Chinese Sellers Moving to Walmart

[Mike Henderson]

There was an interesting article in Business Week this week. Amazon has had problems with China based sellers using fake reviews, and other actions, to boost the rating of themselves and their products. There are companies in China that provide what's called a "brushing service" to boost the rating of a seller and their products. Amazon terminated more than 50,000 Chinese sellers from the marketplace for these actions in 2021.

According to the article, many of the sellers have gone to the Walmart Internet marketplace because Walmart does not police their site as well as Amazon. Walmart offers the sellers the ability to stock their items in a Walmart warehouse so it is not obvious that the seller is from China.

Bloomberg has a paywall but you can usually get a couple of articles free. The title of the article is "Amazon's China Castoffs Turn to Walmart". If you're interested in reading more, search on that and see if you can read it on Bloomberg. I found it very interesting.

Mike

[Mark Hennebury]

My first experience ordering online from walmart,
Just before Christmas I was doing a google search looking for a second monitor, and saw a great deal on Walmart A 32" 2K Viewsonic at an incredible price of $149.13 Canadian, everywhere else they are over $400. I read a bunch of reviews on the monitor watched a bunch of review videos, By all accounts it is a great monitor, And at that price a steal of a deal, So I ordered three, one for me and the other two for Christmas gifts. Of course they did not arrive. After weeks of waiting and complaining ,Walmart says the monitors are not in their stock, but are advertised and sold by a separate seller. Walmart says that they would message the seller to contact me. Of course, no contact from anyone, no returned emails, eventually my money was refunded with no explanation and no apologies. Looking on Walmart website, the monitors are still advertised, only the price has gone up to over $400.

I wont be shopping at Walmart.

[Ron Citerone]

The only reviews I will believe are first hand or on a forum like this where I am familiar with who is who. Internet reviews are bogus IMO.

[roger wiegand]

Nothing about this is unique to Chinese sellers.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Well that sure explains my wife's most recent Walmart order.
She ordered me three pair of sweat pants - one blue, one black and one gray.
We received two pairs of sweat pants. One blue one gray.

Then a day or so later - a red sweat shirt...

[Warren Lake]

At the moment I can look out two homes down the street and see the 150 acre farm turning into raised ground with two story homes on top., So much for 35 years of stunning sunrises and a view to almost the next concession road. Told its Walton International that bought up some number maybe 50 farms around here. Told that that is the Wallmart kids that own that company. My neighbour has lived in her home 82 years and will be 91 soon. Its harder for her to accept than me but still when you see all the things that make a place special turn into everywhere else its sad. You mention Wallmart and this is what comes to mind every time I walk out my front door.

[Bill Dufour]

Sorta related. I heard on the radio this morning that folks from Chile fly to Florida then fan out across the country to rich areas and rob houses in the afternoon. They go into the master bedroom and look for jewelry and name bard clothes/purses. I guess native criminals are too lazy these days. They must be catching them to know about his.
Bill D

[Dave Fritz]

How many remember when Walmart began? Sam Walmart promising everything sold will be made in America. Then the white shirts came.

[Brian Elfert]

How many remember when Walmart began? Sam Walmart promising everything sold will be made in America. Then the white shirts came.

Walmart would have a heck of a time only selling goods made in the USA. I know they used to be more about made in the USA goods, but I never recall hearing them say they would only sell USA made goods. (Not that it didn't happen. I just never heard that.) Menards used to be big about American made goods too, but several of their suppliers for USA made hand tools went out of business so switched to imports.

Walmart announced a few years ago they would be buying $250 billion in USA made goods over a number of years. I know they brought in bath towels made in the USA, but not sure what else.

[Stephen Tashiro]

An interesting thing about mainland China is that its government firewalls ordinary citizens away from large parts of the internet, so when you see Chinese content on platforms like YouTube or Facebook, it is coming by special permission of the Chinese government and may originate from that government. I find it fascinating to watch ADVPodcasts, a YouTube channel about China that is often critical of the Chinese government.

[Alex Zeller]

I remember when WalMart had a policy of opening a new register if more than 2 customers were waiting in line. Clearly they realized people would rather pay less even if it meant waiting in lines for much longer. They also would beat up the companies making the stuff they sold to get the lowest possible price which lead to made it China. Ask Rubbermaid how well it went trying to resist WalMart.

As for their Chinese sellers I don't buy that type of stuff from them. Things like engine oil and name brand stuff (that's most likely made in China but to a much higher standard). Ebay has a pretty good policy when it comes to counterfeit items. You get one warning and the customer gets their money back. If it happens a second time the seller returns the money to the customer but also gets to keep the goods. The downside is that counterfeit stuff needs to be as perfectly copied as possible to fool the buyer long enough to get past the return period.

[Warren Lake]

you want to learn more about China get a book from Sam Cooper think called "Inconvenient Truth" or close to that. Ive heard him interviewed on radio. Hes a great investigator and probably has five or six years into it to write the book. The stuff he said was staggering, at least to me.

What Alex states heard shows on that as well last one was about counterfeit auto parts. Forget how many billions that was.

[Bill Dufour]

Boeing had to start a policy of no nuts or bolts made in China. Regardless of factory certs claiming they meet standards. To many forgeries of hardware and paperwork. There is no good way to test for proper heat treat and stress relief. on a mixture of stuff made in multiple factories all mixed together.
Bill D

[Stephen Tashiro]

Boeing had to start a policy of no nuts or bolts made in China.

For a less dramatic example, look at any globe purchased recently. What parts of the world are shown as belonging to the government of mainland China? Taiwan? Parts of India? Islands claimed by other countries?

[Warren Lake]

Years ago got a new furnace put in, kept getting wifs of gas. Called the gas people they came said nothing its fine. I said its not. They were going by smell, I said you can smell it you work around it ,they did a spray test water and soap and it was leaking. It was replaced and in a day or so same deal. It was replaced again nother guy soap and water and sure enough. Story turned out to be the fittings were made in China. Id never had any gas leak before that, know it happens from time to time. Likely those fittings were all sent to scrap and back to US made stuff.

[Brian Elfert]

Years ago got a new furnace put in, kept getting wifs of gas. Called the gas people they came said nothing its fine. I said its not. They were going by smell, I said you can smell it you work around it ,they did a spray test water and soap and it was leaking. It was replaced and in a day or so same deal. It was replaced again nother guy soap and water and sure enough. Story turned out to be the fittings were made in China. Id never had any gas leak before that, know it happens from time to time. Likely those fittings were all sent to scrap and back to US made stuff.

I still haven't finished fixing the gas piping on my standby generator because of stories like this about Chinese black pipe fittings. I bought some American made pipe fittings for the job, but I have not yet found all the American made fittings I need for the job. An HVAC guy replacing a steam boiler in a Youtube video cracked a new black pipe fitting. He noticed right away it was made in Vietnam and searched through his stock of fittings for a USA fitting which worked just fine.

[Bill Dufour]

You really need to treat stuff from China as a pre assembled kit. Try it out then take it apart to run taps and dies over the threads, retorque the fittings etc. etc.
Bill D

[Curt Harms]

You really need to treat stuff from China as a pre assembled kit. Try it out then take it apart to run taps and dies over the threads, retorque the fittings etc. etc.
Bill D

I noticed that with my Jet JJP-12. The knobs that lock the planer beds were quite hard to turn. I took them off and ran a die down the threads, much better. There wasn't much metal removed but it was enough to make a significant difference. I also replaced the small knobs with larger cast iron wheels. Now they're very easy to lock/unlock.

[Bill Dufour]

I am 62 years old and I only found out in the last month that Galvanized bolts do not work with non galvanized nuts. galvanized nuts the major diameter is machined larger so the zinc coating is the corerct diamter to mate with a oversized plated bolt.
That took a while to figure out because I was running a die over the galvanized threads to try to reduce them down. Problem was the die was worn out and cut threads to large to fit in a regular nut. Got a few pounds of galvanized 1/4 20 bolts for a good price at Habitat. After buying galvanized nuts they work great.
Bill D

[Michael Schuch]

Even the non "brushing" reviews on Amazon by real people that don't understand the product can be pretty misleading. I always read and evaluate the negative Amazon reviews before making a decision based on them.

Although Amazon has been forced to improve their bogus review cleaning there are still a good amount of "professional" bogus reviews on Amazon from various organizations specializing in such things.

I am a big fan of FakeSpot - https://www.fakespot.com/

The Chrome browser add-in does a good job of highlighting fake reviews both positive and negative based on analyzing other reviews from the same users.

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I don't trust the Walmart market place. My dealings with the HomeDepot similar 3rd party sellers has been awful!

[Myk Rian]

Even the non "brushing" reviews on Amazon by real people that don't understand the product can be pretty misleading. I always read and evaluate the negative Amazon reviews before making a decision based on them.
I always read the 4 star reviews, and also leave 4 star reviews.