this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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My retired mother was trying to look for a new Nintendo Switch dock for my niece. She asked me if she was looking at the right one on Amazon and showed me one with a picture of a real looking Nintendo Switch dock except the logo was blurred out.
I scrolled through the Amazon results and was having trouble figuring which was the real one. instead I went to the official Nintendo store and sent her the link to the switch dock from there.
Amazon is really a horrible user experience for buying anything that isn't cheap junk.
Your retired mother is the ultimate Amazon mark. Like you said, Amazon is full of sellers with photoshopped images of shitty Chinese knock offs. Regular people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. You basically have to be a forensic expert in your chosen field to have any luck on Amazon.
The main trick is checking the seller. Certain ones are very reliable for used-but-good things like dvds/books. And you just use amazon for the shipping part.
But even these days they use another shipping company.
For your used things for sure, the seller being reputable and the items being less common works well. Common items (like that knock off Switch dock above) that can be faked are tough because even if you buy product X from seller A, all product Xs can be in the same bin at the warehouse and Amazon just grabs one and ships. if Seller B is pushing a hard-to-distinguish knock off that Amazon believes is product X, then one might end up with that one and think seller A is to blame. That sort of mistake is definitely Amazon's fault in my view. You can end up with knock off stuff when buying from the official brand's store on Amazon for crying out loud.