We don't buy from Amazon, we don't do that here.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
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If you're even remotely worried about anything shady, you shouldn't even be on Amazon to begin with.
It really is just Ali Express with better delivery times these days.
I cancelled Prime and just buy a lot less shit I don't need.
That sounds like a wise thing to do!
Yes and no. There are a lot of products that i once had bought at (semi)local stores that no longer exist.
So it is either Amazon or Temu or any other online shop like that.
I'm not saying that you can't find good stuff there. :)
I personally try to avoid it as much as possible due to them being unethical and they not caring about the environment at all.
PS. Happy cakeday!
Not to mention they’ve completely setup the infrastructure and legislature to perform IP theft at scale. Ref their Amazon Basics
Oh, thanks. I hadn't noticed.
I found my AliExpress stuff to be more reliable than my Amazon stuff.
Literally the same thing. Go to any "how to sell on Amazon" video and the "now you're a real business person" step is always go to Alibaba and find a good distributor of the product you want to steal, er, become an independent distributor of. Have them slap your logo on it and bam, new millionaire coming right up!
Be sure to save money by purchasing surpluses of QA failures at a discount.
The developers name is pigford. I'm more than a little envious of their cool name
Am I the only one who doesn’t care where my decorative sculpture comes from or highlighters or house shoes? I assume it’s the same quality as the stores around me.
The only problem is that “knock off” brands are the only ones making products in at least some instances that used to be filled by the “brand names”.
This is the result of globalizing manufacturing. Eventually the brands that could pay for advertising stopped making things, and the void was filled by these “knock offs” (I don’t care for that term as it was applied in this article. These aren’t fake designer hand bags, they’re just products that don’t have a recognized brand name).
The correct industry term is white label products.
Can you believe that people just 40 years ago were still calling them stickers. Crazy how far we've come in just a short amount of time. Now they're using it in songs on the radio.
The amount of Kickstarters I waited years for, spent a fortune, and by the time it comes, the Chinese manufacturer has started making their own knockoffs for half the price....
Indeed. I’ve had that happen too. Those are actual knockoffs since they’re copying another specific product. It’s a shame that is the reality of our manufacturing industry.
Yeah, exactly! Literally.
At least I can sleep slightly better supporting creators?
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You would think this is what people pay Amazon to do. What is it they do pay them for, really?
For line go up
Probably Prime Video, Prime Gaming, etc.
COOFANDY is not a scam. COOFANDY is a way to stay closer to maximizing best smiles in life to maximum outcomes as well as possible!
I was looking for a specific shirt for a themed party and that brand kept coming up. I bought a good one and one of theirs just to compare and yep, the coofandy one was crap. Too short, weird sleeves, the material was uncomfortable as hell, like wearing a trash bag.
Correct. COOFANDY is c.r.a.p.
C - COOFANDY
R - ® (Registered Trademark)
A - Awesome
P - Products
The manufacturing environment in China is different. A lot of products are made from an existing design, then anyone who wants to sell those buys them from the factory.
The weird "brand names" are basically drop shippers. People buy Thing, send them to Amazon's warehouses, pop a storefront.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
I have plenty of hate to go around.
You, I ~~like~~ hate you.
The weird brand names are because Amazon requires the products you sell to have a "brand" in order to provide them plausible deniability that your product is not generic OEM stuff from China. So the sellers of generic Chinese OEM stuff have adapted by making up nonsensical brands and registering the letter jumble they come up with as a trademark. Now Amazon can claim everything on their site is a "brand name" product, see? It's all totally above board.
Hate both.
The weird "brand names" are basically drop shippers. People buy Thing, send them to Amazon's warehouses, pop a storefront.
That is not drop shipping
"Basically." Close enough. All they're doing is administration, all the logistics and fulfillment is handled by someone else.
Yes, but with dropshipping you're waiting weeks for the product to arrive from China, with FBA you get it overnight from an Amazon warehouse. FBA is also quite expensive for the seller
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Most "name brands" have long been acquired by large umbrella corporations, and shortly after doing so, the "brand recognition" is often leveraged to market white label products; which is increasingly the only differentiator between it and off-brand products. That, and the price-difference: simply paying more for a meaningless "name brand", on an equally inexcusably poor quality product; besides a slightly less shitty customer experience, hopefully.
I really think it's poor design to purely filter on appearance of brands, rather than actual brand reputation. Yes, it might serve as an overgeneralized indicator for questionable reputation, but marketable brands shouldn't be treated as reputable either.
Yeah absolutely agree. I always but hydroflask bottles, but never through hydroflask. The exact same bottles and exact same lids are sold under a rolling list of random Chinese companies like this. Usually these companies do have real names, they're just super Chinese and not worth properly localizing.
Hell, I recently got a new fancy video monopod. The official US name brand that sells it is harlowe. It sells for about a grand
I bought this exact same model from "yc onion" with a nonsensical name the "pineta pro" (said "pine-tah") for less than half that.
I literally brought mine into a store after realizing how similar they are and compared them side by side. Even the stamp and sticker placement is identical. Like they clearly come from the exact same factory just with a different color and a different name printed into the same box on the side.
Why the fuck would anyone pay the 60% price hike just to have a known US company sell it to you? The really shitty thing is that I'm not sure how b and h is allowed to sell it. When I talked to my local camera store they said that they weren't allowed to sell it because they were a brand partner to the US brand and couldn't sell non us products without getting fined or dropped by their suppliers. Maybe b and h is just big enough to not have to care anymore, but that's just going to be one more nail in the already dying camera store market.
Couple things.
First, those are likely “third shift” products. The Chinese company that’s making the original product does more than ordered, and off the books. Slap a different sticker on it, and you can sell it without worry of it being caught as a counterfeit.
Secondly, there is something to be said of going through the original manufacturer. They have warranties, and actually care about their name so will go to some extent to support you if something goes wrong.
Now is that worth doubling the price? Not likely. But it’s something to keep in mind.
I have issues with your monopode having three legs. Mostly I think it's funny.
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Which 14 product listings are left after that
So it can let me filter out any brand that is in all CAPSLOCK? or has no vowels?
I would live if the extension just blocked Amazon and directed you to actual company websites when you go to add a product to cart.
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This is stupid. There are lots of great products from sellers without an established "brand"
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