Prime Day solves a problem of Amazon's own making

Prime Day kicks off on Monday, and that means it's time to SHOP SHOP SHOP.

For those desperately in need of, say, an Echo Look, this is a once-in-a-year opportunity to put a camera in your bedroom at a discounted price. But Prime Day is more than that. So much more. Indeed, the holiday finally (if only temporarily) addresses a problem of Amazon's own making: That seemingly more and more goods on the retail site are overpriced knockoff pieces of trash.

The good folks at Reply All summed this phenomenon up in a July 11 episode entitled "The Magic Store." Essentially, their argument goes, in an effort to truly become the so-called everything store and compete with the likes of Alibaba, Amazon permitted a host of foreign third-party sellers to list directly on its site. This, we are told, led to a flooding of the retailer with inferior products and a downgrading of the Amazon shopping experience in general.

Perish the thought.

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And while this is very much Amazon's fault, Jeff Bezos has gifted us a one-day solution in the form of Prime Day. The highlighted goods, you see, are likely to be vetted by the folks at Amazon. This means that should you chose to hit that 1-Click button, your chances of getting stuck with an overpriced and shittier version of the thing you thought you ordered decrease markedly.

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That is not to say that Prime Day is scam free. Despite Amazon's efforts, reviews on products are often fake. What's more, scammers have developed elaborate strategies to capitalize on the shopping frenzy.

Last year, review site Consumer Affairs notes, spam emails purporting to be from Amazon offered Prime Day shoppers a $50 gift card for logging into to their Amazon accounts and leaving reviews. The emails linked to a fake Amazon login page. When the shoppers clicked through and entered account details, scammers gained access to victims' accounts and placed fraudulent orders.

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But still. If you are inclined to shop on Amazon, and don't mind crossing a picket line, today's the day to do it. You are much more likely to get what you actually intended to order, and less likely to end up with some sketchy imitation.

A few easy-to-follow Prime Day steps should keep your shopping (mostly) scam-free. First, check your favorite website to see if it has a recommended list of deals (Mashable has one). See anything you like? Cool, click the link.

Next, look at the product's reviews. Are they marked "Amazon Verified Purchase"? That's not a foolproof way of knowing if a review is legitimate or not, as people often buy their own product to leave positive reviews, but it helps.

OK, so you see a bunch of positive verified reviews on your dongle of choice. When were the reviews left? If they are all super recent, it could suggest a retailer attempting to stuff his or her page right before Prime Day. That's a warning sign. If they span a decent length of time, they might actually be from real customers. Maybe.

In the end, the only way to 100 percent know what you're ordering is the thing advertised is perhaps to go to a physical store and hold it in your hands. It's not the Prime Day solution that Jeff Bezos likely had in mind, but hey, it works.