Also, I'm more and more attracted to specialized shops again. For example for the last two years I've been buying most electronic stuff from a local shop. I needed a laptop charger and it was a totally awful experience going by Amazon, even typing output values and such. Fed up, went out, walked 15 mins, got one that wasn't the same I had but did the job and matched the specs.
It's exactly that. Why should I use Amazon if I can go to Alibaba or Aliexpress, what's the point if it isn't more convenient than moving my ass to a local store or get it cheaper in China.
I found a local place. Normally I would just go in and talk to them, but because of the circumstances I called. I called Saturday at 1pm and left a message and got a call back mid-day Monday. Their website still shows hours 7-days a week, but maybe they've reduced hours or staff and haven't updated. They confirm the style and model I'm looking for and say they'll call me back if it's in stock or if they'll have to order it. I called them today (Thursday) late-afternoon and they said they had been meaning to call me back. They have the part, I pay for it, and they say they'll call when it's available. When I ask when that might be they said, "If it makes it on the truck, then tomorrow. If not, probably in a week."
None of this is bad customer service, but it's really nice to click "buy" with a good faith estimation for delivery and expect it to show up on my doorstep in a day or two.
I noticed professional businesses are really into their thing, but aren't always on top of the customer service/running a business part of things. It's most obvious to me with tradesmen who make house calls. It's hard to schedule something, it's hard to get an invoice and even sometimes pay them.
of course it was a more expensive item, and it shipped straight away via DHL.
The cheaper items I bought through alixpress typically ship via china post, and that took rather longer.
Because you want it tomorrow and not in 3 months (if ever)? And want to be able to return it?
I'm all for hating things that are popular, but I don't think anyone suggesting AliExpress as a replacement for Amazon has seriously used it.
AliExpress is for things like a replacement cable you don't need soon but you'll need sometime in the next few years, so you can save a few bucks. Anything else I'd use Amazon.
Buying from manufacturers' websites rarely seems worth it to me either. There's always an issue. I've been trying to talk to the manufacturer of my high-end ski goggles to get them replaced. They leisurely take a month to reply to my ticket. Some manufacturers don't even bother.
Amazon has issues, but let's not forget how good we have it. The alternatives aren't exactly slaying it either.
Basically getting some echo chamber fatigue where every HNer has to hop on the whiny bandwagon. We can order anything to our doorstep anytime from anywhere and return it. It's not that bad just because you can enumerate some issues and pet peeves.
Alibaba owns more than 50 % in Cainiao, a logistical company, and the latter organized a Global Smart Logistic Summit today, where it revealed new technologies for smart logistics. The summit was also the location where the group unveiled its plans to expand its global network with another five hubs: Dubai, Hangzhou, Kuala Lumpur, Liege (BELGIUM, note added by me) and Moscow.
https://www.retaildetail.eu/en/news/general/alibaba-opens-be...
When ePacket was often free, I used Ali a lot and small parcels would often be just over a week to the east coast.
It has been this way for me for two years or so. I think I made the right choice. Research on the internet, go fnac, pcbox, appinformatica, cetronic, decathlon... I don't even live in a big city and there are good options for almost everything.
And I'm +30, it's not like I didn't adapt to the internet.
I have literally never received a fake/clone/scam off amazon, and I can't explain that discrepancy. I personally only buy things that are sold or fulfilled by amazon, never shipped by third party sellers, but surely everyone else as savy as HN readers does the same? Why order things with brutal shipping costs and times, only things fulfilled by amazon are quick.
But if you search for "USB charger", you need to prepare yourself for pages upon pages of identical-looking chargers from "Amoner", "RAVpower", "iSmart", "Ailkin", "Anker", "Power7", "Nekmit", etc.
And most of them have hundreds or thousands of 4/5-star reviews, most of them compensated in some form or another, so good luck trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.
For about half the things I search for on Amazon, it's a similar situation.
RAVpower is actually a pretty good maker, with some pretty unique offerings (RP-PB19 is a USB UPS which takes in USB!). They even have an informative blog staffed with support personnel who reply to comments.
That said, your point still stands. These are not household names in the North American market, and it's not immediately obvious what is a legitimate and reliable option vs. a throw-away brand selling imported fire hazards.
[1] https://www.samsclub.com/p/anker-6-port-qc-blk-spring2017/pr...
It never happened to me so I assumed it was people blowing it out of proportion or bad shopping habits. Then I got a fake item. Sold by a legit manufacturer and fulfilled by amazon from the manufacturers official page. But the item was a fake. Then it happen again. And again. And again. All on legit-looking items.
It’s certainly not often, maybe once out of 10 items. But it’s often enough that there are certain items I’d never buy from Amazon. Any food item, or something I put in my body or something I depend on the quality more than the price. It’s just both worth the risk.
After having my “completely legitimate” Swiss Gear backpack split wide open in an airport and realizing the truth of a couple of reviews saying they had fakes with cheaper stitching and a few other wrong things, I don’t leave comments like that anymore.
When I visited Shenzhen a few years ago I marveled at how any certification label you needed (UL, CSA, ESA) were being openly sold by the roll by dozens of vendors.
They even had "PASSED" and "TESTED" labels with what appeared to be hand written (blue ink) signatures/initials - making them look like ones that a QA person on the line would stick onto the product after testing.
I did not see fake UL stickers ... however, I don't doubt that they are there.
Know this: a fake UL sticker is a criminally negligent act. Setting aside the appallingly negative morality of anyone that would deploy one, Amazon needs to be brought to regulatory action in the US and the EU for each and every single counterfeit UL device they ship.
This is a life and death issue. People should not pay, with their lives, for the refusal of Amazon to regulate this behavior.
Shopping patterns?
I buy a lot of things, not just for myself but as gifts for a large family. I have found some areas are so filled with scams that I no longer buy items from those areas on Amazon. Other areas (which make up the majority) I have no problem at all, at worst getting a slightly delayed or damaged box.
Any sort of name brand small electronic was a scam more times than not to the point now I no longer order them off Amazon. But books, board games, or video games have been 100% what I payed for. As far as I can tell I've never received a fake Amiibo, though a few times I never had it delivered and had to call for a refund. Even my few orders of used electronics have been good (though I never did get around to converting my used PS Vita into an emulation center).
Food is good too, but I rarely buy it and only for a few specific items as most other things are far too overpriced. Mainly I order tea and I pay close attention to who is filling the order.
Gardening supplies are probably the most mixed bag of the bunch. Often enough I don't get the seeds I order but it can sometimes be fun to see what actually does spout up.
Result: A few areas: 90%+ rip offs. A few other areas: 50/50. Most areas: 100% good.
As a side note, on anything I buy I go read the 1 star reviews and skip if they mention fakes or if there aren't any at all.
There's either a massive influx of stupidity, or this is deliberately useless one-stars to drown out useful ones.
Clones: If you shop through referral links (e.g. click through from The Wirecutter) or seek out a specific model number from a major brand you won't experience the clone problem.
But how confident do you feel starting your search at Amazon for items like Bluetooth Headphones? There are 20 pages of results that look identical. Or how about a search for Bike Tail Light?
Recently I find myself doing a 180 and returning more to in-store purchasing (Current pandemic situation aside) because I've been burned so many times by random Amazon orders in the last few years. To be fair their support has always made the situation right, but after a point the value from ordering from Amazon is gone if I'm rolling the dice on whether the product will match the description or be defective.
Two examples:
- Search results used to be order-able by popularity, but now only "featured" aka who pays the most.
- "Customers also purchased" or "Customers also viewed" boxes on item pages now replaced by sponsored boxes.
Amazon has gone from a site which made it effortless to find things and buy them, to a site that values advertising revenue over actual retail.
Unfortunately both Walmart and Target have gone the same way and also offer third party seller's items for sale, and sell paid advertisement.
This makes it impossible to ascertain anything about the quality and nature of the book you are actually buying - you might read ten reviews complaining about the translation, only none of them are actually about the translation you're looking at - you have no way of knowing unless they happen to mention it in the review you're looking at. You might read many reviews about very poor binding - but is it from the publisher you're looking at? No clue!
This isn't even getting onto the counterfeit issue you mention.
I love my kindle, but translation + kindle is an awful experience.
You cant make distribution work without huge selection and volume. And selection is the enemy of discovery. It is a hard balance.
Since the beginning of 2020, I submitted a couple of product reviews with detailed and factual explanation about why products in question aren't good enough. One of them was Amazon basic chair [https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Low-Back-Computer-Chair-...], which makes squeaky noises after 6 months of use (I'm a 135 lbs male), and another was Secura milk frother, which also make screechy noises after 1 month of light use (once or twice everyday). Turns out my review for their chair didn't get posted, so I tried again and finally wrote a question on the product page as to why my review isn't showing up. Then the review somehow showed up a week after. For Secura, they don't have a way to upload a video in product review (I see some people uploaded videos/images, but in my Amazon account UI for product review, there's no such feature), so I took a video and uploaded it to YouTube and shared the link as an example in my review. They wrote me a week later saying my review was not posted because of third-party links, so I went ahead and removed the YouTube link and only described the title of my YouTube video if anyone wants to search for it. No words from Amazon after two weeks of submitting that revised review. So I just checked the product review button (as seen in My Orders section) and the message I wrote there is still there. So I just clicked submit again. We'll see what happens.
In the past, when you write review, you get an email from Amazon telling you either that they are reviewing it or that it has been posted. Now, the experience is super confusing and subpar. In the worst interpretation, you even start to suspect if they post every review or they censor some based on their bias toward the seller (e.g., Amazon Basics products get less negative reviews)
Also, since COVID-19 made the shipping times are significantly slower on Amazon, I opened an account on AliExpress last week and started ordering some items. Unfortunately though, the effort it takes to sift through products on AliExpress is still much more challenging/tiring than that is on Amazon now. So some of the comments here are correct that although Amazon is not living up to our ideal vision of how an online retailer should be like, they are still ahead of their competition... I hope it changes some day and we see a decent competitor so that it is better for consumers (although I'm not sure if it'd be better for warehouse workers though...)
I was actually sad when Amazon bough Abebooks.com I think this should not have been allowed due to monopoly rights.
If Amazon did nothing else but allowed to filter products by where was it made/designed, the problem will be solved in significant way.
So it's Ali Baba for... approximately every American?
I used to be an Amazon seller, and ran through maybe 100K in sales a year, but I stopped (wasn't profitable enough for the time spent.) I should have known, with my experience all those years ago, how easy it would be for scammers to get into the market. Hijacking a listing or mislabeling your product under a listing was really really easy. And for the volumes you can move, I can see why you'd do it.
I have some acquaintances that just buy in bulk from Alibaba and then sell them on Amazon. The seller usually doesn't know what they received is fake...nor do they care. The margin is high enough. Amazon seller fees absorb so much of your profit, you're fighting a losing battle unless you can find a cheap supplier or own the market on an in demand item. Then there are actual scammers that know what they are selling is fake and are manipulating listings...so there are multiple problems with the setup.
Of course the bad thing is Amazon doesn't seem to care, and if anything they try to screw the people doing the -right- thing with huge seller fees, and then killing them with their own line of Basic products.
I don't know how to solve it, and I don't think Amazon does either. I actually don't think Amazon cares, because their ultimate goal is to absorb fees and to take over markets with their own products. They can't do that without sales data, fulfillment fees, seller fees, etc. On top of that they make the big kids compete for coveted listing space with ads. They compete with their own logistics companies, but have them over the coals because they make up so much volume. It's a racket.
Regularly made few hundred bucks a months from sunglasses, then my normal job took off.
Well, that's a pretty strong indictment of how badly their business operates. Every book I've ever ordered from Amazon has been damaged (either badly folded covers or even ripped pages). I started buying from local bookshops and the experience is infinitely better.
I order everything from Walmart now.
Outdoor gear is always genuine from REI or Backcountry. Spices are always fresh from The Spice House or Penzey's. Et cetera.
Even the big-box electronics retailers like Currys regularly peg their prices to the Amazon one now, and I've got three within a 25-minute drive so I can get the item the same day rather than waiting 1-2 days for delivery.
Sure, if you don't care what state your book arrives in.
* They still satisfy consumer demand "enough"
* They don't have enough competition in enough spaces
* They can suck at some things, be good at others, and make money
If only my friends read HN to know how useless Amazon was!
I don't think people are saying "Amazon is useless" or "Amazon is going to go out of business".
They are bloated with Chinese knock-offs. No name brands that are all the same thing with a different sticker and a bribe to offer a 5-star review. Listings are manipulated to get max reviews. There is so much wrong with trying to find consistent brands and any quality.
That said, if you want knock-off stuff that may work as well as you expect for the price, it's not bad. When the pandemic isn't here, you have quick shipping on everything. And certainly, many other stores have inferior navigation to Amazon.
One more time: No one is saying Amazon is going anywhere or that it sucks for everything. For the goal of looking for non-Chinese crap, though, it has regressed significantly.
People love hearing themselves whine.