I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off. This was a slow creep for awhile, but now the problem has grown exponentially. Amazon is what Canal Street was in the 90s - somewhere to buy fakes, stolen goods, and electronics that might catch fire.
Amazon has no interest in fixing this problem, because they know that well over half their "inventory" is now from knockoffs, IP theft and/or bait-and-switch scams. it's almost impossible to find items there anymore that are not fake, whether it's re-packaged hard drives or "pyrex" bowls that explode in the microwave.
One way to look at this, and the way I think Amazon must look at it, is that it's not any worse than a third world night market. The attitude of vendors in, e.g. Phnom Penh or Mexico City markets is that the very fact that stupid Americans think they're going to get "real" goods just proves how much they deserve to be scammed. Amazon is actually helping baffled Americans to finally understand what the third world has always known - unboxing is going to be disappointing. Everything you think is affordable is probably fake, and you can't trust the packaging. Only the rich get actual brand products. As America degrades, people will start to get more savvy and more cynical about this, but right now it's still a newish phenomenon and people are shocked, shocked! to find out the kids toys they bought are full of toxic chemicals that we ourselves shipped overseas for burial or "recycling".
What start to really annoy me is how it as become almost impossible to buy quality product anymore. And the issue is not even limited to Amazon.
Recently, at work, we had to make a bunch of RJ45 cables. So we bought some cable, terminals and a crimper and a tester. The crimper was so horrible, we add to cut and re-crimp new terminals 2-4 times before having a working cable. So we said fuck it, lets go buy another one. Turn out, all the shop around us had only cheap ones in store (<30€), we tried a few and had the same issue. To find a crimper that wasn't complete shit, we had to find a specialist store on the internet and it was retailing for more than a hundred euros.
And I keep stumbling upon the same issue when I want to buy tools, electronics and sports equipments: You only have a choice between very cheap stuff that will clearly not do the job or won't do it for long, or very expensive (sometimes overpriced) high-end equipment. There is almost no middle ground, no places for product who are not top notch quality with the latest technology, but will do a solid job if you don't need the latest and greatest. There is the second hand market, but it is a hit a miss, and not a reliable supplier either.
And if there is those "middle-ground" product, you often only find them in limited quantity in specialized store, often only on the internet.
Our economy seems really good at producing cheap garbage that's hardly worth even their low prices, expensive shit that actually works (expensive in part because the cheap garbage eats into its economy of scale by taking market share), and, for some product categories, super expensive shit that exists for the sake of being expensive (as in, conspicuous consumption).
Absent is any ground between cheap garbage and expensive shit that actually works. Some products are in that middle-ground price range, but they're actually cheap garbage that's been marked up to rip you off.
This seems to have increased over time, especially as factories became better able to produce goods that use barely enough material to work at all, without a too-high defect rate. I wonder sometimes how much inflation this is masking—goods stay the same price or even get somewhat cheaper, but are significantly worse than before.
> I wonder sometimes how much inflation this is masking
I've wondered this too. So many electronics or appliances from the 1970s are still working (I own some). Good luck finding that quality today. In effect, companies were smart enough to realize they don't have to bring costs down, they can just screw you on longevity and you'll have to come crawling back in a year or two. In effect, things are "cheaper" on the surface but more expensive over time. Not to mention the effect this has on landfills and pollution. It takes just as much gas to ship a 1970s stove as a 2020 one, but the 1970s one is still working and the 2020 one is replaced in three years.
IMO, this is driven by the middle class learning to optimize their spending. No more spending middle prices on mid-tier products when you can buy cheap garbage for things you don't care about in order to save up for the top shelf on the things you do. Suddenly, mid-price mid-quality items are unavailable at any price.
That's interesting, I've been renovating my home for the past two years and have had the exact opposite experience: I've been quite happy with my cheap pipe bender, cheap angle grinder, cheap hex crimper, cheap multipipe pliers as well as store brand consumables like hybrid glue, tape, drill bits and whatnot. For electrical work I do buy Knipex most of the time and for tools that get used heavily it's usually Bosch, plus I'm never going near cheap paint again, so I do see the advantage of trustworthy brands, but it's nice to know that for things that'll only see occasional use, you can get something okay-ish for a great price. Or for something completely different, I used to dabble in brewing, and all of the small commercial brewers I know are really happy with their bottom price Chinese fermentation tanks.
For some time now, for buying home improvement tools, I have followed the heuristic “buy the cheap one, then once it breaks, buy the expensive high-quality one.” I find that this helps make sure I don’t waste money on something I will only use once or twice.
There is likely a difference depending on the tool. My track saw is going to be Makita or similar, but my abrasive cutoff saw can be a Harbor Freight special.
I do the exact same thing (buy the cheaper versions most of the time).
My dad was in the trades and he bought "good stuff" for his actual trade, but also bought 'affordable' stuff he needed around the house.
The idea is that if you are using a tool every day, and they break on the job it is time, money, embarrassment. How do you tell a customer the cheap saw just broke and you need to get a new one?
The "pro" stuff costs a LOT more, it will outlast if used on a regular basis, but most home owners will not reach those limits.
Tools/electronics can easily be bought from reputable providers: eu.mouser.com,
tme.eu, uk.farnell.com, digikey.com, etc.. You can get a decent ratchet rj-45 crimp tool at around 40€ - like "Knipex 975110".
I suspect "middle ground" had a race to the bottom on price. I'm thinking for example of Sears "Craftsman" brand. Now that there are all these other big-box stores like Blowe's, Home Despot, they each have to have their own "house brand" that should have been the "middle ground" as well but, as I see it, have moved to lower and lower priced Chinese products.
I think what we're seeing is a nice metaphor for manufacturing in the 1st world in general.
Given the infamous bathtub curve and my personal desire to fix and maintain my tools, getting a cheaper one might be proper annoying. Saying that off-shore T15 soldering irons were a top notch quality often times.
However, for certain types of tools/devices - e.g. multimeter, SMPS (even wall charges) I'd not touch totally no brand. An example of middle ground multimeters: brymen - they are more expensive than UNI-T, better than Fluke price/feature wise and very solidly built. SMPS - meanwell: proper capacitors, creep distance, real copper transformers. Hand tools - (screwdrivers, spanners) - Wera.
It gets harder with heavier duty tools that have to do the metal (like really) - that leaves prosumer+ stuff only - Makita, DeWalt - or straight to the pro: Hilti, Fein.
No one seems to care about quality. It's all about price. In the "Cheap, fast, quality triangle - pick 2" society has moved hard towards cheap, fast. Companies don't even want to cater to anything else.
Perhaps that’s because quality is hard to measure in terms of numbers.
What gets measured gets optimized. And price is the easiest to measure.
Everything else is murky to measure, and often delayed as well (like how long a tool lasts, or what that food will do to your health, or what the company will do with your data once you’ve used their app for a year or two).
And on Amazon, what gets measured is impressions and ratings. Hence, as a seller, you get wiped out of you do not invest time and money into gaming the ratings. Honesty and quality not only does not pay, it also gets proactively penalized.
The “evil” here truly is Amazon, for they, in their walled garden, really do control what gets measured. They could prevent or penalize fake reviews. But they chose not to do so.
Actually, I wonder if Amazon could be sued by the FTC precisely because of this behavior. They are profiting from false advertising, namely false testimonials. If you did this on your own web shop, you’d certainly get sued.
You should try one of these P-38 can openers they use in the army [1]. A bit challenging to get the hang of, but they'll last the rest of your life and inexpensive to boot.
I noticed this too. I searched for a couple of xiaomi products on amazon but all it threw up were dubious knock offs.
Bizarrely if you search by price from highest to lowest looking for quality all you get is cheap looking products with no reviews that cost 150x the price of products with actual reviews for no discernible reason.
You need to use professional tools to get a professional result when precision counts. My last coax prep tool cost over a hundred bucks. It works only with one type of coax. Yet every time with professional tools the cable comes out perfect with as much waterproofing as one can get.
The Amazon bullshit tools I bought just made a mess.
Now, all the cheap Amazon wrenches and stuff? I leave em all over!
Check out Raptor Supplies. In general, look at B2B MRO distribution-scope suppliers. Be prepared to pay commensurately, or go low-tier and apply the heuristic already mentioned in this discussion: first time around, buy low-tier; when it breaks in an unfixable way, go B2B tier.
I personally go straight to B2B for anything safety-related like my PPE.
Last summer I bought a new Nikon DSLR from Amazon. Not the type of item where I thought they'd substitute scam items!
But when the box arrived, it was an opened box with an old used and abused Nikon DSLR, parts even missing! Wow.
At least the return was painless so I guess there's that.
I try hard to avoid Amazon now. I prioritize a locally owned store if possible, second option is a reputable specialty web store that specializes in the kind of item I want. Third option is the local big box chain stores, at least I can see what I'm getting.
Mostly I use Amazon only for books these days since I figure it'll be difficult to substitute a scam item for those. I hope.
> I use Amazon only for books these days since I figure it'll be difficult to substitute a scam item for those
Unfortunately you're wrong, it's a huge problem for books as well. No Starch Press already left Amazon because it was the only way to prevent fakes being sent out to customers buying the genuine book. Fakes including ones where the back cover wasn't printed or everything was printed black & white, low-quality paper etc.
As Amazon just mixes fake & genuine products because they say the same thing on the package it's impossible for both sellers and buyers to know what they'll get. You get what the person handling the package will draw next from the pile.
Sorry, books too. Last time I bought a book from amazon I ordered Milan Kundera’s Identity. On Amazon it looked like a Harper Perennial paperback, the same style, publisher and cover art as all his other books I have. What I received in the mail looked like a print-on-demand cheapo from Kinkos. The text was blurry and looked like it was from a dot matrix, the cover looked nothing the same. I couldn’t believe it. Of course I sent it back, and then I called a real book store and asked them to order it for me. To think, I used to dismissively say ‘no thanks’ when a shop didn’t have something I want in stock but offered to order it.
> I prioritize a locally owned store if possible, second option is a reputable specialty web store that specializes in the kind of item I want.
Serious question, how do you find reputable specialty web stores nowadays? (for items which are not your professional specialty, i.e. when you don't have direct knowledge of the market or trusted contacts that can recommend those for you). Trying to google for items of medium quality, you only get shady reseller shops that are as bad as Amazon third-party market, or worse.
Your local bougie salon - high-quality body products (bodywash, hairspray, etc)
Bed Bath and Beyond - bedding and bath products
Design within Reach - furniture
Ubiquiti - wireless APs, PoE switches, and the nicest Ethernet cables I've ever used
ProtectLi - firewalls
Crowdsupply - miscellaneous gadgets for supernerds
--
Best way to find a good quality product is to go to the hobbyist subreddit/community for said product and see what vendor people use. Also, r/BuyItForLife.
> What sort of issues? Security ones? That basically came down to a malicious engineer compromising their own infrastructure and then whistleblowing.
I don't know exactly. I believe they were trying to force cloud-signon for even locally managed devices, and since then I think I've picked up "used to be great" complaints that their quality and support is slipping (like they off-shored their engineering teams or something).
They're kinda pushing for that (like every other tech business, sadly - and I get it, everyone wants to have that sweet subscription model cash flows), but you still have an option to run a local controller without any cloud nonsense, just have to click some small link beneath some form.
If you get their Payboo card you don't have to pay tax. Took me like 2 minutes to sign up. They just closed the program but are re-opening it in January.
Opening a line of revolving credit, with a 29.99% interest rate, and a promise of cash back rewards that match the tax you pay (rewards which you technically are supposed to pay income tax on) isn't exactly the same as no sales tax. As as for "re-opening" the program, we'll see what they actually have for a new program when it is announced.
The interest rate doesn’t matter if you use the card as cash/debit by paying it off every month. And credit card rewards are not taxable because they are considered rebates by the IRS.
Yeah the prices are absolutely insane lmao. I've had good luck with CB2 and West Elm for more affordable but still decent furniture. But I'd get a flagship lounge chair from DWR
I agree the name is pretty terrible for a mass-market company because everybody associates it with price, but I believe the origin was due to the fact that they offered direct sales of products that were previously only available "to the trade" (aka professional designers/decorators).
Honestly, reddit. I moved to Berlin last year and wanted to buy some coffee making equipment. This was still the height of the pandemic, before vaccines were readily available here. So I hit up the local subreddits. And now I have a small list of sites where I can buy both good equipment as well as some great coffee. Of course now I can also go in person if I want to.
Biblio.com is what Amazon originally was — a database of books for sale by marketplace sellers — but specializes in human support of booksellers in exchange for a sales commission on proceeds from buyers, rather than in "become the Walmart of flea markets" like Amazon retail.
This has had a significant impact on my buying habits as well. For luxury items, I tend to order them from a large department store chain, which is pricey, but more predictable quality, and for cheap knock offs, I just go to the source and get them from AliExpress for 1/3 the price they are on Amazon. Nowadays, you see almost the exact same stuff there without some rando brand I've never heard of attached to it.
I intentionally bought a higher end, brand name, cable modem from Best Buy. It stopped working within 48h. Sadly the quality drop isn't limited to counterfeits, or big box retailers are selling them too.
Yeah, I don't mean that being name-brand ensures quality, but buying from a big-box or department store at least ensures that you're getting the thing you order. The whole point of brands from a consumer perspective is that they build a reputation on that brand, and you can choose to purchase things in the future based on past experience with the brand. Amazon breaks that because of the counterfeit and no-name-brand stuff.
I haven't had any scams, and I've done maybe 100 orders from there. I've had some things that are crap, and not worth the effort of returning, but that's significantly true with Amazon too. I originally started using them for ordering electronic parts, and eventually also started getting household goods there. Things do often take a few weeks to arrive though.
> Amazon has no interest in fixing this problem, because they know that well over half their "inventory" is now from knockoffs, IP theft and/or bait-and-switch scams.
That sounds very much like they'd have an interest in fixing the problem. Short-sightedness does not appear to be one of Amazons issues.
In the olden days, the seller was prominently listed in every Amazon listing, and you could click on a seller and browse their entire inventory along with reviews. AFAIK you can't do that anymore. They make it intentionally opaque who is actually selling or shipping.
Seller reviews are manipulated anyway. I once left a bad review of a seller regularly spamming me about my purchase months after I made it, and within a couple days (maybe faster) it was removed, replaced with someone else's review praising them for what I was complaining about. I have no trust in any ratings on Amazon, products or sellers.
I'd like to believe that all these bad practices will eventually result in their reputation going down and then losing significant market share.
However, I'm afraid our discussion here is far removed from the average consumer. I bet that the merchant info was made harder to find because so few people ever clicked it.
For most products I now prefer other sources where possible. However, the convenience still drives me there for many purchases. At the same time it anecdotally feels like I see more Amazon trucks come by my neighborhood. I'm sure most people fall into a spaces where they don't care enough and it's just too convenient to so in Amazon. Their great shipping and return logistics also make up for a lot. Their deliveries are so much faster and reliable than most competitors. I can order from a great vendor, but if they ship via FedEx it will take forever to get here and frequently the delivery date just changes to "pending" for weeks. This had never hairnet with Amazon. It might be fake, but I know when I get it and when it's ten stops away. If it's crap, I can drop it off without envelope or box next time I buy my groceries at Jeff's/Whole Foods.
It's shitty and maybe even offensive but so convenient.
Any company that is sufficiently large can (and should) be scrutinized, but at Amazon scale, arguments can easily be cherry picked to make whatever outcome you decided to be the truth look like the truth.
I could for example bring forth the times some merchant attempted to talk me out of filing a complaint, because, apparently those have very real implications very quickly, with fines and restrictions being imposed by Amazon, which makes a lot of sense to me, considering Amazon is basically letting those vendors play with their "credit score" of trust.
But alas, pretending that I know this to be more than anecdotal evidence, I will not.
I think the things I raised are problems independent of scale. Amazon deemphasizes the merchant and wants to own the shopper relationship, then turned around and tried to claim that they're not liable for the goods they sell.
Amazon's own retail operations ("sold and shipped by Amazon.com") are simply a mechanism to keep people paying for recurring Amazon Prime subscriptions. Retail profit margins are 2% to 4%, and Amazon has expanded beyond it to businesses with much higher profit margins such as AWS, media (music/tv/movies), logistics, and as a platform for other sellers.
Amazon's market cap is $1.7T, and Walmart's is $391B. And Walmart's retail business is much larger than Amazon's. Compared to Amazon's non retail businesses, Amazon's retail business is worth only as much as it keeps people subscribed to Amazon prime.
Amazon chose to get deep into bed with China. This is part and parcel of favoring the Chinese vendors that sell on your platform. Just be glad there haven't been any reports of toys painted with lead (yet).
I had predicted a while ago that the end goal for Amazon's retail division will be to sell only Amazon's own goods and services, and I still stand by it. We may not see it for a long time, but let's face it Amazon isn't what it is today because it sells cheap Chinese knockoffs. The real money is in grocery delivery, pharmacy, Prime Video, Kindle, Audible, Fire Tablets, the Echo ecosystem, Ring. They could even start a courier service on the back of their global logistics empire and compete with FedEx/UPS.
This is an interesting and possibly prescient take. They could announce a crackdown tomorrow on all fake sellers and basically sell 2/3rds of the appliances in America themselves overnight. OTOH then they'd be on the hook for the reliability of their products. And that's not been their methodology so far (excluding acquisitions like Whole Foods and Ring). But it's interesting..
10 to 5 years ago a bought a lot from Amazon, I had packages in flight most of the time. Today it is close to nil.
It has been replaced by specialized domestic shops: electronics, t-shirts, pants, lamps, carpets, bike parts, health items, food, etc. Many shops are small and located "in the sticks".
5 years ago I thought Amazon would kill them. Today it's Amazon that's gone from my shopping.
Also at least in germany, they teamed up with scam comparison sites (they present their "winners" on amazon.de and get a reduced affiliate fee). The kind of sites claiming to do tests and reviews but in the end just comparing the stats the chinese manufacturer puts into the description. Its really frustating to find anything of value, and the search engine gets dumber and dumber every week it seems as well.
I was recently looking for some Goodyear welt boots and a amazon suggestion popped up in the search feed. I did click it to see what they looked like but right away though no way I would buy a nice boot from Amazon I doubt they would actually be Goodyear welt boots. This should concern amazon. If I am afraid to buy something then they are losing money. You would think they would want to bolster public trust in them.
I love Goodyear welt boots. I tend to only buy at Nordstrom anniversary sales, where boots such as 1000 Mile Wolverine or Redwing are often 30%+ off. I’m sure there’s cheaper deals for same brands, but the return policy makes it worth it in rare event of a defect. Now I just need to find a new cobbler—-mine closed shop during pandemic.
I’d add the word “yet” to the end of this statement. Many people I know have started to buy from online places like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Newegg, and B&H Photo when possible, and only use Amazon in a time crunch or when the product can’t be found in stock.
I would encourage everyone who is frustrated by this Amazon problem to not only do the same, but also to encourage your friends to do so as well..
>I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off.
It's more out of inconvenience than ethics. You don't stop buying off of Amazon because scammers are selling on it, you stop buying off Amazon because you become the victim of knockoff scams.
As in, the scammers could be scamming everyone but you but you'd still use it.
I haven't given up on Amazon by any stretch, but I have started checking manufacturer's web sites for things I had previously purchased on Amazon. I've gone so far as to start ordering some of the cheaper stuff from Walmart. Figure if it's going to be cheap stuff, it might as well be curated cheap stuff.
Funny enough, ebooks is probably where I've stayed the most solidly on Amazon.
I gave up on Amazon some time ago and just use aliexpress now. Might as well remove some of the middle men and amazon is basically "everything made in china" anyhow.
I've been burned a few times with amazon sending me made in china knockoffs, or sending me things via "prime" that take as long as aliexpress.
I bought fake Scotch-Brite sponges, fake Brawny paper towels and Gildan t-shirts that bled like crazy and faded after one wash. I now refuse shop at Amazon.
Scamazon, Wak-Mart, and Turget likely facilitate the sale of shoddy goods because consumers need to repurchase them when they break and overall that makes them higher profits. I've had to buy room fans almost every year because that's really the only local option I have now at big box stores near me, The smaller shops are all closed now.
This is why we can't allow the concept of mom-and-pop shops to die off... Quality of consumer goods should always outrank price in terms of importance, that's also possibly why many of the largest outlets are resorting to enabling fake and misleading reviews.
Yeah, the problem is Mom-and-pop shops just can't survive on the customers who are willing to spend extra to make sure they get a quality product. It's not just that there aren't enough people in this country who're willing to pay extra... it's that you can't even get those quality products anymore. Stuff made ten years ago in every category from mattresses to washing machines is more durable and will last longer than stuff made today. A mom & pop shop has to find and source stuff that's not garbage, and hope people are willing to shell out extra for it, but where can they even get the inventory? Most of the quality manufacturers have been put out of business by the tidal wave of Chinese-made garbage, and the few that haven't still source most of their parts from China, which makes them less reliable than they were even a few years ago.
What mom and pop shops are you going to? Seriously, if you peruse Aliexpress for a bit you will see that every “local” store has all the same junk. It’s not like John Mitchell from Wilmington Wisconsin is doing anything other than sourcing from the same wholesalers.
I mean, that's kind of what I'm saying. It's hard for local stores to find consumer goods that aren't junk quality. Portland, Oregon where I live does have one of the better local economies for well sourced / locally produced stuff, e.g. we still have glass manufacturers, make a lot of shoes, and anything made out of wood, pretty much all your furnishings and most of your food you can buy from local makers and growers. And there are small shops that are still sort of affordable where you can get quality stuff. But if you want to buy a can opener, yeah, you can either go spend $100 at William Sonoma for one made out of titanium, or go buy one at Kroger that'll break in a day. Shit outta luck.
[Edit] I feel like here's a good place to sing the praises of my made-in-America, wool and cotton non-offgassing mattress. https://joybeds.com ...I think I was order #700 or something, and I feel like they're not getting the love they deserve. I'm in no way associated with this company but talking about finding quality goods and buying locally, it was really hard to even find this company, and felt like I was taking a big risk buying it online from a manufacturer with so few sales. We need more of this.
Regarding your last remark, and circling back to the main article: now the review market and culture is broken as well. Even when legitimate companies come on line, it's difficult to know about them because they don't get reviewed, and if they do, you never know if there's some financial conflict of interest, or if the reviews are legitimate, or what. If they do get reviewed, there's no follow-through to see if quality has improved or declined, etc.
It's remarkable how, when information is so much more accessible, it's become useless by deception and fraud.
It's especially sad in that it affects companies trying to establish a foothold by providing good business.
This, exactly. The massive flood of fake online reviews, not to mention the broken weighting systems that enhance the effect by grading products on a curve, has created a situation that's stacked against legitimate businesses. Not only are scammers filling their own products with fake positive reviews, they're also spamming real businesses with negative ones.
One of the weirdest things that happened to me this year: I received a book from Amazon I hadn't ordered. It was addressed to me at my house, apparently printed off an Amazon press in Poland, but listed by a "company" in Vietnam. It was called "Daily Business Plan" or something, with a generic stock photo on the cover. Inside, every page was the same - blank except for lined horizontal rules and the days of the week, Monday through Sunday. There were no dates, no year, no page numbers. No bibliographic page. I let Amazon know about it. I can only assume that the seller was trying some kind of scam to write "verified buyer" reviews for themselves...
I shop at Target online regularly. I don’t see very many products being sold by 3rd party sellers. If I did start seeing them, I would slowly move on to another online merchant like I did with Amazon.
This is a reason I invested heavily in Target. They seem to have a much better formula for vetting and regulating third party sellers, and they've invested a lot in building up a marketplace that's somewhat more trustworthy.
It is unfortunate that Target even got into the 3rd party retailer game, as customers are now at risk of Target starting to commingle inventory like Amazon.
But at least Target and Walmart allow you to filter search results for items sold only by Target and Walmart, hopefully restricting to items sourced directly by Target and Walmart.
It would not matter, but Amazon used to advertise that they commingle, so I know they do, whereas I do not know for sure if Walmart and Target do or do not.
Lasko fans are the way to go. I have one of their utility fans that is good for continuous duty, it's lasted 10 years and shows no signs of quitting. I got mine on amazon but I've seen them in hardware stores too.
Amazon has no interest in fixing this problem, because they know that well over half their "inventory" is now from knockoffs, IP theft and/or bait-and-switch scams. it's almost impossible to find items there anymore that are not fake, whether it's re-packaged hard drives or "pyrex" bowls that explode in the microwave.
One way to look at this, and the way I think Amazon must look at it, is that it's not any worse than a third world night market. The attitude of vendors in, e.g. Phnom Penh or Mexico City markets is that the very fact that stupid Americans think they're going to get "real" goods just proves how much they deserve to be scammed. Amazon is actually helping baffled Americans to finally understand what the third world has always known - unboxing is going to be disappointing. Everything you think is affordable is probably fake, and you can't trust the packaging. Only the rich get actual brand products. As America degrades, people will start to get more savvy and more cynical about this, but right now it's still a newish phenomenon and people are shocked, shocked! to find out the kids toys they bought are full of toxic chemicals that we ourselves shipped overseas for burial or "recycling".