[SamuelAdams]

This is a super cool blog post. However I think it alludes to a much larger problem. For many products today, it’s very difficult or impossible for most people to verify the product works.

For a network switch, there are free and open source tools like iPerf to test and verify speeds are as advertised. For a faraday box, you have to go through all these steps (and knowledge learned) just to be able to test these. What about for vitamins, or pet food, or any other “durable” products that are supposed to last for X years?

In an age of snake oil salesmen, paid for reviewers, and fraudulent products on Amazon, there is a real opportunity for creating systems that enable individuals to verify products do what the sellers claim they do.

[readams]

This problem was most famously studied by Akerlof in The Market For Lemons. The prediction is that such a market will be overrun with low quality lemons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

[sdoering]

I agree that the free market is easily gamed and therefore I really am glad to be living in a country with relatively strong consumer protection laws.

I buy online, I can return within two weeks no question asked.

It breaks within two years - I return it. Either I get a repaired one or a new one or my money back.

There are few exceptions but mostly it makes shopping quite secure.

Yes. There are bad actors. Yes people get ripped off by shady online stores. But if using trusted shop, PayPal or one of the known big shopping brands the experience is mostly good.

[wilkommen]

What country do you live in?

[pbhjpbhj]

2 years is minimum default warranty by law in EU.

In the UK we have a warranty period with no particular limit, undergirded by the EU 2 year default, through the Consumer Rights Act -- basically it's founded on how long products would be reasonably expected to last, a fridge should last a decade, a cheap toy arguably far less.

But, I've had a problem with this that I think it's a useful example: Steam sold me a defective game, I tried to play it but the bugs ultimately made it impossible to enjoy (the purpose of entertainment!). Under the CRA digital goods are explicitly included in the ability to return when defective; but Steam/Valve decided their rules on "play" time trumped UK law. PayPal provided a refund (tiny amount of money) in accordance with their terms, but now Steam have taken revenge (the employee time spent on the issue certainly cost more than the original purchase), threatening to close, and then simply limiting my account. That should be illegal IMO, but I don't know if it is. I'm not going to pursue them at this point.

Imagine if a fast-food outlet said "if you complain about your food we'll ban you from buying from us", that would have a perverse effect on consumers and reduce the ability to push back against instances of low quality food. Sure, you can boycott them but that seems worse for everyone.

TL;DR at least in the digital domain, even with strong consumer protections companies can work around the law.

[_0w8t]

Norway has similar 14 day return right for things ordered online. It is originated in eighties when the phone or postal orders became popular. Basically if you do not have a chance to examine the thing one is getting like in a physical shop, the seller must accept returns within 14 days. This cannot be restricted to unopened or unused things.

[cevn]

Sounds like something in EU to me.

[throw10920]

I'd like to describe a complementary problem to yours - that it's very difficult or impossible to find out others' experiences with a product's quality, durability, and performance. That is - the complement to the problem of "it's hard to determine if some products work" is "it's hard to find other users' experiences with the product".

Amazon reviews are completely worthless, but very few other platforms have anywhere close to the same number of reviews on them. Most platforms have no verification of purchase for reviews. It's hard to determine information like "does this device require a cloud login? for which functionality? are there ads?" that isn't explicitly supplied by the manufacturer (or hidden by them). Negative reviews about product breaking quickly aren't very useful because people whose products work for a long time leave reviews at a lower rate. Google is almost useless for finding out information like this because of how SEO-gamed everything is, and the ol' "site:reddit.com" trick will only work for a while longer until these fraudsters create enough fake reviews on Reddit that it also succumbs (which is already beginning).

(rant "...and this problem will likely won't be solved anytime soon, because consumers don't care about these things. That's the reason that we're in this situation - consumer apathy. When was the last time you heard a non-tech-savvy relative say something along the lines of "Wow, this phone didn't last very long. Is there a place where I can add that data point so that other people will be more informed before they purchase one?" Users don't care about performance, privacy, or durability - they just want to watch Netflix and pay the lowest sticker price they can (regardless of annual cost of ownership). You see people self-organizing around things like video games or paintball or book clubs or whatever all the time - why won't they put even a fraction of that effort into ensuring that they buy a good car?")

[newaccount74]

> because consumers don't care about these things

I think that's not the issue. Consumers DO care about durable products, and consumers DO share their experience. Consumers talk to others about stuff they like all the time, and they also complain to others when stuff doesn't work. Consumers also spend a lot of time online researching products.

Amazon Reviews were amazing in the beginning, because so many customers shared their honest experience.

The problem is that as soon as there is a popular place where people go to read reviews, companies realise they can make a lot of money if they post fraudulent reviews (or send free samples to folks who write positive reviews). Products with good reviews make lots of money, so companies are going to put a lot of effort into getting good reviews.

On the other hand, consumers trying to share their honest experience don't have anything to gain from doing so, so they are not going to put as much effort into sharing their experience.

[Tijdreiziger]

Amazon and Coolblue reviews have been decent for me. With Amazon, the nice thing is that even if there aren't any reviews on your local Amazon, it will show reviews from other countries' Amazons with the option to translate. Combine that with professional review sites like Rtings or The Wirecutter and you can usually get a decent idea.

[thatguy0900]

Maybe products have just reached a point of being overall just cheap enough and just good enough that consumers largely don't need to care about reviews? You talk about effort to buy a good car, maybe the average car is just good enough now. I wonder what percentage of younger people have bought an actual lemon that would cause them to be cautious.

[joshspankit]

I begrudgingly feel that things being good enough is they main why. And I say begrudgingly because it means less and less are caring about excellence while more and more becomes trash.

Fuelling it is that there are people in the “I want my <$500 things to last a long time because they should last” and people in the “If there’s a QC issue or it’s not as advertised I’ll return it, and if it breaks after I use it for a while I’ll just get the then-current one which will be better anyways”, and almost no one in between.

In our current society people with funds and not time see a clear ROI for shooting for 80% success because it means not having to spend time thinking or sorting out logistics.

[adolph]

> For many products today, it’s very difficult or impossible for most people to verify the product works.

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. - Jamie Zawinski via Coding Horror [0]

To your point, maybe Zawinski's aphorism is broader than regexp.

The quote investigation [1] linked from CH is well worth reading.

0. https://blog.codinghorror.com/regular-expressions-now-you-ha...

1. http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247

[wolverine876]

> What about for vitamins, or pet food, or any other “durable” products that are supposed to last for X years?

We could, as a society, make rules that prohibit these things and create organizations with the expertise and power to enforce those rules. We are hardly helpless, but the political trend is to forgo and even decry that power, do nothing, and then whine about how helpless we are.

[lvs]

It's called consumer protection, and it's weaker in the US than many other advanced countries.

[dannyw]

It's supposed to be called the Federal Trade Commission.

[goldenkey]

I suppose the FDA is also supposed to make sure our food isn't leaded?

These agencies seem to test one vector while ignoring everything else. I don't trust them.

https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/your-herbs-and-s...

[mfkp]

> What about for vitamins, or pet food

https://www.consumerlab.com/ does a great job testing vitamins and other various things put in or on your body. Well worth the subscription price.

[theshrike79]

Linus Tech Tips is attempting something in this field: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt3-6BsWlPk

tl;dw They're building a setup where they can test a bunch of computer equipment with standardised tests (built by them) in a standardised environment (also built by themselves).

[mrguyorama]

Gamer's Nexus, also on youtube, has done something very similar and designed a bunch of "Standardized" tests for their benchmarks of computer systems and hardware

[gangstead]

Sounds like what Consumer Reports does across various fields.

[joshspankit]

It’s all well and good until you get enough clout that a bad actor offers you a very large cheque to rig the game.

[usefulcat]

Is this a veiled accusation against CR? If so I’d appreciate some specifics. If not, I’ll just mention that AFAIK CR has always foregone all advertising, specifically to avoid such conflicts of interest.

[joshspankit]

Not directly, though I have some personal doubts that have zero basis in evidence.

It’s more a misplaced disappointment along the lines of “this is why we can’t have nice things” (because at a certain point money corrupts it). The number of times I’ve seen products and brands really have something special, and believe in them, and purchase and use the products, only to have them sacrifice integrity for money at some point is heartbreaking.

But that’s a me problem (and society’s problem), and not a Consumer Reports problem.

[RandallBrown]

An easy solution would be putting your phone in the bag and have someone else call it.

The post does mention something similar near the bottom where they suggest putting an AirTag in the bag and seeing if your phone can find it.