I used to love Amazon but now when I look for something I dread to do so on Amazon because I don't feel I can trust anything there.
Amazon "I'm buying from a reputable company, so I can trust that the seller is accurately representing the item." turned to "I thought I was buying from an established company, but instead I'm buying from a questionable person that is using Amazon as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."
EBay "I'm buying from a random person that I don't trust and may be misrepresenting the item, but it looks like they've described all the problems and got the same use from the item as I would like to get, so I'm comfortable with taking a chance." turned to "I thought I was buying from a random person, but instead I'm buying from a questionable company that is using Ebay as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."
It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon.
Out of curiosity, why do you assume people don't realize they aren't buying from Amazon?
(Can't remember, but do the parcels come in Amazon packaging too?)
Because Amazon tells them when they're looking at the item that it's sold by a third party? And then again when they're checking out. And the items sold by third parties include an invoice and receipt from the third party? It's not a difficult technical issue - it only requires basic reading comprehension, which I'd expect most people using Amazon to posses.
Obviously everybody commenting here has figured out what's going on, and most people I've talked to about it (technical and non-technical) have also figured it out, so I just can't see it as Amazon tricking everybody.
My assumption is that most people buying from Amazon do know about and understand third party sellers, but aren't bothered by them enough to do anything.
This is your problem. Most people don't have basic reading comprehension when they're using computers, even less so when they're not expecting to be scammed. This is well known in UI and IT support circles. They don't notice details, they don't read the error messages, they don't read the fine print. On Amazon, they just want to get their thing and move on.
Even if some people understood "some inventory comes from different places," the vast majority of retail operations vet their sources and have quality control. So it's easy to understand why people would assume it's not different from Target selling inventory provided by multiple distributors.
- Search - Pick a category - Select "Amazon.com" as the seller
edit: That wasn't clear. Try two: Inventory submitted by FBA vendors is commingled with Amazon inventory in Amazon's warehouses. When you, a sucker, buys it, you have zero control over whether the widget you get was purchased by Amazon from the manufacturer or sent to Amazon by Billy Bob's Sellin' Totally Not Fake Shit Shack, which definitely got it from the manufacturer, not the bottom price on Alibaba. This is true even if you buy from Amazon and not an FBA vendor.
You can fairly consistently filter by Prime/non-Prime, but that's not the same (that filters down to things fulfilled by Amazon, but not just sold by Amazon).
Recently Amazon made it much harder to select sellers.
Now on some products, the page is so confusing that you don't know is it "Fullfilled by Amazon" or you are buying from someone in China.
Race to the bottom and all...
Recently I got them to refund me after showing I returned the defective item (tracking number + signed by an employee) the SAME day it was returned to the seller's location. Granted, the seller and I had a dispute (which was that the seller refused to acknowledge the device spit out a fair amount of magic smoke when powering a small charger).
Again, it's effort in and effort out. If you buy something off Amazon, make sure it's being shipped to you by Amazon!
I don't like being used as an arbitrage opportunity. I think that if unaddressed it could harm Amazon in the long run.
Validating authentic and genuine reviews is still a very much under-developed solution, still relying on an equally weighted consensus when it's overwhelmingly skewed to positive bias (fake reviews up the average rating).
I now read the bad reviews very carefully. they are often always sandwiched or quickly buried by broken english reviews.
I can't remember how many times I bought a 4.8 star item and realized it was from Alibaba with just a different logo. I definitely won't be needing Amazon Prime anymore.......
but where else will I take out my shopping binge desires?
Generally on Alibaba, you have to know what a "reasonable" price is and expect that "acceptable" means you may have to order something 3 different times. I seem to have a miss rate of about 20-30%--so most of the time I get what I want, but very occasionally I get a bad roll of the dice and have to order 3 times.
I was buying something that's currently out of stock most places.
I looked on Amazon, saw some "3rd party" sellers that said they would have it on stock various dates about 1 week in the future, and I didn't believe them.
Some sellers had hundreds of positive reviews, others had only a few, most were an "appropriate" price (not to high or low), and all of them had the prime designation, but I still didn't believe them.
Amazon has lost my trust here, completely. And I don't know if they will be able to get it back. I just can't trust that they will get me what I bought in a reasonable time frame.
I got it from a previous years unheard of (by me) retailer online. Reviews of the company elsewhere on the internet seemed trustworthy, and I took a leap on them, and it paid off.
I trusted an unknown website more than I trusted Amazon.
They're planning to drop ship it when you order it. Only then will they realize it's out of stock (or they'll wait weeks for it from China).
A number of times I've had a reseller dropship from walmart.com or target.com for a few dollars of arbitrage.
I just checked the item, still sold with solid 4.5 stars and occasional 1star reviews with pictures documenting that they also got a fake one.