Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

I love Amazon and I love Prime (the included streaming services and ebooks are great, on top of free shipping). But, lately I've been noticing cracks in the armor of Amazon, where they're leaving openings for competitors.

I have, just in the past year, ordered a huge variety of things from other vendors, because Amazon prices were far from competitive. And, with free two day shipping from merchants partnered with Shop Runner (which I get free when I pay with my American Express), the difference in experience, cost, and time to deliver is competitive. NewEgg got my server hardware purchases, saving me several hundred dollars on a ~$3000 order. An RV parts vendor sold me an RV air conditioner for ~$200 less than Amazon. I'm shopping for a tankless water heater right now, which is about $160 less from other vendors. And, on the lower end, when Amazon first started doing subscription groceries, they were competitively priced; now, not so much. I find I prefer just buying what I need when I need it from local grocery stores.

I still buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but it's much less than it used to be. And, I don't know if Amazon knows what they're doing or not when choosing to lose these sales. Presumably the increased margins make up for the lower sales (or at least the loss of sales to me, which may not necessarily be the same as decreased sales overall). Surely they're doing the math.

This is the same thing. I bought from Amazon before Prime partly because of the free shipping. The further away the free shipping gets, the harder it would be to choose Amazon over getting it local or from another vendor, I think.

In the past year or two, I've noticed a dramatic rise in the number of counterfeit products. If you buy directly from Amazon, it generally seems ok, but all bets are off when you buy from a third party.

I've also noticed the increased gaming of the reviews system. If you read reviews of many of the highest rated products, you often find that most are shills who are given products for free in exchange for "fair and unbiased reviews." Funny how many of their unbiased reviews award five stars.

It's getting pretty bad.

For me it's the amount of spam i'm getting asking for reviews.

One of the big reasons i shop with amazon is so i know that i don't need to deal with making another account, giving someone else my CC info, getting relentless spam email every week telling me to buy more.

But now sellers are using the "contact customer" system to beg for reviews, and it's starting to get annoying enough that i want to avoid amazon.

Just a few months ago i ordered about 20 separate things for a project i'm working on, and over the next 2 weeks proceeded to get 30+ emails asking for reviews of the products, reviews of the sellers, asking if i'm satisfied with their products, etc. All of these coming straight from the sellers themselves right above the warning from amazon that this system is only to resolve problems with the product/shipping...

And Amazon's answer to all this seller spam is "oh, just unsubscribe from it". Completely missing the point that I'd have to do this once per seller.

I tend to give negative product reviews when harassed by the sellers like this. In my opinion, the review should also be reflective of the company making/selling the product.

I've actually started giving negative seller reviews for this.

If you go to http://www.amazon.com/feedback you can review the sellers instead of the product.

Good idea, I'll be sure to do that too!

To be fair though, I believe people are much more likely to see a product rating than a seller rating. As evidenced by the number of "unbiased" 5 star reviews.

I did that once and the review got removed for "not appropriate" or something. I'm sure the seller flagged it for review for amazon knowing since I reviewed the seller and not the product, he could get it removed. (Which doesn't really make sense, because in buying the product I got harassed by the seller, so it affected my enjoyment of the product).

The same product is often sold by multiple sellers, though.

Amazon is seriously undercutting their reputation thanks to the resellers that they allow on their site, many of whom have problematic product quality, authenticity, and accuracy of item description (to say the least). You really have to be careful that you aren't getting ripped off or buying junk. Most retail establishments protect their brands better.

I've yet to encounter a situation where saving a few bucks on an item was worth the combined cost of paying shipping at another site plus risking having to deal with their customer service. Just in the last two months my Amazon experiences have included:

- Bought a ~$60 item to give as a gift, that didn't arrive on time and the tracking info hadn't updated since it left the Amazon facility. Contacted them the day it had been scheduled to arrive and they overnighted a replacement, no questions asked.

- Bought a pair of pants just before Christmas, ended up getting two pairs of pants for Christmas (go mom). Went to return the ones I purchased (hadn't been worn yet), and Amazon refunded me without even requiring a return (~$25 item).

- Bought a heater a few weeks ago that arrived with one of the dials on its control panel knocked out of place, and no way to re-seat it without disassembling the unit. Amazon paid for return shipping and UPS pickup, and had the replacement item at my door on the second day after I requested a replacement.

I'm not a fan of many of many aspects of Amazon... but in terms of customer service, I don't use any other site that comes close.

I agree that Amazon is amazing at customer service. But, then again, so is NewEgg (in my experience). I've rarely had to deal with returns, but they definitely ship and deliver when they say they will; probably more reliably than Amazon, in my experience (though I order more from Amazon, so I may be skewing it in favor of NewEgg due to less negative experiences, even if the percentages are the same).

That said, two of your examples of great customer service are examples of poor quality in the shipping stage of your order. Amazon didn't deliver on time in one case, and Amazon didn't package the item properly in the third case. Amazon doesn't get an A+ from me for shipping me damaged goods or for losing something and then shipping a new one. (Though it happens to every vendor, and I'm sure Amazon is among the best at not screwing up the shipping process; the best customer service experience for me means I don't have to think about it...it just arrives, on time, complete, and functional.)

But, smaller companies are often much more difficult to work with, in general. I had to order some replacement parts for my motorhome from a small RV parts dealer because Amazon didn't carry them, and handling a cancellation (before shipping) and ordering a new item instead, required multiple phone calls and emails. It also took them several days to get it shipped out (I mean, it was literally several days before they put it in a box and handed it to UPS to be delivered to me).

It's hard to compete with Amazon on a small scale, is what I'm trying to say, but on big ticket items, I'm often willing to shop around. If a trustworthy vendor I've dealt with before has the item in stock for $100+ less, I'm buying from them and not buying from Amazon. It's just happening more and more often lately.

Combine this with Google Shopping Express (next day on my doorstep) and you have a lot of reasons to not use Amazon anymore.

Amazon Prime is still pretty awesome but I've had 3 returns in 4 months for incorrect or broken items (on Fulfilled by Amazon), and the pricing is not competitive with local retail (which Google Shopping matches for the items it does carry).

For example, recently I tried to buy a toy etcher/engraver so I could carve initials on my kids toys. Only place I could find it was locally or through e-bay... Amazon did not have that.

Thanks for the tip about Shop Runner. I hadn't heard of it before now but a quick look shows a couple of stores listed that I order from often enough that it will make the -- free (thanks AmEx!) -- membership worth signing up for.

I recently (during 4Q15) built myself a new server and ordered nearly everything from Amazon (with the exception of ordering half of the SSDs and HDDs from NewEgg, and picking up a spare one of each from a nearby Fry's).

I chose to order from Amazon both because of the free two-day (Prime) shipping and also because I had a new Discover card. In 4Q, Discover gives you 5% back on purchases on Amazon. In addition, at the end of the first year, they double all your cash back. Thus, in effect, I got an extra 10% discount off of all my Amazon purchases during 4Q (which added up to a few thousand dollars), although I won't "see" it until basically the end of 2016.

Agreed, most products above the $500 range can be found cheaper elsewhere, with the possibility of saving $100+ when compared tom amzn. that's why im working on https://percht.com.

Lately I bought a book (python machine learning) from a local bookstore for 15$ less than on Amazon. Crazy - never happend before. To me it seems like Amazon is constantly losing competitiveness as they try to get more profitable.

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