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Comment by cgriswald | Hacker News Reader

I dislike Walmart rather intensely but I know if I order a new Kitchen Aid mixer from them I’m going to get a new Kitchen Aid mixer. Ask me how I know the same isn’t true of Amazon. No matter how good your delivery logistics, it’s not “nailing it” if I get the wrong thing fast.

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I’ve commented on this before—you kind of don’t. It will be a true KitchenAid brand, of course. But the actual machine may be compromised. Walmart places intense pressure on their suppliers and often sells Walmart-only SKUs made of inferior parts and materials.

I bought rope there (in a physical store) a few months ago, for tying down furniture in a truck. Got home, cut the rope, it was a foam core with braiding around it to make it seem like true rope.

This applies to their food items as well, by the way.

Maybe you just bought floating rope? There are a bunch of floating rope products that advertise foam cores.

Nope. I know what floating rope is and that was nowhere on the packaging. It was also the only rope for sale in the store, alongside (very cheap) carabiners etc. and not in a boating or pool section.

A thousand nods of agreement. I tell everyone that will listen to stop buying from Amazon and feeding the beast. They know that they have a counterfeit problem and they refuse to face it. I suspect that someone has done the math and figured out that most people won't figure it out or complain so it's more profitable to just let the common binning continue.

That’s the thing with Walmart, they aren’t shady enough to play the same game. Once you break out of the Amazon bubble of faith based “Amazon is amazing!”, it’s just retail.

Once you get out of the Amazon funnel, why go to Walmart? There’s a hundred retailers that sell genuine KitchenAid mixers. Pick the one with the best price, or color scheme you prefer.

I think combined shipping can be a huge attraction factor for an Amazon or Walmart.

If you want to buy a $150 mixer, but also, say, a $10 book and a $5 cable, you'll be able to put those all in one cart at those vendors and get free postage.

If you go to some specialty mixer retailer, you'll have to buy the other items as a seperate transaction and pay for shipping on them.

I know in my household, we definitely will ask around "I'm buying something from Amazon, so I'll already be spending $25, does anyone want anything else on that order?"

Do you really though? They do the same third-party seller thing as Amazon.

It's not third party sellers, it's comingling inventory from third party sellers. That breaks the reviews / reputation as a way to check, and it means if there's even one bad egg, even if I buy from Amazon itself, I can still get the wrong product.

Selling fake products masquerading as a real ones. That’s literally the worst case scenario for a customer.

If I buy a product and it has issues—okay, it happens. Maybe I post a bad review or just don’t buy it again.

If I buy a product and it’s something else, the seller should be ashamed of themselves.

I have bought (and returned) countless fraudulent books from Amazon to the point where I had to weigh the books, count the pages, and compare with publishers.

And then I closed my prime membership and I’ll take the longer wait times for a real product.

It seems to me Amazon's comingling is bad for competition. Players on their platform, not between Amazon and others.

Have any of the regulators taken note?

I've been reading Congress' anti-trust research and reports. Haven't seen this called out yet.

Legal thinking shifted towards a price focused for all things antitrust. You can be a monopolist, as long as you don’t quickly raise prices. That’s why 3 companies control 90% of meat packing.

Companies like Amazon are carefully engineered to avoid that type of enforcement action. Nothing will happen until you have a major political shift - I’d guess somewhere around 2035-2045 when demographics shift the political dynamic in the US.

I usually filter by "Retailer: Walmart.com" for any common and/or name-brand item (and price/shipping is usually better than 3rd part sellers anyway). You still have to take your chances for more obscure items, but at least for me that's rare.

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