Guess I'd better say a few things.<p>First, I deeply appreciate that so many on Hacker News have come out for this. Enough to awaken me from a sound sleep on a Tuesday evening!<p>I don't really care that much about selling Klein bottles over Amazon - it's mainly to reach parents over the holidays. But I do wish that Amazon would do something about this kind of thing.<p>Finally, I"m very low on stocks of glass Klein bottles. It's weird for me to ask my friends not to buy the things I've worked so hard to make, but I guess I'd better. I hope to have more manifolds in mid to late summer.<p>Warm wishes all around,<p>-Cliff (way late on a cloudy Tuesday evening in Oakland)
That sucks. Nice write-up of how this scam works, I wasn't aware of the details previously.<p>Also, if anyone is unaware, this is this Clifford Stoll: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll</a> - who wrote this brilliant (and true) book: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)</a> - which is a really good read and perfect for HN.
What is ironic is that there is an annual Award given to an AWS employee called the Cliff Stoll Award: For those individuals who see something suspicious, not working as expected, show ownership and drive it to resolution. As Cliff did to find a KGB spy, and documented in "The Cuckoo's Egg".<p>I wonder what would happen if someone at Amazon pulled on this thread and not only solved Cliff's problem but also the root cause that enables this kind of product hijacking.
They're still in denial that they have a problem.<p>Just read the thread on the previous occasion where listings got hijacked on their own fora [0] - its sad to see the sellers so powerless, helpless and just left to themselves.<p>You really have to wonder why they even bother...<p>Edit: also, reading that thread you can also get a feel why big brands have completely left AMZN as a platform (like Adidas, Birkenstock are a few i'm aware of).<p>Possible co-mingling of inventory, hijacked listings... no, just don't bother - of course not each and everyone is a heavyweight as my 2 examples - but <i>do we really need</i> 100s of dropshippers FBA'ing the same crap? I'd rather buy direct at the source than at Amazon these days.<p>[0] <a href="https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/review-manipulation-amazon-echo-dot-listing-hijacked-seriosly/856604" rel="nofollow">https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/review-manipulatio...</a>
A perfect example of why I buy less and less from sites that support 3rd party sellers.<p>The problem is even once reliable sites like newegg.com are now playing these games. If I wanted the Ebay/alibaba experience I can get that! Why large retailer sites dilute their brand and frustrate customers in the fruitless chase of "being like Amazon" in catering to 3rd party sellers amazes and annoys me.<p>At least most other sites let you weed out the 3rd party sellers fairly easily. What's really annoying is with Amazon, even if you are buying from "Amazon" it could be ultimately supplied to Amazon by some hackney 3rd party and not a trusted wholesaler or the original manufacturer. And as Cliff Stoll found out, Amazon doesn't care either.<p>Talk about coasting on your reputation. It will be interesting to see how much trust they have to piss away before it affects them enough for them to finally pay attention to stuff like this :/
> To make their blackhead remover listing look legit, Amvoom then submitted several hundred orders over Amazon, and immediately cancelled each order. These depleted my Klein bottle inventory on Amazon - even though nothing was paid for, and nothing was shipped. In turn, this removed the "second color option" for their blackhead-remover, since Amazon felt that the Klein bottles were out of stock. Result: their black-head remover listing got 199 positive reviews, and the Klein bottle did not show up as a "color choice" in the Amvoom black-head listing.<p>How do people manage to figure out such elaborate ways to manipulate Amazon results without getting banned? Getting banned has minimal cost? Poor detection? Inside information?
Given how this is on page-1 of HN, jeff@amazon (the elite US-based seller support team who uses the email, not Bezos) is gonna tear this AMVOOM / TaroRee hijacker a new one.<p>While this is kinda designed-as-intended (Amazon wants you to brand register with them for protection), this is a pretty shitty dark pattern they put up and sadly it happens as an annoying edge case that existing sellers and customers have to deal with.<p>Source: me, a mid-sized Amazon 3P seller/vendor.<p>Edit: "-Cliff Stoll Saturday morning June 26, in Oakland, California. And yes, I am now trademarking Acme Klein Bottle." Looks like Amazon's getting what they want after all.
I would really love to know why "Amvoom" could declare to Amazon that they own "Acme Klein Bottle" when "Acme Klein Bottle" has nothing to do with the "Amvoom" trademark. Can they just declare they own <i>any</i> page that doesn't have a registered trademark?
<i>A sleezy company hijacked my Amazon listing to move my positive reviews over to their product.</i><p>I've seen that happen sometimes, and always wondered how or why it happened. Like I'll be reading reviews for a USB Memory stick, and the 5 star reviews rave about nail polish.<p>I've reported these cases to Amazon, but they take no action.
I got the baby Klein bottle from Cliff years ago. Nice little nerd tchotchke for the mantelpiece. He also wrote an awesome account of a KGB internet hacking from in the 80s: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)</a>
Is there any economics term for being "too big to care"? This seems to be a case of that, and it seems to be quite widespread at Amazon in particular. Just look at the mess that is the AWS console UI as another example. With all those billions and billions, you'd think that they could remedy a lot of this stuff.<p>But alas, why bother when you are in such a dominant market position? Of course I could think of a lot of reasons, but this seems to be the mentality.
This seems completely insane to me. How is this possible?<p>I like Cliff Stoll and have been looking forward to my first Klein bottle purchase for some years now, so I say this without any insinuation Cliff's not telling the whole story: There's got to be more to it than this, right? Can someone really go on Amazon, effectively take over someone's storefront, and completely ransack the place this easily? Because Cliff doesn't have a registered trademark? This seems out of this world absurd.
It has only really now dawned on me that I really do need to take my Amazon custom elsewhere. Amazon is not a place to do my shopping any more and inertia is not really a good enough excuse for not taking my quantum of influence somewhere else.<p>So I am shopping around for alternative marketplaces for books and general goods. Not groceries - never really fell for that Amazon offer.
One more reason that I am no longer renewing my Amazon Prime this year when it is up.<p>Amazon is on a slow slide to hell. I came to realize this last year. And Prime membership is a large part of the problem. Two issues:<p>1) It reduces friction so it is easiest to default buy from them.<p>2) The price on those handcuffs / membership has gone up, a lot, and it is basically a driver to dilute the cost burden via volume.<p>So cancelling Prime is the key to kicking Amazon to the curb.<p>You can still use it, for times when you cannot find something anywhere else, but it no longer becomes the default.
<a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp/B017UY60MK" rel="nofollow">https://smile.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp...</a><p>I think this is the item.
Amazon stimulates fake reviews, fake listings and fake vendors.<p>This practice has to stop.<p>Gigantic class action suit is overdue for this fraudulent criminal empire.
A mathematical side note: I might be woefully ignorant but I thought it's not possible to make a Klein bottle in the real world...?<p>This is not to belittle Stoll's work, it might be a model or approximation... or I'm just missing something.
Hi Cliff,<p>First of all thank you for being you. I read about you week ago and then I went into a massive youtube binge of your videos. I had a bad day and needed a distraction and seriously your videos were uplifting, funny, educational and so binge worthy. Great stuff, highly recommended to anyone. Wish there would be more of them.<p>From ecommerce perspective, don't care about amazon. I wouldn't say that for most business, but I am sure most of the clients buying from you actually know you as it's hard to search for klein bottle without without you popping up. It is first result above amazon in my google search and I would assume most of the sales on amazon were actually coming from people that first seen your website and just wanted to quick checkout.
I _really_ want a filter on Amazon for both where a product is manufactured as well as where the company exists. Basically I want to undo the Chinese-knockoffization of Amazon with all its complete dilution of all search results… let alone sad stories like this.
This, and other instances of this scam make me not want to buy anything off Amazon ever again. Where is Amazon in this? Why is this even <i>a thing</i>? Is there no oversight at all? Amazon has now become the Alibaba of the west and it makes me sick to think the once beloved marketplace is now just scamville. I typically buy from sellers websites now and rarely buy off of Amazon but now I feel I need to completely remove Amazon from my options.
Automation without live human review should be criminal. One could imagine non-internet analogous situations that are explicitly criminal.<p>It's common that automated decisions with no human contact cause situations like these; probably most of them go unresolved because the victims do not have the clout to arouse a mob.<p>Corporations have a monetary incentive NOT to resolve these problems.<p>It's time for regulation. The market has failed.
I have a Klein Stein and it is excellent, both for beer and coolness. Cliff Stole’s book on tracking a hacker is also a tour de force in tracking things back to the cause. And, like me, he was a stay at home parent for a long time.
I had no clue what a Klein Bottle is, this video was very very very helpful: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfhiVaJj9UY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfhiVaJj9UY</a>
Side note: reading other parts on the website, this guy is hilarious<p>"CORONA VIRUS: I've ordered everyone at Acme Klein Bottle to work from home. Of course, I'm Acme's only employee, and this is my home business. "
The trademark the foreign seller used to hijack the listing <a href="https://uspto.report/TM/90721592" rel="nofollow">https://uspto.report/TM/90721592</a>
I meant to show a simple example of how a vendor offers the same product for the same price on their own website and on Amazon. I was going to argue that they should mark it up on Amazon to encourage traffic through their own site. So I just grabbed a random item on Amazon to illustrate this:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Adafruit-2769-Circuit-Playground-Educators/dp/B07BB84BBQ/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1&keywords=adafruit&qid=1625089241&sr=8-11" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Adafruit-2769-Circuit-Playground-Educ...</a><p>$99.99 "Adafruit 2769 Circuit Playground Express Educator's Pack"<p><a href="https://www.adafruit.com/product/3399" rel="nofollow">https://www.adafruit.com/product/3399</a><p>$350.00 "Code.org Circuit Playground Express Educators' Pack"<p><a href="https://www.adafruit.com/product/2769" rel="nofollow">https://www.adafruit.com/product/2769</a><p>$99.95 "Circuit Playground Express Advanced Pack"<p>Then I looked closer at the Amazon listing, thinking it odd that Adafruit would confuse the product label. I see that it isn't being sold by Adafruit. So somebody is apparently buying one product from Adafruit, relabeling it on Amazon as a much more expensive product, and misleading buyers. And that's a generous reading.<p>I'm not pointing this out as a warning that it can happen. I'm pointing out that I didn't pick this product to illustrate this point. I picked a random product to illustrate a different point, but ran into this. Granted, this is a uselessly small sample size, but sheesh!<p>One moral of this story: Always buy direct when possible. Never buy through Amazon if it can be avoided.<p>It irritates me to find a vendor who offers a product cheaper through Amazon than on their own website. That encourages the exact type of abuse seen here.<p>(I'm not ripping Adafruit for doing this. Of the pages of products displayed by Amazon when I searched for "sold by Adafruit" I didn't find any evidence that Adafruit even sells on Amazon. Lot's of other people--including Amazon--sell Adafruit products on Amazon. Somehow they can meet or beat Adafruit's price. Have to wonder how many are legit.)
Sorry about this Cliff. Hope somebody at Amazon can clear it up. FWIW I bought one of your Klein bottles last year (directly from your website) and it arrived quickly and undamaged.<p>I'm also moving away from Amazon ordering in general because it takes much too long to sift through all the fake reviews of Chinese-made garbage to find the fake reviews for the Chinese-made good stuff.
When I enter "Klein bottle" or "Acme Klein Bottle" as a search pattern, the first item in the list is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kleinverse-Exquisite-Handmade-Education-Decoration/dp/B08YWM31V4/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Kleinverse-Exquisite-Handmade-Educati...</a> . Is that wrong?
@CliffStoll : fyi, at the bottom of the linked page on your website there is a link "TOP OF PAGE" that is broken!<p>It goes to a not found page.
Amvoom fraudulent page in Google webcache<p><a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0UGfjt7PRgEJ:https://www.amazon.com/Acme-Klein-Bottle-Handmade-Glass/dp/B017UY60MK+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0UGfjt...</a>
Somewhat amusingly, Amazon doesn't let you include HN URLs in abuse reports, it errors out with "Please don't include personal info": <a href="https://i.imgur.com/7nFbL3l.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/7nFbL3l.png</a><p>I'm guessing because it contains the string "ID".
I went to Amazon.com, searched for a Acme Klien Bottle and got a "Cradle and Dew" brand bottle "collab with Mr Cliff Stoll."<p>Not a "blackhead" remover. I'm confused. Is that not Cliff's bottle?<p>EDIT: Apparently it has been fixed. Still, WTF, Amazon?
Buyed the real thing from his site (<a href="https://www.kleinbottle.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.kleinbottle.com/</a> as mentioned) 1.5 years ago. Much more to enjoy there anyway.<p>Thanks Cliff & Greetings from Germany
Just came here to say that I bought one of Cliff's Klein bottles maybe 5 years back, and it's still my only decorative contribution to our house.<p>Cliff seems like a great guy, and I hope this gets resolved for him.
So, appalling scam aside, everyone knows what a Klein bottle is or what it does? First I've heard of it, and neither Stoll's site or the Amazon listing shed any light on the topic...just in-jokes.
Great to see news of Cliff here. I have his hardbound book autograpged when I met him in a conference in Berkeley about 10 years ago. I read the book almost 25 years ago..
Sleazy company hijacked Cliff Stoll’s Amazon Klein bottle listing.<p>To me “foreign seller” implies Amazon sellers/buyers has some sort of national context?<p>Note: I do feel bad hijacking happens in Amazon.
It seems like going on the Live Chat with Amazon would help Stoll speak with someone. I've used that several times and they always fixed the issue right away.
What is the purpose of a Klein bottle for those of us not in the know? Can you store food in it or is it just the geometrical shape that fascinates children?
I blame Zizek and his 2020 book Sex & the Failed Absolute who link unorientables (klein bottle, crosscap and Mobius) to unfinished human subjectivity.
This isn't an Amazon bug, it's a feature. Amazon has known for YEARS about sleazy (Mostly Chinese) sellers manipulating reviews, paying for review and generally engaging in super shady practices, and Amazon has done literally NOTHING about it, so at this point we can reasonable assume they tacitly condone these practices.<p>Amazon reviews have all but become useless as a result. Perhaps one of the least trustworthy corners on an increasingly trustless internet.
These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new.<p>B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Crutchfield/Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even better vendors.) Walmart/Target/BestBuy have been good for everything else.<p>If you're too lazy to figure out yourself which products are quality, Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of.<p>And for simply next-level quality, nothing beats DIY. Personalize the final product exactly to your specifications, choosing the highest quality or even custom-machined parts with zero cost cutting. Requires time and passion, however.
We're finally going to not renew our Amazon Prime after many years.<p>We don't have that much need for "free" shipping on cheap Chinese products, and the convenience of the Amazon marketplace is now counter-balanced by the inconvenience of sorting out the fake goods and fake reviews. We are choosing sellers' own marketplaces when we can these days, and just dealing with longer and paid shipping.<p>Additionally, we are finding that Amazon Prime Video doesn't have so much that we want to watch anymore either, and we are paying for multiple streaming services anyway.
Amazon is unfortunately a very convenient plague on our beautiful ppanet, and Bezos seems like a borderline (if not outright) psychopath. it's late and i need to sleep, but just search the internet for "Jeff Bezos is a scumbag" and you'll see that people don't "just" hate him because he's filthy rich (nothing wrong with being filthy rich, lots of great people are!).<p><a href="https://trofire.com/2019/01/28/scumbag-jeff-bezos-to-lose-billions-after-affair-exposed/" rel="nofollow">https://trofire.com/2019/01/28/scumbag-jeff-bezos-to-lose-bi...</a><p><a href="https://www.grunge.com/143621/the-dark-truth-about-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos/" rel="nofollow">https://www.grunge.com/143621/the-dark-truth-about-amazon-fo...</a><p>there is a lot more but I am tired. we should all boycott/avoid using Amazon.
Title should read "A seller based in China has hijacked Cliff Stoll's Amazon Klein bottle listing"<p>"foreign" is provincial and kinda racist. "foreign to who"?<p>Is a seller in China foreign to a Chinese person?<p>Is a seller in Nigeria "foreign" to a Nigerian?<p>Is a seller in the UK "foreign" to a British person?<p>Will this make headlines in the broadsheets, The Washington Post in particular?
The pointing out that it's a 'foreign' seller seems unnecessary and xenophobic, especially given the fact that it is an American corporation the one that not only allows, but almost incentivizes this behavior.