Hacker News Reader

Comment by 12bits | Hacker News Reader

In all honesty who is buying from these third parties, if something on Amazon isn’t fulfilled via Amazon, I’m not buying. If I’m looking for something on Best Buy the first thing I’m doing is looking for the Best Buy only toggle. Is it strictly to make points on the vendors sales? To give a false appearance of massive inventory? Could a third party vendor list “Item A” on eBay, Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart and have access to cross site APIs that when “Item A” is sold it’s removed from all market places? As a Canuck I’m happy for Shopify, as consumer I’m losing interest in online shopping, which might be futile with how everything is trending.

View on HN

I opened a Wal-Mart account precisely because I needed to buy a specialty tool from a vendor that was on Amazon but I couldn't purchase because of "reserved for Prime" BS. The same vendor magically had it available via Wally world. Amazon doesn't have everything in house.

That's fair, I personally avoid those third party sellers for the off chance you get ripped off or get a bootleg/knock off.

I hope your experience(s) had neither of those?

I vet the sellers that seem legit but I don't want my financials and contact info lingering in their sketchy backend systems. There are plenty of good businesses out there with poor IT skills where Amazon/Wal-Mart/Shopify can be a trusted middleman.

I'm buying a lot from third parties, even though I have Amazon Prime.

I don't mind buying books from Amazon, but there's so much counterfeit stuff on Amazon these days that I actually try to buy from either the original vendor or a third-party with a regular supply chain like Target.

I was looking for hand-soap a month ago (when the supply was scarce both online and in B&M stores). Amazon had some from 3rd party sellers but they were listed with very high markups and their authenticity was questionable. So on a whim, I visited the vendor's site (JR Watkins), added some to cart (and they were cheaper than on Amazon!), and the checkout process with Apple Pay (on what was a Shopify backend I believe) was seamless (less than 10s).

I didn't have to create an account (!) or enter my credit card number or address -- Apple Pay handled everything after I scanned my face.

I'm seeing more and more specialty vendors with Shopify store fronts these days, and the experience is so seamless that I'm much more open to buying from Shopify storefronts rather than Amazon, especially it's something of value that could end up being a counterfeit listing on Amazon.

basically most people don't look or understand who they are buying from. They just click buy.

Same reason phishing is a profession I suppose lol

Not really at all, have you considered that not everyone shares your preferences? That's usually a good place to start.

People that sell used books professionally usually have them listed on amazon and ebay and the inventory is synced periodically. There must be some kind of automated inventory management system that they use, because pricing gets updated periodically also, based on the other available prices seemingly.

there are a number of apps that can keep stock between multiple platforms, pull listings/ads as inventory decreases, etc.

i built one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com