My heart breaks for the Wirecutters of the world affected by this.
For consumers, it's more likely heartbreaking, as we'll all likely have a tougher time getting high-quality review content like what The Wirecutter pushes out.
For a lot of categories, you might end up with an adequate product and miss out on an amazing one.
I find reviews very quickly let me find the best product for my needs in that category.
Also, returns are costly. For each one, I have to:
1. Assess the product
2. Go to the amazon order page. Click return.
3. Print the return form
4. Repackage the item. Tape the return form to it.
5. Go to the post office, wait in line, send it.
6. Order a new item, open it, and test it.
5-10 minutes of review reading can save all of that effort.
It's also less wasteful for the economy: needlessly upping your return volume causes negative externalities for everyone else.
Returning on Amazon is one of the easiest things to do on the planet.
What amazing products are you going to miss out on? Most of the stuff on Amazon is just re-branded FBA shit. Most of each category of consumer products come from the same factories in China. Go to Alibaba and source some stuff... It's what all the FBA'ers do.
Literally the entire value proposition of Wirecutter is that the reviewers are really good and unbiased because they spend a lot of time and effort analyzing products.
> What amazing products are you going to miss out on? Most of the stuff on Amazon is just re-branded FBA shit.
1. Wirecutter / Sweethome don't constrain their recommendations / reviews to things you can buy at Amazon.
2. You can buy an overwhelming number of electronics / products off of Amazon. To insinuate that it's all white-label rebrands is disingenuous.
No one has time to do all their research from scratch themselves. (And I have zero interest in doing so.)
There is works and does not work. In the end, 98% of all consumer electronics are going to end up in a dump... generally right after the warranty is up. Live with that or live minimally AKA do without.
For instance: "Not compliant with industry standard; may damage your hardware before failing." is one review that might make me steer clear of a product rated 4.5 stars.
"Product is counterfeit. If you examine the thingummy on the wowjammer, you can see a plastic tab that is not present on the genuine product, but clearly visible on this unbranded AliExpress listing..." is another that would scare me off.
Also, many of the crap-sellers will bend over backwards to get you to remove or update a negative review. Don't do it. You would be complicit in tricking your fellow customers.
Definitely had this happen a couple of times but with seller feedback. Not necessarily because the product sucked (bought some books for my mum) but because the seller was garbage.
In one circumstance, it was a difficult to find book (no new stock, out of print), so I purchased one that had the highest quality listing for used stock ("excellent condition," "like new" etc). When she got it, it was torn, slightly loose binding, but readable (no more than fair condition, IMO); so I left a review stating such, indicating that the condition description didn't match the item, and I wouldn't buy from that seller again.
The seller, of course, wasn't happy about that and demanded that I remove it. I suppose I could've filed a claim with Amazon if they pushed the issue, but they didn't. It certainly wouldn't have been worth the hassle.
Believe me, you have it easy compared to the manual process that most smaller ecommerce players labour under. Only if things like returns are automated can you actually scale the business. I have been struggling on Stack Overflow with getting the returns process, it seems to me that not many people get that far, the answers are a bit thin! So a stellare customer service with the returns labels is quite a thing.
Why so hard? Well, if the customer can be from anywhere on the planet and their original order could have been fulfilled by one or more warehouses around the globe, where do you check their return back in to? Once that is decided there is again a choice of couriers, all with different 'API' access to the labels. The end result is probably the same label with different numbers on in 90% of cases, nonetheless some API calls around the globe have to happen to get to the 'obvious' label that you just print out and stick onto the box.
The label also has to be something that can be checked in at the warehouse with some means of updating stock levels if it goes back into stock. Then there is the small matter of issuing a refund - full or partial. Then checking that refund has gone through the following morning, just in case. Then emailing you all is good. Including some custom coupon just for you to tempt you to buy something else.
Then the thing has to be tested. How do you test an order to Namibia gets returned properly? Or Ottowa? Or just normal Germany, where all those labels have to be translated? Or Japan where there are some issues with addresses and non-latin characters. Or Korea? Or plain Ireland, where there are no post codes.
Getting an order to Namibia (for example) is one thing, returning it and getting the original payment returned, all automagically, 'hassle free', well, that is a fine art. From my readings of Stack Overflow few make it to that depth of the ecommerce sales process.
Obviously my code will do the returns label at 'web speed' (instantly, customer in control) whereas the humans had to take up to 150 hours to get back to the customer with a returns label. Invariably they would mess up the credit memo and the stock would go out of the realms of accuracy fairly quickly. Total overhead for a returns is something like 30 mins for the various people needing to faff about with this 'easily' automated stuff.
Now I know what I know I can see how the retailers are on customer service, only if you are doing it 'the Amazon way' are you really able to profit online, selling through them or not.
I'm just saying that even then, a return is still enough work that investing 15 minutes in reviews pays off, once you consider all the othet factors as well.
Good luck! Sounds very complex indeed.
What about a monitor, for example? You might be fine with what you have, but it might have been more optimal (price or performance) to buy that other one that you had no idea about.
It's also around 15 days, and a bit of effort to repackage and send via UPS, etc, for each attempt.
I was trying to explain why this part of your comment was wrong.
I don't buy things very often. Especially not in the > $100 category. I don't want to waste time on things that are subpar, but I also don't want to get hobby-grade knowledge of every item I buy. So if I can rely on folks like The Wirecutter to review things for me then I can check them out before I make a purchase and gain some confidence in my purchase for only a few minutes of my time.
Sure, I may get a fluke. I may have an issue with a product from time to time. In the fields they review that overlap with my own hobby interests I may disagree with them over nitpicky details. But those are exceptions, and I can trust myself to catch them. For 90+% of the use case, reviewers are a great use of a few minutes of time.
This seems a lot better than older traditional advertising models, where you have people writing reviews for TVs while the publication is getting paid advertising dollars directly from companies like Sony or LG. A classic example of this happened back in 2007, when a video game publisher was running ads for Kane and Lynch on Gamespot, which is a video games review site. Jeff Gerstmann wrote a negative review of the game which ran on the site, and he ended up getting fired as a result (as Gamespot's ownership didn't want to bite the hand that was feeding them).
1. People build websites and have fiverr people write reviews then link to Amazon to reap that sweet, sweet affiliate cash.
2. People build websites and write reviews for products based on the most return using Amazon Affiliate software that ranks products.
3. People honestly link to their affiliate via a blog for a personal hobby.
Most of the affiliates are trying to make money and they don't give a shit how they do it.
Read this shit... https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/making-money.12/
If you read a lot of their reviews you'll find many times they act as a meta review, basing the majority of their opinions on other reviews they read online. That's not high quality.
Almost all of their reviews give too much weight to price. When you say something mid range is the best without a price qualifier it's bordering on dishonest. Many of the things they call best are not the best, they're what they consider the best in the low to medium price range.
Their win was realizing that I don't give a shit about reading about the latest tech news on new product X. I just need an in-depth review for each product category that is done by an expert, exposes the best products I can get for each part of the tradeoff spectrum, and is kept up to date as time passes by. That's all I need. So many times I've done my own research for days and came up with the same 2-3 results that they have, so I don't even bother anymore. I'll be very sad if The Wirecutter dies.
The pleasure of the wirecutter is that the decisions are made. I look for their top choice of wifi routers, then I read about why. In the off chance I disagree, I read the other entries. It explains by what aspects each other product is better or worse than their pick. Perhaps I want a cheaper one? A specific brand? More range? Done in under ten minutes.
I realize everyone is different, but what I love about the Wirecutter is that I don't want to waste my free time reading expert product reviews and comparing specs, and CR encourages exactly that. Any minor benefit from having that information exposed really gets drowned out by my frustration.
Only if the item is sold by Amazon (or a competitor with commission), otherwise the item won't be reviewed or discussed at all.
http://m.thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-windows-ultraboo...
http://m.thewirecutter.com/reviews/which-macbook-should-i-bu...
Then 6 months from now after I've reviewed dozens of different laptops for the same amount of bullshit time, do it again with the old reviews... rinse, repeat. No day to day needed... just go over it once for a few hours, make some bullshit recommendation, then call it a day. Bullshit.
I have seen products which are not superior quality but are ranked as #1. Generally best are third or below ranked products.