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Comment by dleslie | Hacker News Reader

It's funny, as a Canadian, Amazon is its own worst enemy.

Hitherto there weren't many competitors that could match, or even compete with, Amazon's stock and delivery speed. Walmart is close, as is Costco, but Amazon is where it's at.

For quite some time Prime was... Not a good value for us. Then we got Video and Music, to a certain extent, and it's a fair value if the content you want is there.

But the problem, and why myself and many peers have cancelled prime and started shopping elsewhere, is that the basis of trust in the quality of their stock has fallen away completely. The amount of garbage with four stars or more is scandalous, and the likelihood of receiving a knock off product is too high. Opening a box to find a product similar to but different from what you intended to buy is all too common.

Amazon, get your shit together before you irreparably harm your brand.

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Your experience with review gaming is fairly universal, it's not specific to Canada. Amazon reviews are fundamentally untrustable at this point, to the point there are multiple startups providing 'fake or not' services for them.

I've stopped buying anything from Amazon about two years ago. When you start to price compare, you realise how bad of a deal Amazon has become real quick. For the majority of the stuff I was buying, Amazon prime was marginally more expensive. For a minority of them, it was substantially (30%+) more expensive, and I had no idea.

Oh, in case it wasn't clear: as a Canadian, Prime has been of dubious value. We don't have catalog parity either, but that has been less of an issue for a few years now.

Depends on the Amazon services you use. Amazon Music Unlimited is cheaper than other music streaming services in Canada if you have Prime, so taking that price difference into account, I'm basically paying $40 just for the unlimited photo storage. (I don't use Amazon Video, and always select the slowest shipping option for the environmental efficiency.)

> When you start to price compare, you realise how bad of a deal Amazon has become real quick. For the majority of the stuff I was buying, Amazon prime was marginally more expensive. For a minority of them, it was substantially (30%+) more expensive, and I had no idea.

Agreed, but I'm currently trying to get a close friend to realize that Amazon can have terrible pricing. But I think the convenience factor is difficult to overcome.

Before Amazon, you had to just "know" which venue to buy each particular product. Now you can go to one place for practically anything online.

For every purchase (online or not), I do some mental calculation of "My estimate of what this costs to make is X", and I wouldn't pay more than X + Y%.

I also think "Which venue would have the best price for this?". For small junk, I would do some complicated Ebay searches and buy it for $4 from China. For larger things, I would do some complicated analysis of supply vs. demand for a used good and maybe check local classified ads. For other stuff, I'd go to Costco, or some specialized store.

I also have to do an analysis of how much I'd be willing to save to get it in 1 week or 1 month instead of tomorrow.

But most people just don't think that much. Relatively guaranteed shipping of 1-2 days and all from one place is enough for people that don't do this kind of thinking for purchases.

Costco doesn't always have the best pricing, but you know that you'll never overpay too much, it's always quality, and they'll take a return if you're willing to trade some of your life to do it.

What were you buying and where are you buying from now. I almost always compare items on atleast three sites before I buy. Amazon often times comes ahead of or is the same as Jet, target, costco and walmart. Combined with camelcamelcamel and the few truly bad deals are easily spotted.

I use a comparator plugin and I never have this experience. I spend probably at least $1000 a month on Amazon between personal and business and the difference in savings is negligible at best from switching to various other sites from Amazon (most of the time Amazon is the cheapest price).

Prime shipping has been annoying to my residence because I live in Seattle and they use contractors which often just fuck things up for same-day delivery, but it's never longer than 2 days. Almost no other site can match that speed and convenience, which is the real reason any of use Prime.

If I saw the same 30% overcharging phenomenon people keep talking about on HN, I'd probably consider switching. But it is well under 5% and probably ~0%, honestly, and the value of my time and efficiency of shopping online is worth quite a bit to me.

Which plugin?

There's tons; Wikibuy, Honey, etc, etc. I use Honey but I've used a bunch and the results are generally the same. The paranoia inflicted upon me by HN crowd saying I'm overpaying on Amazon by 30% makes me investigate all these claims and I just find them all to be completely false in my case.

I'm not saying people don't have these experiences, but I don't. And even if I did for like 5% or something, the shopping experience on Amazon is 10x better than Walmart.com or Target.com (where it's more like 100x), and that isn't worth nothing. It's like patio11 insisting that basis points fees aren't worth arguing over on Stripe when you are infinitely more productive using Stripe's developer kit vs. Authorize.net or any other terrible gateway, and people everywhere on HN claim how expensive Stripe is and how you can save money and don't factor in even a very conservative estimate on labor hours for a C-level exec or a manager in a company.

It doesn't take much time saved or annoyances avoided for a high-level executive to make a small price difference be completely irrelevant. And that's what Amazon has mostly done.

Is it possible GP meant 30% more for a prime-compatible listing compared to a non-prime listing?

CamelCamelCamel is also useful at showing product price history and has an extension as well: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-camelizer/ghno...

Personally I've had few troubles with fake reviews & ratings. Aggregate ratings and review are just one signal in a purchasing decision. If I'm buying something non-disposable, particularly if it costs more than $50, I almost always look at the top 3-4 products to compare features and scrutinize reviews carefully to look at hidden issues and tradeoffs. With this approach, fake reviews almost always fall in the same bucket as real ones that I perceive to be undiscerning or ignorant - I'm much more compelled by detailed reviews that mirror my own perspectives, interests, concerns, and thought processes. On the rare occasions that I wind up with something unsatisfactory, it's hardly an issue to take 3 minutes to get a full refund.

I also couldn't disagree with you more on how bad a deal Amazon is. Yes, you pay a premium on many things. On the other hand, that premium pays for itself 100+ times over due to the tremendous amount of time and frustration I save by virtue of not having to physically go somewhere to do the vast majority of my shopping. Furthermore, I also find huge value in being able to make careful, informed decisions about what I buy without time-pressure and other annoyances imposed by the physical world. I hate shopping at most stores and when I'm there the strong desire to leave as soon as I can tends to take precedence over making the smartest purchase. Overall I would say using Amazon for most of my shopping has greatly improved my quality of life due to these factors.

I started buying household stuff from Walmart.com. I get free shipping as fast as Amazon. The checkout experience isn't quite as smooth but I don't worry about counterfeits. I'm not sure that's 100% justified but I've never heard of people getting counterfeit stuff from Walmart.

We switched to Walmart and jet.com after repeatedly getting fake makeup and counterfeit beauty products from Amazon. Anything that's fake and goes on or inside your body is just too risky, imo.

This is also a serious problem in the UK. I still use Amazon a lot for things like books, video games, music, and (certain) electronics items, but you're definitely taking a chance if you branch out from there. I'd be very wary about buying premium brand clothing from them, for example.

I'm also in the UK, and I buy a lot of things on Amazon. Thousands of pounds worth every year.

Out of hundreds of items, I've never once received anything that seemed dodgy.

On the rare occasions where I've received a broken/defective product, I've had no reason to believe it wasn't a genuine product, and Amazon have been a joy to deal with to send it back. In fact, the ease of returns, and their excellent customer service, are the main reasons I buy so many items from Amazon and not elsewhere.

I've been less fortunate. Only a couple of items, one of which was a fake Gamecube controller with a USB (!) connector, but it's been enough to dent my confidence and change my shopping behaviour, particularly when it comes to niche items only available through resellers.

Hence my comment about it being a serious problem: the incidence doesn't have to be very high to cause a significant dent in confidence and changes in behaviour.

> the ease of returns

I recently had to return a large broken-on-delivery item to Amazon. They required me to buy and apply packaging ( they had just stuck a postage label on the item ) and pay £35 up front for return shipping.

Two weeks later they refunded the shipping cost but not that for packaging or my own time, including carrying it on my shoulder to the post office.

It was sold by and fulfilled by Amazon, not a vendor. I get better customer service from eBay!

"The amount of garbage with four stars or more is scandalous"

Where are you finding ratings that are more accurate than Amazon's?

Whenever I've looked at competing sites, of those few that actually have ratings at all, the products are rated by maybe 5 people total, whereas on Amazon it's sometimes hundreds or thousands. So are those 5 people really going to provide a more representative rating than the hundreds or thousands that rate Amazon products?

That's not to say that ratings are everything. They're just a start. You have to dig deeper and take a close look at both the positive and negative reviews to know what you're getting yourself in to.

Reviews at most competitors' sites lag behind Amazon -- with the sole exception, to my knowledge, of NewEgg, which actually has a lot of both ratings and reviews, and both are useful.

Hundreds or thousands of fake reviews make it even worse.

I have a theory that the only reason Amazon is the biggest retailer is because Target and Walmart don't have nearly the global presence AMZN does. Amazon is where the customers are -- all of them -- but that's not an insurmountable advantage (in theory).

Target tried to expand into Canada but failed pretty miserably. I got the honor? Of visiting one while they were open and it was a total mess. None of the products Canadians actually wanted from Target, super buggy POS and just higher prices than competitors.

Even IRL stores would probably bite into Amazon's hold on areas where people drive a lot or have good transpo. There don't seem to be too many multinational retail companies, so I imagine there's something fundamental (finance, taxation, shipping, etc.) behind that, and maybe the Internet is the only way to compete.

Target's website is horseshit terrible and Walmart's isn't much better, and both offer inferior shipping options (though Walmart is close). It's not that tough. Also selection at Walmart for electronics is godawful, especially since AmazonBasics crushes their generic line.

Your experience is similar to mine in the states. I don't know that they care about their retail service much any more. Their new ventures seems to be masking its decline.

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