[mrsilencedogood]

Is amazon's model even profitable for these low-price high-volume parts without its binning system?

I literally do not buy things off amazon that fall into these "binning problem" categories, or anything easily counterfeitable. I'll buy from amazon for things that essentially cannot be counterfeit (GPUs, hard drives, things where counterfeits would be more likely to be a brick of the same weight rather than something that worked but was crappy or dangerous), or where i'm essentially trying to get "counterfeit"-grade stuff (stuff like plastic or metal garden spikes, where i just want the cheapest possible thing that will hold my irrigating tubing in place).

Everything else comes from target or the OEM's website store.

[mitthrowaway2]

In my area at least, even garden spikes on Amazon generally cost at least $14.99, while I can get them at my dollar store for $3.99. I think prices on Amazon are pretty absurd for "counterfeit"-grade stuff. But they apparently expect you aren't going to do any price comparison, because that would require getting up and going to the dollar store to see if they have garden spikes.

(HN entrepreneurs: I'd love a map-based consumer-products search engine where I could just type an item description into a search bar and see a map of stores in my area with prices and inventory.)

[throwaway48476]

Because the shipping price is included cheaper items have a higher percentage of the price going to Amazon for shipping. That's why cheap things are always much cheaper in person.

[mitthrowaway2]

No doubt, but Amazon communicates it to the consumer as $14.99 "with free shipping". To the consumer who habitually shops on Amazon and doesn't realize their dollar store sells it for $3.99, this sends the message that "$14.99 is just how much garden stakes cost these days, so I may as well buy them from Amazon who will ship them for free". If Amazon listed them for $3.99 with $11 shipping, it's the same total expense, but it would transparently signal to the consumer that the item itself ought to be cheaply available nearby if they get up and look for it.

Amazon doesn't want that thought to interrupt the 1-click checkout flow. And it apparently works; enough people seem to have internalized the idea that everything costs at least $15-$20 that they don't question it anymore. Soon your local dollar store is losing the economies of scale it used to have, cutting inventory and raising prices...

[tanjtanjtanj]

> GPUs

I wouldn’t be so sure, a good friend of mine ordered a GPU and it was an older and much cheaper model with the shroud replaced and flashed to call itself the newer model in windows. He would not have found out except he immediately ran a benchmark that returned an extremely low score and then investigated from there.

[ProllyInfamous]

>GPUs

Additionally, there is fear that you receive the "actual item," but it has been used detrimentally (usually: operated 24/7 too hot) for cryptomining or genAI.

This actually happened to me once (VEGA64) and I was surprised when Amazon authorized a full refund after the GPU failed.

[mrsilencedogood]

"it was an older and much cheaper model with the shroud replaced and flashed to call itself the newer model in windows"

I really though that anyone going to these lengths wouldn't be bothering to do this to scam on amazon and would instead be gainfully employed??? What the hell.

I guess I can't buy anything on amazon anymore. Oh well.

[devsda]

I wonder how the conversation with Amazon customer support goes in that situation.

If it says X model on the label, and OS also reports it as X it becomes tough to make a case for returns.

[marxisttemp]

I’ve heard tell of people doing the same with CPUs at Walmart.

[zrobotics]

Hard drives are definitely a suspect item, they are counterfeited. I needed some 6TB Seagate drives ~6 months ago to replace the drives in a security NVR, our local supplier was out of stock and they were available on Amazon. The drives appeared genuine, they showed up in OEM style packaging which was expected, I connected 1 of 6 to a Debian machine to check it an it reported the correct capacity. Flash forward to 2 weeks later and I get a notification the storage is full, when the capacity should have been enough for 5-6 weeks of storage. Further benchmarking showed they were actually 2TB drives that reported incorrect size. Fwiw they did match the read/write performance if the genuine drives, which doesn't mean much since that class of drives isn't terribly fast but are supposedly optimized for reliability for drives that spend ~99% of their life continuously writing and rarely reading. At least Amazon took them back as a return and did offer a refund. I had thought it was only memory sticks and SSDs that were being counterfeited, but apparently that is also happening for spinning rust drives as well.

[mrsilencedogood]

"Further benchmarking showed they were actually 2TB drives that reported incorrect size."

what.

ugh.

one less thing i can buy on amazon, I guess. gosh dangit.

[xsmasher]

You're going to love this. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1atu0tk/...

[advisedwang]

Printer ink feels about as low-price high-volume as my own blood.