[trompetenaccoun]

One way some companies and merchants deal with high inflation and increasing price pressure seems to be declining quality. I've seen similar things happening more frequently in different markets, not just tech. If you notice something like it, the best way to deal with it imo is ask for your money back, make it public if possible and boycott the business from then on. Customers need to penalize such behavior as much as possible or soon we can't trust anything anymore. Hard disks especially are one of the most critical components, you don't want failures there.

[autoexec]

One example of this is Breyers ice cream. They are the oldest ice cream company in the US, had a great reputation, and heavily marketed that they only used high quality all natural ingredients until they got bought up by Unilever who stuffed it full of artificial ingredients and fillers to the point where they could no longer legally call their product "ice cream" and had to relabel their products as "frozen dairy dessert". You'd think that doing that would have tanked the company, but they're still one of the top brands globally and in the US. Unilever took advantage of a company's reputation for quality, quietly filled the product with shit, and made a fortune because people continue to eat it up. There are plenty of competitors making actual ice cream too.

[floren]

My recommendation is Tillamook. Their strawberry is fantastic.

[Der_Einzige]

Their ice-cream is firmly mid. If you live in Oregon and want good ice-cream, try salt and straw.

[floren]

I'm always going to suggest the long-running farmer cooperative. Salt & Straw is good (they have them down here in California too) but they're just a compelling buyout offer away from going down the Breyers path.

[rubiquity]

Tillamook is at least half the price of Salt and Straw, who is rather unremarkable after expanding to every major metropolitan in the US.

[Der_Einzige]

This happens all the time with clothes too. Even the "made in england" dr martins are trash compared to old ones, and that's just one small real life example of a "they don't made them like they used to" boomerism.

[rycomb]

Indeed. Seems that Amazon is doing this more and more. Here in the US, I've just received a used (and damaged) Rode microphone, sold and shipped by Amazon 'as new'. And as you said, I returned it and decided not to order anything valuable from them, ever again.

Still, I wonder if these (arguably illegal) practices are still worth it for merchants and companies, considering that there's no enforcement and the majority of consumers don't drastically change their shopping habits when being abused.

[bityard]

So I'm going to do something I don't normally do and defend Amazon only a little bit...

What likely happened was that somebody had an old and broken Rode mic and decided to scam Amazon. They purchased a new one, put the old one in the new packaging, and sent it in as a return with "ordered by mistake" or some other reason that doesn't indicate a broken or faulty item.

Amazon warehouse employees certainly don't (and never can) check out every return item for full functionality. My guess is that at the most, they make sure it's not just an empty box or a brick.

So, the only signal that Amazon has about whether to restock the item again is what the buyer stated for a return reason. If they tell the truth, they might get someone to take a closer look at the item and decide that it's not actually new. If they lie, they are both scamming Amazon and the next buyer.

Amazon _could_ treat _all_ returns as defective and destroy the returned items (historically how many brick-and-mortar retailers did it), but given their generous return policies, this probably means quite a big hit to their bottom line.

[hamandcheese]

There is a large spectrum of options between the extremes of "destroy all returns" and "resell returns as new without any checks".

For example: only sell returns as "open box". For some items, I'd be happy to chance an open box, for other items, not so much.

[IAmGraydon]

I've had this experience with several big retailers recently. One is B&H, who sold me a "new" Focusrite 18i20 4th Gen last month which had clearly been opened, cosmetically damaged, and returned. I've also had this experience many times with Sweetwater (musical instruments retailer). There used to be a sales rep there who would participate in a particular musician's forum that I was a member of and would get us a slightly better price than is standard if we ordered through him directly. Many people who did so, including me, received what was clearly opened and returned items, sold as new. I assume they do this because the vast majority of people would rather not bother and will just accept a small defect.

[tartoran]

I'm really surprised B&H has turned to this, they've been a very good retailer in my experience.

[IAmGraydon]

I've spent 5 figures with them over the last few years, and they've always been good to me too. I'm writing this off as a one-time mistake, but I really hope it doesn't become a trend.

[tartoran]

Could also be caused by a bad employee doing shenanigans or a could also be a one off mistake. But it could be something B&H is doing to unsuspecting customers and that is terrible for their reputation.

[buildbot]

They’ve been sorta good, but rumors if things like this have been persistent for a decade. Photographers would get a few copies of a lens, and then return copies ones that were not up spec. B&H would allegedly just relist those as new, not open box. Many manufacturers don’t seal their boxes…

[tartoran]

I heard some rumors though I'm not sure how widespread the issue is. So far B&H has had a pretty good reputation, maybe they changed management and whoever is in charge doesn't care about reputation, only profits.

[bombcar]

This isn't new, it's just becoming a bit more prevalent. Anyone who shopped at Fry's Electronics knew it was nearly impossible to find something that hadn't been reshrinkwrapped by them (I suspect they'd reshrinkwrap everything sometimes so you couldn't tell).

Dealing with the cost of returns is a major part of a modern retailer, and Amazon has got to be through the roof with the numbers they receive.

[madphilosopher]

Things I absolutely won't order from Amazon: products you put in your body, products you put on your body, and electronics. Their business model and fraud are pretty much indistinguishable at this point.

[mmmlinux]

I had the same thing happen with a soldering iron bought from amazon. sold as brand new. clearly had been used and crammed back in the box.

[IAmGraydon]

>One way some companies and merchants deal with high inflation and increasing price pressure seems to be declining quality.

And some, apparently, turn to fraud.

[Snoozus]

In this case practically all german retailers are affected.