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Comment by ljf | Hacker News Reader

I've totally given up on amazon, it is now impossible to know if what you are getting is of any quality - I wanted a good kitchen knife - but wading through the reviews and search was so painful. In the end I went to John Lewis and bought by price - hoping that gave me a good idea of quality and so far I am damn happy, which is far more than I can say for my last 20 or so amazon purchases.

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Amazon is still ok, but you have to know exactly what you're after. For example, if you want "kitchen knife" that's a no go. if you want "robert welch kitchen knife" there's a chance that it's cheaper on Amazon, but not by much, if at all. In other words, as a search platform to find items it doesn't work anymore, as a place to buy, sometimes. That's just my experience lately.

Even the last prime day was full of crap listings. I stopped spending much and moved to greener pastures (eg brick+mortar shopping, or used professional stuff on classified ads and even fixing stuff instead of rebuying...). Started to learn brazing and so on during lockdown for example.

I'm in a similar situation for the most part. If I remotely care about the quality of the item, I'm not buying it from Amazon. Otherwise, if pretty much any brand will suffice (such as dog waste bags), I might still pick it up on Amazon, but I have already chosen not to renew my Prime subscription based on the major drop in quality of sellers.

For a while I did that (my wife still does) but for any low value stuff it is nearly always cheaper on ebay or Aliexpress - there is literally no benefit to me buying from amazon any more.

My wife still buy a huge amount from there though, but returns a fair amount.

When you find a good brand you stick to it. And if its a public company you can buy shares, and then tell everyone how good the products are and watch your investment go up, and earn money when they sell the goodwill.

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