1-year return policy, fast customer support, and no tax! I love them.

To be fair, all the vendors I listed do free returns.

I&#x27;m lazy and dumb it&#x27;s true, but I like ordering off of Amazon for most things. I just don&#x27;t really care about the 99% of things I am forced to buy in order to live a somewhat comfortable existence. The most important thing I optimize for is own time, and for that, Amazon is great.That said, if you care about quality&#x2F;stuff you buy a lot more than I do, Amazon is a pretty terrible place to shop most of the time. I&#x27;ve encountered this when I want to buy nice stuff, for example a nice and expensive wooden desk. Seems like that&#x27;s pretty impossible to do on Amazon, as cheap garbage seems to be the name of the game.

Free returns. The sellers eat that. It&#x27;s dumb and lazy buyers buying junk and not holding them accountable for the

The B&amp;H PayBoo card gives you a discount on their store equivalent to your state&#x27;s tax. It&#x27;s saved me thousands.

&gt; B&amp;H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there&#x27;s no tax with their card.Wait, explain this for me?

True. B&amp;H is sort of unusual in this regards, but from what I hear their employees are treated well, and the lack of tax is well worth it!

Woah, I did not know B&amp;H was an orthodox institution! That&#x27;s quite neat.

I respect people&#x27;s religions but adherence to constraints like these -- to the extent that the automatons cannot even work -- are silly.

It&#x27;s a bit strange because if you go to actual Israel, there are ways around Shabbat rules that align with the Torah&#x2F;Talmud. For example, on Shabbat, there is an elevator that stops at every floor (so no one has to push the button).It&#x27;s also my understanding that it&#x27;s kosher for gentiles to perform actions outside of the constraints of the rules of Judaism, like turning on&#x2F;off fans on behalf of those respecting the rules of the sabbath.

A friend of mine worked with some Plymouth Brethren who wouldn&#x27;t use computers, but had a stationery company. They employed someone else to build them a website and run it, then print out the orders and hand them over. I&#x27;ve not heard of a religious order that didn&#x27;t even want to allow people outside the order to &quot;break&quot; the rules. Although perhaps it&#x27;s something about money ending up in their bank account?

I stumbled upon an unusual policy when trying to order from B&amp;H the first time. They are not open for business on Shabbat (NYC local time), and this includes their online checkout!I could fill up my cart, but had to come back later to do my purchase.

Regarding headphones.com, I just ordered a pair of HD6xx headphones off drop.com and it was an amazing experience as well.

Indeed! Design Within Reach and AllModern are also quite good for that mid-century modern aesthetic.

Nope. All my Room &amp; Board furniture bought 10 years ago turned out to be duds, as I reviewed on Yelp 3 years ago:Don&#x27;t be fooled by the glitzy showrooms and &quot;made in America&quot; promises of quality, this chain sells essentially disposable furniture. When we were expecting our first child 7 years ago, we moved from an apartment to a single-family home. We wanted to also upgrade from IKEA and equivalent to proper furniture. I bought some heirloom pieces from Thos. Moser (a dining table, two end-chairs, a coffee table, a rocking chair and two foot stools) but they are quite expensive, and we got many other pieces from Room and Board: a queen bed, nightstands, two dressers, six Thatcher dining chairs, Pisa leaning bookshelves, side tables and a coffee table with rounded angles). Unfortunately after 7 years the furniture turned out to be much less durable than I expected. The finish on the coffee table is worn and ugly, the bed required extensive work even though we only use a mattress, no boxsprings, and the spokes on the Thatcher chairs are coming unglued. A proper Windsor chair like the Thatcher should have &quot;through-holed and wedged&quot; construction that ensures the spokes don&#x27;t move. The Moser chairs have that, of course, and in retrospect I deeply regret cheaping out. I could have bought 2 buy-it-for-life Moser chairs for the price of the 6 Thatcher chairs that are now essentially kindling. To add insult to injury, Room and Board refuses to stand by their product and are refusing to repair them. In the Bay Area, we&#x27;ve had good luck with Hoot Judkins furniture, which are better quality for the price (not all though, they have a wide range that goes from meh to Amish-grade).

If you’re shopping for furniture I’ve found Room &amp; Board to be head and shoulders above the rest, in both quality and customer care. No questions asked free returns are a godsend.

&gt; [...] feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you.Has that become any better?

&gt; Let&#x27;s hope they don&#x27;t go the marketplace route while chasing growth.I&#x27;m already hearing complaints about how B&amp;H &quot;isn&#x27;t what they used to be&quot; because they&#x27;re selling much more than their original scope of audio visual equipment.

&gt; B&amp;H has been a godsend for techLet&#x27;s hope they don&#x27;t go the marketplace route while chasing growth. Shopping on Amazon feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you.

+1 for Crutchfield, a great price match&#x2F;protection policy, and support that is responsive yet not overbearingly so.I would also add rtings.com; they do a great job of documenting their process and the results themselves from their reviews with incredible detail.

&gt;&gt; AliexpressI used to buy a lot of cheap things on there, then something interesting started happening. Every time I made a purchase on there, literally a few weeks later, I would start getting fraudulent charges on my card. Thank god, my bank would call and ask, &quot;Are you in Paris France right now? Someone just tried to purchase 3,000 euros worth of clothing on your card.&quot;I haven&#x27;t bought anything on there for about 5 years now and remarkably as soon as I stopped buying stuff off of their site, I have yet to have my cc number end up on some carders market and deal with getting a new credit card.I also did some research and found out many, many, many people have had the same issues with bad charges showing up on their card after making purchases on that site.

I don&#x27;t know how this can be solved with regulation though. What is &quot;superior&quot; about the better product? Tolerances? Documentation? Customer service? The ineffable reflection of the divine? (...) As soon as you put a target on any of those measures Goodhart&#x27;s law rears its ugly head. This strategy is like trying to grab a greased ball bearing with a pair of tweezers.The most efficient way for the customer to compare the relative value of two products is for the quality to be factored into the price exactly, with all externalities realized up front. But how to design such a scheme that isn&#x27;t instantly gamed into oblivion is unclear to me.It&#x27;s like the value we&#x27;re looking for is the depth of it&#x27;s &quot;truth&quot;, if you grant me poetic license to use that phasing, but that definition is not specific enough to be actionable.

That does not seem a fair characterization of AliExpress, which does not commingle inventory, does not allow review hijacking, and where, in my experience, sellers usually are quite accommodating about settling disputes on reasonable terms.

Exactly right. Watching Ebay and Amazon converge on being &quot;Aliexpress&quot; has really made me sad. I understand the folks who are measuring themselves by how effectively they promise quality and deliver crap to their customers. I understand their goal is maximum profit as their best score. And I understand that enough of the market doesn&#x27;t care that it is crap that they prefer this over a quality good.Back when Walmart started and everyone was all about &quot;wow, their prices are great!&quot; and nary a mention of their quality. I realized that Walmart was going to do the same thing to groceries.Without re-invigorating the UCC with stronger consumer protections so that the &quot;costs&quot; are born not individually by consumers but by the market maker who pushes an inferior product, I don&#x27;t see it getting much better.

&gt; If you&#x27;re too lazy to figure out yourself which products are qualityAmazon is a gambling company. People buys things with the hope that, this time, they are getting a bargain. And, as any gambling company, the customers will lose in the long term.But, people gets addicted to gambling. Maybe next item, maybe I will do a smart purchase. The more randomized the experience the more irrational the consumer.I prefer traditional business that follow regulations and are subjects to my country laws. I used Amazon when it started, because they had a great recommendation engine for books. Even that is now a shitshow that offers you what Amazon wants to sell regardless of what you look for.Amazon works as intended, and that is terrifying.p.d.: People is not lazy. It is just that most people are not experts on the products that they purchase, and they are already spending a lot of their time working hard and taking care of their families to add another ten hours of investigation to purchase a pair of shoes.

I&#x27;ve been doing the same thing for a few years now and for the same reasons. I have accepted the fact in most cases I will pay more, but at least for that extra cost, I can trust the sites and the companies I&#x27;m buying from. I also try and find something locally first, before heading to larger chain stores.Perfect example is how I don&#x27;t buy anything Apple on Ebay anymore. WAY too many fakes, stolen or misrepresented stuff on there now. Hard to get away from all the Chinese resellers there either. I just buy directly from Apple. Yeap, its going to cost a little extra, but I can take comfort knowing its not going to be a fake or get something that was completely misleading in the listing.

Google Shopping Express used to do that in San Jose. I once ordered a toy spring for $3 with free shipping and had it delivered in 2 hours so I could use it as a heater coil. Good timesWithin a couple of months they changed the policy to $75 minimum for free shipping. There are also fewer delivery slots today relative to demand

I know most people here are in the US, but for anyone in Japan, check out Yodobashi as an Amazon alternative. They have more curated products and deliver most items the same day in the Tokyo area for free with no subscription.It’s incredible you can have one tiny part delivered within hours for free. I feel bad doing that though, so I always try to cluster my orders just to be nice to their delivery people and the environment.

That’s a pretty strong accusation to make. Do you have evidence?Wirecutter says “our writers and editors are never made aware of or influenced by which companies have affiliate relationships with our business team.”And elsewhere on the site: “The reputation of Wirecutter and its parent company, The New York Times, rests on our vigorous reporting, editorial integrity, and avoidance of actual or even perceived conflicts of interest.”Are you saying this is a lie &#x2F; outright deception?And, fwiw, they indeed still review &amp; recommend Anker changers; see this review where the #1 choice is currently an Anker model: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;wirecutter&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;best-multiport-usb-wall-charger&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;wirecutter&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;best-multiport-us...</a>

&gt; Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of.
 Oh no, they absolutely don&#x27;t. Wirecutter performs some subjective testing, but they get paid for a choice of a products to test and promote. If you watch any category for a while, you can witness a top product (or multiple top products of a same brand) disappear overnight to be be replaced without a trace by another &#x27;reviewer&#x27;s favourite&#x27;.
What did change overnight? Did Anker stop making the best budget chargers? No, their business deal with Wirecutter just expired and another brand took their place in paying for &#x27;independent review&#x27;.

These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it&#x27;s just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new.B&amp;H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there&#x27;s no tax with their card. Crutchfield&#x2F;Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even better vendors.) Walmart&#x2F;Target&#x2F;BestBuy have been good for everything else.If you&#x27;re too lazy to figure out yourself which products are quality, Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of.And for simply next-level quality, nothing beats DIY. Personalize the final product exactly to your specifications, choosing the highest quality or even custom-machined parts with zero cost cutting. Requires time and passion, however.

I got the baby Klein bottle from Cliff years ago. Nice little nerd tchotchke for the mantelpiece. He also wrote an awesome account of a KGB internet hacking from in the 80s: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)</a>

Thank you Mr. Varenc and Mr. Code,  Yes, that&#x27;s what&#x27;s left of what used to be my Amazon Klein bottle listing.  Note that what used to be Klein Bottle by Cliff Stoll is now Amvoom Klein Bottle.
Although I created the listing 4 or 5 years ago, I&#x27;m now unable to edit or change the listing.  I&#x27;ve bumped up my price sufficiently high, in hopes that nobody will buy from there.

Direct link to buy one from Cliff Stoll on Amazon: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B017UY60MK?m=A2YU99E4PF7QUE&amp;marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B...</a>(but you should actually buy from his website)

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smile.amazon.com&#x2F;Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B017UY60MK" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smile.amazon.com&#x2F;Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass&#x2F;dp...</a>I think this is the item.

I read in 1995 when it came out. My take away - searching is not the same as browsing, and something is lost when serendipity is removed from the process. 
And the internet works for a certain mindset to the detriment of other points of view

Just from skimming through the book, it seems like its central thesis is an enumeration of all the ways in which computers and the Internet are terrible, accompanied by predictions that none of those flaws are ever likely to change. So it&#x27;s not really a matter of any of his predictions being &quot;prescient&quot;, it&#x27;s just that some things have improved drastically, and others less so.For example, he complains that nobody will want to look up information from computerized databases because CD-ROMs are too slow; consumers won&#x27;t shop online because they can&#x27;t pay securely; retailers won&#x27;t rely on e-commerce because too few customers have Internet access; nobody will want e-books because you can&#x27;t read them on the subway; there&#x27;s no way to effectively search for content online; digital art will never surpass clip art and crude photoshops; it&#x27;s impossible for networks to be secure because data and credentials are unencrypted; and so on.On the bright side, he thinks that at least nobody will need to worry about online privacy, because it will be too cumbersome for anyone to effectively maintain databases of personal information.But on the other hand, with some of his observations, it&#x27;s at least arguable that they still hold true 25 years later:&gt; Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion. Online debates of tough issues are often polarized by messages taking extreme positions.&gt; An original IBM PC, now over ten years old, is fully obsolete. Likely, it will still work perfectly and do everything it was build for; after all, the silicon and copper haven&#x27;t deteriorated. But you can&#x27;t get software for it any longer.&gt; A word processor may last two years before the next version. These upgrades likely add as many new bugs as are patched, and result in a bigger, more complex program. One that&#x27;s less and less compatible with old files. [...] Curiously, as computer hardware gets faster, programs run slower.&gt; Photo retouching isn&#x27;t new. Digital image processing, however, can be so extensive yet undetectable that it undermines the foundation of photojournalism -- that seeing is believing.

He completely missed the boat about how Moore&#x27;s Law would improve upon the power of early prototypes. It&#x27;s a classic case of underestimating the power of exponential growth by visualizing it as low-order polynomial, and missing that &quot;digital is worse than analog&quot; is a problem that can be solved by increasing the scale of digital power.But he was right about tech will enable and amplify the worst in social behaviors.

Has anyone read his other book ‘Silicon Snake Oil’ [1] from 1995 lately?Sounds like most of his predictions in it (eg e-commerce will fail, digital books will not be viable, etc) were wildly off the mark - but were any prescient?[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Silicon_Snake_Oil" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Silicon_Snake_Oil</a>

There&#x27;s this documentary about him too: &quot;The KGB, the Computer, and Me&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PGv5BqNL164" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PGv5BqNL164</a>

And, still do occasionally stop by!  (woke up from sleeping, and a heavy load on my raspberry-pi web server told me something was happening...)

He has occasionally stopped by this site: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=CliffStoll" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=CliffStoll</a>

Here is a link to the youtube version: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=lxdcBD4ppF0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=lxdcBD4ppF0</a>And I will double up and say it is a great episode of a great podcast.

Also, he did a numberphile podcast which was truly fantastic. I laughed and cried. Do listen to it.

There’s a Cliff Stoll Ted Talk!?? I’ve read the book and  watched the complimentary PBS side piece, but wasn’t aware of a ted talk, thanks!

His TED talk is amazing, his energy for learning is so infectious. I just meant to post the link here but had to watch the whole thing again!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;clifford_stoll_the_call_to_learn?language=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;clifford_stoll_the_call_to_learn?l...</a>

Connoisseur?  Naw!  Stop by my place and you&#x27;ll see a messy collection of oddball things ranging from some old calculators to stacks of old books. 
I received a Curta Calculator from my astronomy mentor, Ernst Both, when he got an HP-35 around 1973.  I was one of his students; today, I can&#x27;t look at it without thinking happy thoughts using a spectrohelioscope to understand sunspot magnetic fields.  But that&#x27;s another story...

He&#x27;s also a connoisseur and collector of slide rules and the Curta mechanical calculator!Here&#x27;s a video of him describing how the Curta performs arithmetic: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OynMJB-2J1o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OynMJB-2J1o</a> — as well as the SciAm article he wrote on them: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mycurta.com&#x2F;Calculator.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mycurta.com&#x2F;Calculator.pdf</a>

A minute ago, I added a few more details to my website-writeup.

I&#x27;ve read your book a couple of years ago. When I saw your name on hacker news I thought it sounded familiar!

Thanks, DFlock. 
As you realize, writing up what happens is a necessary part of fixing a problem.  That’s why I wrote Cuckoo’s Egg.
I’m gratified that my own community has responded; perhaps someone at Amazon will pick up on this.

My best guess is that amazon is using the entities associated with the registered trademark as some form of proof of identity. So since there was no registered trademark for Acme Klein Bottle, there was nothing to compare the new identity to when Amvoom submitted their request.I really hope I&#x27;m wrong though because this sounds like a very lazy and flawed system.

&gt;&gt;&quot;Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn&#x27;t aware of the details previously.&quot;I still don&#x27;t understand how it works. Why can somebody owning something called &quot;Amvoom&quot; claim something called &quot;Acme Klein Bottle&quot;?An even if they legally own the brand, how keeping the reviews when moving the brand to the new owner is the proper thing to do for the customers? By definition, the reviews are for another provider. I don&#x27;t get it.

Ahhh... unfortunately there&#x27;s no kindle version. (I&#x27;m too inundated with paper books that I tend to stick with digital for new purchases).Out of interest, is it publishing companies that make digital versions of books, or is it up to the author themselves to do that?(And if it&#x27;s the latter this is a small request to Clifford to consider it if it&#x27;s not too much of an arduous task. And provided their relationship with amazon isn&#x27;t too soured by the current situation, which I could understand if it is).

That sucks. Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn&#x27;t aware of the details previously.Also, if anyone is unaware, this is this Clifford Stoll: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clifford_Stoll" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clifford_Stoll</a> - who wrote this brilliant (and true) book: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)</a> - which is a really good read and perfect for HN.

There&#x27;s a world waiting for you on YouTube.

&gt; Now I&#x27;m wondering how blackhead removers workThe vast majority of them don&#x27;t actually work, this is why those sellers rely on scams. It&#x27;s almost impossible to know which ones do online.Source: girlfriend and family experiences.

They don&#x27;t but if you have very oily&#x2F;not sensitive skin the L&#x27;Oreal Man Charcoal Cleanser is just short of being miraculous. It doesn&#x27;t outright remove blackheads but everything that can be removed will be so it works a lot better than masks ime. I&#x27;ve never really cared enough to bother using any &quot;beauty&quot;&#x2F;skin products but that one I&#x27;ve added to my routine and over time it just made blackheads disappear. Idk how l&#x27;Oreal came up with such a good formula when their other products are usually more gimmicky (or downright just bad and useless) according to my GF&#x2F;dad&#x2F;mom etc.Though keep in mind I didn&#x27;t have any huge, dried out aged blackhead to worry about, &amp; those would be impossible to remove without some extraction.

Now I&#x27;m wondering how blackhead removers work and if I want to even think about finding out.

Well, it&#x27;s not strictly regulated and it&#x27;s a monopoly so...

On the bright side, I think I’ve finally manage to internalise the meaning of “Kafkaesque”.

I don&#x27;t know if it is easy, but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if Amazon is aware of the problem.There was a discussion about selling products through Amazon on The Amp Hour a few months back, and part of the discussion included trademarks as a requirement. They made it sound like a new and expensive hurdle to deal with. Given Stoll&#x27;s comments, it sounds like the lack of a registered trademark was a contributing factor to his problem. Putting the two together leads me to believe that Amazon is aware this can happen. (From the show notes, it looks like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theamphour.com&#x2F;523-a-keyzermas-story&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theamphour.com&#x2F;523-a-keyzermas-story&#x2F;</a> is the episode in question.)Edit: for clarity.

To me, yes, it is surprising. But likely because I don&#x27;t use Amazon, Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, and so do not read the things you&#x27;re reading (or at least as much) but I understand your point nonetheless. I skim past the numerous stories regarding how awful these companies behave and yet continue to reap massive profits. I&#x27;ve known Amazon was bad, but not this bad. It&#x27;s a shit state of affairs.

Does it really? With what I’ve been reading about what is going on over at Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, this doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s awful, but not surprising. And reading about how Amazon treats it’s employees, as has been covered on this site numerous times in the last while, it’s even less surprising.And continuing to use those services is giving a vote for those practices to keep on keeping on, and that people still use them? Well, no, it’s not surprising but it’s sad.

Kirill, you&#x27;ve put your finger on the central problem.  Amazon should check that a product which is claimed by a Brand is actually covered by the &quot;goods &amp; services&quot; listed under that trademark.

Exactly. That&#x27;s why I was dumbfounded; it just seemed too ridiculous to be real. These companies really don&#x27;t give a shit about people; they just continue to recite something about &quot;customer obsession&quot; and return to patting themselves on the back.

I am confused too. Especially this part:On June 22nd, they used Amazon&#x27;s Brand Registry to re-brand my listing on Amazon (replacing my brand, &quot;Acme Klein Bottle&quot; with &quot;Amvoom&quot;) They could do this because Amazon&#x27;s Brand Registry only respects issued trademarks.I don&#x27;t get this at all. Attacker has a trademark on &quot;Amvoom&quot;. The word &quot;Amvoom&quot; does not appear in Stoll&#x27;s product name or description. It isn&#x27;t even close to any of the words in the product name.FWIW I fully 100% believe Stoll. But the real question here is why is a &quot;brand registry&quot; allowing product takeovers that don&#x27;t involve said brand? That seems to rise far beyond the usual Amazon bullshit, to straight-up algorithmic incompetence. How is this possible?

Hijacking listing with good ratings is very common for products that are not gatedOne view is that Amazon wants sellers to register their trademarks formally with the government, then go through the brand registry process to prevent this.

Hi Nick,  And thank you for your kind note.  I&#x27;m in the embarrassing position of asking you to wait a few months, as I&#x27;m very low in stock; I hope to have more glass Klein bottles by late summer.  (Klein bottle hats &amp; Mobius scarves, happily, I have plenty).

Are you saying Cliff&#x27;s claims are too...one-sided?

This seems completely insane to me. How is this possible?I like Cliff Stoll and have been looking forward to my first Klein bottle purchase for some years now, so I say this without any insinuation Cliff&#x27;s not telling the whole story: There&#x27;s got to be more to it than this, right? Can someone really go on Amazon, effectively take over someone&#x27;s storefront, and completely ransack the place this easily? Because Cliff doesn&#x27;t have a registered trademark? This seems out of this world absurd.

I always assumed they tracked co-mingled sourcing internally, but don&#x27;t have a reason to make it public.At least that way they could trace the people who were seriously poisoning the co-mingled well, in circumstances where they wanted to.

The one thing I don&#x27;t get, and I worked for AMZN in logistics, is the co-mingling of inventory. It is so easy to solve, poses so many problems and yet the logistics benchmark company fails to do it right.

Maybe that makes you incompatible with Amazon, because they are about unbounded growth for its own sake!Small is beautiful! Stay small!- from the guy who in September 2000 bought 16 klein bottles since you only charged for prime numbered bottles, and sent you his credit card number as the sum of two 16-digit numbers sent to different email addresses! I still have a beer mug and question mark; all the rest are with friends! &lt;3

I hear you, Moe.
 Can&#x27;t say that I&#x27;m a big brand. Indeed, I want to stay a small one-person shop.

Like books, ironically.As near as I can work out, their business model is now based on your being able to send back completely wrong or broken things they&#x27;ve sent you, so I stick to stuff where I&#x27;ve got the luxury of going through a cumbersome return process if things go terribly wrong.My address has also been used as a target for a scam where, by sending unwanted goods to a real customer, a seller can fabricate a fake review that counts in their system as real. In one case it was a garbage light (shipped directly in its retail packaging so I could see what the thing was) that by a strange coincidence was the top-rated light on Amazon. Clearly an exploit that pays off.I stopped (I think) that behavior by returning some unsolicited packages to sender, at the post office.

Same. Anything that plugs in, has batteries, or goes in my family&#x27;s mouths is a no go for me now.I&#x27;m pretty much down to a few books, video games, and obscure fasteners&#x2F;hardware&#x2F;tools (which annoyingly they&#x27;re just about the only good source for).

I no longer buy anything important from Amazon, this especially goes for anything that plugs into the mains, I just don&#x27;t trust Amazon any more. Amazon is now just for those low value items that I might need in a bit of a rush. This is especially true now that more and more retailers have caught up with Amazon&#x27;s shipping (at least here in the UK).They seem to want it both ways. They have simultaneously tried to argue that they are not responsible for third-party sellers and blame them when fake and&#x2F;or unsafe goods are sold, but then they work hard to make it appear that everything is coming from one place. It gets particularly annoying when it&#x27;s a product with lots of variations (colours&#x2F;sizes etc) where each variant will be a different seller with different shipping.

&gt; They&#x27;re still in denial that they have a problem.They are too big to fail and they can bribe their way out of anything.
As long as majority of people don&#x27;t care, why would they ever want to fix it?Also for one legit Western company, you can get 1000 Chinese knock-off cheaper ones that don&#x27;t complain and people buy what&#x27;s cheaper.

This was a while ago, but I got a counterfeit fitness band (it told me to download a random APK from a 3rd party website) from Amazon, and they repeatedly told me to resolve it directly with the seller who, surprise surprise, were not interested in issuing a refund.

They&#x27;re still in denial that they have a problem.Just read the thread on the previous occasion where listings got hijacked on their own fora [0] - its sad to see the sellers so powerless, helpless and just left to themselves.You really have to wonder why they even bother...Edit: also, reading that thread you can also get a feel why big brands have completely left AMZN as a platform (like Adidas, Birkenstock are a few i&#x27;m aware of).Possible co-mingling of inventory, hijacked listings... no, just don&#x27;t bother - of course not each and everyone is a heavyweight as my 2 examples - but do we really need 100s of dropshippers FBA&#x27;ing the same crap? I&#x27;d rather buy direct at the source than at Amazon these days.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sellercentral.amazon.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;t&#x2F;review-manipulation-amazon-echo-dot-listing-hijacked-seriosly&#x2F;856604" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sellercentral.amazon.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;t&#x2F;review-manipulatio...</a>

Total speculation here, but probably because common law trademark would have to be proven in a court of law. That is, he would have to sue the Chinese company, present evidence like newspaper clippings or testimony from customers, win, get a judgement, and present that to Amazon. Until then, Amazon looks in the USPTO database.

The very first step in Amazon Brand Registry is to tell them your US Trademark registration number.  Without it, I&#x27;m unable to get through the Brand Registry website.  
And I can&#x27;t find any email address for them - nor, any place to mention this to.  That&#x27;s why I posted that to my website&#x27;s home page.

I have a further question.Since he has common law trademark, why wouldn&#x27;t that still apply? Someone else is selling via Amazon in the US using his common law trademark.

I&#x27;m no expert, and am not recommending any particular copyright-related recourse, but the image submission agreement has a clause to remove materials from the service, and the license grant to Amazon is not specified as being irrevocable: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;help&#x2F;customer&#x2F;display.html?nodeId=201995990" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;help&#x2F;customer&#x2F;display.html?nodeId=...</a>

Um, thanks, I guess.  I think that Amazon’s agreement is that sellers waive copyright to images uploaded.  -Cliff around 11:30 in the evening

Cliff - if you&#x27;re reading this - you own the images they&#x27;re using - time to claim copyright with Amazon ....

As a seller you can go to the contact us page at sellercentral, select the option on the left, then click phone in the middle and get a call back from Amazon.For live chat as a seller, follow these instructions from Amazon&#x27;s Moderator: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sellercentral.amazon.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;t&#x2F;wheres-live-chat-support&#x2F;156997&#x2F;3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sellercentral.amazon.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;t&#x2F;wheres-live-chat-s...</a>

It seems like going on the Live Chat with Amazon would help Stoll speak with someone.  I&#x27;ve used that several times and they always fixed the issue right away.

Amazon stimulates fake reviews, fake listings and fake vendors.This practice has to stop.Gigantic class action suit is overdue for this fraudulent criminal empire.

And when you report it to government agency in your country they say to talk to Amazon or stop using them.These too big to fail companies need to be split and held accountable!If they consciously let fraudsters operate, in my opinion they are complicit!

A sleezy company hijacked my Amazon listing to move my positive reviews over to their product.I&#x27;ve seen that happen sometimes, and always wondered how or why it happened. Like I&#x27;ll be reading reviews for a USB Memory stick, and the 5 star reviews rave about nail polish.I&#x27;ve reported these cases to Amazon, but they take no action.

Sure, but there are hundreds of other sellers ready to do the same exploits tomorrow, or worse. The systemic problems are not being addressed. Amazon doesn&#x27;t have the right incentives to solve these issues.

&quot;It takes some chutzpah to turn defense from your own willful negligence into a revenue center.&quot; It&#x27;s not chutzpah - it&#x27;s the norm for most tech companies - or any other companies who&#x27;s primary product is intellectual property. Think patent trolls, copyright trolls, etc. Amazon is a product troll that somehow has managed to maintain a veneer of legitimacy.I see what they are doing no differently than what Steele started with Prenda law. Heck that&#x27;s probably where Amazon got the idea :p

It takes some chutzpah to turn defense from your own willful negligence into a revenue center. Like telcos’ telemarketer blocking services or Equifux offering credit monitoring services (only free for the first year) to the millions whose sensitive financial info they allowed to be breached.

Wait until your trademark is summarily rejected without reason &amp; you have to get a lawyer for an hour to “call a friend” to get the mark amended.

I&#x27;m sorry Cliff: the system sucks because there&#x27;s a lot of edge case handling when they&#x27;re dealing with millions of vendors selling literal hundreds of millions of SKUs.Many of them autogenerated programmatically like &quot;I love X&quot; shirts, and X = some dictionary list; or bots built to crosslist Target&#x2F;Walmart product over to Amazon etc. for arbitrage etc.I hope someone from Amazon has reached out to you Cliff - my wife gifted my FIL one of your klein bottles and it&#x27;s been an absolute delight going through the purchasing experience with you. Thank you for the joy you bring to us!

Sigh.  
A trademark for a common item (like a T-shirt or a voltmeter) seems to cost about $350 through the USPTO, if you do it yourself and your goods are listed in their directory.
If your goods are oddball (like glass or woolen nonorientable manifolds) then you have to use a more expensive system which starts at $450 and escalates depending on how many different types of goods you&#x27;re trademarking.

I wonder if they&#x27;ll keep the email for when jeff steps down officially

&gt; jeff@amazon is gonna tear this AMVOOM &#x2F; TaroRee hijacker a new oneSigh. The usual FAANG bs. Do nothing as long as it makes you money and do the minimum only if it caused enough outrage. No values, no ethics, 100% shallow.

so it&#x27;ll get removed, drop off the front pageand 6 hours the scammer will be back under another account

Given how this is on page-1 of HN, jeff@amazon (the elite US-based seller support team who uses the email, not Bezos) is gonna tear this AMVOOM &#x2F; TaroRee hijacker a new one.While this is kinda designed-as-intended (Amazon wants you to brand register with them for protection), this is a pretty shitty dark pattern they put up and sadly it happens as an annoying edge case that existing sellers and customers have to deal with.Source: me, a mid-sized Amazon 3P seller&#x2F;vendor.Edit: &quot;-Cliff Stoll Saturday morning June 26, in Oakland, California. And yes, I am now trademarking Acme Klein Bottle.&quot; Looks like Amazon&#x27;s getting what they want after all.

You are correct.  Stoll makes a projection of Klein bottles into 3-space which results in them being self-intersecting.

The 4D version is not impossible in 4D space.

I might be woefully ignorant but I thought it&#x27;s not possible to make a Klein bottle in the real world...?I think Cliff Stoll sells 3D models of Klein bottles rather than the impossible 4D version.

A mathematical side note: I might be woefully ignorant but I thought it&#x27;s not possible to make a Klein bottle in the real world...?This is not to belittle Stoll&#x27;s work, it might be a model or approximation... or I&#x27;m just missing something.

&gt; Amazon simply do not careWhy though? How does this not hurt Amazon long term? What are they gaining from attracting dodgy sellers in the short term?

If you can get someone else&#x27;s account banned for having fake reviews, it would be easy to take out the competition that way.Fundamentally, it is too easy to sign up as a seller.

&gt; Amazon is quick to permaban accounts from real sellers, who make a single mistake (sometimes completely out of their control) but are happy to let these fake review&#x2F;sellers keep their accounts.They banned my customer account from leaving reviews, though, because I mentioned that I got scammed from a listing I left a review on.

&gt; How do people manage to figure out such elaborate ways to manipulate Amazon results without getting banned? Getting banned has minimal cost? Poor detection? Inside information?They don&#x27;t actually ban the accounts doing this. They only remove the reviews&#x2F;listings, but don&#x27;t take any action on the accounts (so they just re-list 24 hours later)Apparently when Amazon acts, they are just removing the fake reviews, sometimes the whole product but never actually banning the sellers account (even if every product that seller is listing is pumped full of fake reviews)It seems to be a endless cycle of a item being hijacked or a item filled with fake reviews, then when reported to Amazon they simply remove the fake reviews or the product but don&#x27;t take any action at all against the seller (or accounts making the fake reviews)This thread[0] on the Amazon Seller forums is crazy with people finding products that are scam listings (with 10,000+ fake reviews), they report them, the products get taken down, then 24 hours later the same sellers have re listed with more fake reviews.Amazon simply do not care, if they did they would:A) Address the root problemB) Ban the seller accounts clearly manipulating the system.Amazon is quick to permaban accounts from real sellers, who make a single mistake (sometimes completely out of their control) but are happy to let these fake review&#x2F;sellers keep their accounts.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sellercentral.amazon.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;t&#x2F;review-manipulation-amazon-echo-dot-listing-hijacked-seriosly&#x2F;856604&#x2F;258" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sellercentral.amazon.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;t&#x2F;review-manipulatio...</a>

You forgot one. Amazon uses seller data to target which products they will produce under their own Amazon brand. So creative entrepreneurs eventually find they are completing against Amazon directly.This is why Amazon will eventually be replaced by a company that can do things better, faster, and cheaper.

Getting a trademark is not that expensive or complicated.  Why do sellers not get trademarks?

Sean, I just added a few things to my note. I&#x27;ll try to copy&#x2F;paste &#x27;em here, although I suspect my sleepy fingers will goof up:I haven&#x27;t really reviewed what I&#x27;m posting here - heck I can&#x27;t spellcheck at 12:30 in the morning:Amazon, through its &quot;Brand Registry&quot; allows anyone with an issued trademark to take over other brands, whether or not the brand is covered by the specific goods that the trademark was issued for.Brand Name Hijacking takes advantage of several bugs in Amazon&#x27;s seller business model:1) Amazon Brand Name Registry allows the owner of a USPTO trademark to take over listings of non-trademarked brands.2) Amazon Brand Name Registry does not prevent a registered Amazon brand from over-reaching beyond the regulated goods and services associated with that trademark.3) Amazon combines reviews of different item variations and colors, even though they are from completely different listings and manufacturers.4) Amazon debits inventory even when an order is cancelled, allowing a denial of service attack to exhaust inventory in a seller&#x27;s listing, at no cost to the attacker.Effects of Brand Hijacking:1) Shoddy or unproven products receive five-star reviews, apparently from several years.2) Consumers, relying on Amazon star ratings, are grossly misled by the summary reviews.3) Disreputable sellers are rewarded (at the cost of honest sellers) by large volume sales caused by high ratings.4) Unscrupulous sellers of reviews receive money from Amazon sellers in return for inflated reviews.5) Independent sellers on Amazon -- specifically those who have delivered extremely high customer satisfaction -- are locked out of their listings and pushed out of their long term business.

Looking at the articles from that seller, I don&#x27;t even think they attach the articles for the reviews directly. It seems like they attach them to articles with many reviews, so that they can add their own fake reviews without being detected.If they made a new article, which immediately gets a lot of 5 star reviews, that&#x27;d be suspicious and Amazon would probably detect it.But if they attach it to an already established article, they can happily add their fake reviews and then detach them again, making it look legit.Just a theory though.

Either they have played around , experienced a similar issue and went on to discover more, or maybe from inside. I think it&#x27;s the first option, though.

Getting banned has a minimal cost if you are a throwaway goods reseller running off a newly registered business in a region where you can effectively ignore all foreign laws, falsify documentation, or whatever else.Getting banned has a high cost if you are a single small business with a long-term decades of time in business as the same company registration.

&gt; How do people manage to figure out such elaborate ways to manipulate Amazon results without getting banned?Because Amazon doesn&#x27;t care, they still get paid if you buy a real product or a shitty counterfeited product.In fact, such manipulation can result in increased sales and driving up the price of a product. You&#x27;re more likely to buy something that has a ton of reviews and purchases, and more likely to pay more money for it if it has a ton of positive reviews.

&gt; To make their blackhead remover listing look legit, Amvoom then submitted several hundred orders over Amazon, and immediately cancelled each order. These depleted my Klein bottle inventory on Amazon - even though nothing was paid for, and nothing was shipped. In turn, this removed the &quot;second color option&quot; for their blackhead-remover, since Amazon felt that the Klein bottles were out of stock. Result: their black-head remover listing got 199 positive reviews, and the Klein bottle did not show up as a &quot;color choice&quot; in the Amvoom black-head listing.How do people manage to figure out such elaborate ways to manipulate Amazon results without getting banned? Getting banned has minimal cost? Poor detection? Inside information?

Thank you Lanstin!Stay-at-home parent? Oh, but your note brings smile to this tired astronomer&#x27;s face...

I have a Klein Stein and it is excellent, both for beer and coolness. Cliff Stole’s book on tracking a hacker is also a tour de force in tracking things back to the cause. And, like me, he was a stay at home parent for a long time.

The trademark the foreign seller used to hijack the listing <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uspto.report&#x2F;TM&#x2F;90721592" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uspto.report&#x2F;TM&#x2F;90721592</a>

It&#x27;s a social engineering- or maybe trademark&#x2F;big online platform loophole engineering attack, sounds like a computer security issue imho. It could certainly be done to scam other sellers as well, and perhaps it has already.

Any suggestions on where I should post a slightly more academic version of this analysis?  Somehow, posting here on Hacker News seems like I&#x27;m talking with friends at a cafe; surely there&#x27;s a better place for this to be addressed.   
I&#x27;m not even sure if this kind of thing falls under the aegis of &quot;computer security&quot;

It&#x27;s so hard to watch as Amazon just let&#x27;s there platform go to the dogs. All in the name of hands off automation I guess?.

IMO eBay is less scammy.I&#x27;ve been using it to buy car parts and it is SO MUCH better than dealing with junkyards (LKQ&#x2F;Car-Parts websites suck!) and everything that I&#x27;ve got so far including parts from Latvia and Germany have been genuine.eBay too is full of knock-off trash from China but you can easily tell those apart from a real listing most of the time with reviews being unique per listing&#x2F;seller. And eBay allows for local pickups too!

eBay is better as each seller gets a distinct listing  Amazon letting sellers just kinda take over listings is a huge problem and has led to many scams like this and more commonly review scams where they sees the listing with positive reviews for a legit cheap product but swap it out for whatever their money grab is.

eBay has miraculously become more trustworthy than Amazon for certain products

I have always had very good experiences with eBay. Several times I’ve been screwed on Amazon. With eBay I can also add a lot of filters to my search which I like. I can immediately exclude items shipped directly from China. Or search for something within 100km so I know I can just go pick it up. eBay has just been so much better from my experience.

Definitely or worse. I use Amazon as a last resort. eBay is first choice for cheap stuff. For expensive stuff I tend to go for bricks and mortar stores.

I have never had a bad experience on Ebay.  Paypal taking my money hostage is another story.

Amazon simply is on the same level as eBay now. (No idea about Alibaba.) It’s really sad to see.

Don&#x27;t worry their listings on Taobao will be accurate because they actually enforce standards.

I got rid of prime and have basically stopped buying from them, and don&#x27;t feel any loss.  Usually if they&#x27;re way cheaper on something it&#x27;s over the minimum shipping requirement and I end up buying less stuff rather than paying more for stuff.  highly recommend it.

I can get pretty quick delivery from a few other companies in my country. What I can&#x27;t get is the very very lenient warranty that Amazon gives. Other companies will work as hard as possible to make replacing something under warranty as painful as possible. Amazon basically goes &#x27;sure, ok&#x27; and either refunds or sends a replacement.

Fast delivery seems to have become an addiction in our fast-paced lives. Do we really need that new thing tomorrow? Probably not. Yet we can&#x27;t delay the gratification.

Amazon co-mingles inventory so I have in several cases chosen &#x27;sold by Amazon.de&#x27; or the brand name seller and gotten what seem to be fakes. This is common for anything mid-range, e.g. good brand-name pots and pans such as WMF, shoes, utensils, ...In other cases I&#x27;ve gotten clearly opened&#x2F;used items sold as new, e.g. woodworking tools.

It&#x27;s hard to give up the convenience and fast delivery (with Amazon Prime) though.  In my experience, I haven&#x27;t run into many problems with fraud or fake products (that I know of).  I try to avoid third party sellers and only order from Amazon or the seller.

Having sold Klein bottles from my website for 20 years and from Amazon from 4 or 5 years, here&#x27;s my experience:- it&#x27;s way more fun through my Kleinbottle website. I&#x27;ve customized my checkout to what I sell. When there&#x27;s a problem, it&#x27;s easier to contact a buyer.- I can show any amount of information on my website; Amazon has 5 bullet points and 1000 characters of description. This, of course, cuts both ways - a quick logical summary helps many people. Long, wordy websites (ahem) can be a problem.- Amazon provides security that you&#x27;ll get what they&#x27;ve ordered. Buying through my website, well, some people are scared off by its primitive style and mathematical humor. (well, attempted humor).- My credit card processor takes a &lt; 3% haircut. With Amazon, it&#x27;s 12% plus $40&#x2F;month.- My customers are my friends. Likely, I&#x27;ll meet them at a seminar, colloquium, or if they visit the East Bay. I hope they&#x27;ll remember me by the good service that I try to provide. This tends to be easier when I handle an order through my website.

To note, buying from the sellers website can be a blessing or a curse.It is true in sometimes unexpected ways. For instance some sellers just don&#x27;t care about notifications; it might be because they usually work with professional buyers who work on a long timescale (&quot;I need it for this quarter&quot;) and will contact the seller on a regular basis if they care.Some sellers just don&#x27;t want to deal with you. I had a &quot;mom and pop&quot; for who my business wasn&#x27;t really a priority (well, fine), sent me random junk after misreading my order, and it was a PITA to sort the situation.Basically, going out of Amazon (the new Alibaba as you say) is also returning to the Wild Wild West. There is no real choice than to deal with both, but god is it a pain.

Which makes you wonder why Amazon keeps this scam-enabling &quot;feature&quot;. Do legit sellers really need it that much that Amazon keeps it despite the scams?

Yup. I tried buying Qualatex twisting balloons from Amazon. From the reviews I could clearly see some sellers were offering legit Qualatex and others were offering cheap knock-offs. Since the reviews are not matched to the seller, I could not tell which sellers were offering the real product. I ended up buying from eBay without issue.

Actually, Alibaba appears to have higher standards for their product listings, because pages are never merged. So the review takeover described in this post would not be possible on Alibaba ^_^

Yep. You will also often immediately get connected to a sales rep via chat, and they will follow up you all the way through to shipping and for any repeat orders.

And also, often more then not Amazon listings are just Alibaba&#x27;s products resales that you can get faster for some stupid high markup.

Notably, Alibaba&#x27;s core business is B2B. Business customers have very little tolerance for bad shipments, and are frequently repeat customers such that they would quickly have left Alibaba if they could not get predictable quality.

Alibaba &amp; Aliexpress _do_ have a clone problem, but the notable distinction is that they don&#x27;t aggressively comingle listings like Amazon does. This means for some common consumer items (fidget spinners, etc.) you&#x27;ll find a hundred listings with identical images, slightly varying descriptions, and different factories, but you can easily choose which seller to buy from.

&quot;Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west&quot;Alibaba is much better than Amazon about seller verification. Look up, say, &quot;PC power supply&quot;. On Amazon, you&#x27;re lucky if you get the address of the seller and a product image.Alibaba gives you multiple detailed pictures of the object, including its data plate. You get the full address of the seller, and whether it&#x27;s the manufacturer or a reseller. There&#x27;s usually a picture of the factory, info about their annual sales and number of employees, whether that&#x27;s been verified by a third party, how fast they usually respond to inquries. Sometimes even what production equipment they use. 
What certifications they have and who does their certifications.Many of those companies will accept an order for one unit.

I often find things on Amazon, then go directly to the seller&#x27;s webpage or search for a book on other bookstores. You can often get it cheaper, and with peace of mind that it isn&#x27;t counterfeit. Only really buy on Amazon if it really doesn&#x27;t exist anywhere else and really need it.

This is common across amazon sellers, all major sellers will recycle SKU codes to transfer reviews. Amazon knows about this, it’s everywhere.They could stop it, but presumably it stops reviews being “lost” which helps support their sales.

Also, Walmart.com has similar prices and selection. Free shipping is $35 though. I’ve had much better results with Walmart packaging and shipping lately.

For me their killer feature is ease and certainty of returns. If I am buying online I need to option to return items that are not as they appear, and Amazon offers that quite readily.So I think the major hurdle for other businesses is getting a reputation for prompt and free return acceptance if they want to sell things sight unseen.

I went cold turkey on Amazon a few months back; the only thing I&#x27;ve kept is the TV subscription.What I realised is that it was just a dependency because it was so easy to search for and buy stuff. Nowadays I&#x27;ll buy from a smaller shop if I need something, but it&#x27;s more likely that I think &quot;do I actually need this?&quot; and say &quot;no.&quot;

Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. have almost completely automated customer&#x2F;user service to keep costs down. Their business model depends on that.The consumers are in the position of primitive people in front of their gods. They have to come together and pray for gods to notice them if they want wrongs to be righted.It would be better to solve this through legislation.

While I still purchase some things from Amazon, anything that&#x27;s to be ingested or involves supplying electrical current is a no. It&#x27;s a sad day when GNC is a more reputable place to shop than Amazon.

Anything with an unfamiliar and suspicious sounding brand, such as AMVOOM, is a non starter for me. I actually started researching brands.

&gt; This, and other instances of this scam make me not want to buy anything off Amazon ever again.Agree. Our family has nearly weened ourselves off of Amazon. We do still buy from there occasionally, but for most things we don&#x27;t.

This has been my experience lately as well. Packaging that looked like it was broken into or returned leaving me to wonder what was left out. I recently bought a GoPro and received a shady sdcard with it (the package comes with one). When I put the microsd card in the sdcard it wouldn’t come out. I threw both away. Packages that were busted up. Packaging that looked like someone else got there first. I’m done. I’m over it. After this mess with Klein Bottles I just deleted the app from my phone. I don’t have prime so it’s not that hard for me to never shop Amazon again.

Is there no oversight at all? Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west and it makes me sick to think the once beloved marketplace is now just scamville.This. Most of the time now when I buy from Amazon it feels like buying from a garage sale &#x2F; flea market. Some examples from my purchases -- 4 pack of AA Eneloops arrived as 2 AAs and 2 AAAs; 2 identical office chairs arrived as 2 different models; Simple Human trash can arrived with 3 softball sized dents in different places; Spigen phone case arrived with some sort of tiny worms&#x2F;maggots inside a corner of the packaging; Clorox antibacterial wipes arrived in generic packaging containing dry wipes. Porter Yoshida backpack arrived as a similar looking Herschel backpack in the same color.I remember buying from Amazon and getting solid products really really fast; not sure where that&#x27;s gone. I do use Amazon for the free Whole Foods delivery and that&#x27;s been OK, though there&#x27;s very lax usage of temperature-safe packaging for dairy and meat products.

I couldn&#x27;t believe this, but looks like it&#x27;s true:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;features&#x2F;2021-06-28&#x2F;fired-by-bot-amazon-turns-to-machine-managers-and-workers-are-losing-out" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;features&#x2F;2021-06-28&#x2F;fired-by-...</a>What a trash company.

&gt; Is there no oversight at all?What do you expect from a company who has an automated system to fire employees, and they&#x27;re notified if the discharge through an app on their phone?There main objective is volume.

Both Amazon and Aliexpress&#x2F;baba follow a &quot;this is a city&quot; mentality. Crime and such are understood as statistics, not as a thing happening under their roof. This is a &quot;beef up police funding next cycle&quot; kind of problem.Any one scam might be defeatable, but &quot;scamming exists&quot; seems to be true in any marketplace with enough participants.

I already stopped. I used to be a Prime subscriber, and use smile.amazon.com for charitable benefits. I don&#x27;t use amazon at all now, because I don&#x27;t trust that I will get what I think I am paying for.

Most of Amazon&#x27;s profit isn&#x27;t from retail, but AWS. Thus, believe it or not, it&#x27;s a much lower priority.And so many companies from so many industries use them they&#x27;re effectively boycott proof: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digitaldimensions.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;big-companies-who-use-aws&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digitaldimensions.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;big-companies-who-use-aws...</a>

This, and other instances of this scam make me not want to buy anything off Amazon ever again. Where is Amazon in this? Why is this even a thing? Is there no oversight at all? Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west and it makes me sick to think the once beloved marketplace is now just scamville. I typically buy from sellers websites now and rarely buy off of Amazon but now I feel I need to completely remove Amazon from my options.

Hey, I’m from the photos org, how can I help +1 this?

Not sure if it will help but I escalated this internally. I work at AWS though and am certainly not in a position of great influence.

Speaking from the experience - listing can be hijacked even if it has a brand registered trademark. These hijackers, rumored, are bribing amazon insiders to change trademark on the listing and gain full editing access to it after change is made.

In short, yes.
If a seller (like me) has not trademarked his&#x2F;her brand, and has not registered with Amazon&#x27;s Brand Registry, then the listing can be hijacked.
Of course, hijackers will only considers taking listings with many five-star reviews extending over several years.

Any valid trademark gets you in the door, then Amazon trusts that you exert your rights only over your brands.For example Anker could have a trademark on &quot;Anker&quot; (the brand) and then claim the &quot;PowerCore III&quot; listing for their battery pack without having to trademark the name of each product.

I would really love to know why &quot;Amvoom&quot; could declare to Amazon that they own &quot;Acme Klein Bottle&quot; when &quot;Acme Klein Bottle&quot; has nothing to do with the &quot;Amvoom&quot; trademark. Can they just declare they own any page that doesn&#x27;t have a registered trademark?

It is mainly a joke&#x2F;gag product for mathematicians, or a cool office decoration. 
Nothing you would buy without the background knowledge.But second sentence in the listing:&gt; Like a Möbius strip, this Klein bottle has only one side. In addition, a Klein bottle has no edge - the connection from &quot;inside&quot; to &quot;outside&quot; is smooth, and the bottle has no lip.Is proper descriptive.

I love that the “hand-blown” bottle pictured in the article is one of Cliff Stoll’s.

There&#x27;s a Wikipedia page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Klein_bottle" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Klein_bottle</a>

So, appalling scam aside, everyone knows what a Klein bottle is or what it does? First I&#x27;ve heard of it, and neither Stoll&#x27;s site or the Amazon listing shed any light on the topic...just in-jokes.

Thank you M&#x27;Beex.  You&#x27;re why I make these one-sided things.  (a tip of my hat, -Cliff)

Buyed the real thing from his site (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kleinbottle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kleinbottle.com&#x2F;</a> as mentioned) 1.5 years ago. Much more to enjoy there anyway.Thanks Cliff &amp; Greetings from Germany

Big fan sir - thank you for all you have done and continue to do.

Hold lots of respect for you and regret that this has happened to you, but thanks for bringing these specifics to light. Amazon needs to fix this - or regulators need to force them to.

I read it only last year. A brilliant and now historical book.

Same here, my copy from 1989 is still on my bookshelf. Thanks for being inspiring!

There was also a television adaptation, &quot;The KGB, the Computer, and Me&quot; produced by PBS Nova in like 1992, starring Clifford Stoll as Cliff Stoll!Here is a bootlegged youtube link--it&#x27;s the best I&#x27;ve got. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PGv5BqNL164" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PGv5BqNL164</a>A legend!

Ha! I didn&#x27;t know the klien bottle guy was the accounting error guy. That&#x27;s very cool.Googled him there and he&#x27;s listed as an astronomer. But the astronomers consider him a computer guy ;)

I just wanted to jump in and say the same thing. I had the hardback of the Cuckoo&#x27;s Egg as a teenager in the 90s. Huge inspiration to me and I have worked in and around tech ever since. Thank you.

One of my (very sincerely held) goals in life is to be as excited about _something_ as Cliff Stoll is about _everything_.

a fantastic and inspirational read. also great cookie recipe! made them many times

Hey Cliff, I just have to say thanks. I read the Cuckoo&#x27;s Egg in the early 90s and while I was already interested in computers, the idea that there were &quot;networks&quot; of them out there... well... it blew my mind.I immediately went to my school librarian and said I wanted to try to connect computers together, or try to dial-up to library information services, etc. We started learning together.You were a huge inspiration, thanks.

Their blackhead remover product might be brand hijacking, but their ACME Remover Product! it&#x27;s the real deal. Just see this review of their product:&quot;100% success at removing ACME (Klein bottles) from some kids, parents, even works on some websites!&quot;
-Cliff Stoll
(He did not say this, its a joke!)

When I had my little ISP in the early 90s, Cliff&#x27;s book was given to every new customer for the first few years.

You seem like a really cool and interesting person, Cliff.Do you still use the RC mini forklift for storage? I&#x27;ve always thought that seemed like a lot of fun.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kg6woZULFeM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kg6woZULFeM</a>

Cliff, if you ever read this, I have a computer science book club that could use reading suggestions. Thoughts? Anything from management to best practices ... we will be adding your seminal work to our list too :)

My reciprocal appreciation to Fury, Atlanta&#x2F;n, and Meester (and my many other friends on Hacker News).I deeply appreciate the kindness and support of the hacker community - sends me back thirty five years to when I was fooling with a Unix workstation and stumbled on a small accounting error. Back then, I was surprised by the outpouring of help, suggestions, and collaboration from other computer folk.At this moment, I again thank this community -- across decades and across the globe, I&#x27;m heartened and happy to be one of the gang.Warm wishes all around,<pre><code> -Cliff</code></pre>

The classic Klein bottle is a 2D surface. It doesn&#x27;t embed in R^3 regardless of whether you give it a little thickness so you can make it out of matter.

Does anyone else see 10 vertical lines of characters that look like the ‘matrix’ font overlaid on the word ‘yog so Thoth’ in the last two lines of qwertious’ post?

No it&#x27;s your space that&#x27;s 3-dimensional. Just make sure to store your klein bottles in 4d space and they will be free of holes and self intersections.

Just remember to keep the formulaes for the descending node (or dragon&#x27;s tail) handy.

Worse, the klein bottles did nothing to remove my black heads

Don&#x27;t buy this guy&#x27;s klein bottles, they&#x27;re a scam - they&#x27;re only THREE dimensional! Such a rip off. How am I supposed to store a ŷ̶̺̎͌͐̿̽̊́̕ŏ̶̗̈́̓̍̎̃͠g̶̝̺̜̜͋̿̚ͅ-̷̧̛̈́̔́s̷̰̀͌́̈́ơ̷̝̭̫͛́͘ẗ̴̹̱̖̥́h̸̡̡͙̻̀o̸̹̘̾̀͗̇̕t̵̗̠̄̽̈́͑ḧ̵̳̰̩̲͈̜͉̝́́͌͐ in this thing?

I was going to ask about this too -- my suspicious nature immediately thinks they&#x27;re improperly taking advantage of Cliff&#x27;s name to promote their product. But maybe there&#x27;s a genuine collaboration and it&#x27;s all above board?

Seems they are also ripping off his product descriptions.Anything that can be done to get these people off of amazon?

What about the following listing (first result for the search &quot;acme klein bottle&quot; ) :<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B08YWM31V4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B08YWM31V4</a> by &quot;Brand: Cradle &amp; Dew&quot;&quot;Kleinverse Exquisite Glass Klein Bottle, Handmade Math &amp; Science Education Vase, Mobius Strip Glass Display for Gifts, Geometry Decoration &amp; Theorem Glass - Collab with Mr Cliff Stoll&quot; $74.90 + shippingHow linked to you is this ? Are these just reselling your products or are they independently made ?Edit : In the description it states &quot;These Klein bottles are proudly designed in Singapore, The Garden City&quot;.

Lopis, you&#x27;re right. Forward planning has never been my strong suit, and backward planning doesn&#x27;t seem to work for me. There are some smart people in the world who can predict demand. Not me!And, about twenty minutes ago, I ran out of large Klein bottles. It&#x27;ll be September before I can get more, what with shortages of borosilicate glass.

So in 2015 [1] you said you ordered enough bottles for about 10 years, but you&#x27;re already running out? That&#x27;s quite the success story you have there![1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU</a>

Guess I&#x27;d better say a few things.First, I deeply appreciate that so many on Hacker News have come out for this. Enough to awaken me from a sound sleep on a Tuesday evening!I don&#x27;t really care that much about selling Klein bottles over Amazon - it&#x27;s mainly to reach parents over the holidays. But I do wish that Amazon would do something about this kind of thing.Finally, I&quot;m very low on stocks of glass Klein bottles. It&#x27;s weird for me to ask my friends not to buy the things I&#x27;ve worked so hard to make, but I guess I&#x27;d better. I hope to have more manifolds in mid to late summer.Warm wishes all around,-Cliff (way late on a cloudy Tuesday evening in Oakland)

A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing