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Amazon may be awful elsewhere, but it's miles better than our local French online retailers. I've got a lost mouse (the package was delivered empty), Amazon immediately refunded. I had other packages not delivered at all with other retailers, and they wouldn't refund until they enquired with the delivery company, which had to do an internal investigation. And some of them wouldn't refund but gave vouchers instead.

Also, Amazon returns are refunded as soon as the package is scanned at the post office, not 2 or 3 weeks after.

I'd really like to buy from a French company, but every time I try, they go out of their way to send me back to Amazon.

I am completely with you. It is even surprising that none of them wants to get the, let's call it patriotic part of French Amazon customers.

But they indeed all rate much worse than Amazon

Heck, I once bought two folding cushion "stools" that could be unfolded into "ground sofas" (for lack of a better word) from IKEA.

Delivered by "Trusk". They were left with the building caretaker who just signed without checking.

We only got one. And IKEA won't do anything, because we can't prove we didn't receive the second one and aren't just fraudulently asking for a freebie.

Never got these kind of issues with anything sold by Amazon. Only time a package went missing, despite "La Poste" stating the contrary, they just re-delivered it without a fuss.

The flip side of this is Amazon actually refuses to inquire with delivery companies, and here in Canada, the post requires that the sender be the one to inquire.

I've had several instances where the item was clearly at my local post office but misplaced. Canada Post refused to check without Amazon requesting it, and Amazon refused to do anything but send a new item. In each case the original item mysteriously appeared in my box months later when the postal workers inadvertently found it.

I almost never buy from Amazon anymore. Not really because of any bad experiences, though reports about the high number of counterfeit goods that Amazon sells certainly contributes to my reluctance. Also: Amazon is just too big. I like a bit of competition in the market.

Also, in Netherland, Amazon isn't all that big. In the distant past, I sometimes ordered at amazon.com, later at amazon.de. Recently I got an invitation to amazon.nl which apparently just opened, but I really don't see the point. Netherland already had a couple of big online retailers: bol.com and coolbue. They're good, fast, reliable. I don't need Amazon anymore.

bol.com is fine, but coolblue is overly expensive and does not offer anything above other online vendors.

I am glad Amazon is here - more competition is always good for consumers such as ourselves.

A lot of people in The Netherlands [1] use Bol.com (part of Ahold; Albert Heijn's parent company). However, Amazon.de (Germany) is also popular, and you can avoid S&H with Amazon Prime.

The reason there is no huge Amazon.nl is the same reason there's no huge eBay.nl; there's already a large local competitor: Bol.com (and Marktplaats.nl).

Because of Amazon Prime Germany being popular in NL, Amazon introduced an Amazon Prime Netherlands. They even offer a discount deal but they offer a lot less than Amazon Germany, so it does not make sense to switch the Prime subscription (apart from the discount).

If you want to order something in The Netherlands from Germany, and they only ship to Germany, then you can use a service like Huifkar. They have a drop place in Germany to ship to, drive over border, and post it from there in The Netherlands to your address in The Netherlands.

I had positive and negative experiences with all of these. On Bol.com I received some kind of fashion (?) book by Kim Kardashian instead of a 200 EUR budget smartphone (I didn't even know who she was before that). They fixed it though.

If you look at the working circumstances in distribution centre of Amazon and Coolblue you understand why sometimes things go wrong.

[1] It is called "The Netherlands"; not "Netherland". You can also use the ccTLD, "NL".

> It is called "The Netherlands"; not "Netherland".

That's an archaic Anglicism in my opinion. Nobody in Netherland calls the country "de Nederlanden", and probably hasn't in two centuries. I think it's about time that English finally followed suit.

I’d think it’s more important to get people to stop calling the whole country “Holland” first.

We can just wait a few decades and change it to "waterworld".

:(

> I think it's about time that English finally followed suit.

Why? Do you think that languages should all follow the same rules about everything?

When it's about a proper noun with a clear authoritative source, I would say yes.

Not everything, but names, yes. When China informed the world that their capital was called Beijing rather than Peking, the world fixed their spelling and pronunciation. Why would this case be any different?

And of course there will remain spelling and pronunciation differences. I don't expect English to use "Nederland", but "Netherland" should be fine. Maybe also drop the "Dutch" and replace it with something like Netherlandish or Netherlandic. Because "Dutch" is another weird archaic holdover. Nobody in Netherland even knows why we're called that in English. (I suspect it stems from the medieval name "Diets" for a group of predecessors of our language, which stems from well before the country existed.)

That's actually a really interesting example.

Because you're entirely right about the city, and yet China doesn't call itself China.

Actually, the big three SE asian countries (Japan, China, Korea) all have different names for themselves than most languages of european origin use. Presumably others do as well, but those are the ones I looked up.

I wonder why that is.

Edit: Further thought. Most of the major cities I'm aware of (especially capital cities) in those countries are pronounced fairly accurately (with room for accents, of course). That's actually a really interesting set up.

> The reason there is no huge Amazon.nl is the same reason there's no huge eBay.nl; there's already a large local competitor: Bol.com (and Marktplaats.nl).

eBay has owned marktplaats since 2004. I think they’re conceptually the same.

I’m also unsure if eBay’s modus operandi has ever been to acquire and transition local platforms to their eBay platform, which is probably for the better.

Marktplaats is not an auction place, it is a market place (kind of like Craigslist). They never changed that, and eBay Netherlands has always remained a niche.

Not much of eBay is an auction house anymore...

My pet theory is that eBay acquires/operates classified marketplaces and lets them dominate enough to prevent a competitor from appearing and taking marketshare from the more profitable eBay platform.

I haven't checked recently but back in the days (00s) eBay offered more protection than Marktplaats.

You can also do auctions on Marktplaats, though it's much more freeform than eBay. I auctioned a 1980s Transformers toy there ages ago, and I got such weird vibes from the two top bidders that I was happy to sell to a third bidder that showed up.

It's not just Amazon US which is terrible for that. Since moving to Spain I've stopped ordering on Amazon also. At least half the products I've received from them were either counterfeit, or clearly already used. Add to this their terrible delivery service and I don't understand how they're still in business here.

But what did you reply after that?

Ah yes, I ended up replying to a HN comment :)