Hacker News Reader

Comment by basseq | Hacker News Reader

That "tyranny of perfect information" begets FOMO. If you'd looked at one more site or one more review you might have discovered a "better" (cheaper, high quality, higher utility) item.

I'd add that's it's worse because the world is flatter. Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman? But then when the version from Alibaba is total crap, there's no recourse. It's not like a local shop with reputation at risk.

So you end up in this world where nothing matters and it's a race to maximize attention. Which means, as a consumer, you have to do your research or risk getting taken for a ride.

View on HN

Consistent quality is the entire point of brands. Find a soap you like and you can mindlessly get the same thing for the next 20+ years. Which also generally means you can pick a random brand and not end up with junk as long as trust the supply chain.

The issue is when you want something different than the millions of other people out there. Sure, things change and the quality may slip, but there is only so much time in the world is comparison shopping really worth it to you?

That's kind of the point, though. Supply chains are becoming more transparent and accessible to the end customer, so in 2020, you have a much better chance of going "directly to the source" than you did 20 years ago.

So the FOMO is paying a brand markup for consistent quality you could get for less.

Then you have "established" brands that are just trying to maximize profit. And "new" brands that are just AliExpress resellers. So trust that even a Brand™ experience will be a good one is waning.

In other words, the premise that you're paying for time savings is less assured, and the information to actually make comparison shopping worthwhile is right there.

30 years ago, there were 10 options, but the information was hard to get. Now, the information is right there, but there are 1000 options. Does it now take less time, or more?

A lot of brands also try to push cheapo goods under their good brand, usually by adding some stupid suffix like "express" to the brand name, which you don't realize until after you've bought the item.

Electronics especially is very difficult. Take Samsung for example, any phone that is not the latest S-model is really disappointing. Less educated consumers just know that "samsung phones are good", when most reviews only refer to S10. Likewise I can't mindlessly go into a store an buy a Sony TV even if my last Sony TV was good, i need to do the online research to figure out that the last 2 characters in the model-nr indicates if this is the premium version or not. Things change so quickly also that the brand that had the lead one year ago is no longer having the best options.

Unfortunately private equity funds buy out companies with a good brand reputation, do "quality fade" on the produce, and milk the company's reputation until it is in tatters, then get a tax deduction for the inevitable bankruptcy.

> Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman? But then when the version from Alibaba is total crap, there's no recourse. It's not like a local shop with reputation at risk.

The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon, are the same crap from Alibaba imported by a guy who read a How To Make Money On Amazon book, or just marked up directly by the same people selling on Alibaba. Heck, even the "brand items" may turn out to be a cheap clone that someone had shipped to Amazon fulfillment, bypassing their incredibly stringent "I pinky-swear this really is the authentic item" vetting process.

> The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon

I find “on, say, Amazon” entertaining. Amazon may well be the worst largeish US online vendor. It’s gotten to the point where I trust eBay more.

If you want winter gear, buy from one of several excellent online stores dedicated to it.

If I want winter gear, I'll physically go to REI or Sportsman's Warehouse and buy a coat that actually fits.

I was actually thinking about my recent experience trying to buy a $5 Monoprice USB-PS/2 converter when I typed my original comment.

>It’s gotten to the point where I trust eBay more.

Absolutely! I recently bought a simple item, a roll of wiring loom tape. It was on Amazon and had a few reviews that stated that the received tape was old and didn't stick very well anymore.

Same item on eBay for cheaper has the seller specifically mentioning that they only sell fresh tape from the running production, not old stock. Even better, the seller specialized in these (and other) tapes.

It seems that eBay has just cultivated a much higher quality base of vendors. Many of them seem specialized.

Right! So why should I pay for crap, or the other way around, why should I overpay for good quality, if I can get a solid substitute for less?

For example, I'm shopping for landscape lighting right now. You can spend a lot on landscape lighting. A nice bronze spotlight from a "good" brand like Kichler can run you $100+ ea.[1], and I need 8–10 of them.

Conversely, I can get an 6-pack of albeit-plastic spotlights off Amazon from a Chinese company for 40 bucks, with 4.5 stars and 252 reviews.[2]

I am getting ripped off with Kichler? I am getting crap from Zuckeo? Who knows!?

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Kichler-16012BBR30-10-Degree-3000K-Br...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/ZUCKEO-Landscape-Spotlight-Decorative...

And this goes the other way, too. In the same vein as lighting, I was trying to find a simple, modern, LED vanity fixture.

You can get builder-grade and often-ugly crap from Home Depot (see also: Brands not being an indicator of quality), or spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on designer pieces.

I ended up finding one I really liked off a no-name website, with the product shipped from Hong Kong for like $80. Solid metal, reasonable-looking electronics, arrived in 2 weeks, good communication... very happy!

yeah, I get bombarded with ads on Instagram for a decent looking product at a "must be a quality item" price. But a quick AliExpress search reveals there probably just getting it there and reselling for huge markups. Pretty smart actually.

Some people are "satisficers" content with good-enough. Some are "maximizers", who want to find the absolute best product, which leads to wasting enormous time on research, and ultimately frustration and buyers' remorse. Usually people are maximizers in some product categories and satisficers for the vast majority of other items. In my case, I am a maximizer for computers, cameras and optics, but couldn't care less about shampoo or hand cream and just want an end to the madness.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com