Which makes you wonder why Amazon keeps this scam-enabling "feature". Do legit sellers really need it that much that Amazon keeps it despite the scams?
Many legit sellers – big names in all sectors – use the listings merging feature, from kindle books that are almost unreadable to network equipment that has variants with very different qualities. In many cases, Amazon is the seller.
As a customer I find it infuriating, and it feels as though it has been made more difficult over time to read the reviews for just the selected product.
I suspect that many transactions on Amazon simply would not happen if customers were better informed about what they are buying. I have no doubt that this is true across retailers – just think of all the things that have been hyped and sold that end up in garage sales barely used. It's far more common to see crap with five-star reviews than something great with three- or four-star reviews.
The feature kind of makes sense for purely cosmetic changes, like color – but even then it would be useful to have information about the actual variant.
I don't think this is some UI problem. I am quite sure it could be solved very quickly by showing reviews for the selected variant first, and then making it clear that other reviews are for other variants.
There is a way of somewhat mitigating this merging feature: Don't just look at aggregate review scores. Read the lower-end reviews. If the flaws are petty or expected, then that's great. If your variant is the worst of the bunch, you'll find out. But even with all that, it doesn't sort the takeover problem in the article.
Amazon tacitly supports this scam because it only cares about sales. It doesn't really care about the sellers.
It also knows that positive reviews have a huge influence in increasing sales, and negative reviews really dampens sales. This is why Amazon also allows what I call Product Page Hijacking.
How this works is, Amazon allows multiple models or variants of a product to be listed on the same page, so that all their reviews are mixed together. This deceptive practice hoodwinks many customers. There are 2 kinds of product page hijacking - somewhat obvious ones and the really sneaky kind.
Example of a somewhat obvious one - https://imgur.com/OfZLUeL - here, one product page actually lists multiple router models that have different features and configurations. While it is a bit obvious, the buyer still has to carefully read the reviews to figure out what model the review is about.
Example of the sneaky ones are products that only partially list their model number, and list and sell slightly different variants of model under a single product page.
E.g search for "TP-Link WR841" in https://dd-wrt.com/support/router-database/ - there are 9 variants of the same model (in essence, 9 different models) that are differentiated by a version number (v9, v10, v11 etc. after their model name).
But instead of creating a product page for each variant - "TP-Link WR841N v9" or "TP-Link WR841N v11" or "TP-Link WR841N v13" - only one product page is created under "TP-Link WR841N" and all the variants are sold under it. The variations in the models are sometimes not minor - some of the variants have a higher RAM and even totally different CPU! Since all the variants are sold under one product page, the reviews posted are actually for all these different variants. But the buyer will often have no idea of that. And they may not even receive the product they think the reviews are recommending!
The router issue is even more insidious as the vendors may not even know which version they have as the manufacturer considers them all identical even though they can be entirely different.
I don't think it has reached that stage though - so far, they have been clearly labelling the full model name of the product on the box and / or on the product. (I think it may be illegal for them to do otherwise as they have to obtain various certifications when they ship the product). So the vendors do know what products they have. It is kind of deceptive advertising on Amazon - they deliberately mislabel the product model by not including the version number (which is actually part of the model name).
There is not much to wonder about, Amazon does it because it critical to their fulfillment service, one of the key ways amazon makes money and keeps it 1-2 day delivery times is inventory mixing, i.e if you order from Seller X, you may actually get Stock that Seller Y shipped in.
This is why they need to merge listings into 1. It is also why there is soo much fraud on Amazon, and I dont believe they will ever fix it, the logistic costs would make Fulfilled by Amazon unprofitable if they had to stop mixing stock
If they use the Fufilled By Amazon service, which if you want to have "Prime" shipping you have to, then yes that is possible and more common than it should
The way the service works, is that you the vendor will ship your products into a amazon warehouse, other vendors will ship the "same items" a amazon warehouse, all of these "same items" are mixed together in the inventory system, your account is has a credit of "X items" but not the specific items you shipped in to the warehouse
Example
Acme Vendor shipped to amazon 15 Logitech MX Mouses
When amazon gets the mouses it take all 30 and puts them in a big box, as the orders are filled even if you ordered from Acme, you make get one of the one Evil shipped into Amazon
I think there’s a discount if you allow commingled inventory (or a cost to keep it separate) which makes sense as Amazon has to track and potentially stock it in multiple warehouses
The comingled inventory actually is a good idea, just flawed. Go ahead, comingle the inventory but keep track of where each item came from so when the counterfeit is discovered they know where it really came from and don't blame the innocent supplier.
Amazon taking action against the vendor, and consumers blaming the wrong vendor.
When you order from Amazon Marketplace you can clearly see who you are ordering from, even if Amazon shipping the item. Consumers getting a bad product will then no only review the item but the seller with negative feedback even though the seller they bought it from may have done nothing wrong
That's what amuses me - what, it requires a few additional characters on the stock barcode?
Of course the real problem is the counterfeiters have no problem starting a new vendor every few weeks or even days, so the damage may already be done by the time the reports come back.
The idea behind it was a good one - if you’re selling a book about cats, and you update the book to fix some typos (easy to do with Kindle for example) you don’t want to lose all your reviews.
And then they added a feature where if multiple marketplace vendors are selling the same thing it combines them.
And a third feature lets you classify items as various colors of a product (but the same product - think blue vs pink socks) and all the reviews get combined.
So if you do all three in the right order you can change anything to anything now, even taking another listing.
It's a good feature, it just needs more safeguards.
I'd also like to see a feature where established customers ($x bought over y time) can flag an entry as suspect--an entry gets enough flags and a human looks at it. If the entry turns out to be suspect everyone who flagged it gets a bit more flagging reputation, if it's wrong they get a bit less. The more flagging reputation you have the more your flag counts towards getting a human to investigate.
I don't think anyone would mind that (even the scammers) - because what the scammers want is "Five/four star" and "400 reviews" to show - they don't care what the actual reviews even say.
> And then they added a feature where if multiple marketplace vendors are selling the same thing it combines them.
It's more the other way around. Initially you could only sell something on marketplace if it was something Amazon already listed, usually a book. There would be an option on the Amazon listing to buy it elsewhere and if you selected that there would be a list of non-Amazon sellers you could buy the book from - these would normally be individuals reselling books they had finished reading.
