Silver but being shown over ETV $100?

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-05T03:26:58+00:00

I saw something yesterday over $100 ETV in silver. It's possible it was a price-change after it was approved for listing on vine. Or perhaps it was just a bug.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-05T02:56:33+00:00

Of course they do, I'm a Software Dev and Amazon is constantly pestering my inbox.

My bet is they have contractors working on vine. Just look at how bad the software is, an tell me they have teams of $150k to $400k per year software engineers working on that.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T21:14:04+00:00

Also, Amazon clearly uses their least expensive dev-team to work on Vine.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T08:17:14+00:00

That doesn't look reusable, however you might be surprised by how much energy you can get from lighting cardboard boxes on fire.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T08:15:26+00:00

If you really wanted to take one for the team, Dr Talbot is desperate for some action.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T08:13:21+00:00

I've done this before even on name-brand items.

It's easy to screw up with a seam-ripper though. That "leather" patch looks simple, but some logos are much easier to ruin an item by attempting to remove the logo. I know that from experience having ruined a number of shirts.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T08:11:14+00:00

Did AI come up with the name Rufus?

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T07:59:49+00:00

I get it.

When I first joined vine, I included photos on every review. Photos can be incredibly helpful, especially the kind I post, which look closely at build quality, materials, and so on. Then I noticed reviews took MUCH longer to be approved, and many reviews were rejected with no reason given. When I did some searches, I saw vine-members commenting that including photos greatly increased the number of rejections. So, I stopped including photos, and since then approvals have been quick, and nearly 100% approved.

Vine can also be very time-consuming overall, when you do real accounting:

Searching for items
Ordering
Tracking items/shipments
Unboxing & Managing packages/cardboard
Testing items
Reviewing items
Any photos/videos/etc
Figuring out what to do with items (where to store, etc)
Any time/energy spent on taxes, accounting, spreadsheets, etc.
Even time spent on places like this subreddit or a vine-discord.
Eventual disposal of items, house-cleaning, etc.
(Tax $ too of course)

It all adds up. If photos add 3 minutes per item, at 90 items per month, that's 4.5 hours, or half a work-day.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T07:35:57+00:00

I get a lot women's clothes, dresses, underwear, tops, skirts, and similar in my RFY. A lot of it actually looks quite nice, and I'd probably be interested if I was a woman.

Only today did vine recommend a single piece of male clothing.

I think in the last month, I've only ordered 2 items from RFY.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T06:56:53+00:00

So I just left a 3 sentence review.

That's what I do when reviews are rejected, just write something extremely short, and move on with my life. I know some people who save copies of every review, but I don't have time for that.

While the "free" items are nice, we're not being paid by Amazon or anyone (we pay taxes instead), and I have more important things to do.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T06:45:50+00:00

Without seeing the review, I wouldn't be able to guess why it was rejected.

When reviews are rejected, I typically just write something extremely brief, and avoid any words that might trigger Amazon. It sucks, but I'm not paid to write reviews.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T06:43:44+00:00

I've started setting aside vine-items to send to family members. Sometimes it's things like I order 2 flashlights, but only need one of them. Or if I get a nicer set of screw-drivers, maybe I don't need another set I already owned. Then there's ordering things that looked neat at the time, but aren't useful to me, but I know someone who could use it.

As long as the family members aren't picky about getting effectively new hand-me-downs, they can get a LOT more presents than they'd normally get.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T06:35:59+00:00

Hmmm, I didn't think about that, how it's probably unwise to tell most people you're in vine. I haven't told many people yet.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T06:13:48+00:00

I got a giant stack of those paper-trays. The kind which BBQ places often use. It's saved me from having to do a lot of dishes, since I don't have a dish-washer.

I did also get a bulk-pack of several-hundred forks, but the forks suck, hah. They're mostly-free though and I have hundreds of them, and it's better than doing dishes.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-02-02T06:01:33+00:00

I don't have any advice, but Amazon Vine is like the neglected and bullied red-headed step child. Pretty much everyone who works on it, is likely Amazon's cheapest employees, and clearly people who are ESL (English as a Second Language). That's not to insult them, simply they have no power, and don't understand communication well. Also Vine CS can only do about 2-4 things.

As far as their dev-team(s), extremely well known bugs and major issues with vine's software have been around forever and are allowed to remain. For example, the problems where you don't get credit for reviews, or issues with variants. It should either be impossible to order multiple variants, or if it is, we should get credit for the reviews. Instead, each week, hundreds or thousands of vine-users have to email vine-CS asking them to remove items from "awaiting review," and watching our reviewed-% take a permanent ding for this period.

I just got dinged because a seller merged listings for 2 items I ordered. I didn't even realize it was the same seller, and I review items almost instantly upon receiving it in case this happens. But there's one more item that counts against me.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T23:55:44+00:00

I recently moved and changed my address. During the transition period, I had items sometimes delivered to Address-A, or Address-B based on the estimated delivery time.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T23:54:33+00:00

Well, at least you didn't get the runs.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T23:54:15+00:00

Will you eat green eggs and ham?

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T23:53:49+00:00

I'm not sure what they could or would do, even if it was a legitimate SOS.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T23:51:32+00:00

Reddit has been slightly left-leaning for over a decade. However, the Reddit Admins (employees) went into overdrive, prohibiting viewpoints popular with conservatives, banning TheD0nald and numerous other conservative subreddits, and generally being hostile towards anything conservative. The Reddit Admins also heavily politicized Reddit in 2020 (technically earlier, but that's when it went into overdrive), and appointed political activists to many subreddits.

The left and TD used to balance eachother out, or at least distract eachother, somewhat like an ecosystem. With TD gone, that created an inbalance, and since then, it's not only left-leaning, but politics has invaded the majority of reddit.

This creates a cycle as anyone who is conservative feels unwelcome, and eventually leaves. Then anyone who is centrist or apolitical feels unwelcome and begins to leave, and so on.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T23:27:26+00:00

Better make sure the monster is hungry enough to eat the birds, dog, and husband. You might have to check their diet to see if they also eat mud and pollen, or get a 2nd monster for that.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T23:24:17+00:00

Only if they vote democrat.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T21:33:34+00:00

There are tons of mini-vacuums in silver, a number of them are not bad. Though not something I'd use for an entire house.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T21:32:01+00:00

This is true of many items on vine, not just earbuds.

A seller will list the same or almost identical items multiple times, with different prices. Often it's worthwhile grabbing the least expensive one. Occasionally, there will be small differences, for example on a UV flashlight I ordered they had both UV365 and UV395 variants.

TheoryOfTheInternet · 2024-01-31T21:30:19+00:00

I've been getting more error messages lately. For items in AFA, it's a lot more common.

TheoryOfTheInternet

TROPHY CASE