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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a scam where product pages are sold off to host a completely different item. They usually have lots of 5 star reviews and high search rank but the reviews are all talking about something different than what's now being sold.

I thought it was a bug at first but I've seen this too often. I don't understand how Amazon doesn't know this is happening, or why it even lets it happen in the first place. Product pages should be immutable.

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I was looking through some old Amazon orders last night. A pair of MPow bluetooth headphones I bought in 2013 now appear as an MPow fitness tracker.

It seems like sellers recycle old listings to keep their reviews.

What they also do is that they sell a quality product for 1-2 years, get good reviews and then switch to inferior materials.

Luckily the review system can catch this, as long as you look at recent reviews and the seller isn't buying any new reviews.

I find this happening everywhere. Loss leader, great product, next season the product cost the same and is now crap.

Anecdote: in my country they sell Toppits brand cling film, and it used to be great. Now it’s absolutely useless! Doesn’t self adhere at all.

Not familiar with that brand of cling wrap, but they probably reformulated from PVDC to LDPE like Saran did due to toxicity concerns.

I found some old Saran wrap when I moved in to a new place from like the 70s and that stuff was the bomb. Anyway, I ban brands that do this, and I never buy them again. Kingston and PNY, you've lost me forever.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kin...

I seriously doubt many people are catching it otherwise the scam wouldn't be so popular. People probably stop reading after the second or third review and don't check that entire pages are talking about a different product.

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