Fake micro SD cards from China (?) with nonsense brands swamp Amazon

Hardware and technical stuff
#1

Oh boy I’m doing to be so disappointed when the 1TB microsd I ordered from Amazon for $20 isn’t genuine and can’t hold a few mb

The brand is “flash drive” haha

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Either all these have 3-4 stars with no written reviews for a handful or have low-no star reviews with people complaining about data loss or not holding the advertiser capacity.

Get these things are “recommended by Amazon” or Amazon’s choice …but never shipped and fulfilled by Amazon though.

Brands like: ALINSEN, GIGASTONE, KOOTION, MORIC, KEXIN, NETAC, YUMOKAS, SUPERDUODUO and the FLASH DRIVE one I saw for $20 that’s no longer listed today but you get the Amazon dogs page not found

I guess they scam money successfully? Some of these listings have been up for years—I guess Amazon doesn’t care about their reputation

#2
#3

There’s definitely a problem in certain categories of goods on Amazon (see also: power adaptors for nintendo products, pool filters, and refrigerator water filters, all of which I’ve gotten obvious counterfeits).

To their credit, I’ve never had any problem getting an instant refund from Amazon. Probably helps to have Prime, though.

#4

Apple products I’m leery of - no personally bad experience, but for a recent example I wanted to pick up some AirPod Pro during Prime day and they were $160 on Amazon - but many reviews were saying they arrived opened and clearly used/refurbished and while the Amazon chat person I spoke with assured me they would be new, I found them for $10 more on Best Buy and I felt a lot more confident buying from there. They turned out to not only be perfect/brand new but arrived immediately the next day with free shipping from Best Buy.

Amazon hasn’t been impressing me lately. Between shady third-party markets disguised as Amazon fullfilment to “free 2 day shipping with Prime membership” being more like “3-5 days” for the last few years.

#5

Amazon is acting mostly as an aggregator and platform, and brings together a truly staggering variety of products and vendors that we otherwise would not have easy access to, or maybe even any access. The flip side is that they are bringing together a truly staggering variety of products and vendors. QA in that circumstance seems, um, hard. And yeah, it’s an open question whether they care that much. It’s probably a lot cheaper to just issue refunds no questions asked than it is to actually police the marketplace.

#6

There is basically only one brand of SD card I will buy on Amazon, and that is SanDisk. There are higher end ones like Patriot, but for safety and pricepoint SanDisk delivers. Not taking any chances with others.

#7

Same, high-end SanDisk cards direct from Amazon. Never had any issues with those.

#8

Honestly, I am really being turned off of buying any electronics from amazon.

The chore that it is to sift through all of the knock off products, read reviews etc, it is a joke. I am wasting time verifying if a product is genuine.

I fucking hate using amazon sometimes. For any sort of electronic accessory, it is a complete joke, it is the wild west.

Well, at least my SAMdisk usb drives I ordered worked. Man, I was off my game that day with the reading comprehension.

Fucking useless website.

#9

I use Fakespot plug in to find out if products have fake reviews on Amazon, that helps a lot.

#10

Sure, but that still requires all of the searching/hunting around.

I really wish that Amazon had a filter that would allow search results to only display shipped by/sold by amazon

Some of the biggest worries come from seeing a legitimate listing, but a not so clear 3rd party seller as the top option, and getting a product that does not match the listing.

It is just such a hassle to buy things on amazon now, I gotta install addons?

Amazon has slowly turned into a grey market shop, and it stinks.

#11

TeamGroup, Patriot and Silicon Power are the cheapest of the name brands. SanDisk, Lexar and Samsung cost more.

#12

Prime qualified items are they aren’t they?

#13

No, prime qualified just means it ships out of an Amazon warehouse.

It does not mean that they are sold by amazon.

#14

I suspect the task of filtering is not an easy one, nor a cheap one. Given the choice of paying more for (maybe) a more reliable buying experience, or paying less and rolling the dice, how many consumers are going to opt for the latter? Most, I bet. And from Amazon’s point of view, deciding on criteria for reliability and quality of products gets them into a quagmire. Given the realities of global manufacturing, there is the definite possibility, even likelihood, that any attempt to screen these products will end up looking like it is racially motivated or at the very least anti-Chinese. And given how all over the place these products end up being, in terms of end-user satisfaction, I’m not sure there is a clear metric to be found.

I’m not at all diminishing the scope of the problem, or implying that it’s ok, but I do think solving it is not easy.

#15

They could start by cleaning up their reviews and making it easy to report bad sellers. I left a review for something and mentioned that the seller (who was also the manufacturer) wanted to pay me for a review. They removed my review and the Amazon support chatbot didn’t seem to care.

#16

They do…

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#17

Well, solving it would be super easy if they just had the ability for you to filter to only shipped from/sold by amazon.

They have tons of metadata on products, and you can filter with crazy granularity on most products, but for some reason they don’t allow you to filter by seller.

I think they don’t do this, because it would severely limit search results

#18

They don’t.

For some products sure, maybe, but it is in no way universal

I just searched SD card, and I do not see that prompt at all.

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No option.

#19

That is not always an option available. For instance, I just did a search for “chocolate” and I could not limit it to only Amazon as a seller.

#20

You have to drill down into a category, but I took that screenshot less than 2 minutes ago.

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