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Comment by reikonomusha | Hacker News Reader

I do not trust Amazon to ship anything safely and securely anymore. Almost everything I receive is damaged, late, or mis-delivered. Books are especially abused somewhere in Amazon’s fulfillment. (They’re always bent, creased, or dirty.) Items that are supposed to be 1-day shipping typically take >=3, and Amazon’s tracking mostly says “oops! it’ll come trust us”. (Not verbatim, obviously.)

Amazon’s return process is becoming incrementally more obtuse as time goes on. While they’re still decently good, it’s getting harder to do easy, no-nonsense returns. Typically—if they don’t just tell me to dispose of the item myself—they demand I drive to Amazon lockers or Whole Foods or Kohl’s to drop stuff off at no charge, and pressure me into just getting Amazon credit.

I would never buy a $7,000 item on Amazon under any circumstance.

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I'm genuinely surprised that people have such vastly different experiences with Amazon. I made 231 orders with them last year(lockdown....) And haven't had a problem with a single one. Couple times I wanted to return something they just refunded me without asking to send the item back. Everything arrives next day, always(here in UK anyway), and the customer support is stellar compared to literally anywhere else. Anyone who has ever had to contact Currys customer support should know what I'm talking about.

Like, I see all of these comments on HN all the time but I have the exact opposite experience - they just have no competition over here. I'm at a point where even if something is slightly more expensive on Amazon I'd rather buy from them as I know their CS Support won't try to screw me over.

The same for me. I had one damaged product, a pack of pork rinds that opened up because it was too tightly packed next to 5L of olive oil. Because of my experience with their customer service (and delivery service which is second only to DHL for me), other merchants need to be substantially cheaper.

You must have a very secure delivery location, and I'm willing to bet that you probably live in a more affluent community, if what you're saying is even true. That and/or you're having stuff delivered to Amazon locations.

Not to mention not everything is shipped from seller / manufacturer to you via Amazon.

Uhm.....I don't see how living in an affluent community has anything to do with that - few years ago I lived in the dodgiest part of town and never had any issues with Amazon either. I'm guessing you have that view because Amazon in US leaves parcels on your doorstep? Literally never heard of that happening in the UK. If you're not in it goes back to the depot, maybe they'll leave it with your neighbour if you're lucky. So....if you count my own front door as a "secure delivery location" then...yeah? Where else would it be delivered? I guess you could have it delivered to a locker, but if it goes back to the depot I just have it redelivered on Saturday or Sunday when I'm definitely at home.

I would find that horrible. In normal times, I'm most definitely often not at home on Saturday and Sunday. As it happens, I live in a relatively rural area but I absolutely expect deliveries to be left at my front door without me signing for them except for the very odd high value item. If I had to deal with drop-off/pickup arrangements for every order, I'd use Amazon a whole lot less.

You can request that in Amazon delivery settings if you have a safe location at home, but it's not the default. By default parcels go back to depot.

Same with roughly the same package volume annually over 8+ years. Literally the only thing lost was due to a historic weather event and Amazon still took care of it.

Maybe with commodity household goods it’s different than with higher value items or with electronics.

Electronics is certainly more of an issue - Nobody is shipping empty boxes of toilet paper.

The main issues you get are when returns are put back into stock but haven’t been sufficiently checked.

I used to work for an online retailer who sold things like games consoles and the amount of return scams we got was absolutely shocking. If you sold a games console with a free game (usually a code inside the console) people would take the game code out, or copy it, and then return the console and have the game. Other times they would take an iPad out, put a brick in the box and then shrink wrap it. Or buy counterfeit AirPod pro’s and swap them for the real ones and return the fakes.

The problem is compounded because people want to buy “new” items with shrink wrap around them, so it’s harder to check returns aren’t scams when the scammers have shrink-wrap machines.

Off topic but I have seen interesting labels that break destructively.

If you could turn that into a ribbon, then any box could be wrapped in such a way any tampering is evident.

If you could also print a QR code on top, then you have a per shipment tamper proof

I suspect it exists but i am sure there is a long way between that and cost effective useage

Isn't it a basic consumer right to take items out of the packaging, try them, and then return them?

Absolutely.

The issue here is people returning it in a state where it is still sealed - as if an item is sealed it will go back into stock straight away and the retailer can’t open it up to check that it is in there.

If it’s opened you can still return it, but once that happens usually electronics have to be sent back to the manufacturer to refurbish/reset.

It’s not about stopping people returning items, it’s about making sure the correct returns channel is used and detecting fraud (which happens when people return the item pretending it’s unopened so it goes back into stock unchecked, but the item has been replaced with a brick).

Right, I didn't get that. But how often is an item returned without the box being opened by the customer?

Also, how does Amazon prove that the brick they received came from the customer and not some employee?

I can’t answer the first question, other than to say “often enough to have a process to handle it”.

As for the second one, with bin/lot tracking you can identify if the item had previously been returned. Employee theft doesn’t usually involve putting bricks in it within a DC - it’s usually easier and less risk to take the whole box (and maybe get rid of the packaging in the toilet, at a warehouse I used to work at someone was found to be stealing iPods because a lot of packaging was found behind a toilet ceiling tile). If the item hadn’t previously been returned, this would usually infer that the customer was lying about receiving it with a brick in it (although obviously there is the possibility that it came in that state from the supplier).

The usual assumption is that the supplier didn’t send it in with a brick, because otherwise customer fraud is too easy - but occasionally that assumption is wrong, which is probably what happened in this case.

They probably checked there was no return in the history, made the assumption it wouldn’t have come empty from Canon, and figured it was the customer that lied.

You are right - there are definitely things that can be done (what you are describing used to be done on Xbox games for example).

The main thing is making sure that these things are ubiquitous, that there isn’t a workaround and that systems are in place to do the specific checks which are different for each item at every return point.

In the example with the Xbox games, not all games had the seal, or the same game SKU might sometimes have the seal and sometimes have a standard case. Then there was the workaround where people could lever the case open at the top and still take the game out.

The danger of seals is sometimes they can provide a false sense of security, but they probably do help when implemented well.

The problem is not lack of tech, it’s that consumers are easier to attract to a platform than vendors so the rules tend to favor the vendors.

> Off topic but I have seen interesting labels that break destructively.

I don't know if it has been invented yet, however here's the idea: a RFID tag that normally returns a valid code, but any removal attempt would not simply destroy it, but rather change the code (for example through bit changes by peeling conductive parts of it) into one that would return a tamper warning at next readings. That would also make possible to track when the box was opened (therefore potentially also finding by whom) since all boxes must be scanned at every step. The tag however should be put in a place where the user would not stick a cutter blade; it should peel off for example as the result of pulling a string to open the box, removing a piece of cardboard, etc.

Same here, i have been ordering with Amazon (Uk & occationally Us) for 21 years and can count on 1 hand the number the number of times i've had delivery issues.

ALL other delivery outfits are horrible in comparison, and i actually dred using any other service.

The UK has many horrible delivery services. DPD and Amazon are two that are acceptable. I dread trying to receive a delivery from any other service. Incredibly there are more than a few that are actually worse than Royal Mail.

UPS is 100% solid for me too. Been shipping with them within the UK and I know they can be trusted. DPD provides much better delivery tracking though, not only they provide an accurate 1 hour slot, they also take a picture of the parcel being delivered so there's no doubt where it went.

Also depends on your reputation as a buyer on Amazon I think. If you order lots of high value items and one goes missing they treat you differently than if you made one high value purchase.

I’ve run a huge pile of apple kit through them in the last two years and when a Mac mini disappeared from my doorstep they refunded without question.

The Mac mini did make a reappearance a week later as it was dumped in someone’s porch down the road and they brought it back round. Spoke to customer services and they sent me a return label to send it back.

> Also depends on your reputation as a buyer on Amazon I think

Probably. There’ll be some people who can rely on their reputation with their CC company too to do a chargeback.

yea I’ve spent an absurd amount on Amazon and now they don’t bat an eye on returns. I reported that my expensive ultra wide monitor hadn’t arrived, they sent another and then the first arrived. I had to contact support and tell them I got two because they had already refunded me. They won’t risk losing their whales.

It happens in the UK too.

https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/nm1mm1/i_got...

Amazon in the UK ships 228m a year in 2018 [0], that's going to have increased by now.

If the chance of a problem worthy of complaining on reddit or a blog was a million to one that world be 4 problems a week.

[0] https://tamebay.com/2018/09/amazon-established-as-3rd-larges...

I’m in the same boat as you. I’ve had a couple of misorders, but they were 3rd party sellers.

And I love the ability to take items back to our local Amazon depot without having to box the item. Just give it back to them and they handle all the shipping.

Chiming in here as well; I always trust Amazon to refund me if something is missing or broken without any hassle. A lot of other retailers always gives you a hard time even though they are at fault. They have a huge problem with counterfeit but again always easy to get your money back.

I never had a problem with counterfeit goods until I received a fake board game - took me a while to realise it was fake (horrible quality) - when I did they refunded and I got another one that was real - fine.

Since then though I won’t use Amazon for anything remotely safety related, think child car seat - nope, some equipment for rewiring house, nope.

This also makes me think about higher end purchases, whereas before I was like 100% Amazon, they have lost the trust I had for them and doubt they will get that back.

My main issue is that by the time I realised it was fake the game had been stopped and seller removed so they probably knew the game they sent me was fake (because of other complaints) but they made zero attempt to put it right. It seems if customers report fakes, customers who potentially also received fakes are not alerted and that is a real problem for me.

This is the most bad thing I’ll say about amazon is that the counterfeits are becoming an issue. I saw one person who, perhaps wisely, said they won’t buy anything to eat or drink on amazon because one bad counterfeit could be catastrophic. Your point about safety equipment is a similarly good point.

> It seems if customers report fakes, customers who potentially also received fakes are not alerted and that is a real problem for me.

Amazon doesn't even bother to collect that data. If you want to make a return because you received a counterfeit, you need to lie about the reason for your return, because "I received/believe I received a counterfeit product" isn't a choice they let you choose from when filing a return.

But isn't there textfield for you, where you can specify your specific reason?

I mean, I am not sure, if anybody ever reads those, but you I would not have to lie this way.

Product Not As Described. (It was described as the actual product, not as a counterfeit.)

That doesn't distinguish between "I ordered a book and got a plant mister" and "I ordered a book and got a stapled photocopy with greasy fingerprints."

At best, this sounds like a euphemism to me, and at worst, it seems like Amazon doesn't want to log such information. If Amazon cared to keep track of counterfeit returns, they'd make it an explicit option.

Honestly, it feels like Amazon is intentionally not keeping explicit records of the counterfeits they sell because of their potential liability and the fact that such records would make Amazon look bad in depositions.

I think it vastly depends on what you are ordering.

We passed a ton of orders for valuable goods that were processed by small companies who used amazon as an alternative storefront to boost their sales. Communication was finnicky but everything went fine.

Then we also order a ton of cheap, little convenient stuff that we could have ordered on aliexpress but went to amazon for faster delivery. It was a lot more hit or miss, with pure junk coming in from tjmes to times.

We never hit the level of scam described in the article, but we'd also pay a lot more attention on where it’s coming from before forking 7k.

I mostly get what I order, but I don't order much in the way of electronics or things where scams are common, though I did have to be careful when ordering a simple micro SD card as there were many incredibly cheap, off-brand products that were likely to be scams.

I have also seen a few deliveries with pictures that went to what was clearly the wrong address, had a box of chocolates arrive totally melted where the ice pack exploded and left me with a wet, melted box of chocolates, and during early Covid, I did end up getting scam toilet paper rolls shipped in from China. Oh, it was actually toilet paper, but the rolls were incredibly tiny and nothing at all like the pictures.

So... definitely hit or miss and it depends a lot on what you order.

Well, some common sense is needed. Anything at too-good-to-be-true prices are nearly always a scam, for example.

I buy about everything from Amazon, since the beginning, and have had nearly zero issues. A screw-up now and then is forgivable.

Yeah, but I can hardly blame non-technical people who don't know the prices of things and who haven't heard about the cheats that off-brand memory cards can pull. I mean, many of them advertise to the computer that they are the listed size. But... when you fill them up, it becomes clear that's a lie.

I wish Amazon could randomly test and delist some of those products or whatever. Or maybe do some random testing before listing them for sale, it's not some obscure scam after all.

Of course Amazon needs to do better. But the point remains - to-good-to-be-true prices should always arouse suspicions, as they are a tell for scams.

Oh, I definitely look for those as well, but I'm just saying this is often difficult because people don't know what brands are trustworthy or what a "too good to be true" price is in the first place.

When searching for USB sticks, and there are two clusters of prices, one of which is 20% of the other, you don't have to know much to be skeptical.

I have to agree with damaged books. It seems Amazon is using lower quality packaging material today than they did a few years ago.

What’s changed is that they don’t care about packaging books anymore. Previously they would ship books inside of an airgap in a box, or at least inside of a tight box that would prevent damage. Now they will just throw it into a Mylar envelope that offers no protection against bending.

Agreed. Bubble envelopes can work okay if they are the correct size, but I often get normal-sized books shipped to me in XXXL size Amazon envelopes. These mailer envelopes are big enough for the book to rotate freely in amy direction inside of the packaging. So it’s inevitable that it arrives with creased or torn pages and jacket. I even had one where the cover separated from the pages. Horrible.

My preferred approach now is to use niche-retailers for things I care about arriving intact on the assumption that if your entire business is about that product category then you should be knowledgeable about how to ship those items safely. Barnes & Noble for books, B&H for camera, BestBuy for consumer electronics and video games, etc.

Yeah, Amazon loves those bubble bags and even just the mylar ones. They aren't careful enough about what sort of items go in them. Many items are fine that way but more than once I've gotten completely destroyed packaging around an intact item. Fine if I was simply going to use the item anyway, not so good if I was ordering it for someone else. I've also had a couple of cases where I was surprised it survived.

I suspect they are playing the odds, accepting that they will have to refund a few items that got smashed from inadequate protection.

I wonder if there are regions (or countries) which are worse? Amazon in Germany is also great, so far.

I’m like you - I’ve ordered so many things from Amazon this last year or so (new circumstances plus pandemic lockdown) and literally not one problem of the sort described. I can think of two items out of hundreds which weren’t on time (one, Amazons’s logistics made it a whole day late, and one was the seller’s issue). And the (very rare) returns were dealt with without a hitch.

For other reasons, I actually want to not be so reliant on Amazon, but their combination of Prime delivery, reliability, and customer service is unbeatable for many/most non-specialist items.

Amazon in Germany can also go very wrong. This is why I stopped ordering there:

I ordered a bunch of small electronics stuff, about 100€. In the order process Amazon selected an expired credit card (which I'm sure I had replaced in the settings already). They then split the order in parts and for each order part demanded an additional late pay fee, because the card was expired. This is despite me calling them to stop the order or to correct the payment method, before the package had arrived.

They couldn't help, I was promised a call back, never arrived. The chat support deleted the expired credit card from their system, only to cut the connection as soon as I asked for a solution for the fees and to know why the wrong card was selected. Later, that expired credit card turned up in my settings again.

In the electronics stuff that arrived, a converter I bought was evidently fake. It was also a converter, but it had different markings than the one on the product photo (including a missing CE symbol). I sent that back. A short while later, Amazon accused me of not having sent it back and wanted me to pay again! I still had the proof of having sent a package, which made them shut up.

Never again.

Why would an order go through with an expired credit card? Is this something like cash-on-delivery or card-on-delivery?

Valid question. I was switching bank accounts at that time, so it's possible the card was not expired but linked to an account that did not exist anymore. Might also have been the account itself and not the card that was listed (Lastschriftverfahren, where they take money directly from the account). I'm fuzzy about the details, not really because it was particularly long ago (~2 years), but because it was confusing back then.

Edit: Had a look at my writeup in my blog [0], Lastschrift it was. Amazon picked a bank account that did not exist anymore to pay for the order. When that bounced came the fees - and while one fee for that would have been normal if I had given the wrong bank account (which I'm pretty sure I only did, if I did, because their system did not save when I changed the bank account before), to take multiple fees for one order was in no way okay.

[0]: https://www.onli-blogging.de/1832/Meine-richtig-schlechte-Su... (in german)

This has happened to me. In some circumstances banks will still honour a charge even though the card is expired.

You'll have to ask the banks why. In my case it wasn't a problem, but technically it shouldn't happen and it's strange that it did.

That actually could have been a problem. If the bank had accepted the charge, the fee for that would have been high, as far as I read when closing the account. This way - by Amazon just getting a bounce - my annoyment was just about the unreasonableness of the fee (to pay 3x3€ instead of 1x3€ just because Amazon decided to split the order), if the bank would have charged me instead it could have become a money problem.

That added to my concern with Amazon just using the wrong bank account, and that old account occuring again and again in my profile. Even if I wanted to order something at Amazon it would be too risky now.

Amazon doesn't charge your card until it's about to ship your order. Thus an order with an invalid card will go through but won't ship.

Fulfilled by Amazon.de screwed up my last micro-order. I ordered an 8-pack of something and got a 5-pack.

Trivial for small items, but doesn't bode well for high value orders.

It's a confidence issue. Amazon has become a logistics giant but is steadily losing customer confidence.

A combination of fake reviews, fake items, high-friction or just plain missing consumer support on high-value items, and a hopelessly confused mess of a shop front all add up to a mediocre and untrustworthy experience.

It's enough that they screw up 0.01 - 0.1% of orders. They are big enough, those people will be loud and not those without issues.

On HN I put comment below because I had some issue - if I had not, such comment would have too little value to post.

I did receive many things without issues and have also received books that looked way worse than if you gave them to a toddler. It's bizarre - they started with books and books are items that are trivial to pack securely.

3 out of 5 books I ordered there were what a regular bookstore would have called a "Mängelexemplar": folded in pages, accidentally cut corners, missing pages

Those are books damaged in printing that the printer is supposed to destroy, some enterprising employee grabs them from the scrap to be recycled and Amazon stands ready. Publishers and authors lose the entire amount. I have seen books like this at weekend swap meets (flea markets) near major printing ecyclers where the recycler employee does the diversion when they see good books(to their eyes) in the scrap.

I cannot remember when I have last received a pristine book from Amazon in Germany. There is always at least one minor damage that I wouldn't get from a store book.

For cameras in the UK I usually buy from WEX instead, who have excellent customer service and specifically sell camera equipment. I quite like Scan for computer components too. But for general “stuff” or tech, Amazon are so much better than places like Currys, it’s not even funny any more.

I have had issues with Amazon in the past, but if you do have a poor support experience you just need to persevere until you get someone more flexible. Which is somehow still better than most of our other stores here in the UK.

Hedonic adaptation. I love amazon. I probably place 200+ orders a year, and I have plenty of issues. But that doesn’t make it vastly superior to the alternative.

For example, I bought a projector on BestBuy. They had the dimensions wrong and it wouldn’t fit where I needed it. With amazon, that would be a simple return. With BestBuy, a simple return and a 15% restocking fee. Good luck reaching someone at BestBuy to explain why that fee should be waived. With amazon, it would be a simple chat.

Amazon is infinitely better than most other retailers. People just forget how good we have it.

If you order that much then Amazon has little reason to loose you as a customer, so of course they will not bother you.

Maybe people just like to complain about anything that doesn't meet their impossible standards.

Yeah, I’m in the U.K. and I don’t think I’ve ever had a real issue with Amazon. Deliveries are on time 99% of the time and returns are simple (they even covered a £60 Post Office return of a heavy product I decided to return, because their only option required a printer and this was mid-pandemic so I had no way to access one).

Based off this thread I might think twice before ordering expensive stuff from them though - however I usually find other places are better value for expensive electronics etc. anyway

In the US, I tend to favor one or the other of the big US NYC "camera stores" for electronics. (Or a local Best Buy.) The prices are usually the same and I feel they're probably a bit safer if there's some sort of problem.

I don't know if I'm lucky and some other people are just unlucky. But I also sometimes suspect that some people buy things at prices that are "too good to be true" or that always go for the lowest price. (I admittedly also tend to go elsewhere for certain types of items. For example, I always buy my Apple stuff directly from Apple.)

It really is location dependent, since most of the problems are caused by the shipper. Amazon will use multiple shippers, and in some areas will use what ends up being people driving around in their personal cars to deliver packages. If you have unreliable shippers in your area, it’s hard to deal with Amazon when things go wrong. In one place I lived, Amazon would use the US Postal Service, UPS, and Fedex. I had no control over which. The local FedEx team was horrible, they never figured out how to deliver packages to my building. So they would pretend to deliver, say customer wasn’t home and no secure place to leave the package for 2-3 days, then stick a notice on the outside of the building somewhere that I could use to drive to the FedEx warehouse in the next town over to pick it up. Maybe it’s different now, but there was just no way to do anything about this.

Another location and I’d get these local people delivering packages in their personal cars and that was really hit or miss. Seems like anytime they were busy they just report that they tried to deliver but no one was home. They could steal whatever they wanted, it’s a matter of trust. How does Amazon know who is lying? Maybe I’m scamming them, maybe the shippers, maybe someone else is stealing packages off my doorstep.

There was just no way to choose a shipper or report problems with one. Don’t have any problems where I am now, so I don’t know if they’ve fixed that. They should be able to tell, statistically, if packages have more problems with one shipper over the other, but smart shippers who want to steal could probably game the system.

I don't get FedEx much but had a terrible experience with them on a few orders. One package left way out by my mailbox on a busy road. Another tossed to the side of my long driveway (????). Then things were fine again. Assume there was some driver who was, shall we say, not good at their job.

Periodically I do have shipper issues (including USPS on occasion). I have a long gravel/dirt driveway and some shippers obviously don't like to come down it. (I also have a neighbor with a large dog that likes to bark and that sometimes scares off drivers too. Oh yeah, that was FedEx too. Saw their truck and they claimed online not to have been able to deliver due to local regulations.)

FedEx is bimodal: they have "real" FedEx like Tom Hanks in that movie, and then they have contract drivers who bid for delivery routes on a short term basis and are not FedEx employees.

I don't get why Amazon doesn't allow the customer to chose between multiple available shipping carriers. They do for returns, which is fantastic and one of the reasons I love buying on Amazon, because I can always chose to pick the carrier that has the office 1 minute walk away from my home that is never busy, instead of being forced to drive to some remote store and stand in line.

If Amazon gave these choices to customers for shipping, it would apply pressure to shipping carriers to improve their service, as people would experiment and pick the best ones and stop picking bad ones. Eventually a bad carrier is forced to improve to not lose revenue. And Amazon would get way happier customers, who can pick what is best in their region, and they would have a massive advantage over smaller shops.

> I don't get why Amazon doesn't allow the customer to chose between multiple available shipping carriers. They do for returns...

I assume because the volume of returns is much lower than the volume of sales, plus Amazon isn't responsible for coordinating the return.

In essence, my suspicion is that at Amazon's scale they literally can't afford to let customers pick their own shipper. That's one variable too many to manage for their massive logistics problem, and the expense of building out the support for that would never be recouped.

> In essence, my suspicion is that at Amazon's scale they literally can't afford to let customers pick their own shipper. That's one variable too many to manage for their massive logistics problem, and the expense of building out the support for that would never be recouped.

I don't get it. All the alternative carriers are obviously in their system already, since deliveries obviously get routed via all of them, and (presumably) some algorithm selects which one that is in each case. All it takes is to put one more selection field on the order (and I guess in the customer profile, for a personal default value) and then use that if provided and the algorithm only if not provided. What's so hugely complicated about that?

Again, without any real knowledge, this is all speculation on my part, but: I’m assuming multiple shipments for different customers are combined at different points en route, so Amazon is optimizing for cost by choosing the shipper that makes the most sense (for them) for all of those customers.

Maybe it’s in fact trivial, but at Amazon’s scale I find it hard to imagine that any changes to their shipping algorithms are that easy, at least compared to the increased revenue that goes along with it, which in this case presumably is zero.

If you’re willing to put up with all of Amazon’s other crap in exchange for convenience, you’re unlikely to drop them because they won’t allow you to pick the shipper, at least until someone else starts taking business away from them.

I suspect the wield this lack of choice as a weapon against the carriers. They go to each carrier and say, "that a healthy looking Amazon contract you've got there. Shame if we suddenly stopped sending packages your way", then squeeze them for price. Harder to do that if Amazon let their customer pick the carrier.

I've certainly been part of something very similar, where a company has multiple suppliers providing the same service. Near contract renewal time we would move our volume on their competitors to remind them that they needed us more than we needed them. It was a very effective way to get them to keep lowering their prices as the years went on.

There is also probably also a logistics piece as well. Amazon will be shipping products to carriers last mile hubs or similar themselves, rather than having a carrier handle the entire distance. Which makes it cheaper for Amazon. So carrier will also be picked based on which hub is nearest to one of Amazons warehouses, how full the Amazon truck going there is, which warehouse has the product etc

People keep mentioning the price, the real problem is never buy camera equipment on Amazon. Use Adorama or B&H. I've bought tons of stuff on Amazon over the years, and have only had issues with camera equipment. After the last issue I had a few years ago, I realized it's just a waste of time to deal with camera equipment on Amazon.

Why camera equipment? IDK. Even before Amazon was a thing, buying camera equipment online was always a bit shady. I assume those same people just move to Amazon.

I should add that I've never had a problem sending back or replacing the item even when it was over 1k.

I was in urgent need of a spare part a couple of years ago and paid Amazon UK a lot extra to get it the next day. It was a heavy and bulky thing so I got really surprised when I got a simple envelope in the mail the next day. It contained a simple SD-card adapter worth less than a dollar.

When calling Amazon about it they said I needed to ship the adapter back before they would send me the part I ordered. I told them it was totally unreasonable for me to have to wait many more days to get the thing I paid for when they obviously made the mistake and adapter wasn't worth anything compared to what I ordered. They could easily see that the weight of what they shipped was less than 1/1000th of what I ordered too but they refused to handle my case before they got their adapter back and they ended up hanging up on me.

Migrated my company off AWS after that and haven't used Amazon since. I value other things higher than saving an occasional dollar here or there.

The commingled inventory problem is seriously a United States thing, from what I have heard. It is a frustrating situation here in the US where lots of spoilable goods are available on Amazon but if you purchase them, they are spoiled. Deodorant, cereal, protein bars, tape, everyone has stories.

A Japanese friend said he could Amazon order a particular variety of candy and it would arrive next-day in good condition and I felt jealous. In America there really is no such service for ordering food or spoilable items online.

Yup, my track record with them is excellent, also.

I have received one wrong item (refunded, told to keep) and one item I didn't order. The only hassle I've ever had was a damaged item they were trying to talk me into accepting a discount rather than returning (a very heavy item, I'm sure shipping was an issue.)

There very definitely is an issue with counterfeits and their comingled inventory system needs to be nuked from orbit. I have once seen a product where it was pretty apparent *every* offering was garbage or counterfeit. I even reported one of the counterfeits to Amazon as the image revealed it was one of the garbage things, not the name brand it purported to be.

Someone here half joked about the LTV calculation determining how easily they accept returns. Amazon would be incredibly incompetent not to have an A-list who get priority treatment. If they don’t put people like you who make 200+ orders on it, that would be odd.

Anything over a few hundred bucks is playing with fire. I bought an iphone through them (Amazon sold, not 3rd party) last year and had to do the same thing the couple did: chargeback on credit card. They refused to investigate and flat out accused me of fraud. Gee, maybe it's the low paid disgruntled employees from warehouse worker to contracted out Prime delivery guy stealing shit? Nah, it's the guy who spent tens of thousands at your business and you never had a problem with!

I went with eBay over Amazon for an international edition of a major android flagship for this very reason.

In Europe at least the dedicated electronics retailers are clearly cheaper than Amazon, and of course do not commingle. Returns may be a bit more cumbersome, but honestly who returns electronics anyway? Usually you know pretty well what you're getting.

Europe also has laws that require a mandatory "No questions asked" minimum 14 day return period after delivery date. Doesn't mandate free return shipping, but for a € 500 piece of electronics paying a € 4.95 shipping fee in the rare case that you return it isn't so bad.

I wonder actually where this stuff happens typically. Clearly some seems to happen before things even get to Amazon, that whole counterfeit commingling thing you hear about, where the 3rd-party stock gets used even if you buy from Amazon directly. (How this could be worth it to do at all vs. the reputational damage is unclear but I guess they're always chasing the small efficiencies... still you'd think it would be easy for Amazon to track the actual source of fake/nonexistent items even when they're mingled like that.)

I'd have to think theft by the warehouse workers is pretty rare, it feels like the kind of thing they'd surveil and police quite zealously.

You can tell they're increasing the scrutiny on drivers as well with them having to take photos of the delivered item, and they've clearly always been closely tracked on time and location.

> I wonder actually where this stuff happens typically. Clearly some seems to happen before things even get to Amazon, that whole counterfeit commingling thing you hear about, where the 3rd-party stock gets used even if you buy from Amazon directly.

This is actually largely Amazon's fault, as far as I understand it. People buy obviously counterfeit items, then buy the real thing on Amazon, and return the counterfeit item. Amazon does ~zero verification of the return and puts the counterfeit item back on the shelf/bin with the official SKU.

Amazon has no concept of "open box" vs "new," and they don't want to be the arbitrator of returns.

> "Amazon has no concept of "open box" vs "new,""

Yes they do. There is a large section of the website ("Amazon Warehouse deals") devoted to open-box items. I've used this a few times and got great prices on perfect items, just with opened or damaged packaging.

Yet somehow returns end up back in the warehouse where they are picked as "new" sales to other customers.

This is true. I've had Amazon send me clearly used and damaged items although I ordered new. They also always block my negative review pointing this out, claiming that reviews are about the product and not about my experience of ordering it from Amazon.

> You can tell they're increasing the scrutiny on drivers as well with them having to take photos of the delivered item, and they've clearly always been closely tracked on time and location.

Some time ago, my wife ordered something from Amazon, and it was reported as “delivered,” but the photo was of someone else’s doorstep.

She had no problem getting them to ship a replacement, but it added a few days to the process.

The “last mile” stuff is crazy. I sometimes see two Amazon Prime Sprinters on the same street, at the same time.

It was much worse, when it was done by independent contractors. We would see these folks driving around, with so many boxes in the cab of their vans, they had to make a hole to see through.

Looked like an episode of Hoarders.

I’m not surprised they have issues. The system is basically strained to the max. It’s a miracle that it works as well as it does.

>Some time ago, my wife ordered something from Amazon, and it was reported as “delivered,” but the photo was of someone else’s doorstep.

This happens to me about every third time I get something from Amazon. Fortunately, the wrong house they keep delivering to is in my neighborhood and I recognized it in the picture.

I report this every time, but I don't expect it to do any good.

>You can tell they're increasing the scrutiny on drivers as well with them having to take photos of the delivered item, and they've clearly always been closely tracked on time and location.

Not really, I'm currently living out of an apartment with a mailroom and it seems like half of the orders are correctly marked as "Left in mailroom" with a picture, less than half the time they actually put it in the parcel locker, most of the time it's just dumped on the floor even when it would obviously fit, and when it's not marked as "Left in mailroom" it seems that delivery drivers are exploiting the fact that they don't have to take a photo if they select "Left with receptionist". We don't have a receptionist, so every time they select that not only do I have to try and figure out where in the mailroom my package is, I have to do it immediately because now I have no clue if they correctly put it in the parcel locker where it's safe or if it's just lying in a stack of boxes out in the open.

Not to even mention all the times packages are marked as delivered the day before, presumably to hit some delivery quota. Currently if you open up a case with Amazon for a package marked delivered that you haven't received they make you wait at least 2 days because odds are it's still in transit.

Did they contest the chargeback though?

In a case like this, without additional proof, the credit card company will just side with the customer.

Amazon arrived in force kinda recently in my country. My parents are amazed by it and started making expensive purchases...

And now are surprised at how shitty their delivery is.

The worst case was when they bought some medicine for their dog and a expensive screen to use in their business.

The dog medicine arrived on a friday, I was present and heard a car horn, went to check, and it was a random normal car, a lady climbed out, said it was a delivery. when I said I was son of the person that made the purchase, she just shoved the package through the gate opening and drove away, didn't even said hi or bye or whatever, didn't check my identity properly, didn't take a signature, didn't even tried to deliver the package safely, she almost threw it at me.

Then saturday my parents had a meeting with someone, and left, but on that day the city hall sent some workers to do some work on the sidewalk.

Seemly Amazon deliverd it to these workers, Amazon claims they delivered, and claims some dude we never heard of accepted the delivery, we believe the dude in question is some random city hall employee that was doing sidewalk maintenance.

Likely to be Amazon Flex (https://flex.amazon.co.uk/). Anyone can download the phone app, go to the Amazon warehouse, and start delivering packages.

As you can imagine, quality of delivery is pretty variable. I had an Amazon Flex worker steal a phone that I'd ordered - Amazon refunded with no questions asked and as far as I know didn't bother to investigate the theft.

My general rule is: Do not buy anything electrical (plug in or battery) or anything that goes in to your body from Amazon.

I would definitely not buy dog medicine.

I think I could use your rule.

Amazon delivery is outrageously atrocious in my (poor) country. As an instance, this was the condition of an assorted pack of fruit juices that got delivered to me just yesterday: https://imgur.com/a/sSMmgot

To top it off, (rather poorly trained) Amazon support encouraged me to consume the contents of the pack with no understanding of what a health hazard means; at which point I hung up and cancelled my Prime membership.

I bought a new 32" monitor about 2 years ago that when I unpacked it, it was clearly an open box item. The way it had been packed was extremely unprofessional, tape was haphazardly wrapped and twisted around the stand and cords and things that normally come in plastic bags weren't bagged.

They've been shipping the wrong items lately too, twice in the last year when I order something that has multiple selections like color, scent or flavor etc I'll sometimes get the wrong item sent. I've done more Amazon returns in the last 2 years than my previous 15 combined.

The open box thing is a huge issue. I bought probably 5 things last year >$100 sold as “new” that just weren’t. Returns have always been easy, I live near an Amazon Go and they even have an attendant that helps. But not being able to trust that a new item is actually new is…shitty. I would never buy electronics from Amazon, just get it for the same price at Best Buy and wait a couple more days (plus they often have same-day pickup available, which Amazon can’t compete with). Target is another good option for the same reason. Always keep in mind that everyone will price-match Amazon.

> Always keep in mind that everyone will price-match Amazon.

The other side of that coin is that Amazon used to have relatively low prices. Not anymore.

They do still occasionally have flash sales that I’ve gotten brick-and-mortars to match. But yeah, their business model has shifted away from undercutting everyone; makes sense but it’s disappointing.

Is open box always a return for you then? I got a coffee scale with obvious usage stains on it from Amazon, but honestly it works fine and a quick cleanup was much easier than a return.

It is for me. I am quite conscientious and I expect others to do their jobs at least as per the prescription, if not scrupulously. "New" means "new" to me, no exceptions.

As a matter of fact, I would go to great lengths in order to return or replace the coffee scale if that happened to me. It places my mind at peace to have things exactly as I expect them to be.

Fair enough. I'm quite happy to take the used product if it's flawless, in my mind that's a bit less waste produced by my lifestyle.

I’ve just kept a couple things, yeah; but usually I could have gotten a better deal if I purposely bought used or “renewed”, so the return is more about the price than the principle. For some things, I’d return anyway because the practice feels scammy and user-hostile.

I've never seen a decent price at a Best Buy. At least here everything is marked up.

It’s generally the same price that anyone else has, with the exception of small items like cabling or accessories. It can be hard to get a price-match on that type of thing, because the brands are more niche/whitelabel.

I think Best Buy is the absolute best ;) place to buy a TV; good prices, huge selection, always handled carefully. YMMV!

I’m in Europe. Earlier this year, I ordered from Amazon Japan, the package arrived quicker than things I had ordered earlier on a European Amazon and it was insanely well packaged.

Amazon Japan even in 2013 was amazing. My host family ordered an out of print trail guide to the hiking trail between Osaka and Tokyo after I had failed to find it in every major book shop in Osaka. If memory serves it was delivered in about 6 hours.

I guess a lot depends on who and how they pay to deliver. I got an internal x260 battery (that can't configure properly in Linux, if anyone knows about it) a few days ago and has been a disaster.

In the case of Spain their customer support is fine, but it falls flat because delivery is a shitshow.

Even more so in the Canaries where we need to pay a lot of handling fees to receive the packages unless you want to do the customs process yourself. On a 200€ headphones I needed to pay 44€ of taxes and handling fees that was shipped from Valencia.

Amazon Japan is incredible. I ordered a Japanese book from them and it arrived the next afternoon (to the UK!) Another time I was in Japan and I needed a specific bluetooth keyboard for the tablet I was using, delivered to a convenience store pick-up point in the deep north of the country in the middle of winter, ordered with my UK credit card, and no problem, it was there the next day. I can't imagine the amount of organisation both of these things take.

Delivering in a Hokkaido winter sounds like an epic undertaking considering the amount of snow.

Aomori, but yes it's amazing that everything keeps working in those conditions (in general, not just Amazon).

Amazon Japan used to be in a league of their own, but a mix of their home-rolled delivery service being objectively bad and them allowing their platform to be dominated by scalpers (転売ヤー) means that they've lost a lot of the trust I had in them.

I ordered from Amazon Japan for the first time last week and the delivery speed was excellent. I would say the packaging was sub-par compared to other Japanese retailers though. CDJapan is just as fast and ships me books in better condition than any UK store, and proxy shipping from Buyee.jp redefined what packaging means to me. Seriously, it’s almost worth using them just to get some top quality cardboard!

The winning strategy for Amazon is to segregate by loyalty: Have an absolutely stunning experience until you are addicted, then let you have bad products and focus on newer clients.

In fact, nothing tells us we all see the same prices either. I suspect they only show me more expensive items, because I can find my A4 paper at 6€ elsewhere instead of 10€ on Amazon. And same goes for most other stuff. Maybe after a few years, Amazon profits off us with a hefty margin. Price segmentation by (reverse) customer loyalty.

Maybe we need a service were we can all upload our online merchants screenshots of products and prices, that can then tell us if particular customers have been segmented into the pay more forever bin.

Camelcamelcamel.com?

never thought of this but this is has been my experience exactly, lot of past bought cheap version of item disappear from the amazon own search and I either have to get them from the reorder interface or straight up use google to search the amazon's item page and buy it coming from the direct link.

Definitely has not been my experience. I've been an Amazon customer since 1999, and I got Prime pretty much as soon as it started (I think they had a promo for students back then). I've spent tens of thousands of dollars with them, easily. I continue to have very few problems with orders or deliveries, and on the rare occasion when I do, it's resolved quickly and easily.

> Books are especially abused somewhere in Amazon’s fulfillment. (They’re always bent, creased, or dirty.)

Interesting that you bring this up- I have noticed over the past year and a half that all my Amazon books have been showing up with damaged corners and smudge marks all over the covers.

I buy directly from the publisher and have never had any issues. They might take a little longer to arrive, but they're always in perfect condition. Sometimes they even throw a free e-book my way, which I appreciate the hell out of.

I understand purchasing from other categories on Amazon, but with books it's so easy to avoid Amazon all together. Plus you know you won't receive a counterfeit (https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202) if you order directly from the publisher.

Soooo many counterfeit books on Amazon, especially textbooks. Nothing quite like dropping > $150 on a big book only to get an obvious inkjet job in the box.

This might not be foul play - lots of textbooks are formally out of print and printed on demand by the publisher. The quality is lower for that reason.

It's genuinely astonishing how bad Amazon is at shipping books now. It used to be their Thing, and now basically any book you buy from them arrives damaged. You can complain and get them to send a replacement and the replacement is damaged too.

In my experience Amazon Japan still knows how to pack books correctly, but I haven't ordered from them since the start of COVID... they properly secure books to a bit of backing cardboard (with shrink-wrap and/or rubber bands, usually) and then mount the backing cardboard inside of the packing box so that the books don't slide around and get damaged. I'm sure it costs like an extra 50 cents per package to do this, but presumably their customers demand quality in other countries where Amazon doesn't have a de-facto monopoly.

Let me emphasize something here: Amazon Japan ships globally. Not just books -- bags too. And that's big because the Japanese bag selection is truly something else. Alas, many are very expensive. However, since I didn't travel for more than a year now (guess why) I have shuffled the travel budget over to the bag budget and bought a bag from Amazon Japan. Here's the most important part, watch just thirty seconds: https://youtu.be/g6uSpuN2uT8?t=346 ideal size for me, incredible flexibility. I combine it with https://youtu.be/oaRyVuLuWOw?t=160 because I like flexibility :)

Previously I was buying electronics and I needed to use proxies which are added cost and hassle.

> the Japanese bag selection is truly something else.

Got any tips?

I left a link to a Japanese video but https://www.reddit.com/r/ManyBaggers/comments/aj6q91/travel_... https://www.reddit.com/r/ManyBaggers/comments/bl1plj/japanes... https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=xpac

I agree. I don’t books on Amazon anymore here in Germany unless I cannot get the book anywhere else.

As for Amazon Japan, their packaging is most often top-notch although that’s more related to Japanese mentality than to Amazon‘s policy.

Provided the items are fulfilled locally (as in Japan) the packaging and delivery tends to be pretty much flawless. I'm honestly surprised by the number of English books they stock locally.

Lots of books on Amazon are now printed on demand. In theory a smart and possibly environmentally friendly practice.

But you end up with smudgy pages from a bad printer, pages missing, and a book binding not lasting more than a day.

This sounds more like you are getting counterfeit books, not print-on-demand.

It’s a real thing [1] - although you might think they were counterfeits on arrival if you weren’t aware of this service

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Print-on-Demand-Guide/b?ie=U...

Yes, it sounds like it. Which says something about the quality of Amazon's product, heh.

I find it especially galling when for a document title search, I’ll see public domain reports (NASA NTRS PDFs for instance) ranking higher in Google results for buying a print on demand copy via Amazon at significantly inflated prices, or honestly just what is plain disgustingly greedy, the many charlatans selling them as kindle ebooks, sometimes as multiple skus with different prices, trying to profit from people that don’t know any better.

I order lots of printed musical scores. The higher quality scores are $45+ a pop. Amazon frequently renders them completely useless as a work you’re supposed to be able to sight-read with your instrument. After all the folding, bending, and creasing, the books don’t even stay open properly, and the bent pages make for terrible and distracted reading. It’s depressing and an absolute shame.

That is depressing. I suppose it’s a side effect of growing too large. I’d hate to receive scores like that.

> they properly secure books to a bit of backing cardboard (with shrink-wrap and/or rubber bands, usually) and then mount the backing cardboard inside of the packing box so that the books don't slide around and get damaged.

That's how they used to do in France when they started (15-20 years ago): a base cardboard plate at the right size for the box, the stuff stacked on the cardboard, and both united by a shrink wrap. That was both simple and extremely effective, or otherwise said: great.

I don't know why they stopped. And I don't know why nobody else copied that system.

(I used to order from 2000 miles away, now I don't order books from Amazon no more, except second hand foreign language books I couldn't get otherwise.)

Here in California, I used to get books from Amazon that came in a box with appropriate bubble padding added. This worked.

If I try to order a book on Amazon today, it gets shipped in a manila envelope (with bubble padding built into the envelope). The tightness of the envelope damages the book.

I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, or even an acceptable idea.

I think the competition from local retailers is important in this. I’ve bought books from other Japanese stores, like CDJapan, and the packaging is excellent. In the UK all retailers seem to ship books poorly now. Waterstones is no better than Amazon sadly.

I don't return that much stuff to Amazon, but I've generally found their setup for returns to be about the best and easiest around: typically I have the option to drop off several places or to print a shipping label.

My experience is that books are mostly still OK (US based) but the frequency of getting a new book that is slightly damaged has increased significantly. Even books that are shrink wrapped by the publisher sometimes come with corner or other damage (which may or may not have happened once in Amazon's hands, but I should not have to tolerate).

What I can say with certainty is that the attention to shipping the books has plummeted compared to the early years of Amazon. Back then they would put the book(s) on a piece of cardboard and shrink wrap that and then put some of the bubble stuff in the box.

Now you are lucky if they even put any filler in the box and best hope its not a rainy day and delivery leaves the package outside your door as boxes are flimsier and not always sealed tightly.

Amazon used to be my #1 shopping place (save for groceries), years ago but I rarely use them anymore.

Last hard drive I ordered from them came wrapped in factory issued static plastic bag, and NO padding inside the Amazon issued cardboard box. I of course returned it after confirming it was broken.

That's not the only reason I gave up on them. Searching is getting really hard, reviews are meaningless due to fake ones, counterfeit products, ...

To me it looks like they've decided to run the business to the ground and cash in a monumental amount of money.

Don't forget expired, misleading, or a knock-off. There's so many pitfalls to Amazon orders it reminds me of EBay back in the day.

Lots of brick and mortar stores improved their curbside flows during the pandemic, and this is the sweet spot for me. Same day pickup of items you could have grabbed yourself off the shelf, and humans around to dispute problems with.

Yup, ironically, books coming from Amazon are far more likely to arrive damaged - two decades later, and they still can't get it through their heads that they can't just toss a book in a box and expect it to be not crunch the corners every time. I don't think that it is even smart enough to be a scheme to encourage Kindle and Audible sales...

For returns, I was surprised to see only drop-off options, but I found that they actually just bury the pick up option on another page. I usually find it now under a small faint "more options" link. Good luck.

(And yes, despite being a multi-decade Prime customer, I now avoid Amazon for many categories, including books, & especially batteries)

A box? You must be a favorite, premier customer! Most of my stuff comes in a flimsy paper bag these days.

I would never buy anything expensive from Amazon, the customer service is not adequate when things go wrong. I even stopped buying CD's from them as they would almost always arrived with cracked/broken cases. Specialist sellers, e.g. Prestomusic, actually wrap and pack them properly (and often have much better websites for buying music).

Are you still buying CDs?

It’s rather nice to buy unusual CDs and FLAC them. I like to do it from time to time.

Or vinyl albums, adds an extra dimension to listening to music.

Absolutely. Bought Bowie’s Blackstar on vinyl. Just seemed to fit somehow.

Where do you get uncompressed, drm free music?

Yes I still do and I FLAC them. I've been collecting CD's for 35 years, so it's difficult to stop. I am sometimes envious of the high-res downloads, but whenever I hear digital clipping in the 16-bit CD version, the clipping has always been present in the 24-bit version too.

> Almost everything I receive is damaged, late, or mis-delivered. Books are especially abused somewhere in Amazon’s fulfillment. (They’re always bent, creased, or dirty.)

Strangely enough, a company whose employees have to piss in bottles and use crying booths may have staff that are not especially engaged in the highest quality work.

Ironically I do not buy books from Amazon due to the atrocious quality of their 'print on demand' titles. These look like they are printed with a 5 year old heavily abused inkjet.

Part of the appeal of reading deadtree is the paper feel, smell and type quality. Majority of paper backs from amazon are nigh unreadable.

Once you've established a monopoly you can start degrading the service

Online retail has never been a monopoly. Doesn't matter any way you measure it.

I always seem to get a boot prints on the books I buy on Amazon. I don’t really buy from Amazon any more but the amount of boot prints I’ve received over the years is a lot!

The latest book I ordered came unbelievably spotless. It was about $4 AUD including shipping for a book that would usually cost me $50+ shipping from USA (it was sheet music) so I was very happy. The original delivery date they gave me was delusional so I paid it no mind when it passed. Two days after it, I get an email saying they’re refunding me $3 for the inconvenience, and my spotless book arrived the next day. Three days late is a rounding error in postage delivery timelines where I live. I’m still bewildered by the whole experience to be honest, but hey, almost free expensive sheet music book. Definitely low risk for that purchase.

The dirty book thing is so weird, often covered in some weird kind of glue-like "stuff"...

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