I'm still surprised how many people are surprised by this. I tried to explain it to a friend once and he was like "haha yeah some Chinese makers put up fake brands with fake pics and reviews, you gotta do your research"...
People have no idea what's going on here and how in collusion Amazon AND other well-known brands are with the scam that is Chinese manufacturing. Amazon really need an American competitor.
In the current day you need to assume all numbers that represent large groups of people are fake, or at the very least heavily massaged. Polls, ratings, upvote counts, likes and retweets, "scientific" data, vote counts.
The only time it's trustworthy is when they are low numbers, or the mass media is trying to desperately convince you away from something.
And specifically with Amazon, the Chinese companies often ask you to give a positive review in exchange for a gift. The gift sometimes costs more than the product you bought in the first place.
But how can you do actual research? Products are fake, reviews are fake, Q&A is fake, I guess you can look up consumer reports but its probably owned by china and fake too. Are there any web sites with actual consumer reports on products? This seems like a good .win page.
Buyer beware? Make sure you look at every detail. Sucks you got scammed but keep the vendor in mind.
I became cautious of a lot of stuff on Amazon because of that USPS executive order put in back in the day that allowed Chinese mail and packages under a certain size to get shipped for practically nothing. It was put in place to help China recover from war time issues, but it was still in effect and Chinese vendors were undercutting the shit out of American businesses with it. It literally cost less to get something shipped from there than in our own country.
At least a couple years now they've been pushing the weird Chinese brands with respect to electronics gadgets. If I want that level of junk I'll just order it from AliExpress for next to nothing. At least then I paid a crap price for a crap product.
Otherwise it's gotten to the point everything needs so much research if you want it to be halfway decent. I don't even trust more reputable brands anymore. Logitech for example I've gotten to the point I generally hate everything they sell.
Otherwise it's gotten to the point everything needs so much research if you want it to be halfway decent.
So true. It's such a chore to buy anything anymore. I can't depend on the reviews. I can't depend on the brand or quality of the item. I can't depend on the seller. I can't depend on the e-commerce site. No one has a reputation at stake. And yet for a lot of products, I'm effectively trapped, since now I can't really get a lot of stuff locally.
I've been shifting my electronics (and a lot of other kinds of purchases) to Costco since I know I can at least rely on their return policy, and I know they at least try to stock decent products.
I finally ended up getting rid of Costco mainly because I moved and it was too inconvenient anymore. They were great on returns though. I think when it comes to brands now, very few of them even bother with a reputation. You can silence dissent online, buy good press, etc. and it's all cheaper than maintaining a reputation.
They downsourced, and the engineers left to make a startup that failed and someone ran off with everyone's money not delivering the promised hardware. Everyone lawyered up and vanished. The original Logitec is a hollowed-out shell of its former self.
They might still make some stuff that's decent, but I've tried a couple different mice and keyboards and they just don't seem to have any quality at all anymore. None of it was at the super high end, but it wasn't the low end either.
Got you one better. My Amazon account has been completely banned from posting any reviews and had ALL of my prior reviews removed because of "suspicious reviewing activity". My crime? Posting several reviews back-to-back on items that I bought, noting that the items were collectible and only available in limited quantities. Apparently that violated "community guidelines", so I received no warnings, no second chance, no nothing - they just straight up cut off my entire ability to review anything. My appeal has fallen on deaf ears, so I've just accepted that Amazon reviews are run by a bunch of crooks and Chinese shills.
Amazon is bad about this. It has gotten to the point where I rather go to a Walmart or Target than to order off from Amazon. At least I can visually inspect the items at a physical store and judge the quality myself.
Have to be careful doing this. In-store prices can sometimes be higher than what they post online, even when you're doing in-store pickup. And they don't price match (or at least they didn't when I last asked them; I ended up ordering the thing I wanted online from inside the store and wandering around until it was available for pickup).
Another scam the Chinese use is to buy a bunch of legit product like Carhartt t-shirts and have them shipped to US addresses. Now initiate returns with BOOTLEG product.
The next person to buy a Carhartt t-shirt receives a chinese bootleg, two sizes smaller than the label, and leaves a pissed off review on the legit product.
They supposedly mix inventory from different suppliers if it has the same manufacturer and manufacturer item #. So one manufacturer can supply counterfeit product and fuck it all up.
Try checking on the SELLER, a trick they like to do is attach themselves to a real and popular product listing (i.e "we sell the same item"), but you get the fake.
I’ve also been been hit with this bullshit when I bought a cheap controller for my switch. After making the bad review it was deleted along with my complaints.
Luckily I was able to return it and get my money back by claiming it was broken and wrapping 5 layers of tape around the controller, why? Well, who in the fuck is going to take the time to unwrap that bitch? Nobody apparently hehe.
Fyi, any solar panel that can fit on a power bank is going to output under a watt and I've yet to see a bank with a proper solar charge controller in it cutting that sub watt to a fraction. Don't count on the panel being able to keep up with the bank's self discharge much less recharge the pack.
I'm sorry that you just got red pilled on how shit products get pushed to the front by Amazon.
What these companies do is they send the product to you for free, or they put something in the product to incentivize you to leave a 4 or 5 star review. Usually "we'll send you something (worth almost as much as the product) for free if you leave a 5* review".
Allllso, you may have gotten a dud item - go for a refund.
Is the item still up?
Funny I've had very similar experience around 5 years ago with very similar powerbank - it stopped working within a week. Solar panel was a joke, it didn't charge jack (even if it worked, the amount of power it's generated was negligible), in fact I think me leaving it in the sun is what caused it to die. I would recommend getting a powerbank without all these bells and whistles. I got one without solar and remote charging, and it's been working like clock since then... and it kept charge for years!
I literally found my powerbank in storage 2 years after I last used it and it had 3/4 charge indicator.
I think powerbanks with integrated solar are garbage - leaving it out on a sun and thus heat for extended periods of time is probably a bad idea, and the solar cell they have is far too small and shitty to make any difference anyway. But I am not an electronics expert, just my opinion.
edit:
sorry typo in original comment:
"I got one without solar and remote charging" - just plain powerbank without any additional crap.
I had a cousin that worked sales and they'd have the problem of their products being stolen via credit card fraud and listed on Amazon. Since they intermix supplies from various suppliers their warehouses are full of stolen goods. If someone with political will wanted to come down on Amazon all you'd have to do is raid a couple dozen of their warehouses and find stolen goods and then prosecute. Shame that won't happen until a new crop of officials are elected with the balls to go after the enemy.
Don't know how it looks in US but here in UK I always instinctively scroll down to star bars and instantly click 1 star reviews to see if they have any photos to back up their reviews. In 80% of cases I usually find some which is why I hardly ever buy from Amazon.
It would be interesting to see what's inside, I have a few cheapo solar panels that look exactly like that, (for future projects) they have metal tabs on them.
"OP is shocked to find that Ching-Ching garbage is fucking Ching-Chong garbage."
I really don't understand why people would fully trust the reviews on a site dedicated to selling you the product you're looking at not to have a massive conflict of interest.
I wonder if they play games with the voltage to advertise more? Amps being related to voltage and all, if the battery were to be 1.5V it would make the mAh number higher despite the fact that USB charging for 5V would be a lot less.
I've been getting 3, 5, to 10 reviews and/or questions/answers on my amazon account that I never made. At first I thought it was spam, or spoofing, but then I clicked and see these are actual reviews that I didn't make (or actual Q&As). The odd thing its not under my reviewer identity but my first name and last initial.
So I changed my email and password. The messages still come in. I've forwarded this to Amazon and they replied with just that this is spam and to ignore it. I dropped it, because fuck them, but it's NOT SPAM, they are actually posts on their site.
All reviews are fake, all Q&As are fake too. And Amazon is either in on it but at the very least they care not.
You'll probably find that the next time you try to leave a review for any item, it'll prevent you from doing so by giving you this message:
"We apologize but this account has not met the minimum eligibility requirements to write a review. If you would like to learn more about our eligibility requirements, please see our community guidelines."
They probably didn't like that you included the factual label of "Chinese scam knock-offs".
Only stick to big brand items on there is simple things that are impossible to fuck up.
I'll still use it as a go to if the company I want to buy stuff from has a front there, Asus etc.
Reminds me of some Christmas lights I bought off there years ago, when they arrived they were DOA. Opened the box up and it was an absolute mess and definite fire hazard. Sad thing is back then if they got too many negative reviews they'd just change company and repost the item to a copy paste store front- guess Amazon wasn't so greedy back then
and alibaba/aliexpress. the only benefit you're getting when you buy through amazon is the easy return policy. when you receive chinese garbage from amazon, it's a shitload easier to return than sending chinese garbage back to china and hoping you get your money back.
You don't need original packaging. Just put it in a box and send it back. You can probably still do it now. Just go on your orders page and return it. You have to fill something out online and print it though so go through their actual steps but its pretty easy. Do that, then fuck Amazon.
Even the return policy is a joke. The last item I ordered from Amazon (before I dropped them forever) actually shipped from China. The item I received wasn't what I ordered, so I filed for a return. Despite trying to escalate the case, Amazon wouldn't provide a prepaid label for this seller, and the return shipping cost more than the item itself.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED! Well, not that shocked.
I'm still surprised how many people are surprised by this. I tried to explain it to a friend once and he was like "haha yeah some Chinese makers put up fake brands with fake pics and reviews, you gotta do your research"...
People have no idea what's going on here and how in collusion Amazon AND other well-known brands are with the scam that is Chinese manufacturing. Amazon really need an American competitor.
In the current day you need to assume all numbers that represent large groups of people are fake, or at the very least heavily massaged. Polls, ratings, upvote counts, likes and retweets, "scientific" data, vote counts.
The only time it's trustworthy is when they are low numbers, or the mass media is trying to desperately convince you away from something.
And specifically with Amazon, the Chinese companies often ask you to give a positive review in exchange for a gift. The gift sometimes costs more than the product you bought in the first place.
But how can you do actual research? Products are fake, reviews are fake, Q&A is fake, I guess you can look up consumer reports but its probably owned by china and fake too. Are there any web sites with actual consumer reports on products? This seems like a good .win page.
"Sold by HAOTING-US"
Buyer beware? Make sure you look at every detail. Sucks you got scammed but keep the vendor in mind.
I became cautious of a lot of stuff on Amazon because of that USPS executive order put in back in the day that allowed Chinese mail and packages under a certain size to get shipped for practically nothing. It was put in place to help China recover from war time issues, but it was still in effect and Chinese vendors were undercutting the shit out of American businesses with it. It literally cost less to get something shipped from there than in our own country.
At least a couple years now they've been pushing the weird Chinese brands with respect to electronics gadgets. If I want that level of junk I'll just order it from AliExpress for next to nothing. At least then I paid a crap price for a crap product.
Otherwise it's gotten to the point everything needs so much research if you want it to be halfway decent. I don't even trust more reputable brands anymore. Logitech for example I've gotten to the point I generally hate everything they sell.
So true. It's such a chore to buy anything anymore. I can't depend on the reviews. I can't depend on the brand or quality of the item. I can't depend on the seller. I can't depend on the e-commerce site. No one has a reputation at stake. And yet for a lot of products, I'm effectively trapped, since now I can't really get a lot of stuff locally.
I've been shifting my electronics (and a lot of other kinds of purchases) to Costco since I know I can at least rely on their return policy, and I know they at least try to stock decent products.
I finally ended up getting rid of Costco mainly because I moved and it was too inconvenient anymore. They were great on returns though. I think when it comes to brands now, very few of them even bother with a reputation. You can silence dissent online, buy good press, etc. and it's all cheaper than maintaining a reputation.
They downsourced, and the engineers left to make a startup that failed and someone ran off with everyone's money not delivering the promised hardware. Everyone lawyered up and vanished. The original Logitec is a hollowed-out shell of its former self.
They might still make some stuff that's decent, but I've tried a couple different mice and keyboards and they just don't seem to have any quality at all anymore. None of it was at the super high end, but it wasn't the low end either.
Got you one better. My Amazon account has been completely banned from posting any reviews and had ALL of my prior reviews removed because of "suspicious reviewing activity". My crime? Posting several reviews back-to-back on items that I bought, noting that the items were collectible and only available in limited quantities. Apparently that violated "community guidelines", so I received no warnings, no second chance, no nothing - they just straight up cut off my entire ability to review anything. My appeal has fallen on deaf ears, so I've just accepted that Amazon reviews are run by a bunch of crooks and Chinese shills.
Amazon is bad about this. It has gotten to the point where I rather go to a Walmart or Target than to order off from Amazon. At least I can visually inspect the items at a physical store and judge the quality myself.
Have to be careful doing this. In-store prices can sometimes be higher than what they post online, even when you're doing in-store pickup. And they don't price match (or at least they didn't when I last asked them; I ended up ordering the thing I wanted online from inside the store and wandering around until it was available for pickup).
Amazon is bad.
Another scam the Chinese use is to buy a bunch of legit product like Carhartt t-shirts and have them shipped to US addresses. Now initiate returns with BOOTLEG product.
The next person to buy a Carhartt t-shirt receives a chinese bootleg, two sizes smaller than the label, and leaves a pissed off review on the legit product.
They supposedly mix inventory from different suppliers if it has the same manufacturer and manufacturer item #. So one manufacturer can supply counterfeit product and fuck it all up.
That's exactly what they do. I've seen many products where a specific time period suddenly has tons of bad reviews when the product was fine before.
Try checking on the SELLER, a trick they like to do is attach themselves to a real and popular product listing (i.e "we sell the same item"), but you get the fake.
The strange square brackets are always a huge red flags. No idea why they use them.
I’ve also been been hit with this bullshit when I bought a cheap controller for my switch. After making the bad review it was deleted along with my complaints.
Luckily I was able to return it and get my money back by claiming it was broken and wrapping 5 layers of tape around the controller, why? Well, who in the fuck is going to take the time to unwrap that bitch? Nobody apparently hehe.
I recommend using FakeSpot when buying anything on Amazon.
Helps avoid situations like this.
https://www.fakespot.com/analyzer
Damn good to know
Fyi, any solar panel that can fit on a power bank is going to output under a watt and I've yet to see a bank with a proper solar charge controller in it cutting that sub watt to a fraction. Don't count on the panel being able to keep up with the bank's self discharge much less recharge the pack.
tl;dr power bank solar is a meme.
I'm sorry that you just got red pilled on how shit products get pushed to the front by Amazon.
What these companies do is they send the product to you for free, or they put something in the product to incentivize you to leave a 4 or 5 star review. Usually "we'll send you something (worth almost as much as the product) for free if you leave a 5* review".
Allllso, you may have gotten a dud item - go for a refund.
Anker/Aukey are trustworthy brands.
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Wireless-PowerCore-Portable-Compatible/dp/B083YW8NW5
And I believe Amazon doesn't delete the review, I think the original manufacturer can delete that too.
That's unfortunate, I have a bunch of Aukey and Anker chargers and they've all been working for me for several years.
You have some bad luck with this shit man lol
When it comes to batteries/cables it's Anker/Aukey all the way
That's the problem with starting your business in someone else's business.
Is the item still up? Funny I've had very similar experience around 5 years ago with very similar powerbank - it stopped working within a week. Solar panel was a joke, it didn't charge jack (even if it worked, the amount of power it's generated was negligible), in fact I think me leaving it in the sun is what caused it to die. I would recommend getting a powerbank without all these bells and whistles. I got one without solar and remote charging, and it's been working like clock since then... and it kept charge for years!
I think I have this one
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-PowerCore-Portable-Double-Speed-Recharging/dp/B01JIWQPMW/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=power%2Bbank&qid=1639691592&sr=8-3&th=1
Just charge it at home once and leave in car for emergency, or buy solar cell on its own like this one https://www.amazon.com/25000mAh-ADDTOP-Portable-Waterproof-Compatible/dp/B07FPHHNDL/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2VFXM4PVQN52W&keywords=solar%2Bcharger&qid=1639691737&sprefix=solar%2B%2Caps%2C187&sr=8-4&th=1 and charge off of that.
I literally found my powerbank in storage 2 years after I last used it and it had 3/4 charge indicator.
I think powerbanks with integrated solar are garbage - leaving it out on a sun and thus heat for extended periods of time is probably a bad idea, and the solar cell they have is far too small and shitty to make any difference anyway. But I am not an electronics expert, just my opinion.
edit: sorry typo in original comment: "I got one without solar and remote charging" - just plain powerbank without any additional crap.
I had a cousin that worked sales and they'd have the problem of their products being stolen via credit card fraud and listed on Amazon. Since they intermix supplies from various suppliers their warehouses are full of stolen goods. If someone with political will wanted to come down on Amazon all you'd have to do is raid a couple dozen of their warehouses and find stolen goods and then prosecute. Shame that won't happen until a new crop of officials are elected with the balls to go after the enemy.
I made a post about Chinese industry, work ethic, and honest a few months back. Lying about products seems to part of Chinese culture now.
https://media.kotakuinaction2.win/post/MUPXBlom.png
https://communities.win/c/KotakuInAction2/p/12jw3cPKZp/perhaps-i-should-instead-tell-yo/c
It's been that way forever as part of asian culture.
It's super important to not offend emotions, which quickly turns into lying and telling you what you want to hear.
Don't know how it looks in US but here in UK I always instinctively scroll down to star bars and instantly click 1 star reviews to see if they have any photos to back up their reviews. In 80% of cases I usually find some which is why I hardly ever buy from Amazon.
It would be interesting to see what's inside, I have a few cheapo solar panels that look exactly like that, (for future projects) they have metal tabs on them.
Image https://www.banggood.com/5W-5V-Protable-Solar-Panel-Polycrystalline-Solar-Energy-Charger-Panel-For-Travel-Outdoor-p-1838498.html
Probably best not, as it could become a fire risk
"OP is shocked to find that Ching-Ching garbage is fucking Ching-Chong garbage."
I really don't understand why people would fully trust the reviews on a site dedicated to selling you the product you're looking at not to have a massive conflict of interest.
I wonder if they play games with the voltage to advertise more? Amps being related to voltage and all, if the battery were to be 1.5V it would make the mAh number higher despite the fact that USB charging for 5V would be a lot less.
I wouldn't be surprised if the dirt-cheap ones are a misdirection to make people buy the mid-priced one.
welcome to the party pal
They would mean nothing anyway. Most of these dumbasses leaving one star reviews are people bitching about bad packaging.
I've been getting 3, 5, to 10 reviews and/or questions/answers on my amazon account that I never made. At first I thought it was spam, or spoofing, but then I clicked and see these are actual reviews that I didn't make (or actual Q&As). The odd thing its not under my reviewer identity but my first name and last initial.
So I changed my email and password. The messages still come in. I've forwarded this to Amazon and they replied with just that this is spam and to ignore it. I dropped it, because fuck them, but it's NOT SPAM, they are actually posts on their site.
All reviews are fake, all Q&As are fake too. And Amazon is either in on it but at the very least they care not.
You'll probably find that the next time you try to leave a review for any item, it'll prevent you from doing so by giving you this message:
"We apologize but this account has not met the minimum eligibility requirements to write a review. If you would like to learn more about our eligibility requirements, please see our community guidelines."
They probably didn't like that you included the factual label of "Chinese scam knock-offs".
Welcome to 2015 lol
Only stick to big brand items on there is simple things that are impossible to fuck up.
I'll still use it as a go to if the company I want to buy stuff from has a front there, Asus etc.
Reminds me of some Christmas lights I bought off there years ago, when they arrived they were DOA. Opened the box up and it was an absolute mess and definite fire hazard. Sad thing is back then if they got too many negative reviews they'd just change company and repost the item to a copy paste store front- guess Amazon wasn't so greedy back then
and alibaba/aliexpress. the only benefit you're getting when you buy through amazon is the easy return policy. when you receive chinese garbage from amazon, it's a shitload easier to return than sending chinese garbage back to china and hoping you get your money back.
You don't need original packaging. Just put it in a box and send it back. You can probably still do it now. Just go on your orders page and return it. You have to fill something out online and print it though so go through their actual steps but its pretty easy. Do that, then fuck Amazon.
Even the return policy is a joke. The last item I ordered from Amazon (before I dropped them forever) actually shipped from China. The item I received wasn't what I ordered, so I filed for a return. Despite trying to escalate the case, Amazon wouldn't provide a prepaid label for this seller, and the return shipping cost more than the item itself.
that's because you bought from a direct dropshipper, not one of the ones who orders units to be stored at amazon warehouses.
some of them do the direct dropshipping like that. others have it shipped to warehouse and then it's eligible for prime and sells better.
Brakets are a dead giveaway for trash as well
Yeah and the names are fucking stupid because they're just making shit up so they can get a trademark in the states.