I don't know, either. Frankly, of late I'm content to write it off as either apathy, incompetence, or left-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-right-is-doing.

In the end, I don't care other than intellectual curiosity so that I don't slide into the same cesspool in my work. What matters, in a world of nearly infinite online vendors, is Amazon's reputation. Without that, they're nothing in my book. And in my book, Amazon's reputation isn't anything near what it was ten years ago. Nothing major, I guess, but that reputation is being chipped away one hammer stroke at a time. Knock-off items, okay, I can mitigate that. Blatantly lied about when my item will be delivered? Bah, I grew up in an age of "allow 4-6 weeks for delivery", one more day won't kill me. But those things start to add up. Which is why I continue to seek out other vendors, and don't see myself doing much business with them in the next couple of years.