A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing (opens in new tab)

I deeply appreciate the kindness and support of the hacker community - sends me back thirty five years to when I was fooling with a Unix workstation and stumbled on a small accounting error. Back then, I was surprised by the outpouring of help, suggestions, and collaboration from other computer folk.

At this moment, I again thank this community -- across decades and across the globe, I'm heartened and happy to be one of the gang.

Warm wishes all around,

       -Cliff

I immediately went to my school librarian and said I wanted to try to connect computers together, or try to dial-up to library information services, etc. We started learning together.

You were a huge inspiration, thanks.

Your Amazon problems would be solved with a regular USPTO trademark. They don't recognize common-law trademarks because they are heavily arguable in litigation.

USPTO is a database of trademarks already scrutinized by trademark attorneys and government. It's not perfect, but it is a collection that Amazon recognizes.

You can do this for $2000-ish and never think about it again.

then GS1.org for barcodes

Now you can sell your bottles in museum gift-shops!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YWM31V4 by "Brand: Cradle & Dew"

"Kleinverse Exquisite Glass Klein Bottle, Handmade Math & Science Education Vase, Mobius Strip Glass Display for Gifts, Geometry Decoration & Theorem Glass - Collab with Mr Cliff Stoll" $74.90 + shipping

How linked to you is this ? Are these just reselling your products or are they independently made ?

Edit : In the description it states "These Klein bottles are proudly designed in Singapore, The Garden City".

Until someone showed up on amazon and sold it too, they just copied it and printed it themselves.

The copied book is identical, cover and all, images in the Amazon listing too ... Amazon chose to do nothing.

Hot ziggitty!

https://ibb.co/8jy12Z8

https://ibb.co/Nxt7V6j

How did you go about designing it? Was it fairly organic? Or did you have the full plan from the beginning?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU

A friend recommended it to me as a “beach book” and I bought it not knowing anything about it. Best beach book ever.

I want to buy your books, but suddenly I don't want to buy them through Amazon, is there a better website for me to buy them from?

https://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_the_call_to_learn?l...

I still don't understand how it works. Why can somebody owning something called "Amvoom" claim something called "Acme Klein Bottle"?

An even if they legally own the brand, how keeping the reviews when moving the brand to the new owner is the proper thing to do for the customers? By definition, the reviews are for another provider. I don't get it.

Sounds like most of his predictions in it (eg e-commerce will fail, digital books will not be viable, etc) were wildly off the mark - but were any prescient?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil

Here's a video of him describing how the Curta performs arithmetic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OynMJB-2J1o — as well as the SciAm article he wrote on them: http://www.mycurta.com/Calculator.pdf

Out of interest, is it publishing companies that make digital versions of books, or is it up to the author themselves to do that?

(And if it's the latter this is a small request to Clifford to consider it if it's not too much of an arduous task. And provided their relationship with amazon isn't too soured by the current situation, which I could understand if it is).

They seem to want it both ways. They have simultaneously tried to argue that they are not responsible for third-party sellers and blame them when fake and/or unsafe goods are sold, but then they work hard to make it appear that everything is coming from one place. It gets particularly annoying when it's a product with lots of variations (colours/sizes etc) where each variant will be a different seller with different shipping.

They are too big to fail and they can bribe their way out of anything. As long as majority of people don't care, why would they ever want to fix it?

Also for one legit Western company, you can get 1000 Chinese knock-off cheaper ones that don't complain and people buy what's cheaper.

Last year I bought a new mouse. NewEgg redirected my sale to a reseller, who sent me a busted, used mouse in a plastic baggie, with cigarette burns on the buttons. After raising a little hell, I got a refund. Basic on customer reviews, I'm not the only person this seller (betechparts, if you care) is scamming. Despite multiple emails to customer support and the NewEgg CEO, this seller remains active on NewEgg.

I no longer trust Amazon or NewEgg to supply non-counterfeit and unused merchandise.

While amazon is super handy, even food items like can goods are cheaper on walmart, but you have to wait a few days for shipping. Its can goods, theres no hurry, save money and shop around.

They don't actually ban the accounts doing this. They only remove the reviews/listings, but don't take any action on the accounts (so they just re-list 24 hours later)

Apparently when Amazon acts, they are just removing the fake reviews, sometimes the whole product but never actually banning the sellers account (even if every product that seller is listing is pumped full of fake reviews)

It seems to be a endless cycle of a item being hijacked or a item filled with fake reviews, then when reported to Amazon they simply remove the fake reviews or the product but don't take any action at all against the seller (or accounts making the fake reviews)

This thread[0] on the Amazon Seller forums is crazy with people finding products that are scam listings (with 10,000+ fake reviews), they report them, the products get taken down, then 24 hours later the same sellers have re listed with more fake reviews.

Amazon simply do not care, if they did they would:

A) Address the root problem

B) Ban the seller accounts clearly manipulating the system.

Amazon is quick to permaban accounts from real sellers, who make a single mistake (sometimes completely out of their control) but are happy to let these fake review/sellers keep their accounts.

[0] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/review-manipulatio...

I haven't really reviewed what I'm posting here - heck I can't spellcheck at 12:30 in the morning:

Amazon, through its "Brand Registry" allows anyone with an issued trademark to take over other brands, whether or not the brand is covered by the specific goods that the trademark was issued for.

Brand Name Hijacking takes advantage of several bugs in Amazon's seller business model:

1) Amazon Brand Name Registry allows the owner of a USPTO trademark to take over listings of non-trademarked brands.

2) Amazon Brand Name Registry does not prevent a registered Amazon brand from over-reaching beyond the regulated goods and services associated with that trademark.

3) Amazon combines reviews of different item variations and colors, even though they are from completely different listings and manufacturers.

4) Amazon debits inventory even when an order is cancelled, allowing a denial of service attack to exhaust inventory in a seller's listing, at no cost to the attacker.

Effects of Brand Hijacking:

1) Shoddy or unproven products receive five-star reviews, apparently from several years.

2) Consumers, relying on Amazon star ratings, are grossly misled by the summary reviews.

3) Disreputable sellers are rewarded (at the cost of honest sellers) by large volume sales caused by high ratings.

4) Unscrupulous sellers of reviews receive money from Amazon sellers in return for inflated reviews.

5) Independent sellers on Amazon -- specifically those who have delivered extremely high customer satisfaction -- are locked out of their listings and pushed out of their long term business.

If they made a new article, which immediately gets a lot of 5 star reviews, that'd be suspicious and Amazon would probably detect it.

But if they attach it to an already established article, they can happily add their fake reviews and then detach them again, making it look legit.

Just a theory though.

Getting banned has a high cost if you are a single small business with a long-term decades of time in business as the same company registration.

Because Amazon doesn't care, they still get paid if you buy a real product or a shitty counterfeited product.

In fact, such manipulation can result in increased sales and driving up the price of a product. You're more likely to buy something that has a ton of reviews and purchases, and more likely to pay more money for it if it has a ton of positive reviews.

Sigh. The usual FAANG bs. Do nothing as long as it makes you money and do the minimum only if it caused enough outrage. No values, no ethics, 100% shallow.

and 6 hours the scammer will be back under another account

For example Anker could have a trademark on "Anker" (the brand) and then claim the "PowerCore III" listing for their battery pack without having to trademark the name of each product.

Since he has common law trademark, why wouldn't that still apply? Someone else is selling via Amazon in the US using his common law trademark.

These too big to fail companies need to be split and held accountable!

If they consciously let fraudsters operate, in my opinion they are complicit!

Basically one oneline retail market participant optimized out almost all competition.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

On June 22nd, they used Amazon's Brand Registry to re-brand my listing on Amazon (replacing my brand, "Acme Klein Bottle" with "Amvoom") They could do this because Amazon's Brand Registry only respects issued trademarks.

I don't get this at all. Attacker has a trademark on "Amvoom". The word "Amvoom" does not appear in Stoll's product name or description. It isn't even close to any of the words in the product name.

FWIW I fully 100% believe Stoll. But the real question here is why is a "brand registry" allowing product takeovers that don't involve said brand? That seems to rise far beyond the usual Amazon bullshit, to straight-up algorithmic incompetence. How is this possible?

And continuing to use those services is giving a vote for those practices to keep on keeping on, and that people still use them? Well, no, it’s not surprising but it’s sad.

There was a discussion about selling products through Amazon on The Amp Hour a few months back, and part of the discussion included trademarks as a requirement. They made it sound like a new and expensive hurdle to deal with. Given Stoll's comments, it sounds like the lack of a registered trademark was a contributing factor to his problem. Putting the two together leads me to believe that Amazon is aware this can happen. (From the show notes, it looks like https://theamphour.com/523-a-keyzermas-story/ is the episode in question.)

Edit: for clarity.

One view is that Amazon wants sellers to register their trademarks formally with the government, then go through the brand registry process to prevent this.

one-sided?

Books can still be sourced from Books-A-Million, Barns & Noble, as well as local shops.

If I'm looking for choices for a solution, I'll use a marketplace, but after I find a solution, I'll order straight from the vendor itself

(but you should actually buy from his website)

I think Cliff Stoll sells 3D models of Klein bottles rather than the impossible 4D version.

You're right, of course: As others point out, mine is a hobby-business, and Amazon isn't the best place for it. Still, it was fun having a (small) presence there, even if most of my customer interaction happened through my Kleinbottle website.

Having said this, I'll probably continue this zero-volume business out of my home; the cool thing is how many fascinating people I meet. Just a week ago, a mathematician stopped by and tried to teach me homotopy theory. Good stuff!

Ad astra per aspera? !!

Cheers, -Cliff

Alibaba is much better than Amazon about seller verification. Look up, say, "PC power supply". On Amazon, you're lucky if you get the address of the seller and a product image.

Alibaba gives you multiple detailed pictures of the object, including its data plate. You get the full address of the seller, and whether it's the manufacturer or a reseller. There's usually a picture of the factory, info about their annual sales and number of employees, whether that's been verified by a third party, how fast they usually respond to inquries. Sometimes even what production equipment they use. What certifications they have and who does their certifications.

Many of those companies will accept an order for one unit.

This. Most of the time now when I buy from Amazon it feels like buying from a garage sale / flea market. Some examples from my purchases -- 4 pack of AA Eneloops arrived as 2 AAs and 2 AAAs; 2 identical office chairs arrived as 2 different models; Simple Human trash can arrived with 3 softball sized dents in different places; Spigen phone case arrived with some sort of tiny worms/maggots inside a corner of the packaging; Clorox antibacterial wipes arrived in generic packaging containing dry wipes. Porter Yoshida backpack arrived as a similar looking Herschel backpack in the same color.

I remember buying from Amazon and getting solid products really really fast; not sure where that's gone. I do use Amazon for the free Whole Foods delivery and that's been OK, though there's very lax usage of temperature-safe packaging for dairy and meat products.

What I realised is that it was just a dependency because it was so easy to search for and buy stuff. Nowadays I'll buy from a smaller shop if I need something, but it's more likely that I think "do I actually need this?" and say "no."

It is true in sometimes unexpected ways. For instance some sellers just don't care about notifications; it might be because they usually work with professional buyers who work on a long timescale ("I need it for this quarter") and will contact the seller on a regular basis if they care.

Some sellers just don't want to deal with you. I had a "mom and pop" for who my business wasn't really a priority (well, fine), sent me random junk after misreading my order, and it was a PITA to sort the situation.

Basically, going out of Amazon (the new Alibaba as you say) is also returning to the Wild Wild West. There is no real choice than to deal with both, but god is it a pain.

What do you expect from a company who has an automated system to fire employees, and they're notified if the discharge through an app on their phone?

There main objective is volume.

They could stop it, but presumably it stops reviews being “lost” which helps support their sales.

Any one scam might be defeatable, but "scamming exists" seems to be true in any marketplace with enough participants.

Agree. Our family has nearly weened ourselves off of Amazon. We do still buy from there occasionally, but for most things we don't.

And so many companies from so many industries use them they're effectively boycott proof: https://digitaldimensions.com/blog/big-companies-who-use-aws...

The consumers are in the position of primitive people in front of their gods. They have to come together and pray for gods to notice them if they want wrongs to be righted.

It would be better to solve this through legislation.

Though keep in mind I didn't have any huge, dried out aged blackhead to worry about, & those would be impossible to remove without some extraction.

The vast majority of them don't actually work, this is why those sellers rely on scams. It's almost impossible to know which ones do online.

Source: girlfriend and family experiences.

Stay-at-home parent? Oh, but your note brings smile to this tired astronomer's face...

But second sentence in the listing:

> Like a Möbius strip, this Klein bottle has only one side. In addition, a Klein bottle has no edge - the connection from "inside" to "outside" is smooth, and the bottle has no lip.

Is proper descriptive.

Back when Walmart started and everyone was all about "wow, their prices are great!" and nary a mention of their quality. I realized that Walmart was going to do the same thing to groceries.

Without re-invigorating the UCC with stronger consumer protections so that the "costs" are born not individually by consumers but by the market maker who pushes an inferior product, I don't see it getting much better.

I could fill up my cart, but had to come back later to do my purchase.

Let's hope they don't go the marketplace route while chasing growth. Shopping on Amazon feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you.

It’s incredible you can have one tiny part delivered within hours for free. I feel bad doing that though, so I always try to cluster my orders just to be nice to their delivery people and the environment.

Perfect example is how I don't buy anything Apple on Ebay anymore. WAY too many fakes, stolen or misrepresented stuff on there now. Hard to get away from all the Chinese resellers there either. I just buy directly from Apple. Yeap, its going to cost a little extra, but I can take comfort knowing its not going to be a fake or get something that was completely misleading in the listing.

I would also add rtings.com; they do a great job of documenting their process and the results themselves from their reviews with incredible detail.

Wait, explain this for me?

Amazon is a gambling company. People buys things with the hope that, this time, they are getting a bargain. And, as any gambling company, the customers will lose in the long term.

But, people gets addicted to gambling. Maybe next item, maybe I will do a smart purchase. The more randomized the experience the more irrational the consumer.

I prefer traditional business that follow regulations and are subjects to my country laws. I used Amazon when it started, because they had a great recommendation engine for books. Even that is now a shitshow that offers you what Amazon wants to sell regardless of what you look for.

Amazon works as intended, and that is terrifying.

p.d.: People is not lazy. It is just that most people are not experts on the products that they purchase, and they are already spending a lot of their time working hard and taking care of their families to add another ten hours of investigation to purchase a pair of shoes.

I just cancelled my membership, for all of the reasons you cite. I had been letting my membership ride only because of their streaming video, but recently, they've started yet another dark pattern.

I rarely finish a movie in one sitting. Three times in the past month or so, I've started watching something for free, and then come back to find that it was no longer free when I wanted to finish it. Like, the next day.

Most recently, this was Freakonomics. It was free when I started it, then I hit the wrong button on my Apple TV remote (THAT'S real hard, amirite?), and when I went to restart it, it had become for-cost. I mean, seriously?

I can live without their exclusives, and the standard defense around here that they're not, actually, a monopoly for online shopping is certainly true, so I'm done.

"Please don't fulminate."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Regardless of how you feel about $Bigco, plagues on planets, psychopaths, and similar rhetoric makes for bad HN threads, and we're trying to avoid those here. Thoughtful critique is welcome of course.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27685624.

It's a larger and more interesting question than whether these captains of industry are good or nice or healthy. You can assume they're not trustworthy and then go from there. Hell, all of crypto is based on the idea that people aren't trustworthy: not a big stretch to take that literally and assume that business operators aren't trustworthy.