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Comment by x0054 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is going downhill quickly. I target shoot with a compound bow as a hobby, and as a result I usually buy a set of arrows a year. In 2015 when I would search for "target arrows" on Amazon the first page results would be for legit American companies who make exceptional arrows for about $30 per set of 6. Now, and for the last 2 years if I search for "target arrows" I get pages and pages of Chinese crap arrows (I purchased several sets and returned them). The crappy ones are also selling for $30 per set but they are made out of weak aluminum and come bent up. To get the nice American made ones I have to got 10-20 pages deep or search by brand name and even than the real ones are usually on page 2 with page one featuring the same crap from China. Now, don't get me wrong, I am sure they can make quality arrows in China, but what makes it to the top of Amazon is utter crap.

I noticed this with many other products as well, but the arrows is a particularly noticeable example because it's something I regularly replace as they get beat up and destroyed (I shoot a lot).

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It's really baffling to me how despite being one of the largest companies in the world and being centered around e-commerce Amazon doesn't do anything about these issues weakening their core product. I say "do nothing" not "fail to stop" because I haven't seen any evidence that Amazon does anything at all to prevent or discourage these behaviors.

I wonder if it's because they push the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra too far. After all, their current approach is successful so why risk changing anything? That would also explain why the website overall looks so dated in many areas.

I don't think it's baffling at all. Facebook is the largest social media company, and what do they do to try to stop all of the propaganda, troll factories and hateful things going on there? Naught. They know that they are the largest company and therefore doesn't have to do anything as long as their position stays the same. Which it seems to be doing. Yes, there are people leaving the platform but where do they go? There is no real contender, therefore Facebook will remain number 1.

On my city Startup Facebook group, I see lots of posts offering fake Facebook & Amazon review services. When I report such posts, the response I get is, the said posts doesn't violate Facbook's Community standard Guidlines.

I don't think it's completely the same thing though, this propaganda and trolling could arguably be a positive for Facebook by driving engagement. Of course there's a balance to maintain but it's not necessarily all bad. Socially and ethically it might be bad but bean-counting-wise it might not be that terrible. Facebook doesn't really care if people trust what they see on the platform as long as they generate pageviews and get ad impressions.

On the other hand I don't see how fake reviews and bootleg items do anything but hurt Amazon by making people distrust the platform. You don't want to add friction to the buying process by making people triple check that they're not getting duped.

And it's not like it's a new problem either, lack of trust was a huge issue in the early days of e-commerce, I'm sure Amazon doesn't want to return to these days where you felt like you were swimming in a sea of scams.

The problem is that before you bought stuff largely from Amazon.

Whereas now it's more akin to eBay which always suffered with scam problems (and responded by giving buyers far more power - which then resulted in buyers scamming sellers instead of the reverse).

I wish it could return to the days where you just bought stuff from Amazon - or at least make it very easy to only search for their products.

Have you tried eBay recently? I’ve bought a few things from there in the last year and found it pleasant and professional.

I have friends who work on teams in Facebook who use ML to detect and filter out “undesirable content”. It’s a difficult problem but they’re a pretty intense team (workaholics) so I wouldn’t say they spend 0 effort.

They're betting on the regulatory force of their review system and product listing SEO, which is linked to their search algorithm. The truth is that it's easier for smaller sellers/brands who laser focus on one or a few products to outcompete bigger brands with many products, and as a consequence appear first in the search results.

The more niche a product is, the easier it is to compete. It's just hard to tell an establish brand apart from a brand that just does Amazon, if you search for something (brands) outside of your knowledge domain. Smaller private label brands can appear more professional as a result of that mentioned laser focus and having Amazon as only channel.

In my opinion it's also the fault of the bigger brands not investing enough into the optimization of their listing, they don't depend on it.

>also the fault of the bigger brands not investing enough into the optimization of their listing, they don't depend on it.

I wouldn't call it their "fault", per se. Thought experiment: If I'm a third party seller on Amazon, why should I / what do I gain by investing into the optimization of my listing if I do not depend on my Amazon listing for the majority of my revenue?

Edit. Agree with the rest of your post btw

>If I'm a third party seller on Amazon, why should I / what do I gain by investing into the optimization of my listing if I do not depend on my Amazon listing for the majority of my revenue?

Sure, you're right, that's how businesses think, and it makes sense. But the side effect is the situation that was brought up, that customers don't understand why their favorite products don't show up higher up in the list, if at all. there might be a point where it can affect a brand and their domain authority. Like Google search, the stuff that doesn't show up on the first pages is perceived as less relevant.

Sorry for this late response, just saw your reply.

It hasn't hurt their revenues, so they have no commercial reason to do anything about it. In other words - it's a leading indicator.

> also explain why the website overall looks so dated in many areas.

As pointed out by UX experts "what's good for Amazon is not good for normal sites."

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/amazon-no-e-commerce-role-m...

> It hasn't hurt their revenues, so they have no commercial reason to do anything about it.

That can't be the explanation. They surely must be aware of it, and surely must be looking forward in time, right?

I guess it's possible that everyone there is a moron, but it doesn't seem likely.

> They surely must be aware of it,

I know for a fact from an Amazon employee that they are aware of it. It's more that they don't have a focus on fixing it.

That seems shortsighted for such a traditionally longsighted company. If you sell tents to people who sell fruit, and don't screen the fruit for disease, and then people get sick, they will use other bazaars.

The status quo seems inconsistent with their mission (stated as "earth's most customer-centric company").

https://www.amazon.jobs/en/working/working-amazon

Perhaps shoppers aren't the customer they have in mind?

I think a major reason behind this problem is that their entire seller system to Add/Edit Amazon product listings (Amazon Seller Central) is run almost entirely as an outsourced division.

The website is entirely different (although Amazon themed/branded). It still doesn't have full mobile support. Phone support is almost non-existent. Most customer support is outsourced to foreign countries. It is a joke.

It once took me 3 months of arguing back and forth to get an erroneous $30 seller fee refunded since there was no "supervisor" to speak to and only a broken ticket system where I would received canned apologies and promises - just to have the same result over and over.

They are clearly understaffed and/or don't know what they're doing most of the time, so counterfeit, duplicate, and junk/low quality listings get through all the time.

thing is, you perceive it as a problem. it’s not. like google dumbing down email and usenet and so on, the next growth market is the folks that want the cheap shit.

A cynical explanation would be that Amazon has looked into it but have decided that it is more beneficial to promote Chinese crap over quality products, precisely because they break more often (more replacements sold) and more people buy low priced crap than high quality products that cost more (more earnings for Amazon).

It's amazing the extent that Chinese crap covers in meeting product market demands. I could see why some people will just chance it on cheap electronics like a Chinese GoPro when the real thing is already expensive and may be 4-5x the price. But what's infuriating is when obscure things like fake ear plugs and knock-off lighters get delivered to you because it's so unexpected it becomes nonsensical. Lower value discretionary things are now prevalently faked to the point that it makes you wonder why the hell would someone go through the effort of manufacturing and shipping a product that brings in such a small profit after fees and expenses unless millions of items were being sold. In the end, sellers supplying cheap crap through Amazon now have a huge market in reach, Amazon makes more money from more transactions, and customers are stuck hoping Amazon will still provide proper support and refunds for legitimate purchase issues.

I was recently researching car dashcams. On Amazon the top brand has thousands of reviews but the most critical one accuses the seller of offering free mounts in exchange for 5* reviews. The second most prominent one is featured heavily in a deal aggregator website which I knew about from before.

I decided to do my research outside of Amazon. The most reliable brand which I chose based on independent review sites and user forums does not actually appear on first 10 pages of Amazon search results. I bought it anyways, and it is so good value for money that I have ordered another one. Safe to say I don't trust Amazon recommendations at all.

I'm in the market, can you tell us the name?

I'm not OP but something similar happened to me. I ended up buying the Papago goSafe 535. Pretty decent bang for buck.

Sorry for the late reply, I went road-tripping with the new dashcam. I went with Viofo A119. I think it's pretty reliable and good value for about $90 (plus an SD card). Also ordered a CPL filter got one of the cams, it's not arrived yet.

Thank you! I ordered one.

One way to overcome this sort by "Most reviews" which normally Amazon hides (I think they do it to give chance to sell new brands/products more). You have more chance to find the product you want and more trustful if it had 10K reviews instead of 10 reviews. I wrote about how to do it. Full disclosure, I am the author of free web app tool on the article. https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate...

I directly clicked through to your junglesearch.net Looks nice! But is it really free, or do you 'live' off user search data?

Thank you for the comment. It is really free , I do not sell user search data I do not even record them, I only use Yandex Metrica to see how users use the site to improve site usability. One main problem is user try to chose "Most reviews" sort option without choosing any Amazon Department (When All Departments is active most of sort options will not work so I do not show them) and I even placed a site tour to make users notice it and it worked for some some users but not all of them but it is an improvement. Actually money comes from Amazon Associates Program that's the only way to monetize the site.

Would you mind adding an option to change amazon country?

This.

In Europe each country (with an Amazon presence ofc) has its own website, each with its own stock and sellers. Buying from the US website is often a no-go, because of the shipping times and the customs fees, and also buying from other european countries is often bad as you forego free shipping and returns.

But anyway thank you for your product, it's already pretty useful for brand products. :)

Thank you for the feedback! I will gradually add other countries first two are UK and CA. What is your country?

Germany.

And thank you again :)

Site is recently reopened (2 weeks) with new domain https://www.junglesearch.net and I get feedbacks to add other countries and I really like to add them. It requires some API work to get new country's categories and checking which options are working on which department so it required some work. CA, UK are on my top list to add.

Bad news Amazon closed related associate account again.

By the way Amazon canceled the affiliate account again after commenting in this thread so probably it will be closed again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277073

I've noticed that sellers have been gaming this metric as well. I was recently shopping for a phone case and other phone accessories. What I found is that sellers are re-purposing SKUs from other highly rated products. I found a ~4.5+ star product with thousands of reviews but saw that most of the reviews were for a completely different item that is no longer being sold. So they'll take a highly rated product, put a different item in its place.

I heard that issue recently, merchants exploits this variant issue and Amazon does not provide a way differentiate variant comments.

Coincidentally, I've been looking for a dashcam. Care to share which one you selected?

Sorry about the late reply, I've replied here- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277994

Why don't you just got to a sporting goods shop; either a local or a chain like REI or Dicks, and pay the retail premium and know what you're getting?

I don't want retail to go away. Fuck Amazon.

Before the fake review epidemic, buying on Amazon meant I didn't have to drive out for an hour or longer and instead spend time on other things.

For any product I care about, I do my best to find online retailers who specialize in that category. I'll buy disposable stuff off Amazon, or something I literally cannot find anywhere else, but that's about it.

I broke my rule last week to buy a CB radio that was about 66% the usual retail price, so of course the seller rewarded me by having it delivered 600 miles away (either that, or USPS seriously messed up) and then failing to respond to my inquiries.

I much preferred the convenience of a single source which already had all my payment details setup, delivery addresses set up, and which I knew wouldn't give me any bullshit with returns.

Fulfillment should be a commodity, and I don't want to have to deal with how different brands have structured their own fulfillment.

Supporting a tiny store that does something for the community (ie real reviews) is more important to me than not having to fill out my address on another form.

agree.

Quite often, thanks to eBay, Amazon and other online, those retail stores simply aren't there any more. My options are destroyed, and I have no choice but to try and buy online or drive miles on a "maybe chance".

There used to be a superb hardware store and a great outdoor store near me. Both have closed along with so much else on the high street. If I try and get a lot of what the hardware store carried either online or in other retail (the big DIY sheds) I'll get a far inferior cheap and nasty Chinese equivalent for surprisingly little saving. The items I actually want remain elusive.

The outdoor store had staff that climbed, hiked and so on, and were great for advice as well as product. If you wanted something a little out of the ordinary (either specialist or more unusual sizes) they could order it in for next day at no cost. I got a couple of super cheap items in their closing down sale. :(

I could probably drive 100 miles to Manchester or Glasgow and find a suitable retail option. That would make anything other than carefully planned bulk purchase crazy expensive.

Online has been great for rare niche items, or electronics. For an awful lot of the day-to-day rest I'm left feeling that after the initial boost when they first set up, it's left us far worse off. To cap it all Amazon are rarely cheaper any more.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

And shoddy business rates that drove the high street away.

I live off grid, 2+ hours from any store that would carry such arrows, and I used to buy them just fine from Amazon. My comment was about the decline of Amazon, not a request to solve my arrow buying problem :)

It would be very funny if Amazon gets back to where Internet started... curated directories.

Not necessarily à la Yahoo! but a modern collaborative system, with help from some ML would do. My friends at Slant would agree :)

Amazon wants to automate & eliminate manual tasks, not add more manual tasks to what they've already got.

But Amazon's bright sparks might be able to come up with an automated approach to solving this problem (e.g. via machine learning to identify the suspicious patterns of behaviour that Which? and others have observed) if they are suitably incentivised (e.g. sufficiently embarrassed)

I agree with this, but would like to say, if you open your orders history, you can order the same arrows again assuming the business is still selling them on Amazon.

I recently had the same experience.

In an effort to get completely off of Google, I moved my music library off of Google Music and was going to just use an MP3 player. I had some suggestions from friends (Sony, Phillips, Onkyo, Pioneer) and decided to search Amazon to see what I could find.

When I did a search on Amazon, it was page after page after page of Chinese MP3 players, all under $50. Most of the Hi-Fi players my friends recommended were in the $4-$500 range and up. Even after searching for the specific models they recommended, I still couldn't find them. The search results would return the same sub $50 players.

After a few minutes I gave up and went directly to the manufacturers site. Even more discouraging, when I was googling "Pioneer MP3 player" the Pioneer website was completely buried in the search results, but the first two pages of SERP's had a myriad of Amazon results.

There was a time when you just expected a company to be on page 1 if you searched directly by the company name and product. And these were not fly-by-night companies nobody has heard of. These were major electronic and audio companies I was searching for. Depressing to say the least

Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer?

"Get everything in one place" was more valuable when we had to travel from place to place and it took 30 minutes, but traveling from one website to another takes no time, so the proposition isn't as strong.

Return policies, security, etc, are concerns still, but those cons come along with the pros of no commingling, probably a lower price if ordering direct, and supporting the economic diversity of having more than one store.

Not OP.

> Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer?

I don’t want to share my info with more websites / services than necessary. Amazon already has my CC. I don’t want to spread my info any more than I have to.

That’s one of the main reasons I use Amazon. However as long as other sites allow me to use PayPal I’m happy.

> Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer?

Already have an account with Amazon, 2-3 days shipping, customer support.

Yes, at this point I'm considering cancelling my Prime subscription since I noticed that for many product categories I frequently buy (audio equipment, HIFI, biking gear, clothing, hardware) Amazon is a subpar option.

- Product exploration, curation and comparison is a huge problem at Amazon. Unless I know exactly what I want, I don't even bother searching on Amazon. This issue extends to the quality of the product selection - I think the marketplace approach is a mistake. If I wanted to browse a sea of cheap low quality items from dubious sellers, I'd check eBay.

- The selection for niche categories is limited and the listings are terrible to browse. Particularly clothing is bad: The same item is scattered over countless listings, featuring inconsistent attributes/options

- Pricing is competetive, but rarely exceptional. These days things are priced very similarly between different stores.

- return policies aren't issue here in the EU. There's a mandatory 14-day return window. Sure, 30 days are even better and Amazon handles them flawlessly, but it's basically a non-issue at any store for me.

That said, I still very much enjoy their reliable next-day delivery enabled by Prime. This is what makes me come back to Amazon again and again - after doing my product research elsewhere, of course.

I think this is his whole point, Amazon is not competitive with other retailers. At this point they seem to just be relying on their name and being the first place someone will look. I went a long time with Amazon being the first/only place I looked for stuff, but that started changing 4-5 years ago, and today I almost never buy anything from them.

I remember the daily deals used to be all useful products. Now I just feel like I am browsing some Chinese market.

Competition for scarce resources without regulation drives entropy.

> Amazon is going downhill quickly

Unfortunately I have to agree.

There has been a huge increase in the number of dodgy sellers and obviously fake reviews, and Amazon does not seem to care. I reported a few dishonest listings and absolutely nothing happened despite a number of reviews corroborating it.

Prime deliveries have also started to slip (here in the UK), with 'guaranteed next day deliveries' suddenly being delayed with no update or anything.

Amazon got so successful because they earned a pretty much blind trust from customers, but trust is lost quicker than it is earned.

"Amazon is going downhill quickly. Here's my anecdote of a niche product experience that doesn't even make up 0.0000000001% of their revenue."

Here's my anecdote: I can't stand Amazon Canada. It's complete and utter crap.

Actually everything in this country is a crappy watered-down version of the US: Amazon, Netflix, you name it.

It's not clear those low-price low-quality products aren't legitimately listed first because most people prefer them.

Edit: ignore the above, I failed to read the part where they said the price was the same.

Except when sellers game the system and flood it with fake reviews, it’s pretty strongly suggestive that this isn’t a grassroots shift in consumer preferences.

Relatedly, if someone else can make a business out of helping your customers sort out fake reviews on your site, like Fakespot has, it pretty clearly means either there’s something wrong with your site or you don’t care about the sham reviews because they still drive business for you.

Agreed. I recently heard in a talk an example of NLP being used to help rank sellers by analyzing messages between buyers and sellers, before and after transactions.

Another example was how Taobao increased the number of useful reviews by allowing sellers to pay for reviews, and used NLP to determine if the review was useful. If it was, only then would the reviewer get paid. This would then dis-incentivize sellers expecting bad feedback from paying for reviews, and incentivize good sellers who were seeking honest, relevant feedback.

Seems like both examples can still be gamed, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

> The crappy ones are also selling for $30 per set but they are made out of weak aluminum and come bent up.

Low price, low quality is a real value proposition; outside the context of wristwatches, no one legitimately prefers lower quality at the same high price.

I suggest Amazon solves this by requiring ALL purchasers to leave reviews of ALL products they buy. Or by adding a $10 fee to every purchase that can only be refunded by leaving a review.

That will just create a shitload of low-effort noise in between useful reviews.

I don't think I would agree to that model. I wouldn't like my money being held hostage for a review. If they give me a dollar discount, on the other hand, I would be much inclined to leave a review.

It is the same model, just semantics. Either way they are increasing the price of the product by some amount and decreasing it when you leave a review.

It's only the same model if you ignore the large psychological difference.

I remember this being used early on in WoW; in order to keep people from playing too long XP earned decreased over time.

After complains it was changed to a boost for time spent logged out which was much more popular.

Ha! Great example.

I would just get the discount then leave a 1 star review, to make up for the annoying hoop I just had to jump through.

This wouldn't stop people being dishonest in their reviews. Nothing does so far.

Nah. Better solution is removing reviews from people who get refunds. Double win by incentivizing manufacturers to refund a disgruntled customer.

I'd sure prefer to know that the product I'm about to buy frequently needs to be returned.

I’d also prefer to know how that return process played out.

I would love that too! If they had some sort of stat meter next to a product saying x% of the purchases were returned, it would be great. Plus it would force the seller to up their game or die.

nah, they'd just change their name more frequently

If all reviews are glowing positive, what's the point of the review system?

According to the article, people were getting refunded via side channel and keeping the products.

Which defeats the purposes of having reviews by removing the negative reviews...

Door Dash more or less forces users of their app to review the last delivery they had in order to place their next order. Maybe there is a way around it but it’s non-obvious. As a result, the worst rating of a restaurant I’ve seen is a 4.2 out of 5. Because people, myself included, just tap 5 stars to get it out of the way.

Isn't the solution to that problem branding and not nationalist policing by the retailer? I mean, reading your post I don't see what Amazon can do to make you happy except ban "chinese" manufacturers.

If you're seriously a regular buyer of these products, surely you have a few manufacturers that you know and trust, just like serious hobbyists in other activities have preferred brands of balls or shoes or guitar strings or whatever. Can't you just search for those?

> or search by brand name and even than the real ones are usually on page 2 with page one featuring the same crap from China

So he does search for specific brands and is still stymied by Amazon ranking algorithms.

Arguably, it's actually Amazon's search algorithms that are to blame. Those have been known for a long time to be sub-par, now, at least since 2012 (when I worked there).

If you search for a brand name, products without that brand name anywhere should just not show up, period. (I suppose an exception is if you just don't have it, kind of like when Netflix shows "shows related to" when they don't have what you're actually looking for.)

Right, but those other products pay Amazon to show them when someone searches the competitor’s brand, so they will keep showing them even if you don’t want to see it.

> Arguably, it's actually Amazon's search algorithms that are to blame. Those have been known for a long time to be sub-par, now, at least since 2012 (when I worked there).

You’re conflating direct experience with the masses. My parents didn’t work there. They wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell them. I think most people aren’t having this conversation.

> kind of like when Netflix shows "shows related to" when they don't have what you're actually looking for.

I wish they would fix that and make it communicate clearly that they don't have this show, and the following are just the alternatives. Because with the UX looking identical for when there is a match and when there is none, this feels like a cheap attempt at duping people into watching something anyway.

"kind of like when Netflix shows "shows related to" when they don't have what you're actually looking for."

I wouldn't mind that to be honest. And I've discovered some shows/ movies which were pretty damn good (but not mainstream) just based on this sort of logic. I most likely would've never discovered them otherwise.

Showing related shows is a nice feature. The Netflix implementation feels mildly manipulative. It is as if they are pretending the film or show you are looking for does not exist and hoping you will just watch something else on their network rather than leave for another network.

I'd much rather see an acknowledgment that the show exists and that they don't carry it, and a list of related titles separated by actor, genre, director, etc. If contract allows, they could even include a "Coming on %month %date" if a licensing agreement has been reached but is not yet active. That might make me just wait until they have the title and find something else to watch now, rather than checking if (say) HBO has the movie. Additionally, they could have a "request this title" button, even if it does nothing because they're already basing their leasings on search data.

I'd also like a list of places I can view it a la gowatchit.com, but I can understand why they don't do that.

> I wish they would fix that and make it communicate clearly that they don't have this show, and the following are just the alternatives.

I'd like if they'd say "we have this show in the markets X, Y and Z. If you'd like a change, write an email to <insert mail of studio here> or tweet to @studio."

This way, studios could finally be subjected to shitstorms. After enough of these, maybe they'll turn down their greed somewhat. I don't want to pay six different streaming providers, that gets more expensive than US cable tv prices...

Two things: First, he covered that by saying searching by brand still had his "real" search results on page 2. Second, maybe you're super young, but Amazon used to be "good stuff", not just "hey, let's compete with eBay, on their level." What if you actually don't know the difference between "good" arrows and "bad" arrows? It used to be that Amazon had already made that call for you.

Amazon used to be the place you bought from without effort. "Of course Amazon's going to give me the best item for the best price" was the ubiquitous mindset.

Now the Amazon brand name is garbage (to me). Their prices are so mercurial you can't rely on them being even "average" and odds are they're even predatory (since it's just some random guy setting his selling price, not amazon nor MSRP).

"Fool and His Money" capitalism rules the Amazon Marketplace.

It's the worst part of eBay without the low expectations and transparency.

> It used to be that Amazon had already made that call for you.

This is why I've gone back to buying from brick-and-mortar stores. They've done the curation. They're not going to carry junk that always gets returned. Ten years ago, if I could buy it from Amazon, with Prime shipping, I wouldn't leave my seat. Now, if I can buy it from Target, Best Buy, or Kroger, I'll just make the trip. Good work, Amazon. I've canceled my auto-renew for Prime. I'm done.

Unfortunately, NewEgg also seems to be following in Amazon's "marketplace" footsteps. If you're listening, guys, you have an opportunity to NOT do this!...

>They're not going to carry junk that always gets returned

I'm guessing you mean specialty stores, and not Walmart.

Yes, ditto on newegg. My heroes for fighting patent trolls and building the best shopping cart ever and having good products at good prices. Lately it's been in decline though. Haven't bought anything there for over a year.

The patent troll-fighting heroes have moved on from Newegg. It’s owned by different people now.

What's the alternative to newegg if I may ask?

Does it need a replacement? Newegg still sells a wide selection of genuine parts at reasonable prices.

> Their prices are so mercurial

I was discussing a barbell set with my trainer and by the time I got around to buy it next morning it doubled in price. Came back down in a week. WTF.

Could they have observed you looking at it?

> Could they have observed you looking at it?

Maybe, but any website that does that is being so unbelievably short-sighted and consumer-hostile that they deserve to go out of business and bankrupt their owners.

Uh, QA? The source nation isn't the problem, is that Amazon is listing those crappy products over quality items.

Although, I would LOVE if Amazon let me filter out products not made in America.

I'd love a retail site that let me search by useful criteria, like country of origin, ingredients (e.g. food must contain or must not contain X), dimensions (not just '3" to 9"' when I want exactly 6.5"), etc. Amazon has most of the data already listed in tables on the product pages.

I want Octopart for everything else.

Thanks to Amazon commingling you can order a genuine brand and get a fake anyway.

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