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Comment by xoxoy | Hacker News Reader

Shopping on Amazon has become unbearable for like 95% of categories these days. The experience is like rummaging through some shady tourist market with a dozen stall owners trying to scam you. The pricing is all whack with lots of counterfeits that have gamed the ranking and review systems. It’s just not worth trying to filter and find things that are actually competitively priced and sold directly by Amazon.

Have no idea how they are so dominant still when they seem to not care at all about these things.

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I wouldn't know. I stopped shopping on Amazon in 2016. It really irks me when I see a product I'm interested in and only see it on Amazon! I'll often pay the $10~$15 more to buy it straight from the manufacturers website to avoid Amazon (and a lot of times, it's cheaper outside of Amazon).

I miss the days of PriceScan/PriceWatch and other comparison sites.

Recently I bought some new camera parts. I noted the price of the body and lens I wanted on B&H, Adorama, Newegg .. and then went to Google shopping and found a smaller store called TriState Camera out of NY. Their website is old school; but I saved nearly $400 of the big retailers for the exact same parts.

Your experience differs from mine substantially. Where do you shop that you can regularly find things cheaper than Amazon?

In my experience it depends on how the product is sold, some manufacturers have a very tight supply chain and prices do not very much. You can often find products that sit on a retail shelf on sale at some point. It takes more time/searching - and expect slow shipping. Its not the same as the Amazon experience but cheaper, its hunting down the right deal and waiting for it. Be ready to use some scrappy web sites.

Amazon is hardly “cheap” even for things they sell directly these days. it’s either outrageously overpriced (most often in categories they don’t sell and is all third party sellers) or it’s in line with other retailers.

For groceries I have found that even the most expensive grocery chain around here (QFC, part of Kroger) is cheaper 99% of the time.

Sorry but this line

> (and a lot of times, it's cheaper outside of Amazon).

is not true. Amazon does not let sellers list products on amazon for a higher price than than what they list on the sellers website. It's 100% against TOS and they will shut down your listing if it's your first offense and will permaban you from selling if you continue to do so.

Seriously. So much absolute garbage. And woe if Shipped and Sold by Amazon but its in the same bin they put the counterfeit garbage from other sellers. Which they do.

It has gotten to the point if a 3rd party seller is on an Amazon page, it is a no-buy.

Sadly Walmart is the same. So far Target does not allow third party sellers so they're my go to for anything I need to guarantee is legitimate. That or the manufacturer's website if they happen to sell direct. Amazon's heyday has (IMHO) come and gone as a seller of anything but their own brands.

I am saddened that Walmart continues to chase the 3rd party seller gimmick, but they at least allow you to filter results by seller. I always select Walmart.com, ignoring everything else.

Also, Target does have 3rd party sellers, but it sounds like they are doing it in a more constrained way. The program is called Target Plus. https://digiday.com/marketing/target-third-party-marketplace...

BestBuy too, at least in Canada. I think BestBuy has done OK financially, but I'm always surprised at how much the "brilliant" executives get paid when their plan is to copy the worst half of Amazon's business model.

IMO BestBuy would have been better off extolling the virtues of having a trustworthy supply chain that doesn't circumvent regulations like Amazon does. Their retail business also means they have a better distribution system then Amazon, at least for now.

I wonder how many people buy the marketplace stuff because I know that when I go to BestBuy it's because I want something immediately or I want something where I don't trust Amazon (chargers, memory cards, etc.).

> Sadly Walmart is the same

You can filter out third party sellers on Walmart's website and just buy what Walmart sells.

Here's an example for anybody who doubts this; go search for:

a) an Oximeter

b) a medical thermometer

c) a blood pressure cuff

These are all fairly relevant devices. Spend 10 minutes really researching the categories, and actually read the reviews (in particular the 5* and the 1* reviews). Can you find a combination fo devices that you're actually confident buying? It shouldn't be this hard.

The reason for this is the reputable products are all sold out. The usual response would be to increase prices to keep them in stock, but currently amazon bans sellers who do that because of price gouging laws, and so sellers list their stock on other platforms instead.

No, I've bought oximeters on Amazon in years past and there was no General Electric, Sony, Samsung... It was all knockoff no-name low quality.

I don't think General Electric, Sony or Samsung make standalone consumer pulse oximeters.

The point is, there was no recognized & respected brand that sells a high quality product. Just a bunch of fly-by-night operations.

To be fair pretty much all thermometers sold everywhere are fake, it's not just Amazon. You really need to look at Consumer Reports or Wirecutter if you want a real one, and who knows if you can even get one right now anyway.

Googling this just comes up with a bunch of one off Chinese scams. I'm really curious, any links to further reading on this? I've never heard of it.

I mean just go through the thermometers you see on Amazon or in your local drug store, and look up the data from the independent tests on their accuracy.

Oh the other hand, you can also find a "knock off" device that costs 1/4 of the original price and works just as well. It's manufactured in the same factory as the original, but cuts corners and doesn't have fancy packaging, or anything fancy really.

The argument is that in a free market a consumer should have a choice. You want a great branded product, go with a known brand. You want to save money, try the little guy, with all the caveats that come with it.

The problem with Amazon is counterfeits. Counterfeits go against the idea of a free market. You almost certainly can’t know that the “Apple 5W wall plug charger” is legitimate until you receive it. It says “Apple” on it, but it’s not genuine. Why is that the consumer’s fault?

See, there's a level of hypocrisy here in that the average consumer wants the assurance of getting what they want without any of the burden of specification, or compliance verification.

There's a level of savvy everyone should have but doesn't; and I'm just not sure the best way to facilitate it.

The point is that Amazon's listings are overwhelmed by cheap / no-brand items. As a consumer it's basically impossible to know what items in a category are of reasonable quality or not. My guess is that the eventual competitor who disrupts Amazon will figure out a way to curate listings to make it possible for customers to buy something in a category with confidence that it'll work to stated spec.

Now, imagine you are using Amazon.ca where many of the legitimate .com vendors aren't even there or are there and are price gouging or have massive shipping fees.

Amazon.ca has become such a cesspool and so much worse in the past 6 months, I've just stopped buying from it.

Amazon.ca still fulfills a purpose for me... It’s AliExpress with faster shipping.

If it’s something I’d consider buying from AliExpress but need it before 3 months from now, then I’ll go take a look on Amazon and pay a premium on the cheap Chinese stuff they sell to get it in a day or two.

Anything else... like others are saying, major retailers or manufacturer direct are the way I go.

That's ... brilliant. Not sure it's worth keeping Amazon prime for, but a good idea.

100% agreed. I was shopping for some recording gear earlier, and (habitually, I guess) checked amazon to see what was available. Zillions of things with brand names like "foofer" and "fifine" (yeah, I'm making those up, but you know what I mean).

What are those things, really? I don't know.

I hit Guitar Center instead, and there's this clearly presented list of brands that I mostly kind-of recognize, a simplified set of products.

The thing that amazon does really well is deliver things fast.

I now use amazon to buy Anker products and that's it. I recently was shopping for a heart rate monitor - the Wahoo TICKR X was out of stock everywhere except Amazon. I couldn't get over the feeling that it was in stock only because it was fake, so ordered a Garmin from a bike store instead. There is no store I trust less.

Why not just buy directly from Anker? https://www.anker.com/store

Generally that is what I try to do for anything I want to buy — get it from the producer directly. Sometimes it is prohibitive in some way (e.g. shipping time or cost) or more expensive but most of the time the experience is perfectly fine and I can be totally confident in what I will be getting.

Interesting. They used to only sell through Amazon in the UK but this is no longer the case.

Something I’ve learnt - a reason I’m tempted to shop at Amazon is because I have an account there. But many suppliers now allow shopify or Paypal without needing to set up an account. By avoiding the temptation to set up an account (ie ignore FOMO of offers), using other sites becomes as seamless as Amazon.

I now believe shops that push customers to set up accounts and don’t use shopify etc, drive people to Amazon for convenience.

I use Wirecutter and then go search for the items I want on walmart.com, bestbuy.com, b&h, Barnes and noble, etc.

I boycott Amazon. I feel jerked around any time I use their site.

Wirecutter is an affiliate marketer. If they reviewed 15 pieces of shit they'd recommend a top 3 to buy based on taste. Almost all of the review sites are like that now. Look up the story of Casper and Sleepopolis. Today's review sites are predominantly filled with advertising disguised as reviews.

They're good enough. To me the alternative is Reddit or online reviews on the seller website which are even more unreliable. And the alternative to that is to spend countless hours researching things myself.

Is Consumer Reports any good?

I’ve never used consumer reports. Reddit can be really good if you find the niche communities. It’s basically impossible to research yourself these days because nothing has decent specs.

Sites like Wirecutter aren’t completely useless because they give a relatively decent overview. It’s just worth being aware most review sites border on being advertising, so they won’t tell you if a whole product category is trash.

I could hardly disagree more. It takes some effort to find the good stuff, but Amazon is the superior way to shop online for most things.

It's impossible by design to find "the good stuff."

Even when purchasing from "legitimate" product pages, they'll send you co-mingled counterfeits. You have absolutely no assurance that what you're buying is legitimate.

right - the main critique is the fact that you even have to do the work to find the decent stuff. it’s ridiculous and not customer friendly at all.

what’s a category of good that Amazon excels at where they are the dominant seller e.g. where the search term has not been gamed by a dozen marketplace sellers?

even with Amazon as the direct seller I don’t find them to be cheaper than other stores for almost anything. it’s really only when the pricing is competitive and directly from them where it makes sense to buy given convenience of fast shipping if you have Prime.

the only thing I can think of is their own private label, but even there it seems extremely hit or miss just reading some of the reviews - sounds like everything is just sourced from bottom of barrel Chinese manufacturers that slap an Amazon logo on things.

I don’t think there is a category where amazon shines, but I have had good results with car parts, gardening supplies, tools, books, household items.

I usually find a brand name seller with a website or a specific part number.

Or if I don’t know/care about a brand I read some reviews and look at review pictures I don’t buy the cheapest item and still scrutinize best selling item.

The top results could be garbage as people are saying, but somewhere in the first page of top rated results is the best item for a great price.

In a rural place, prime is a huge time and money saver, have had good customer service. I still don’t think other online retailers have caught up to amazon, I hope they do .

I think it's often impossible to distinguish whether something is good on amazon. For many products there are often 100 chinese clones with fake brand names and suspect reviews. I only use amazon now when I need something specific and if I know it will be difficult to find elsewhere. Specifically for PC and tech products, I've actually found best buy is great these days at stocking popular stuff at about the same price as amazon.

As someone with 2200 purchase on amazon over the last several years, you're definitely wrong. I have to use every trick up my sleeve to not get pure hot alibaba trash. It USED to be that amazon best seller items were good at least, and now those are an absolute trash garbage fest as well too. Go try to buy a strainer, charger, literally any appliance, anything, and tell me you get good results.

If you've bought 2200 things despite it being so awful why would Amazon be inclined to fix it? Your orders show them it's working for you.

I didnt mention anything about amazon's inclination to fix it. I said that it's pure garbage on amazon and it takes an astronomical amount of work to find NOT trash, and even after this many orders I still get fooled when using all the fake review spot apps, etc.

I recently bought Amazon's best seller hot oil frier. When we turned it on, the cheap thin metal of it bent from the heat so that the hot oil dripped on the floor. Turns out it was straight from a Chinese noname brand but marked as "sold by Amazon" on the website. When I tried to refund it, they told me that Amazon had just purchased the items for resale and that I should contact the original manufacturer for warranty. And they gave me a Guangdong address and a Gmail email.

By now every product listing on Amazon should be treated like SEO spam.

Plus there's now all these sellers trying to buy a 5 star review by promising a gift card. I recently saw a baby carriage with lots of 5 star reviews from teenagers who tried it out with plush toys because they didn't have kids yet.

They really are like low quality SEO blog spam. I can't believe how many products I see with almost all 5 star ratings...for a completely different product.

Yes, I actually quite literally fear for my life from factory chemicals or defects. A few years ago I saw a charger that was amazon's "best seller" and it had tons of 1 star reviews of peoples houses catching on fire...

I once ordered a USB charger from Amazon that said you needed to have 3m of empty space in every direction to avoid the fire risk. I just wondered how anyone could satisfy that and put the charger into a wooden cupboard. Maybe I should revise that decision now :/

Yes, I would for your safety with anything even remotely dangerous, like electronics (I watch out even with a strainer which is just steel, but can be covered in loads of carcinogenic chemicals from china etc).

I recently just got fooled again, I needed to buy a cooking butane torch for grilling cheese. The "best seller" was quite nice looking, had great reviews, great photos.

I actually got it in my hand and it essentially fell apart. I immediately threw it in the trash as there's no way I'm putting highly flammable gas into this junk. I went to a head shop and bought one for the exact same price with amazing quality... its funny how we started out with brick and mortar, migrated to online... and now I'm going to start migrating back to brick and mortar.

I remembered your post after I saw these

https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/ifytxk/ysk_t...

https://themarkup.org/banned-bounty/2020/06/18/how-we-invest...

Report this to your state's Attorney General, they usually have a consumer protection division.

They did give in and give me a refund eventually. It's just that I was surprised by their laissez-faire attitude that their topseller was some random no-name factory in China.

Attorney General would still be interested in the fact that you were sold a deep fryer with such a potentially dangerous flaw by Amazon, and the run around they initially gave you.

I agree with you completely. I've yet to have a shoddy counterfeit product with thousands of purchases over a decade. Any actual problems are also solved within minutes.

Can someone link a product listing that they received a counterfeit from?

https://www.amazon.com/TOPPING-es9018k2m-opa2134-Decoder-Amp...

"HIFI Audio Decoder Amplifier - Aimpire AD10 MINI USB DAC CSS XMOS XU208 ES9018K2M OPA2134 Audio Amplifier Decoder"

This is a fake. Strange how the URL says TOPPING but the product is from "Aimpire". Aimpire has been photoshopped into some, but not all of the product pictures (where TOPPING is still visible in a few).

Turns out that Aimpire has had a contentious relationship with Topping (the designer and manufacturer of the real thing), started making their own (inferior and unlicensed) versions of the Topping product.

Looks like this one is "sold by amazon.com". Huh. Guess it slipped by their counterfeit checkers.

Interesting, thanks for the link.

This is a strange case. The reviews seem to say people are buying the Topping product but getting the Aimpire product. But if you buy from this page, you're knowingly purchasing the Aimpire version. Are people buying Topping from another listing and getting this?

EDIT: never mind, looks like this product used to say Topping and was changed, and that's why the URL is still the original wording. That's clearly a scam then.

Search audiosciencereview and you'll find all the juicy details ;)

I don't even known how I would find 20 products such that 19 were counterfeit.

Amazon has responsibility for the shit they sell regardless.

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