How to Avoid Scams and Shoddy Wares on Amazon (2025)

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With a few keystrokes you can find almost anything on Amazon ... and buy it with as little as a single click. It’s a wonderbox of capitalism. Take, for example, power banks. Search “power bank” on Amazon and you'll get back more than 40,000 results, ranging from well-known brands like Anker or Belkin to obscure names with zero reviews. There are hundreds of companies and sellers to sift through, with varying capacities, port options, and charging speeds.

Which brands are high quality? Which listings are legitimate? What’s a good price to pay? Are these power banks actually some of the best deals on Amazon Prime Day, or are the discounts fake?

These days, almost anyone can sell items on Amazon in three easy steps. The site hosts millions of sellers, making it more like eBay than Target. But Amazon does not vet everything on its virtual shelves thoroughly, if at all, and that means you have to be careful about what you’re buying. The site has known problems with fake reviews and counterfeit items, and a growing number of sellers have flooded the site with strange new off-brand products. Amazon does have fairly good return policies, including an A-to-Z guarantee for items sold by third parties. But ideally, you'll avoid having to deal with a return in the first place.

WIRED can help! Below are a few tips to help you better pay attention to what you’re purchasing at The Everything Store, in an effort to choose items that are more likely to arrive as advertised.

Updated June 2025: We've refreshed this story with current tips and information.

Whenever possible, you should buy items directly from Amazon. Amazon keeps a far better eye on its own inventory than it does on its third-party sellers. Items it sells directly are more likely to arrive as advertised and qualify for free two-day Prime shipping. Because Amazon manages everything, returns are usually painless. I’ve gotten refunds for defective items without even having to return them at all.

If you’re already checking out a product on Amazon, like our favorite iPad, always make sure the seller info says "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com." This information is typically in one of two places. Either it’s under the red price (and green "In Stock") or it's under the yellow Add to Cart and orange Buy Now buttons on the right rail. If you're on the Amazon app, it's also under those buttons.

If you’re browsing through Amazon listings, filter the site’s search results to only show items sold by Amazon.com. It will likely improve the quality of the items you see, cutting out a lot of less-relevant, lower-quality search results. And again, the items are vetted, so you’ll probably get what you expect and have an easier time returning it, if need be. I'll use the Google Pixel 9A as an example of a product you might search for. It's our pick for the best affordable phone.

Step 1: Search for a particular item in Amazon’s search box with category set to “All.” In this case, I searched for "Pixel 9A."

Step 2: Amazon's search should choose the right Department automatically, but if needed, you can navigate to the top of the left rail and click on a Department that fits.

Step 3: Once the page refreshes, scroll to the bottom of the left rail and choose "Amazon.com" as your Seller.

Step 4: Now you will only see "Pixel 9A" products sold directly by Amazon.com.

If you still don't see "Amazon.com" as a seller, try hitting the "See More" button. It will bring up a dense but readable alphabetical page of sellers. If Amazon is one of those sellers, it will show up in the list. You can use CTRL+F (Command+F on Mac) to search for the word "Amazon.com." Sometimes you'll see “Amazon Warehouse,” which only sells used and refurbished items.

When people see that a product they like is on sale, a little wave of excitement washes over them. Instead of thinking about how much we’re spending, we start to think about how much we’re saving. Coupons and discounts exist because they create a sense of urgency that causes many people to buy things they normally wouldn’t. Some sellers abuse that pricing power. There are a lot of products on Amazon that are endlessly "on sale" and that makes it hard to know if you’re getting an actual bargain.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to check. Just copy the URL and paste it into CamelCamelCamel. You'll get a page with a graph on it showing every price fluctuation in the past year. A lot of products have deceptive sale prices like this, to varying degrees. Knowing what the actual going rate is for a product puts you in charge.

Alternatively, the Keepa extension for Chrome will add a similar box right into Amazon.com pages for you, though it does try and get you to register for free, and it might slow your browsing down.

Tools like Keepa and CamelCamelCamel may also help you determine the best time to buy an item. Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max, for instance, consistently fluctuates between its normal $60 price down to $40. As of press time, it has sold for lower than $40 only a couple of times, meaning that if you see it on sale for $40, you (probably) don't need to wait to score a good deal—unless you care a lot about the $7 difference and you're willing to wait a good long while to get that bargain again. The tools can help you spot similar trends in other products, like televisions, which tend to get a lot cheaper around Christmas or the Super Bowl.

Amazon's 5-star review system is supposed to make choosing products simpler, but it's easily gamed. If you’re looking at an expensive product from a company you’ve never heard of, or if there are hundreds or thousands of very positive reviews, do a little sleuthing. Many sellers try to manipulate reviews to get their products listed more prominently on Amazon.

Fakespot is an excellent tool to help you spot deceptive reviews, but unfortunately, it's shutting down in July 2025. We also like using The Review Index and ReviewMeta. These aren't perfect tools, but they can give you a hint at whether a lot of reviews are fake or suspicious. We've got more advice on detecting fake Amazon reviews here.

Or just read the reviews yourself. Click on the link to reviews under the product name on a page and you'll end up on a dedicated reviews page. To start, browse through the Customer Questions. You can use the search box above them to scan questions and reviews for keywords that may indicate issues with a product, like "break,” “bad,” “defective,” “customer service,” or "return." Amazon has also implemented an AI-generated summary of reviews on most product pages, but take these with a grain of salt. For example, this blender's AI-generated summary says that customers like the quality and durability of the blender, but that “… some customers find it quieter than expected, others note it can be somewhat loud.” That's not very useful information—you're better off reading the reviews on your own.

I don’t give much credence to one- or five-star reviews. They're sometimes filled with too much elation or anger to be useful. You can often learn more by reading two-, three-, and four-star reviews. These reviewers tend to have a more balanced perspective and may elaborate on the good and bad aspects of a product. Verified buyers are also more trustworthy than non-verified, but they could still be receiving compensation for purchasing and reviewing a product. (It happens.) You also want to be alert for reviews that sound like other reviews, ones that repeat key marketing phrases, or any that seem overly happy and wordy.

And finally, I'm biased, but trusted, in-depth reviews from professionals—such as those we publish on WIRED—can help you narrow down worthwhile products.

Most third-party sellers won't try to scam you or sell you fraudulent goods, but it’s good to be extra vigilant when you’re buying from a seller other than Amazon.com. Amazon doesn’t do a great job policing third-party sellers and doesn’t require they follow the same return policies.

Here are a few tips to help you know if a product listing or seller is trustworthy.

There are a few other quick tips to help you avoid outright scams. You should never be asked to leave Amazon.com to complete a purchase. That indicates that something is majorly wrong. Amazon also won't ever ask for your social security number or anything incredibly sensitive like that, so alarm bells should start ringing in your brain if that ever happens.

Watch out for fake emails as well. Since Amazon is the most popular retailer online, a lot of phishing attack emails try to pretend they are Amazon. A good rule of thumb is to not click links in an email unless you know Amazon sent it. You can find Amazon's messages to you in its notification center. If an email is legitimate or important, it should be here. Be sure to report any suspicious emails to Amazon.

For help with returns or other issues, check Amazon's support site. Your recent orders should show up on this page if you want to initiate a return.

How do you make smart buying decisions on Amazon? Do you have your own methods and techniques for not getting ripped off? Let me know in the comments below.

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How to Avoid Scams and Shoddy Wares on Amazon (2025)

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