10TB portable SSDs on Amazon UK are scams

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=portable+ssd+10tb&crid=3B5JCJDW98CMX&sprefix=portable+ssd+10tb%2Caps%2C149&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

by AlexMuir • 3 years ago

197 173 3 years ago

amazon.co.uk

AlexMuir• 3 years ago

Went looking for an SSD earlier - the "SD-card in a box" scam is going great guns on there. Must be selling hundreds a week. Not just the ludicrous 10TB, but also 2TB.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LuBanSir-External-Design-Portable-C...

Note the reviews refer to all different stuff - phone chargers, arm slings, extension cord organisers. What a total shitshow.

voidwtf• 3 years ago

This is among greatest abuse Amazon allows in its product listings. Any change to a page should reset the reviews unless otherwise vetted by an Amazon employee. Changes shouldn't be material in nature, only corrections. A new revision/version of a product IS NOT THE SAME PRODUCT. Different product == different listing.

duskwuff2• 3 years ago

That might be going a little far. Adding an extra-large size to a listing for a T-shirt (for example) shouldn't invalidate all of the existing reviews.

A more targeted approach might be to disallow sellers from adding variants to products which are not currently for sale. I suspect that would cut down on most of the abuse.

nickthegreek• 3 years ago

That would be an easy way to get rid of negative reviews.

duskwuff2• 3 years ago

Note the reviews refer to all different stuff - phone chargers, arm slings, extension cord organisers. What a total shitshow.

This is an exploit which has been abused for years -- as I understand it, Amazon sellers can list their products as a "variant" of another, often unrelated, product which is no longer available for sale. When they do so, their product inherits all of the reviews from the previous product, and no obvious indication is given that the other variant ever existed (because it's not available).

phpisthebest2• 3 years ago

Yep a "legit" example of this is Dymo, the Dymo 550 added DRM Paper (yes DRM paper) to the product, but they listed the 550 as a variant of the 450 which was not DRM, all of the great 450 reviews followed to the new 550 trash product that no one should ever buy...

sdenton4• 3 years ago

This should be preeeetty trivial to build a classifier for... At least to reduce the need for human review to only the egregious examples.

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

Sometimes I wonder if I've been taken. The only external SSDs I've bought from Amazon were brand name Samsungs, sold-by-and-shipped-from Amazon, but both have been flakey and one failed outright. I should open them up and see if they're just really good counterfeits.

bragr5• 3 years ago

I should open them up and see if they're just really good counterfeits

They could be legit and failed QA in the factory (flaky after all) but they "fell off a truck" on the way to the electronics recycler and ended up for sale. Semi-counterfeit "3rd shift" products that are made off the books on the official line, often with lower or nonexistent QA, are common too.

tl;dr counterfeiting is complicated and just opening it up might not give you a reliable answer

mardifoufs• 3 years ago

Samsung external SSDs are known to have had issues IIRC.

zuminator2• 3 years ago

Same happened to me with a couple of Sammy m.2s. Thought it was bad luck or bad case airflow, now I wonder myself.

ren_engineer• 3 years ago

at what point is Amazon criminally liable for this? They are defrauding customers on their marketplace and in many cases letting these products buy premium real estate via their ad platform

phpisthebest2• 3 years ago

When they politically upset an Attorney General of some state for some unrelated reasons that triggers the need to make a political example out of the company

arp2422• 3 years ago

That 2TB one even has an "Amazon's choice" label on it. "Amazon's Choice highlights highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately."

How can you even expect regular people to know it's a scam? I only vaguely have an indication that £30,99 (the price it gives me) for 2TB seems too good to be true. I work in IT, but I don't spend all days buying portable SSDs so I don't really know what these things cost today, and the "Amazon's choice" label makes it give a false sense of trust ("wow it's really cheap, but maybe just some discount or whatnot? Well, I guess it must be alright because it's Amazon's Choice!")

hgsgm2• 3 years ago

"Amazon's choice" means what it says: highest value for Amazon. No wonder the fake stuff is there, it has higher profit margin.

joshmn• 3 years ago

This shop has everything. An external SSD, extension cord holders, furniture anchors, and then "pjur Analyse me! Moisturising - Water-Based Personal Lubricant - for Comfortable Anal Sex"

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=LuBanSir

Steve44• 3 years ago

I feel that part of the problem fuelling fraud like this are reviews such as the three star one I've copied below. Given it corrupted files why did the person keep it and also still give it three stars.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good storage capacity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 20231

Colour: Black-1Verified Purchase

While the storage capacity is good for the value I would only use this for small files as it corrupted any large video files I had, additionally, the transfer speed was quite slow (especially for USB 3.0) reaching speeds of up to 16mb/s and regularly dropping to 0mb/s, this is not a fault of my pc as other USB 3.0 devices can reach speeds of 80mb/s on my pc.

fancyfredbot• 3 years ago

I was thinking that surely Amazon would lose money selling a fake product which everyone would return, but I guess some people don't realise and don't return it so that selling these ends up being profitable for both Amazon and the manufacturer. At least until someone files a class action lawsuit anyway.

gruez• 3 years ago

I was thinking that surely Amazon would lose money selling a fake product which everyone would return,

This got me curious about who pays the return costs, and after some searching it looks like the seller eats it[1]. In other words, Amazon might be making money even if the item was returned. Regardless, it also means that it might be possible to shut down these scams (or make them unprofitable) if activists purposely buys these scam listings, only to return them. The scammer would have to eat the fees, which eats into their profits. The only downside is your time plus the possibility of your amazon account getting banned if you return too much.

[1] https://blog.sellerboard.com/2022/09/19/the-actual-costs-of-...

joenathanone• 3 years ago

I almost got burned by this, bought some highly rated Bluetooth speakers as gifts, thanks to the extended holiday return window I was able to return them. The scam I seem to have gotten caught by is the seller initially delivers a great product, then once they have enough 5 star reviews they swap it for an inferior product not matching any of the listed specs.

Buttons840• 3 years ago

How does a company that consistently sales scam products not get sued into oblivion? Is there some legal loophole Amazon is using, or is it just that they have enough money to buy the legal system outright? Is there a legal protection for marketplaces or something? Is Amazon a marketplace?

partiallypro3• 3 years ago

Not just scam products, their catalogue is flooded with stolen goods. Many of which were stolen from their competitors that have physical stores. They just turn a blind eye to it. They also have a horrible counterfeit problem. It's pretty insane what Amazon gets away with. I shop at Amazon for many things, so I guess I'm part of the problem, but generally know what to avoid.

mk894• 3 years ago

Any sources on stolen goods? That's the first time I hear it, it's quite nasty honestly. Bad stuff, scam, I can even tolerate, as I can send back, but stolen goods no way - how do I know it's stolen?

I also learnt over the years what to buy and NOT to buy, but sometimes, especially for "compatible" pieces (e.g., a phone screen protector, not official from Samsung or Apple, if they exist) it's like gambling: you don't know what you're getting, and the reviews seem to be about other things (toys, remote controllers, ...literally anything).

scarby2• 3 years ago

It's pretty insane what Amazon gets away with.

In this case amazon are essentially being eBay and like eBay they will refund you if anything goes wrong. They will then deduct that refund from the seller (while still charging the seller fees). We don't sit around and wonder how eBay gets away with these things. They also cant inspect every good to see if it's stolen. If you want to allow third party sellers on an online platform this will happen and there's very little we can do to stop it.

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

I believe that is their loophole, yes. They're just the payment processor and shipper, you are not buying the product from them. To me it seems like another area where the Internet has exposed gaps in the law that were not foreseen, and legislators have not caught up.

vorpalhex• 3 years ago

Amazon is the merchant of record.

Aromasin• 3 years ago

My mother is a sucker for online shopping, and over the last few months has bought a number of clothes on Amazon. I've checked, and every single one of them has been a counterfeit. One set was literally a pair of hospital scrubs with a label sewn in. It's disgraceful.

She's simply not savvy enough to know she's getting scammed. She can't fathom that a company as big and famous as Amazon would let that sort of criminality happen on their platform, and as such refuses to believe me that most of the products on there are a scam. In her words, "Amazon wouldn't let that happen". Not only that, but because she buys this sort of shit, Amazon seems to show her even more of it through their recommend function. She's getting targeted, and Amazon is complicit in it.

This is what bothers me most. Their excuse is "the market place isn't at fault, it's between the buyer and the seller". They damn well are at fault if they're using their algorithm to fill a persons marketplace with counterfeit goods. As soon as you manipulate what a person does and doesn't see in your shop, you have agency. You are culpable.

_tom_• 3 years ago

Because they will give you your money back. That's one thing they are good about.

Edit: even if the fault is not theirs.

barbazoo• 3 years ago

Thinking of the poor folks that never even realize they've been scammed by Amazon.

mavu• 3 years ago

Well, same as all the other big IT giants.

They all moved a lot faster than society and government, know when they must dish out lobbying money (and have enough to do so) and give more people what they want at the expense of fewer people.

It's coming to an end though. The boomers that don't understand the current state of the world anymore are moving out finally.

The next 10 years will be filled by the tears of abusive companies that don't understand why they are suddenly required to follow rules they didn't make themselves.

cogman103• 3 years ago

They all moved a lot faster than society and government

Not really, these problems have plagued ebay long before they plagued amazon. Further, these are problems that we've seen in other avenues like QVC and open marketplaces.

And the solution is dead simple, hold amazon liable for their part in distributing stolen and fake products. Stop accepting this namby pamby "Oh shucks, we sure are trying our darnest but those scammers are just cleaver with their 9000 listings of the same product under different names, all conspicuously with the same sell address/accounts."

The reason we have this problem is because it's more profitable for Amazon to sell fake goods then it is for them to increase consumer confidence that they are getting genuine products. The reason lawmakers aren't cracking down is because nobody is lobbying for them to crack down (And I'm sure amazon/google/etc are lobbying for the opposite because it's just too darned expensive to make sure people aren't scamming)

jonatron2• 3 years ago

Generally, marketplaces are not liable for trademark/copyright infringement listings until they are made aware. Amazon have a form for reporting that. In the case of items not as described, there are consumer protections to allow returns, but I don't know if they have to remove the listing.

r00fus• 3 years ago

Amazon is only a marketplace in name. They require so much validation and approval and can discount sellers' products if they feel like it. They should not have so much control and still get away with profiting from these scams.

The main problem are situations where the product mostly passes an initial inspection but fails at a later date or for specific advanced use cases (ie, it isn't easily detectable until well after a return period).

zabzonk6• 3 years ago

how are they supposed to test all the products they sell? no vendor does this.

thfuran2• 3 years ago

Literally testing every single item? No, that's not common. But vetting suppliers and doing QA on what they're giving you is definitely normal in many industries.

topspin2• 3 years ago

how are they supposed to test all the products they sell?

Who suggested they should?

And why would that be necessary?

Simply applying the least bit of effort vetting their sellers and aggressively pursuing the reported scams would solve most of the problem.

But they can't be bothered. Instead they run the largest sucker-mart in history.

ilrwbwrkhv• 3 years ago

Amazon itself is a scam now. Moved away from it a long time back. It is not an Alibaba clone with better English copy.

zabzonk6• 3 years ago

every amazon order i have put in over the last 9 years has been delivered on time and delivered what it said it would. go figure.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 3 years ago

and delivered what it said it would.

How would you know? Part of the difficulty is that the counterfeits are often passable.

hrunt• 3 years ago

If I take that amazon.co.uk URL and replace it with amazon.com, I get zero scam-looking SSD drives. The only results that are 10TB are 7200rpm portable drives, and the largest SSD drive is an $800 8TB drive.

I wonder what makes Amazon show all those junk on its UK site, but not on its US site.

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

Try a tour of the European sites - .it .de .fr .nl etc for the same thing (often the same product codes work). I've bought stuff that was £70 uk, $200 .com and €35-for-two from a different Eu country. Arrived in 3 days. Some stuff i got from .com just took ages to arrive, but i paid less than locallly and wasn't in a rush. Khazakstan has some interesting products, too, but they were electrical - yes, but no.

JohnTHaller• 3 years ago

Don't forget the thousands of unsafe electrical products with no UL, CSA-US, or equivalent certification shipped directly from China.

Gigachad7• 3 years ago

Electric bikes and scooters are the worst since they have a tendency to explode in to a fireball inside bedrooms and elevators.

jypepin• 3 years ago

Sorry, can someone explain what is happening here? What's wrong with those products?

ndsipa_pomu2• 3 years ago

They're likely a cheap SD card inside the case with firmware that pretends to be 10TB. When you use them, they appear the correct size, but once you go over the size of the actual SD card (e.g. 256GB) you overwrite existing files and corrupt them.

You can tell that they're fake as the price is unrealistic.

mk894• 3 years ago

I just searched for the prices of 256GB SD cards and they're about 20$. At this point I guess they put 128 or even 64 gb SD cards, otherwise it makes no sense...

daggersandscars• 3 years ago

They aren't 10 TB products. The storage device (usually an SD card inside a larger case) has been modified to report 10 TB of space but actually has far less than that. Once the actual space has been filled, the device will write over the initial bytes (or some other undesired behavior).

It's not possible to buy 10TB of storage for the prices listed as a hard drive, not to mention as SSD.

mk894• 3 years ago

They put microSD cards into boxes and sell them as SSD drives :)

Thanks to OS abstractions and all, 90% of people will never notice, or once they do, they remember that too cheap is most of the time scam :)

ravel-bar-foo• 3 years ago

The scam is that nobody makes 10TB SSDs. Scammers buy a 128 GB SD card, put it in a box, have it report itself as (very slow) 10 TB drive. Joe consumer doesn't fill 128 GB right away, so the drive looks fine at first. Then suddenly fails to write.

tristor• 3 years ago

Well to start with, there's no such thing as a 10TB SSD (currently).

deathanatos• 3 years ago

If you understand the market value of non-scam SSD storage, the price of basically every item on that page is well into "too good to be true" territory.

Further, a lot of them have the trappings of a scam: e.g., can't spell worth shit, the same product is somehow sold by 15 different companies all with very fake sounding names, etc.

Go to a reputable manufacturer, like Seagate, and find a product. E.g., a 1 TB SSD will set you back $130. Now, the listings here are half the price for 10x? Too good to be true.

daneel_w• 3 years ago

Surely one can trust a "mobble sdud state" portable drive of 10TB capacity for £79.

foobarbecue3• 3 years ago

I saw a "16TB SSD" for $70, figured it was a scam, but was curious so I bought it.

It turned out to be a metal box with a 60GB SD card inside (although actually, I couldn't even get the card to work properly when I took it out). The SD card was on a carrier board that made it present as 16TB, although I couldn't create any partitions on it.

I posted a review saying it was a scam and the product disappeared quickly. I got approved for a return, but it said "seller will send you a return label within 5 days." They didn't. I got on chat support and got a full refund without having to return the product.

ajross3• 3 years ago

I saw a "16TB SSD" for $70, figured it was a scam, but was curious so I bought it.

Just so folks are aware: this kind of behavior doesn't constitute a good faith purchase. If you suspect something is wrong, you aren't allowed to push the risk management off onto a retailer just because they aren't as clued in as you are. It's the same principle that says you can't take advantage of mislabeled prices or leaked discount codes.

In this case, where it's just one item and the poster was probably willing to eat the cost, it's a no-harm-no-foul thing and it was good customer service of Amazon to refund the price. But in general this is a game people shouldn't be playing.

(Edit: and as expected everyone wants to argue based on who the bad guy is supposed to be and not what I actually said. Amazon may be bad. This is still fraud if you do this expecting to get refunds if you can't use the item. Don't do that.)

SOLAR_FIELDS• 3 years ago

Isn’t it Amazon’s job to do due diligence that sellers aren’t committing outright fraud on their platform? I’m not sure what you mean by “allowed”, but I would have zero problem doing exactly the same to Amazon ethically given they actively, on purpose, create this problem in the first place.

Doing something like this is the only way to effect any sort of change anyway. It’s not like regulators are particularly interested in solving this problem. And clearly neither is Amazon. So maybe enough returns where they have to eat the cost will actually motivate them to enact some change.

tedivm• 3 years ago

The only reason it "isn't good faith" is because the seller wasn't acting in good faith. Had the purchaser gotten what was advertised there would be nothing to return. The fact that we now assume so little of Amazon products isn't an ethical issue, it's a marketing on on Amazon's behalf.

foobarbecue3• 3 years ago

If you suspect something is wrong, you aren't allowed to push the risk management off onto a retailer just because they aren't as clued in as you are.

Says who? Surely the retailer is responsible for vetting what they're selling.

Gigachad7• 3 years ago

How gracious of Amazon to refund the customer after having scammed them in the first place by advertising and selling them a fraudulent product.

Should we also quickly hang up on phone scammers so we don't waste their time that could be spent convincing grandma to pay tax in Apple gift cards?

verbify• 3 years ago

I really don't understand the problem. If you offer me the latest and greatest pc for £1, there's nothing wrong with me taking you up on the offer even if I think there's a catch. And then when it turns out that the box was empty, I'm entitled to a refund.

m00x• 3 years ago

/r/confidentlywrong

bragr5• 3 years ago

Edit: and as expected everyone wants to argue based on who the bad guy is supposed to be and not what I actually said

Literally none of the comments argue that. You are just very wrong in your understanding of the relevant consumer protection laws.

function_seven• 3 years ago

I saw your edit, and I vehemently disagree. Amazon is the scammer here. They know damn well these things can't be real, but they can't be bothered to crack down. It is perfectly kosher to agree to their offer and get a $70 16TB drive. Either it's a legitimate 16TB, which means you got a great deal, or it is not 16TB, and you can undo the transaction. The costs of these returns can be passed to their supplier.

OP didn't profit from this exercise, so "fraud" doesn't enter into the conversation. If more people did what OP is doing, incentives would maybe finally align for Amazon to do the right thing, if for purely financial reasons.

As it stands today, apparently there's more profit in ignoring these scams then there is preventing them, so Amazon doesn't apply effort in that direction.

Was OPs purchase in good faith? No, I guess it wasn't if they were certain it was a scam. But it sure isn't fraud.

zenexer• 3 years ago

Amazon has little incentive to proactively address this issue unless their reactive measures (issuing refunds and taking down listings after people complain) are the more costly alternative.

There's an argument to be made that if we want Amazon to fix this issue once and for all, we should head to Amazon and buy these devices en masse, then complain when we get products that are designed such that they could not serve any purpose other than to deceive and defraud consumers.

There's also an argument to be made that we, as informed individuals, are obligated to take this action to prevent others from being scammed.

rattlesnakedave2• 3 years ago

This is correct. I would also be highly surprised if most of these fake items are FBA or sold by amazon. Almost all of it can be avoided by being very wary of 3rd party sellers (as you should be, on any platform that allows it).

dragonwriter4• 3 years ago

Just so folks are aware: this kind of behavior doesn’t constitute a good faith purchase. If you suspect something is wrong, you aren’t allowed to push the risk management off onto a retailer just because they aren’t as clued in as you are.

Based on what law? This seems to be importing the concept of good faith purchase that has relevance to the transfer of title (if the buyer doesn’t have a reasonable good-faith belief that the seller has good title to the goods being sold, and the seller only has voidable title, the buyer will receive only a title voidable by whomever the seller’s title was voidable by), but outside of its domain.

There is, that I am aware of, no generally-applicable rule (e.g., under the UCC) applicable to the sale of goods in the United States where the purchaser’s doubts about the seller’s representation as to the description of the item that they were selling would prevent the formation of a sale contract and the buyer’s right to inspect, reject, and return nonconforming goods under that contract. You may be confusing reasonable belief that the seller is actually offering the goods with reasonable belief that the seller actually intends to fulfill the contract, which are different issues.

Could you cite statute or case law on point, or reference a work which does?

jjeaff2• 3 years ago

Hard disagree. Both the seller and Amazon have a responsibility here. As a buyer, all I can do is go by the description and advertised price. If you made a mistake, you can ask for it back on your own dime or not ship it at all and give a full refund. If you are scamming, making Amazon or the credit card company step in is literally the only real system in place to identify and root out scams.

Buyers that risk their own time purchasing potentially scam items do a service to all the buyers that might unwittingly buy such items and not know until it is too late.

In short, skepticism of a purchase does not mean bad faith.

ghshephard• 3 years ago

Over the winter, up in British Columbia, we got a cold snap that looked like it was going to south of -40 degrees (where almost all common consumer thermometers, both home-weather station ones (that are very accurate, or at least consistent across multiple devices - +/- 0.2 degrees) and analog ones (including an industrial freezer thermometer). We went to our local home hardware, and for just $25 they had one that went to -60. Seemed like it was too good to be true - but they were popular, so we bought one. Put it out doors, at ~-34 degrees, the solution in the column split apart and the thermometer stopped functioning.

We took it back in the next day (with lots of photographic evidence showing our other thermometers, digital and analog, all showing -40, and the one outlier showing a scattered -34) for a refund.

When we bought it - I kind of thought it was too good to be true. So - did I commit fraud when I purchased it from home hardware in the belief that it would work as advertised, only to refund it the next day - and was that a game I shouldn't be playing (that is, taking a retailer at their word))?

selcuka• 3 years ago

If you suspect something is wrong, you aren't allowed to push the risk management off onto a retailer just because they aren't as clued in as you are.

Isn't it better from the retailer's point of view if someone buys this and returns immediately and posts a negative review? It would reduce the number of future returns and actually work for Amazon's benefit.

6sp• 3 years ago

It always bothers me when people make definitive statements like this without citing any sources or providing context. Fraud is a pretty extreme accusation here. Are you saying attempting to return an item constitutes fraud because the buyer somehow acted in bad faith purchasing an item falsely advertised? Also, it’s most likely a third party seller which Amazon held the funds back from. Are you saying the scam artist deserves to get paid? The refund only happens because the fraudulent seller knows they have no recourse. The only person committing fraud here is the seller not the buyer.

ferminaut• 3 years ago

I first ran across this scam in about 2002 with SD cards back when digital cameras were much more popular. I recall a vendor "proving" it was legit by plugging it into a computer in front of me and showing the SD card had 1gb of storage.

I'm sure the scam is even older than that.

Gigachad7• 3 years ago

There is a tool which can reliably detect this https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

It attempts to write the full storage and then read it back. If its fake, the read will fail. It's also useful for detecting storage that has become unreliable.

cm21872• 3 years ago

You are braver than me to plug a device that is an obvious scam into a USB port of your PC, it's of the level of proverbial USB key found on the parking lot.

foobarbecue3• 3 years ago

Indeed... I hesitated but curiousity got the better of me. I was watching dmesg, at least. And it was a computer I consider pretty disposable.

smittywerben• 3 years ago

How else do I get the dinosaur mouse cursor onto my nuclear centrifuge device?

m463• 3 years ago

or letting amazon provide your name and address to this scammer

bb883• 3 years ago

I guess you got a free 60GB sd card out of it....

dylan604• 3 years ago

Q: What makes Amazon Marketplace any different from the local flea markets that have been havens for selling stolen goods?

A: You're not going to get caught selling stolen goods via Amazon.

At least the local flea markets would occasionally have police stroll through looking for merch and could act upon it then and there if found. Amazon took being a fence to a whole new level that criminals are laughing all the way to the bank from the whole experience.

lazyant• 3 years ago

This is another example of a scam in Amazon https://www.amazon.ca/Portable-Reusable-Ultrasonic-Cleaning-... , the best seller product in its category and it's not anything ultrasonic but a little vibrating motor. The 5-star ratings where for a different product (I don't see them now so at least they fixed that but still allow the scam).

gibolt3• 3 years ago

Looking forward to the first legit 10TB 'scam' that puts 10 1TB micro SD cards into a case. A manufacturer could probably do it for under $1k

gibolt3• 3 years ago

Has anyone found a hard drive scam with multiple levels of fake storage? 10TB drive, containing a 1TB SSD, with a 256gb SD card, that is actually a 16gb micro SD card.

It has to exist

Gigachad7• 3 years ago

What would be the point? You would just increase the cost without making it any more convincing.

zabzonk6• 3 years ago

if it looks like a scam, and looks like it costs much less than it should, then it is a scam - if you fall for it, that is your problem

ROTMetro3• 3 years ago

Actually no, we have laws about these things. It's just that we don't enforce them once a company because large enough, because reasons. Does a woman deserve to be assaulted for walking alone after a certain time of night?

You can avoid the situation, but the responsibility is absolutely not on you.

zabzonk6• 3 years ago

Who is this "we"?

and of course the rule whenever you by something is "buyer beware" i cannot believe you would think otherwise

cm21872• 3 years ago

This is not the first time this makes it to the HN front page. Either no one at amazon reads HN, or they seem to be comfortable having their customers scammed. I find the former highly unlikely.

cogman103• 3 years ago

Anyone that's done software knows what's going on here.

Scams earn amazon money. No manager or executive will prioritize addressing this issue because it'll hurt revenue. Can't be damaging those OKRs, that's where your bonuses come from.

The only solution to this is new regulations and enforcement. That's the only way an amazon exec looks at this and says "Oh, if we don't fix this we'll be out billions!"

octacat2• 3 years ago

idk, if it does not hurt revenue. I cannot trust their reviews anymore, so I don't shop there for a long long time. And prices are the same as everywhere anyway.

georgemcbay• 3 years ago

Amazon has turned a blind eye to all manner of scams for YEARS.

The one I ran into personally is the one where a seller takes a product that sells by the case and they take the retail cases and split them up into units that aren't meant for resale. In my case it was Hartz Delectables Bisque cat treats.

These come in small cases of 12 pouches per case. The sellers will buy those cases, split them up into individual pouches, and then sell each pouch for SLIGHTLY less (eg. 11 dollars instead of 12) than the normal price of a full case of 12. The real retail cases you buy of this product have wording on them specifically saying they are meant for sale as a single unit and not to break them up, so presumably the manufacturer is aware of this sort of thing happening, but Amazon still allows marketplace users to run this fraud years after I first reported it to them (and stopped using them for any cat food related product and switched to Chewy).

If you read the fine print below the fold the sellers list a valid size in ounces, which maybe gives them some legal protection, but given both the out of band pricing and the fact that Amazon often jams all of the listings of a single product type into one big listing that you sometimes can't make heads or tails of who is actually selling the exact version you are buying (as long as they are Fulfilled by Amazon) its super easy to miss this until after you've fallen victim to it.

After running into this years ago I made Amazon very aware of what had occurred but the scam listings are still up on the site (AFAICT exactly the same listing since Amazon almost tauntingly informs me that I purchased this product in the past when I view the suspect listing), still wildly overpriced, with a bunch of reviews that talk about the scam but give it a 4 or 5 star review because I guess the people reviewing it didn't feel like trashing the product.

My review is 1 star. The product is fine, but I'm perfectly fine with 1 starring a review of a fraud listing for a good product because best case scenario that happening repeatedly maybe pushes the real OEM into getting on Amazon's case about their policies, wish more people would do the same honestly.

boomboomsubban• 3 years ago

A previous post looking into these scam drives

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34409772

imwillofficial• 3 years ago

Can somebody pull the andon cord on these? (Is that still a thing?)

ROTMetro3• 3 years ago

Imagine a local store pulling the 'we're too big to stop blatant fraud in our store'. Funny the double standard large corporations get for the blatant breaking of laws in their stores versus mom and pops.

adenozine• 3 years ago

I’ve personally come to assume that 1/3 of everything on Amazon is fake.

Is there any reputable auditing or investigation where I could read more about the evidence?

Amazon seems pretty clearly to not be motivated to fix the fraud problem. Economy of scale and all that.

brianmcc• 3 years ago

I'm UK based. Pretty much stopped buying anything of importance from Amazon these days. Argos fills most of my online shopping needs now and often I can even just drive 10 mins to collect my stuff!

Occasionally I do pause to consider just how spectacularly Amazon has blown it for general online shopping.

hmaxwell• 3 years ago

why spend $70 on a 10tb drive when you can spend $15 on a 16tb drive, https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804901971131.html you get screwed either way may as well go all out

c3534l• 3 years ago

When I tried to report a seller for a similar scam, I was told by an amazon representative that consumers can't report fraudulent sellers, only other sellers on amazon and only if they infringe on their brand. Fraud is not on its own a reportable offense. There's no button that says "report fraud." Amazon doesn't care and won't fix it.

NKosmatos• 3 years ago

Oh come on now, they’re shipped by Amazon and the order is processed by Amazon, but the seller is some random Chinese guy. Do your research when buying something, read the fine print, don’t buy from random people and use your common sense. Amazon doesn’t care and don’t have the workforce to go through all these fake listings. If you think you’re going to buy a 10TB SSD for ~80$ then good luck with your life :-)

scotty792• 3 years ago

If Amazon gets a share of the sale it should be responsible. If it gets fixed payment for participation in the market then it shouldn't be.

d23• 3 years ago

They’re very clearly turning a blind eye to the problem. There’s no way to report scams, and if you attempt to leave reviews on scam listings they’ll be rejected.

octacat2• 3 years ago

don’t have the workforce to go through all these fake listings

Oh, so maybe not firing workforce is a good idea? So, someone could go and check the listings of SSDs (very common scam). And what's about less obvious fakes? Like an SD card with a different speed after some point?

kgbcia• 3 years ago

Way to many scams on Amazon. I was looking for a cellphone and decided to walk into a store than buy some Chinese phone with spyware.

simonblack• 3 years ago

Luckily the prices quoted for these SSDs are ridiculously low. "When it sounds too good to be true, it is."

What would be far more dangerous is if the prices quoted were close enough to real prices to be credible, but low enough to be attractive.

Example: Not $70 for 16 TB, but $1500 (say) for 16TB, which is roughly half-price.

With Amazon, I generally buy readily-available branded items for a lower than usual price. Or else I buy that item from a known and trusted supplier.

Nifty3929• 3 years ago

Would we be willing to pay a lot more money for a storefront that curates their vendors and vendors products?

Some of us would, but empirical evidence suggests that most won’t.

This is the function that traditional specialty retailers like appliance stores and such used to do well. But most are forced to compete only on price now because otherwise people walk in, talk to an educated salesperson, touch and feel the item, find the one they want, and then buy it from the lowest priced competitor.

If you want some level of curation and accountability for your SSDs, try Best Buy.

theshrike79• 3 years ago

Amazon is 100% just a front-end for AliExpress drop-shippers nowadays.

Don't buy anything unless it's an "official" store for a brand, even the "fulfilled by Amazon" tag doesn't mean crap anymore.

joaofiliperocha• 3 years ago

no shit Sherlock ...

fmajid• 3 years ago

It's long past time KYC (Know Your Customer) laws were passed on marketplaces like Amazon, with liability. If the financial industry can deal with it, so can they.

throwaway67743• 3 years ago

Since Amazon won't actually bother dealing with any of the counterfeit products they encourage selling, it seems like the only solution is to buy en-mass and return repeatedly (since its a fake item, it's at their cost in most parts of the world)

kugutsumen• 3 years ago

ChatGPT to the rescue

Urgent Request for Action on Fraudulent Products on Amazon

Dear Jeff Bezos,

I am writing to express my concern about the increasing prevalence of scams and fraudulent items being sold on Amazon. It appears that these vendors have been operating for some time without any consequences and have consistently deceived customers with recycled reviews.

As a consumer, I am deeply troubled by this lack of action from Amazon. Not only does this violate consumer protection laws, but it also undermines the trust and confidence that customers have in your platform. This issue is not just limited to the 16TB SSD incident, as other examples such as the ultrasonic cleaning product that was actually a vibrating motor have been reported as well.

I understand the difficulties in policing a platform of this size, but I believe that it is imperative for Amazon to take more decisive steps to eliminate these scams and protect the interests of its customers. The comments of other customers reflect a similar sentiment, with some even opting to stop purchasing important items from Amazon due to this issue.

I hope that you will take the necessary steps to address this problem and ensure that Amazon remains a trusted and reliable platform for customers.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

10TB portable SSDs on Amazon UK are scams

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