Okay, it’s Christmas Eve and I’ve suddenly had a change of heart. I think the world is going to suck with out Chinese people.

Has anyone noticed that recently, the “new” products on Amazon are much more used, damaged or otherwise low in quality? I have gained the habit of ordering multiple items when it is cheap and returning the excess or broken, just to guarantee that I get even one whole and new item.

Circa September 2021, it was reported that Amazon kicked off some where from a few hundred to a few thousand Chinese companies. The reason cited was review fraud. The fact that they targeted Chinese companies only is a little bit racist. But dishonest Chinese should be punished IMHO, so I thought nothing of it. A couple billion dollars of sales on Amazon is like pocket change for Bezos, wouldn’t affect things at all.

But ever since then, we the customers, have been experiencing a barrage of bait and switch schemes. Essentially the merchant will put up a promotion on an ASIN with a set of very attractive descriptions. (The ASIN is like a SKU but renumbered and unified system used for all items sold on Amazon). After promotion event ends, the merchant will then take the same ASIN product and change texts and pictures. And promote the item for sale again.

For the poor fellow who bought the product the first time around, they cannot see what they thought they bought because the product page has changed. For the poor fellow buying the new item, he is seeing star-ratings and reviews for an entirely different item.

I literally had this happen to me many times this year. What came after Black Friday is simply not what the description says at Christmas time. A server first had a dedicated RAID adapter, but when I complained it didn’t work, that RAID disappeared from the product description.

The sad thing is that this “feature” in the grey area benefits Amazon merchants in a way that made the ecosystem work for many years. But during that time, there were a large number of Chinese suppliers that did not resort to this trick. They sold their stuff with woefully misspelled description never changing. probably because they lacked the English skill to even come up with a separate but elaborate description for another item. Probably, another reason, is that they just wanted to sell their product for some, any, money for a living wage.

But now that the Chinese are wiped from the planet and it’s future, what we experience is everything else. I would not dare name the origin of these dishonest merchants. Plus, most likely they will be pinned on Chinese people again. But honestly, I really feel life is worse after a certain population of vendors was wiped from Amazon. The sellers are simply lying and using bait-and-switch.

“But they’re just trying to make a living wage” you blurt out to me with an accusatory glare that says I am being biased in some way. But you will not find me defending these merchants, any of them, in any way. I will of course not rationalize what they have to do, I wouldn’t even ponder the fairness of bezos squeezing merchant margins so hard for his own gain, I mean the lot of it is all fun brain exercise on a Christmas Eve.

It is just so very interesting to see a layer of humanity when you have the power to peel away a layer by country of origin, you can experience another layer minus that country of origin.

Fascinating!