[fxtentacle]

I recently bought Amazon's best seller hot oil frier. When we turned it on, the cheap thin metal of it bent from the heat so that the hot oil dripped on the floor. Turns out it was straight from a Chinese noname brand but marked as "sold by Amazon" on the website. When I tried to refund it, they told me that Amazon had just purchased the items for resale and that I should contact the original manufacturer for warranty. And they gave me a Guangdong address and a Gmail email.

By now every product listing on Amazon should be treated like SEO spam.

Plus there's now all these sellers trying to buy a 5 star review by promising a gift card. I recently saw a baby carriage with lots of 5 star reviews from teenagers who tried it out with plush toys because they didn't have kids yet.

[heavyset_go]

Report this to your state's Attorney General, they usually have a consumer protection division.

[fxtentacle]

They did give in and give me a refund eventually. It's just that I was surprised by their laissez-faire attitude that their topseller was some random no-name factory in China.

[heavyset_go]

Attorney General would still be interested in the fact that you were sold a deep fryer with such a potentially dangerous flaw by Amazon, and the run around they initially gave you.

[obmelvin]

They really are like low quality SEO blog spam. I can't believe how many products I see with almost all 5 star ratings...for a completely different product.

[Exuma]

Yes, I actually quite literally fear for my life from factory chemicals or defects. A few years ago I saw a charger that was amazon's "best seller" and it had tons of 1 star reviews of peoples houses catching on fire...

[fxtentacle]

I once ordered a USB charger from Amazon that said you needed to have 3m of empty space in every direction to avoid the fire risk. I just wondered how anyone could satisfy that and put the charger into a wooden cupboard. Maybe I should revise that decision now :/

[Exuma]

I remembered your post after I saw these

https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/ifytxk/ysk_t...

https://themarkup.org/banned-bounty/2020/06/18/how-we-invest...

[Exuma]

Yes, I would for your safety with anything even remotely dangerous, like electronics (I watch out even with a strainer which is just steel, but can be covered in loads of carcinogenic chemicals from china etc).

I recently just got fooled again, I needed to buy a cooking butane torch for grilling cheese. The "best seller" was quite nice looking, had great reviews, great photos.

I actually got it in my hand and it essentially fell apart. I immediately threw it in the trash as there's no way I'm putting highly flammable gas into this junk. I went to a head shop and bought one for the exact same price with amazing quality... its funny how we started out with brick and mortar, migrated to online... and now I'm going to start migrating back to brick and mortar.