Chinese brand. I ordered on their website and, long story short, my parcel got stuck at a warehouse for weeks, presumably lost. They said they can't refund me before they retrieve the tent and "inspect the package", as if I somehow went to a warehouse in a different country, found it there, and damaged it.
It took me well over a month of back and forth to get a refund, and only after I repeatedly threatened them with a chargeback. I ordered the exact same tent on Amazon and had it the next day. As a bonus, it was now discounted on Amazon but not on the manufacturer's website.
I only order from Amazon a handful of times a year when I can't find an item elsewhere, but manufacturers are really doing their best to push me towards it.
Yeah, Amazon has disadvantages (counterfeits, fake reviews, more expensive) but its advantages (insane shipping speed/cost, strong return policy) are nearly impossible for competitors to compete with. The manufacturer is not going to offer same day delivery and no-questions-asked returns.
My biggest issue here is delivery date certainty. So often the manufacturer will list "2-5 day delivery" or similar. But no way to tell which side of the country they ship from.
These days, Amazon do a lot of print-on-demand which gives bootleg quality, and there's no way to tell if you're going to get it, and there seems to be no way to avoid it.
I worked for a hardware startup ten years ago now, and a big problem that was rampant at the time (and seemingly has only gotten worse) is that basically the Contract Manufacturers (CMs) in China take the BOMs and plans they’re given, and since they already have the molds, the same product will mysteriously be produced with a knock-off name, within weeks of your product being produced in china. At the time (and still) I didn’t know enough about whether the CMs are doing it themselves or they’re selling the information to a company to produce, or what, but if you want to manufacture something in China, you’re begging for it to be copied immediately.
While I have my own disdain for the current length of copyright law, it’d be great if China at least had some variety of it. This sort of crap may be an eyesore for the big companies, but its a death-knell for small startups, and Amazon is enabling it.
I remembering hearing from a former Cisco employee once that in the mid 00s this would happen to them and the knock off router manuals were literal photocopies of the Cisco ones with very half-assed attempts to block of Cisco.
This says it's using AmazonBrandFilter's list of brands. Why would we use/support this chrome extension instead of the upstream one [1] which is actually doing the important maintanance task?
"Knockoff" seems to be literally describing itself.
On top of that, it has a more restrictive license than AmazonBrandFilter. Given this appears to be a very simple AI project, why not just reimplement any missing functionality from AmazonBrandFilter into something under a free license? The most difficult to duplicate component is MIT.
Further, what on earth is the reason for FSL for such a trivial project?
FSL immediately makes me assume this project is monetized in some way, yet it's not immediately presented what that is, which makes me suspicious of the whole project. Maybe that suspicion is unfounded, but it could be immediately cleared up with some explanation on the landing page.
It seems like AmazonBrandFilterList is one of the lists they use. It also seems like there a couple extra features that doesn't have. Either way, it's not like they're hiding the use of it. It would be another thing if it was being secret about it.
Yeah. I don't know. I don't love that they're just ripping the list like that, I wouldn't mind as much if they at least helped contribute to the list. That is far and away the hardest part of this thing.
But it is what it is, I'll be more peeved if they monetize it (which I'm unsure if they're doing).
Maybe I should put one of those buy me a coffee links on the repo, I'd probably be better about focusing on it then.
Not that trying to repackage and possibly resell existing work isn't a little lazy and borderline scummy, but your filter list "brands.txt" is MIT licensed.
You could always release the plugin code MIT and keep the brands.txt file proprietary or under a more restrictive license if you don't like what they are doing. After all, you did explicitly allow this.
To be honest it just felt like the right way to do it. I also never expected it to ever get any amount of traction. The fact I got more than 10 people to run it is thrilling.
Something I've actually found I do is I just leave the addon in debug mode all the time. It's more verbose about what it's doing but it also highlights instead of hides listing. Which I've found I really like.
So I think I'm actually going to make that into a feature, highlighting vs hiding.
Allow users to opt into you injecting referral links. If they opt in, when they land anywhere, you rewrite amazon links to your referral code. Costs users $0, it's opt-in, and you make money.
I've considered this. I just feel like I need to be really careful on that front.
Right now I'm dealing with a dude that requested his own brand be added. Which is totally cool. But looking at said brand. I am reeeaaallly struggling to tell if hes 3dprinting his stuff to sell, or if hes drop-shipping it and trying to get on the list.
In the current age of AI, deepfakes, etc this is a very hard problem and I don't envy you. I think asking vendors to go through a paid verification process is fair. There are a slew of KYB vendors out there who can help.
I think you're going to have to standardize what you consider to be knock offs and what's not, or you're going to end up in continuous quagmires like this trying to make a determination based on vibes.
You might even end up getting together a team of volunteers to look through them or it'll probably get overwhelming.
What determination did you use to make the original list?
So the original list is very specifically about no-name dropshippers. I very specifically state in the readme that the list isn't a measure of quality. So in the case where this guy is 3D printing stuff and selling it. That's good enough for the list if he's been doing it long enough. But looking at the details of this one, he's dabbled in crypto. He apparently sold crystal tubes... So like he sorta feels like he might be a state-side dropshipper.
I am sorta leaning towards just adding his brand. The list isn't append only, we can remove stuff if people feel the need.
Mixed inventory is really a different issue. So short version, I don't. However Amazon did announce they were stopping the practice so hopefully that's just solved.
I own a dozen Amazon brands that are probably largely of the kind that OP would want this to get rid of (sourced from China, not name brands by any stretch, only sell on Amazon). For the most part I would say this extension is not a great idea (obviously very biased!), since I purchase brands that have high quality products that typically have pretty poor branding/online presence that I can improve. My stuff is very frequently of the same quality (and sometimes from the same factories) as much pricier stuff but at a lower cost. To some of those suggesting you can get this stuff on Aliexpress, in some cases that is true, though of course the big benefit of buying from Amazon is that there's no risk to buying no-name stuff because if it's junk you can return it.
In any case, I gave this a try to see which of my brands it would filter out. It's weirdly inconsistent.
One of my brands was filtered out because there's no brand name at the beginning of the listing. That's just an outright bad rule, because Amazon generally decides whether or not the brand name appears first. This brand is trademarked and has Brand Registry, so it qualifies for that treatment, just not getting it right now. Also, a number of other brands without brand names did not get the same treatment (and these are very much the type of products this is designed to filter out).
On another one, it misunderstood the product model, which is at the beginning of the product name, as the brand and hid it based on that. That one was a bad one because the model is only three characters, which is extremely unlikely for a brand name.
One product I sell is a hunting accessory, so I did some searches there. It hid everything by the brand KUIU, which is a well-known and very high end hunting brand. Definitely wrong there.
So yeah, sort of an interesting idea, but the execution is pretty sloppy and the creator clearly doesn't have a full understanding of how Amazon listings work.
Another PL seller here with a few brands and a couple hundred products:
"No brand name" flag is tricky because the Amazon catalog team actively does A/B tests to hide brand names as part of their goal of commodifying all the sellers to increase price competition, when they see you're selling a commodity item.
Same goes to wellknown brands that get caught in the crossfire because they're using their brand name from another language but don't make sense in English.
Agreed that it's an interesting idea, but execution has a LOT of false positives.
I stopped buying from amazon unless its a known brand, anything random I am just buying from costco instead. Had enough of the trash, or used product i keep getting from amazon
The fact that Amazon doesn't care enough to implement this filter themselves is a strong indicator to just not buy of the site.
Amazon doesn't give a shit if you're being hustled. If they have to issue a refund, that's the sellers problem, in all other cases they make money. There is so much junk of Amazon that's just not worth it. The only reason I ever shop at Amazon is if I truly cannot get the item elsewhere. They aren't cheaper, they're certainly not faster (in my area) and with every purchase you're at a much greater risk at getting scammed, compared to shopping at sites that don't do the marketplace crap.
In a sane world Amazons customers would be leaving in droves, and I cannot figure out why they don't.
Because if you need something in 2 days in the United States its often your _only_ option. I begrudgingly maintain a prime membership because its typically >2 times per month that I need something in two days. Maybe if I planned better that would happen less and I would save money, but its purely a convenience.
Their logistic network is where prime holds its value.
Costco is great for curation, but only for the items they carry.
A combo of Amazon for the random junk I don’t care much about and Costco for consumer staples works out well.
And no online vendor gets remotely close to Amazon for speed of shipping, ease of returns, and product selection. Usually matches the best price I can find on most things too - outside of stuff I buy direct from China.
Lots of the random crap I buy on Amazon I want the marketplace for. Like I needed a dozen plant domes this spring. I wanted them tomorrow, not next week and I didn’t need qty 100. So having the option for that vs. a gardening warehouse that targets large growers is quite handy and exactly what they excel at for me. I could care less which random brand sells the thing to me since they are all the same.
The no hassle returns from Amazon mitigate everything. I recently bought direct from someone and had to return because they didn't send the advertised item. I had to pay return shipping and a restocking fee, costing me $40 and a lot of my time. I tried to work it out with the seller not realizing that I only had 30 days to dispute with Paypal, so I was screwed there. My overwhelming takeaway was I should have bought from Amazon. (and, if you use paypal open a case with them asap instead of talking to the seller first).
I don't particularly like Amazon and would like to shop somewhere else, but it is sooooo convenient that it's hard to quit.
These vibe-coded, LLM-generated websites look ALL the same, lol. They have the exact same tells nowadays. The output of LLM's in web-site generation used to vary quite a bit last year but now they all produce the same generic soup. Some sort of weird model collapse is happening.
After 30 years of the web, a "common" component model and "UI standard" is now inadvertently metastasizing into existence. Sadly, it is a crappy standard with many of the UI decisions (cards with icons on their own line) being utterly brain-dead.
I've used https://www.onlyamazingseller.com/ in the past, and while it doesn't show reliable third-party sellers (it shows only products sold directly by Amazon), it does get rid of much of the stuff I don't want to buy.
I should check my purchase history, but I probably use Amazon more for buying stuff that they would classify as a "Knockoff", but isn't (i.e. there is no established brand they are knocking off). Because for legitimate brands, I try to simply buy elsewhere.
Such a shame that easily broken and disposable pieces of plastic are shipped around the globe in huge numbers, all in the name of selfish first world comfort.
How future generations will look back at our convenience online ordering practices and be absolutely horrified at how we thought it was no issue to get some bit of plastic made in Asia and shipped over to US or Europe, then next or same day delivered just for for a few dollars/pounds.
Sorry OP, not aiming at you. You just triggered a sad rant.
The ships are already making the trip carrying cars, furniture, medical equipment, and all kinds of critical things. The drop shipped trinkets basically hitch a ride for free.
Thinking about some of the business practices of our ancestors, shipping bits of plastic seems like a great improvement.
Our great-great-grandchildren will probably be getting their gadgets via some kind of Star Trek replicator rather than a container ships and no doubt some moral hazard will be involved in that practice.
We do the same for groceries though. Only a few generations ago, oranges or bananas were a luxury if you didn't live in an area where those fruit grow. Now we get avocadoes and berries way out of season, shipped from across the world.
Yep, and it is terrible for the planet. Avocados use disproportionate amount of water to grow, and the boom of their popularity n the west has caused massive water issues in already resource stretched parts of the world.
All for what, so someone in a western cafe can have some smashed avocado on their sourdough toast? I'm pretty sure people could do without out of season berries, and avocados at all. We used to east locally and seasonally for millennia, forcing over production of anything to ship it round the world is a recipe for disaster.
and I am really happy with the first one I bought and bought a second one for a co-worker who liked mine. At my food co-op I found something from the highly reputable Aura Cacia brand that was almost twice the price and I think very similar in quality.
As far as I know, the only brands making the phone charger cords I use are considered 'off-brand'. I am not sure the goal is to remove ever purchasing things that are not 'known brands', but paging through thirty pages of the same exact really stretchy underwear sold under different names for every single page-worth of others is both inefficient and stressful for those of us that dislike shopping in the first place. So, I personally will check this out. Underwear arbitrary, just remember it Christmas shopping.
Indeed - they're legitimately solving a real problem. It's just an interesting dynamic that a whole new product category is produced overnight, with no clear leading brand. Usually someone makes a useful product. It gets known. Then others enter in the market to compete. Here you just get 5 companies entering the market altogether.
As for the essential oil diffuser: That category was established long before these brands became a thing. But oh boy the overpriced ones in stores are really not worth it!
That’s not the problem. The problem is buying stuff from AJSH or HUYA or BJFGL or MNQW or NBXA or any other random 4 letter “company” on Amazon for $40 when the item is crappy $2 item off aliexpress being drop shipped on Amazon.
I feel we're well into the race to the bottom because I'm having an increasingly difficult time finding the brand name products to be any better. A lot of the brand name stuff is now also crap and some of the knock-off stuff seems to be just fine.
I'd rather buy a cheap knockoff than pay top dollar for an equally bad branded product. Most "consumer-grade" stuff out there these days is garbage regardless of price or brand. Examples: mattresses, home appliances, furniture, audio devices, routers. If you want quality stuff, you need to buy enterprise-grade stuff or make your own.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 59.8 ms ] threadEdit: appears to be using blacklists.
[1]: https://sell.amazon.com/brand-registry
[2]: https://archive.is/IQs4i / https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...
My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. The $9 difference is going to come out of my budget to buy authentic brands and buy local stuff.
If you don't like it, make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary, reduce my taxes, and don't pull random geopolitical shit that crashes the S&P500 every other weekend, and then we'll talk.
We need to realize that the cost of food at grocery stores has gone up a lot too.
I have no incentive to change anything about my spending habits. If the "system" changes itself so that I have a ton more disposable cash lying around then sure I'll re-consider the authentic brands.
About the only situation I still buy authentic brands is if there's an electrical safety or lithium battery involved. But yeah, I'm not spending $52.99 on a nice-looking bike bell ([1] with shipping and taxes) when there's a $10 knockoff of it that looks exactly the same and works just as well.
Back in the days when the original was $5 and the knockoff was $1, I might be willing to pay for the original.
[1] https://us.knog.com/products/oi-luxe-bike-bell
So why do they keep telling us it's 4%?
I don't know what the date brackets are for your meal ranges there, but the largest component of the price increases in things like takeout meals over the past few years has in fact been wage increases for low-wage workers like the people making your Chipotle meal. In other words, it's more expensive because their salaries have doubled.
Where do those investment incomes come from?
Ahh, yes. Profits.
Investment income--in the form of capital gains--isn't coming from profits, it's coming from the mass delusion in the value of stock assets (which is somewhat correlated with profits, although the existence of stocks like SpaceX or Gamestop show the possible disconnects).
If you wanted to complain about the salaries of billionaires, or the stock grants on the other hand... but you said investment income!
The real knockoff problem I see is that you buy what you think is BigBrand and get shipped Knockoff because someone is mingling inventory.
We don't know that. Look at Project Farm's review videos, he tests a lot of knock off and brand name products and it's almost always a get what you pay for situation. Knockoffs look similar, but use cheaper materials almost always.
The question is almost always, do you need the quality that you get from name brand. Not "why can I get name brand quality of half price"
Now all the 40 cent items cost $2, and have $3 shipping. Or you can buy the same thing on Amazon for $6. Their search also used to be a lot better, today it's worse than Youtube search.
Cannot even imagine 1 day.
The value prop of Amazon is (was?) getting your item fast (not cheapest anymore and certainly not highest quality).
Amazon used to be the cheapest and fastest with the best customer support. They have slipped backwards on all those fronts.
https://www.geekwire.com/2019/lawsuit-ruling-dog-leash-purch...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1k2ydn1rz8o
It seems like the retailers can be held responsible should "ASDAS_A!kr" drop off the radar, but might still be easier to sue local.
(I know "local" companies still find ways to settle / weasel their way out of responsiblities, but at least you know where to reach them...)
- Coming from the same factory line with the same quality control, just rebranded (Costco famously does this a lot)
- Factory seconds, goods with very minor defects (sometimes not even in the product itself but in the box etc)
- Manufacturers copying specs and running illicit production lines without the company’s authorization
- Complete knockoffs, where the design was copied but the product is totally different
Ultimately for most of these Amazon brands you have no idea which of these you are getting. Just because a product looks the same doesn’t mean it is the same. And in a lot of cases, e.g. with battery operated electronics the cheaper manufacturers skip a lot of safeguards and it ends up burning your house down.
Unless it's high-power LiPo or Li-Ion, that's extremely unlikely.
Whereas if it's costco it will at least be easy to get your money back if it dies in six months.
Costco famously shops around aggressively for quality products -- not premium, but not crap -- and usually from big manufacturers who are already making excess supply.
Is common for supermarkets, too. Kraft can only get sub-par cheese one quarter so they make the same product but sell it as a white label option for lower margin. The factory line keeps running, product gets moved, inventory gets cleared, and margin is slightly lower but acceptable.
If it's an old and established US mark like Philips or Maytag or something? ZGGCD is the way to go.
I don't think commerce (especially at Amazon) works the way you think it does.
There is a very good chance that when you buy something at Amazon that says it's BigBrand ... it's just a knockoff. Or a fake that has infiltrated another part of Amazon's supply chain. There is big money in lying to customers through Amazon.
She would rail against fakes and would show you how the seams and other details were different and how, looking close, the difference was obvious.
My Uncle Dick, the oldest of the brothers, bought three fake Rolexes from the back of a truck on a trip to see my Great Aunt Simone in NYC. He thought he got a steal. Two months later he reported that they didn't run anymore!
in many cases may even be from the same factory made by the same hands with a slightly different supplier or quality of fabric, or lower QA.
- shipping sometimes goes to from day(s) to weeks
- suddenly their ads start going to email
- please review us emails
I'd rather bezos get his cut.
IIRC amazon yeets you out of their marketplace if you sell items cheaper than on amazon.com. Which you can work around by giving our coupon on your website, but that results in email/sms spam.
I keep doing it anyway, but it's certainly not because it's a better or cheaper experience.
- Return experience is TERRIBLE. I'm not kidding, with Amazon you've got one click to a QR code and a UPS store dropoff. Some of these mfgs you are jumping hoops for a week plus! And then have to box, buy a label, often pay for shipping and more. IF you can even get in touch with someone.
- Shipping experience is TERRIBLE. How does FedEx stay in business? I'm serious - the express port of their name is a joke. Stuff will randomly get stuck in a warehouse for a week. I've had their call center tell me that for SURE it will be delivered x date (because the online tool shows that date) but the package is still out of state at 9PM. So they'd need to get it in state, then to distribution center and then to a truck to my house by midnight - surprise surprise that didn't happen.
- I've gotten used products from the mfg? Do they get amazon returns back and then try to ship direct with those? How does this work that the new product is under the amazon.com seller and the mfg has the USED?
- You get on more mailing lists going direct. ULINE and friends now ship me these huge catalogs following tiny tiny purchases. Catalogs are still a thing!
It took me well over a month of back and forth to get a refund, and only after I repeatedly threatened them with a chargeback. I ordered the exact same tent on Amazon and had it the next day. As a bonus, it was now discounted on Amazon but not on the manufacturer's website.
I only order from Amazon a handful of times a year when I can't find an item elsewhere, but manufacturers are really doing their best to push me towards it.
While I have my own disdain for the current length of copyright law, it’d be great if China at least had some variety of it. This sort of crap may be an eyesore for the big companies, but its a death-knell for small startups, and Amazon is enabling it.
So far, you think there is some universalism sentiment. You're wrong.
"Knockoff" seems to be literally describing itself.
[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/amazonbrandfilter/m...
Yeah. I don't know. I don't love that they're just ripping the list like that, I wouldn't mind as much if they at least helped contribute to the list. That is far and away the hardest part of this thing.
But it is what it is, I'll be more peeved if they monetize it (which I'm unsure if they're doing).
Maybe I should put one of those buy me a coffee links on the repo, I'd probably be better about focusing on it then.
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazonbrandfi...
TIL, thanks for your work!
I wish there was something like this but that filtered out AI books.
You could always release the plugin code MIT and keep the brands.txt file proprietary or under a more restrictive license if you don't like what they are doing. After all, you did explicitly allow this.
edit: lol. tried searching for USB C flex cables. WHOLE search result page is gone. Love it! :-D
Something I've actually found I do is I just leave the addon in debug mode all the time. It's more verbose about what it's doing but it also highlights instead of hides listing. Which I've found I really like.
So I think I'm actually going to make that into a feature, highlighting vs hiding.
Right now I'm dealing with a dude that requested his own brand be added. Which is totally cool. But looking at said brand. I am reeeaaallly struggling to tell if hes 3dprinting his stuff to sell, or if hes drop-shipping it and trying to get on the list.
You might even end up getting together a team of volunteers to look through them or it'll probably get overwhelming.
What determination did you use to make the original list?
I am sorta leaning towards just adding his brand. The list isn't append only, we can remove stuff if people feel the need.
But also the List is by far the hardest part. It's way more work/time/misery than the addon itself.
Great original idea, BTW. Wish I had known about your extension prior!
In any case, I gave this a try to see which of my brands it would filter out. It's weirdly inconsistent.
One of my brands was filtered out because there's no brand name at the beginning of the listing. That's just an outright bad rule, because Amazon generally decides whether or not the brand name appears first. This brand is trademarked and has Brand Registry, so it qualifies for that treatment, just not getting it right now. Also, a number of other brands without brand names did not get the same treatment (and these are very much the type of products this is designed to filter out).
On another one, it misunderstood the product model, which is at the beginning of the product name, as the brand and hid it based on that. That one was a bad one because the model is only three characters, which is extremely unlikely for a brand name.
One product I sell is a hunting accessory, so I did some searches there. It hid everything by the brand KUIU, which is a well-known and very high end hunting brand. Definitely wrong there.
So yeah, sort of an interesting idea, but the execution is pretty sloppy and the creator clearly doesn't have a full understanding of how Amazon listings work.
"No brand name" flag is tricky because the Amazon catalog team actively does A/B tests to hide brand names as part of their goal of commodifying all the sellers to increase price competition, when they see you're selling a commodity item.
Same goes to wellknown brands that get caught in the crossfire because they're using their brand name from another language but don't make sense in English.
Agreed that it's an interesting idea, but execution has a LOT of false positives.
Amazon doesn't give a shit if you're being hustled. If they have to issue a refund, that's the sellers problem, in all other cases they make money. There is so much junk of Amazon that's just not worth it. The only reason I ever shop at Amazon is if I truly cannot get the item elsewhere. They aren't cheaper, they're certainly not faster (in my area) and with every purchase you're at a much greater risk at getting scammed, compared to shopping at sites that don't do the marketplace crap.
In a sane world Amazons customers would be leaving in droves, and I cannot figure out why they don't.
Because Costco does not sell a lot of stuff that I want.
Their logistic network is where prime holds its value.
Costco is great for curation, but only for the items they carry.
A combo of Amazon for the random junk I don’t care much about and Costco for consumer staples works out well.
And no online vendor gets remotely close to Amazon for speed of shipping, ease of returns, and product selection. Usually matches the best price I can find on most things too - outside of stuff I buy direct from China.
Lots of the random crap I buy on Amazon I want the marketplace for. Like I needed a dozen plant domes this spring. I wanted them tomorrow, not next week and I didn’t need qty 100. So having the option for that vs. a gardening warehouse that targets large growers is quite handy and exactly what they excel at for me. I could care less which random brand sells the thing to me since they are all the same.
I don't particularly like Amazon and would like to shop somewhere else, but it is sooooo convenient that it's hard to quit.
After 30 years of the web, a "common" component model and "UI standard" is now inadvertently metastasizing into existence. Sadly, it is a crappy standard with many of the UI decisions (cards with icons on their own line) being utterly brain-dead.
This is an example: https://www.amazon.com/MiiKARE-Universal-Rotating-Adjustable...
You'll find lots of different manufacturers selling this on Amazon, but there is no well known brand that makes these.
How future generations will look back at our convenience online ordering practices and be absolutely horrified at how we thought it was no issue to get some bit of plastic made in Asia and shipped over to US or Europe, then next or same day delivered just for for a few dollars/pounds.
Sorry OP, not aiming at you. You just triggered a sad rant.
Our great-great-grandchildren will probably be getting their gadgets via some kind of Star Trek replicator rather than a container ships and no doubt some moral hazard will be involved in that practice.
Generally though, things are getting better, no?
https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/avocados-sustain...
All for what, so someone in a western cafe can have some smashed avocado on their sourdough toast? I'm pretty sure people could do without out of season berries, and avocados at all. We used to east locally and seasonally for millennia, forcing over production of anything to ship it round the world is a recipe for disaster.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FS1H4SQQ
and I am really happy with the first one I bought and bought a second one for a co-worker who liked mine. At my food co-op I found something from the highly reputable Aura Cacia brand that was almost twice the price and I think very similar in quality.
Indeed - they're legitimately solving a real problem. It's just an interesting dynamic that a whole new product category is produced overnight, with no clear leading brand. Usually someone makes a useful product. It gets known. Then others enter in the market to compete. Here you just get 5 companies entering the market altogether.
As for the essential oil diffuser: That category was established long before these brands became a thing. But oh boy the overpriced ones in stores are really not worth it!
$39 instead of $224 for a pet bed. I know which one I'll buy.
I don't even know why that is legal.
I see "HORUSDY" type brand names all the time. It's crazy that any shirt/pants/etc results in one of these.