Decreasing diversity of deal vendors?

datruandi thought this was worth mentioning said Sat, Dec 17th 2022 at 12:48am ET

Maybe I am imaging it but to me it seems that over the years the diversity in deal vendors/manufacturers is getting smaller and smaller.

Eg
Aukey and Tacklife (same company) seem to be over-represented lately.

I understand that deal sites well, buy up things where a deal is to be had, and maybe it is just coincidence.

And no, I don’t want speaker docks back.

1 comment, 7 replies
Comment

djslack said Sat, Dec 17th 2022 at 1:49am ET:

Here’s how I see it: Aukey and Tacklife didn’t set out to be deal manufacturers. They set out to license a bunch of stuff and sell it on Amazon. Then they got banned, but were stuck with a bunch of stuff with their names on it. They sold it off to Meh, and Ross/TJ Maxx, and Channel Control, and anyone else who would buy large lots of now distressed merchandise. Probably because they were counting on Amazon not only to sell this stuff but to warehouse it, too, so suddenly they had a BIG problem and had to cut their losses very fast. This is conjecture, but it’s how I think something like that goes down.

I do wonder if anyone sets out to be a deal manufacturer, though.

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- @djslack wait Amazon banned that?
  
  thechilipepper0 said Sat, Dec 17th 2022 at 10:56am ET
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- @djslack @thechilipepper0
  
  I didn’t know this, but just checked into it. Yep, they’re banned. Here’s why:
  
  https://xcessorieshub.com/why-is-aukey-banned-on-amazon/
  
  The executive summary is: “Aukey has done something due to which it has been delisted from selling on Amazon. Aukey has done a massive data breach by paying customers for posting fake reviews. There were 2 other big companies, Mpow and Tomtop who faced similar penalties.”
  
  shahnm said Sat, Dec 17th 2022 at 11:39am ET
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- @djslack @shahnm @thechilipepper0 And those brands are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve reported at least a half dozen others over the years, and lately those reports have been taken very seriously. At first, Amazon didn’t even have an obvious way to report the issue. But when enough buzz started showing up about the utter unreliability of their ratings because of those fake reviews, they finally started doing something about it. Nowadays, I pay more attention to the percentage of one-stars than anything above three.
  
  werehatrack said Sat, Dec 17th 2022 at 12:40pm ET
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- @shahnm @thechilipepper0 yep. The thing is they were generally decent products, but I think there was a push to game the system to try to get ahead. Quite a few companies with lax moral standards went this direction.
  
  Another company that did the same thing was Enacfire. They actually made pretty fantastic Bluetooth earbuds for the prices they sold them for on Amazon. But they had a review scheme going and also got kicked off. I still get emails from them, they do exist, but without Amazon volume they try to sell at MSRP on their own website and in sure make only a fraction of what they used to.
  
  It’s shady, for sure, but I wonder if it’s cultural. Like how in some countries, bribery is a way of life, but here it’s very taboo.
  
  djslack said Sat, Dec 17th 2022 at 12:56pm ET
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- @djslack @shahnm @thechilipepper0 Um, what country are you in?
  
  macromeh said Sun, Dec 18th 2022 at 11:17am ET
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- @djslack @macromeh @shahnm @thechilipepper0 Bribery is only taboo here for the little people. At the top of the heap, bribery is de rigueur.
  
  werehatrack said Sun, Dec 18th 2022 at 4:51pm ET
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- @djslack @macromeh @shahnm @thechilipepper0 @werehatrack I dunno, we had a VP sent to federal prison last year for getting kickbacks upwards of $3million
  
  mbersiam said Mon, Dec 19th 2022 at 10:13am ET
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