Be careful when you buy from Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Be careful when you buy from Amazon

seliger.com

14 pointsjseliger8 comments

IMHO Amazon is diluting its brand by allowing third parties to sell items in its website.

It is not rare that non-techie people buy stuff from third party sellers believing they buy from Amazon.

I'm find it less of a value, too. I increasingly find better prices elsewhere, partially because I really don't want to join Prime. After browsing Amazon first, I bought a postal scale on eBay, and a refurbished laptop on Newegg.

Yeap! If you can't trust the seller, why not go directly to eBay?

The other day we received a parcel from Ukraine. When I openned it my wife said "I don't understand, why is it from Ukraine? I ordered it from Amazon!"

Since then, I cancelled all my family's Amazon accounts and ask everybody to send me links to the stuff they want and I order them for them.

Having third party sellers is the equivalent to Macy's allowing shady street sellers selling counterfeit perfumes in their store. Completely stupid idea if you ask me.

As someone who just bought a bunch of life-or-death climbing gear from Amazon, the idea of counterfeit goods is terrifying.

We order a lot from Amazon, have Prime, etc., but my impression is that there's been a noticeable decline in the quality of their services over the last couple of years. It's impossible to find what I want anymore unless I know exactly what I'm looking for, and I hear more and more cautionary tales like this. The speed of delivery has increased impressively, sure, and I've been happy with some of the returns I've dealt with, but more and more often they seem like a delivery service than a shopping outlet. It seems like I'm buying directly from manufacturers more often, as I feel more confident in what I'm getting, and the shipping usually isn't too different.

Several times this past year, the Prime delivery date, stated to me while checking out, was missed. One time, for a birthday present, I paid extra for next-day delivery; they missed that date.

More frequently, I receive very poorly packed boxes. Items bouncing around the box with no or "token" packing material. One package came with all but one of the air pockets, used to provide cushioning, deflated. A substantial, hardcover book was packed together with some loose, higher quality mechanical pencils having unretracted/unretractable lead sleeves, with no padding or protection whatsoever. They were all just swimming around a relatively oversized box. (The product pages for the pencils gave no clue that I noticed that they would come in loose form, unpackaged save for being in small polyethylene bags.)

I don't order that much from Amazon/Prime, so this represented a significant fraction of my total activity with them.

For me, negative change has gone further than the un-differentiation of their catalogue.

Basically, China.

In circa 2012, Amazon, likely bowing to monsterous bribes and other pressures, allowed China to list items as 3rd party. In the 4 years since, counterfiets have increased by around 70%.

It will be the death of them. But hey, Bezos has his rocket ships, right?

Just threw out an amp I bought on Amazon, that was really from a third party. It done died young. Not the only loss I've had, so I rarely buy third items (that they don't send out) from them now.

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