So resolved? Thanks to Cherron and Angela I noticed the other listings still show thousands of reviews, skewed to positive. That is still not OK.

Amazon have noticed unusual activity and is now blocking reviews on the product without buying verification, in other words they are protecting Dymo from review bombs because people would push down the rating to much.

In Spain, the Amazon store currently has 984 reviews averaging 4.5 stars. Off course all of them from previous series. If you scroll down, the "reviews for other countries" have a bunch of fellow European costumers giving the deserved minimum score. I guess they will have to receive local complains on twitter to react for each store.

There is only 7 reviews that are 5 star, the rest are only ratings, which knowing amazon are going to be mostly easily falsified by DYMO.

Report this to the FTC.

* cyberpunk dystopia hell

Reporting that review shit now. I work for Amazon review moderation. I encourage people to report it too. Corporate is not gonna fuck around with petty crap like this. Based on severity, seller will either be warned or blocked off marketplace.

I've reported it already, everyone needs to report the listing.

@@bharathch8304 Where do you report listing violations as a customer?

I wonder what "people also bought"

I do not know if they manage the listings, in the seller details it states: sold and shipped by Amazon themselves

I made an attempt but couldn’t find a way to report the listing. So I emailed the CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassey. I know that sounds crazy but he has recently been in the news for being very involved in simple customer complaints. Bezos had a similar reputation. So I figured why not. Here is what I sent: Hey Andrew, I heard you occasionally read these. I wanted to make you aware of the fact the Dymo has used their old printer listing to launch their new printer. This is significant because their new printer has DRM built into the labels and as a result is getting blasted in customer reviews. However because they have reused their old listing their overall rating remains high. This is a clearly undermines the trust consumers place in Amazon reviews. Hope you all can get this corrected and restore some of that trust. Thanks! Links below

@@Mrcaffinebean Yeah, I was able to report one listing but the other two don't seem to have an option, perhaps it's a "you can only report X things each day" thing (or they noticed craploads of reports coming in and got sus)

Amazon is in this as well. It would not work without Amazon help.

@@Mrcaffinebean let us know if he gets back to you or does anything btw

Potentially. You can always report the listing and let Amazon sort it out.

blatantly misleading customers. Might even be illegal.

I see this happen with a lot of products on amazon. They sometimes even list different models are list together as different options, but the description by Amazon which model is being reviewed and you will only know if specified by the reviewer.

I've seen it in a lot of reviews by way of 'product received for free' or 'product received as part of a promotion' or some such but there's also obvious low-effort reviews that are definitely paid. There's also that strange 'vine' system Amazon itself has that's basically paid reviews.

@@NathanCroucher Illegal rarely stops corporations, but not being able to sell on Amazon will. It takes years to sue a corporation but Amazon can turn off their lights overnight.

Yeah, I’ve seen this a lot! In a product listing with good reviews, you’ll sometimes find user-submitted photos of an entirely unrelated product!

These types of deceptive practices being ALLOWED BY AMAZON is one of many reasons I only buy from amazon as a last resort.

I hate AmazingJunk for so many reasons...

I thought that was illegal.

@@nameredacted1242 Do not confuse AmazonJunk with the AmazonJunkyard. The seller Amazon is totally unrelated to the AmazonJunkyard sells happening inside their store using their payment services.

The only thing I was able to do in similar scenario was that I just downvoted Amazon app. Untrustworthy platform ...

I've had the same experience. Posted an honest review, nothing outlandish or offensive, and got banned ... from reviewing that particular product! Got in a negative review under a different user account, and next thing I know the seller is emailing me, offering money to take down the review. So I added that fact to the review, to let people know the seller is crooked.

Wow. Not only that, what Dave describes above about Amazon having purged many old reviews - I am NOT seeing that here on 4/22/22 in the US. Still a 5-star product.

They are probably poppin champagne as it allows them to pull the chord on golden parachutes

​@@TechyBen Oh for sure... Those who take decisions are never there to witness the consequences. They move from company to company for those golden parachutes, stock options, severance bonuses, etc...

I don't think they killed their brand at all. I don't want to give Dymo too much credit for knowing what they're doing, but it's likely they knew they'd get pushback from a minority of people that would eventually blow over. Dave said people would have to be crazy to buy Dymo now, but it's a household brand and the majority of consumers will simply shrug and move on. Corporate or government customers will have the lock-in effect and adopt alternatives only reluctantly. Dymo could even offer big discounts for large orders of labels to keep corporate users satisfied but then soak individuals or small companies with higher prices. The slimballs aren't going to crawl back under their rocks because because geeks like us and the EFF are outraged. Playing on our strengths, what we need to do now is find ways to defeat their DRM/RFID locks.

@@tcarney57 I suspect you are probably right. Large organisations tend to buy from a company because they've always done so, ir's just not worth the effort changing. Just like they do with Fluke multimeters and IBM computers.

@@tcarney57 Yea I agree with you and and @g0hjq. I deall with ALOT of IBM crap and most of IBM's problem in the day was the whole "we are in our own bubble" mindset. This feels like it was supposed to come out a few years ago, but now, with everyone fired, its out now. The fact they don't even have a team to handle this shows they went bargin bin on marketing. I will even be ok with the rfid if it would auto configure for me, I print mabye 10 labels a year. But for almsot 400 bucks:P

Hell, they'll sell a completely different product over a collection of good reviews! They count on buyers being idiots, and/or too lazy to read: "Five stars, must be good, here's my money."

It's a common scammer technique where you see the latest iPhone at 25% off with hundreds of 5 stars reviews. I'll take 3! You do the same as here, but you sell a toothbush cheap for 6 months, collect reviews (including fakes & paid) then swap it out for the latest iPhone at 25% off. I thought Amazon cracked down on that.

I forget the specific example, but I recall seeing something similar to a can opener that appeared to have good reviews, but the majority were actually for a cheese grater that no longer existed on the listing. It's ridiculous how, in some cases, products can be barely in the same ballpark as another product to be considered a valid variant on the same listing.

Could this be reported as a wrong listing?

I've seen it on listings that aren't even the same kind of product.

I've seen listings of a clearly fake very cheap 500gb USB that had reviews about some kind of bed sheets, reported it on live chat support and got it taken down

But it's not a violation, it's an updated product (successor to the 450) so it's within the rules of Amazon. Tons of companies do it.

There's a ton of listings like this where the reviews have nothing to do with the product. You can probably buy a listing with good reviews.

eBay still has an issue where you can have multiple prices on a single listing, which makes sense for bulk/package offers, but some asshats just list 20€ items along with 1€ items, so sorting by price always leads to the same overpriced listing, because of the 1€ item But after thinking about it, this issue probably also exist on amazon

A lot of chinese scammers do this too. They offer some normal product, collect some nice reviews, then put some unrelated scam product in the listing(graphics card, console, smartphone...) And rip people off with some 4.5 star rated listing. On ebay they like putting some expensive item together with some cheap item in one listing, so you then see the expensive item on the image and a price of 2 dollars. But then the 2 dollars are only a charging cable and the actual product is 50$.

@@MrHack4never it is the worst, picture and title is for a dothat of some kind, but the low price is for the power cable or something that is on the same listing

It's a feature for premium sellers only.

We use ZT410s and are slowly replacing them with 411s, which are indeed an upgtade. They aren't small but great for production lines or heavy printing. Honestly rarely have issues with the printer itself. Usually random label stuff. Label gets stuck somewhere or for some tiny 1cm/1cm labels its hard to get them aligned. We use brother printers for smaller/more mobile printing. Also have no issues with them.

It's simple....they are just words. I work in Automotive SW development for over 10 years, and when a corporate rep talks about "quality", it just means they have a checklist and the product has all of it checked. A good checklist CAN lead to a [english language] quality product, but shortcuts are taken everywhere with complexity growing exponentially.

@@mateiberatco500 I got a delivery, where the packer had ticked off all the items in the box, they had also crossed off all the items they could not find to put in the box... sent the package anyhow. Package was a self build printer, thus never worked having the actual print head missing. "Checklists" still need a brain to work. :P

We're doing this for a better capitalism experience where we extract more dollars from your wallet.

That's kind of like when that said "Healthy people need to scurry and hide under the bed from a virus that has a 98 % survival rate and not work and get money from the government...it's for your own health." Sure you can trust the government...just ask a Native American Type 1 Indian.

@@brentfisher902 If you can find one, of course. The funny thing about that 2% rate is that it wasn't even for healthy people. Based on the cruise ship data, that figure is for vulnerable people. What bugs me about that is that in all the fear-mongering the media did about "flattening the curve" they never bothered to ask "why does the government have a plan for dealing with a type of pandemic that that had over a decade an a half and spent countless millions of dollars to prepare for?" Ya know, for SARS, which includes Covid

Never used Amazon as we have no delivery hubs here, closest is more than thousand kilometers away in another country, separeted by sea. Because of it and the ludicrous shipping, literally everything is more expensive than buying from store or Ebay. All in all, Amazon is pretty unheard here. No one orders anything from there and no one talks about it. Hope it stays that way.

Amazon sucks so badly - business practice, and consumer experience, and prices. eBay may not be perfect but I trust it 1000% more than Amazon, and I only buy from eBay now, never Amazon.

This is my experience too. It's pretty sad honestly. I've bene using ebay more, aside from general purpose bought items. Anything specific / wanted form a specific brand, i try to go to ebay.

Type in the exact brand and model you're looking for, and they bury it under pages and pages of other crap that, I guess, somehow pays them better? When they pull that stunt, I close the page and go to eBay.

@@jpdemer5 Choosing between Amazon and eBay is like choosing between stage 4 lung cancer or a heart attack.

Report the listing, there is a link in the description of the item.

Amazon do not care about rogue sellers. Amazon do not respect their own rules... I reported some scammy sellers, got the usual "thanks for the report, it is effectivelly against the TOS, we will deal with it" and nothing ever got done. When I tried to follow up with them, they just said "An investigation is underway".

Are you sure it was a desk lamp? It's possible it was actually Norton 360. It's easy to mix them up as they both use similar amounts of electricity and have a similar effect on securing your computer.

@@tin2001 or maybe mcaffee?

It's a dark pattern so they can get more commissions on listings that sell more products...slit that throat and get rich $$$.

Krupps coffee machines did the whole DRM thing too. But at least in that case you could just double sided tape one of their original pod foil covers into the machine and it would from then on always believe you had a 'real' pod installed. Their stock tumbled when unsuspecting ppl found they couldn't use the pods THEY wanted to.

A lot of Chinese sellers do this too, I'll see reviews for older models of something on a product page, sometimes not even a newer version of the same item, just something completely random.

Imagine if Amazon still had an old model in their warehouse, so the order comes in with the SKU, and the older model gets sent out?

@@cujoedaman Sure, this is sold by and fulfilled by Amazon themselves though.

It's a common scammer technique where you see the latest iPhone at 25% off with hundreds of 5 stars reviews. I'll take 3! You do the same as here, but you sell a toothbush cheap for 6 months, collect reviews (including fakes & paid) then swap it out for the latest iPhone at 25% off. I thought Amazon cracked down on that.

This is already one of the reasons I don't like the listings with multiple selections. You can't easily tell which reviews go with which products. And you pretty much disregard any 5 star reviews since more likely then not they are fake.

Or, just stop buying shit from Amazon. Problem solved.

It's something I've noticed for the better part of a decade. Classic Amazon tactic

I've been using Dymo label makers for years and years, right back to the daisy-wheel type of impact/stamper kind of label maker, so this is very disappointing. I wonder who in the company, thought that this was a good idea, and that there would be no public pushback. Will have to avoid Dymo label printers in the future, until this is reversed - IF it ever is.

HA You know what, this is a good analogy. Both manufacturers have a custom format. The mark format of the Dyno labels and the brush tab that comes out that connects to the vibration plate of the Philips (yes I got one), You cannot keep selling a $300 dollar tooth brush every year when you find out one will work fine the rest of your life. Hell I don't even think I needed to replace the lion in my brush.

@@warlockd You have a lion in your brush? Sounds dangerous. One day you forget to feed it and WHAM, it rips your throat out.

Their software is reason enough to stay away from Dymo products.

Brother makes a nice product or two in the same price bracket.

When someone is throwing their legal weight around and being a greifing moderator on a power trip...that means an evil person has something that they want to hide and there's a big sum of profits on the line. It's no surprise why voting day is on a Tuesday....that's done intentionally by design.

I've had really good luck with the higher-end idprt products like the sp320

I think its because the labels for the printer are a “style” option

They don't appear to have reused the 450 listing for this, because that one is still available. What they have done is combine the labels and the printer in one listing. Which is still Wish-like levels of deception.

@@DaedalusYoung As I noted, an ASIN is not the same as a SKU and you can have multiple SKUs per ASIN. Amazon wants to allow this so you can have options on a listing for related products in a single listing, but it gets abused. I would say, in this case, it's being abused. BTW, Amazon does tend to crack down on listings that hijack ASINs. But for smaller businesses with unique products, this is still an uphill battle.

"This is really strange that Amazon allows this." It is by design. Ever wondered why a friend "accidentally" keeps giving themselves bigger portions of ice cream, cake and skittles and crisps? It's an "accident" they notice, and have no reason to "fix". :P

@@TechyBen There is a use case for it but the rules need to be much more strict. A valid use case may be same item in different colors, for example.

@@smithiness Problem is, each system is used for the opposite of what it should be. Instead of grouping colours, they do the opposite. I cannot find a phone case, because any search just returns 1000s or 10,000s of the *same* case in slightly different colours. Amazon (and to some extent ebay when they copy it) is so broken by design.

This is worse being almost "bait & switch", the reviews are for the old good item, you get get shipped the newer DRM version.

This isn't Dymo buying reviews, so it's not the same thing. This is Dymo re-using an old listing and just changing the product details -- the reviews are genuine, but for the previous product.

@@WereCatf What else can Amazon do, because Dymo are clearly engaged in deceptive behaviour. Amazon should nuke the brand from store.

@@RenThraysk Why do you think Amazon wants to do anything? They are fully aware that sellers do this, this has been happening for *YEARS* already and Amazon has done nothing about it.

Rule #1: Thou shalt not attribute to accident or forgetfulness that which can be perfectly attributed to malice and greed. "I just drove alone in my 8-cylinder Mormon Assault Vehicle half a block to the bus terminal and forgot my wallet for the 367th time....could you spare some change to buy my bus ticket for me?"

That's pretty much every printer maker out there.

That "print lockout" is probably caused by having an empty yellow tank. I heard years ago that most ink-jet printers print "hidden" (ie single pixel patterns that encode the printer model and serial number to make it easier for law enforcement to ID a specif printer used in counterfeiting or other crimes.

As far as I know, this isn't a problem with Epson's EcoTank line that have ink reservoirs refilled from bulk bottles. The only issue with them is after a certain amount of printing the software posts frequent nag pop-ups reminding one to check and refill the ink reservoir, because letting any one of the reservoirs go dry can destroy the print head. After refilling a reservoir one can clear the "low ink" warning for a particular color and continue using the printer as it was when new. Epson seem to have learned their lesson.

@@Milosz_Ostrow Interesting, didn't know these existed. Love to see this concept in a laser (obviously bottles won't work...)

​@@larrybud - The concept exists in laser toner cartridges, sort of. One needs to cut a hole in the cartridge with a tool supplied with the refill kit, then gradually dump a measured amount of toner in and finally plug the hole with some vinyl tape. I've done it, but the process is messy and I don't think I'd do it again. It is better to buy a refurbished cartridge from someone who has the proper facilities and can replace worn components.

Doesn't work. On the UK Amazon they're using verified purchase reviews of labels from years before the 550 printer was released.

That’s due to an automated system to avoid review bombing. If the number of unverified new reviews doesn’t match up with some heuristic related to sales numbers, Amazon shuts down unverified reviews.

@Lippy That would be the second thing I would fix if I were a dictator of a utopia. "Rule #2: No person shall be denied access any conceivable possible product or service soley on account of age." The first rule would be to make the 13th amendment of the US constitution unconditional. Which means any child would be free to take only recess class all day all year in school if they so desire. The third rule would legalize murder. "Rule #3: The right for a sane human being to only be required to be surrounded entirely by kind non-toxic people shall not be infinged--to the death."

Yeah, probably needs a better term, but everyone use DRM.

@@EEVblog DRM on blanc labels? That is not DRM

Item #420: Screen door for a submarine. Rating 5 stars. "I got one of these and now I can know when my submarine is diving and don't have to look at the gauge anymore! Dis iz teh kewlze....

Case in point. Vladimir Putin. Was once a cool male model that bathed in ice water and rode polar bears...now a common fighting bully picking on the Ukraine. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

It isn't... Unless you know the RFID password???

Wonder if the RFID could be re-used?

@@snap-off5383 I wondered that too. Do they track usage, or just identify the roll? If they don't count up the used labels, you could easily just keep the spindle and reroll your 3rd party labels. If it does count prints, you're screwed when someone accidentally prints 100 blank labels. We used to occasionally get that at work.... Pop the lid, wind them back on, good to go. Except if it says it just printed a label and counted it on the DRM chip, it's going to stop when it "runs out".

@@tin2001 Yeah, gotta go to bed, and stop going deeper down this rabbit hole. Its against the DMCA to circumvent the DRM to make THEIR software print labels in any way shape or form. That would be gaining access to their copyrighted material that was supposed to be protected by the DRM. HOWEVER, if you were to sell a unit that would retrofit this to NOT run their software to print, but rather run a DIFFERENT software but still print out using that hardware that you own, then you're not accessing their copyrighted materials. I think I see a market in the future for car control swap-outs. You can't hack tesla ford gm et al's software, but you can rip it out, throw it in the dumpster and replace it. I either have a great business idea, or I need to back away from the PC.

​@@tin2001 It counts up. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with that NXP chip - some NXP chips have one-way counters (which cannot be reset). I guess the ones Dymo uses is one of these. Like older NXP chips, it will require an encrypted password (so you cannot simply sniff the password on the wires; encryption parameters are re-negotiated every time). Even if you crack the 32 bit password, the chip still has a digital signature which can be used to authenticate the chip (so cannot clone it). NXP sure learnt their lessons from how spectacularly they failed with the "security" features of their first chip models. I guess way to go would be some circuitry which sits idle and watches the communication lines until it sees the communication pattern which indicates a "write" to the card and disrupts it. Maybe the main controller will detect that and stop printing, but it might be worth a try...if you can convince anyone to buy that printer and a stack of their overpriced labels just for, uh, "fun".

@@snap-off5383 Interesting idea. From the hackers perspective it could be used to bypass the DRM, from the manufacturer's perspective they'd want to re-use them by offering a core fee for returned empty rolls.

If they keep up the DRM BS, it could easily go bust. Time to change course, which would be a simple matter of removing DRM from the software.

That's not a new idea, and it was used before RFID chips were a thing. 35mm film canisters have a DX code printed on them, so that cameras know what speed the film is, and how many exposures it has. It's a perfectly good system, and actually makes for a better customer experience, as people didn't have to change any camera settings or run the risk of over- or underexposing their film. Of course people were still free to choose whichever brand of film they preferred.

Please tell me Brother haven't stooped this low! I thought they were the last manufacturer we could all trust. Do you know of any Brother printers with DRM?

@@Microwave_Dave no experience with Brother to comment sensibly I'm afraid. Except possibly shoving a driver onto a box for a friend or family years and years ago. Happy to comment nonsensically though: In my mind the list went from E to X so Brother being a B and before E we might just B okay. 🤔 If they have stooped to the dungeon depths my comment can only be: "Oh Brother"

Of course they are noticing "unusual" activity. They are using the same listing for a different (and awful) product. Leave it to Amazon to assume it's the customers doing something wrong.

You shouldn't be allowed to leave a review on something you never purchased. You'd be complaining if the "woke" crowd were trying to cancel a product this way, but here you are.

So, did you buy the item? Of course not... so why would you be adding a Negative Review?

@@j.f.christ8421 Exactly. People here complaining they can't leave a crappy review for a product they don't own. Same people complaining about fake 5-star reviews from "Company XYZ" employees

That the same thing God says when a child is starving. "Yes, I know you are praying for food right now...but some 430 pound nympho breeder woman lost the keys to her SUV so I'm too busy." Amazon is complicit in the scamming.

refilling you can't even refill the toner cart anymore I still got a good working one were i can refill the toner cart all i have to do is reset the page counter