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Comment by Galaxeblaffer | Hacker News Reader

It's really hard recognizing the image Amazon have in the US compared to my personal experience with amazon.de . The service is stellar, shipping both ways is free as long as you buy products covered by prime. Refunds are with no questions asked (as long as you don't start abusing it i guess). As soon as you go into 3rd party sellers the experience gets muddled, though I've had plenty of good experiences with those as well. There's simply nothing here in Europe that gets even close to what Amazon offers. I really really hope it will never be like the horror stories i see here on HN.

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As a prime member in the US, your description more closely matches my experience with Amazon than the negative reviews here. I don't know if it's the way I shop or maybe I'm easier to please, but I really don't get it when people complain about counterfeits or poor quality experience with Amazon.

I only purchase items that have prime shipping, and that have free returns in case something is wrong. 99% of the time their delivery estimation is accurate, usually within 48 hours of my order or less. If something is broken or I simply don't like it, I return it for free at any one of several places within a 10 minute drive of my house: Whole foods, ups store, or Kohl's. And there's no rush - I have a full month to return the items and the refund is issued before I even get back home after dropping off the item.

I think it's selection bias. People with a bad experience with Amazon are more likely to dive into it here. And dive they do, nearly any time Amazon is mentioned. Even in a thread about Wells Fargo we somehow get sidetracked into "Amazon just sells counterfeit garbage".

Out of the thousands of items I've bought through Amazon, I think maybe one set of Henckels steak knives might be counterfeit (I've ordered two sets of the same knives and they were noticeably different - both seem high quality though).

Using this logic, you could quickly dismiss all criticisms of any company. It's not a very compelling argument, especially because no one is arguing that individual, atomic, anecdotal comments describing negative experiences with Amazon represent a statistically significant evaluation of Amazon as a company.

I try my best to not buy from third party sellers. Then I occasionally get surprised that I am buying from a third party seller. So I simply stopped because the perceived risk is too high. Amazon is overpriced anyway so why bother buying from them?

If you buy Amazon basic brand items you don’t have to worry. And the Amazon basic products are generally really high quality, from clothes and more high end niche items to daily necessities, Amazon basics items are best in class. People who complain about Amazon are usually buying crappy items from dodgy vendors, and then they idiotically blame Amazon.

Except it's almost impossible for the majority of customers to distinguish between the 'good' sellers and the 'bad' sellers, and we shouldn't pretend this isn't a deliberate effort on Amazon's behalf. Not only do Amazon often make it onerous to find out who is in fact selling an item, they also:

1) Co-mingle the inventory of multiple sellers in their distribution centers, so even if you buy from a good vendor you've used in the past, you still might end up with garbage from a shady vendor. 2) Allow widespread and rampant review manipulation / botting across every product category on the site, making it even more difficult to distinguish 'dodgy vendors' from so-called good ones. 3) Allow vendors to BRIBE customers with things like free items or amazon credits for 'organic' reviews, again, making it a Sisyphean task for most customers to find reputable vendors.

> and then they idiotically blame Amazon

This a callous and inane assertion. If a customer buys something from Amazon's website, and pays Amazon, and Amazon emails them a receipt, and Amazon delivers the product, the customer has every right to blame Amazon if the product they receive is crap. I'm frankly flabbergasted that you somehow think it is the fault of the customer.

> And the Amazon basic products are generally really high quality, from clothes and more high end niche items to daily necessities, Amazon basics items are best in class.

This reads like ad copy to me -- Amazon basic products are fine, but they certainly are not 'best in class' or 'very high quality'. Amazon doesn't even go that far (they items are literally called 'Basics'.). Furthermore, if the only thing a customer can feel confident purchasing on Amazon is a Amazon Basic items, it kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? There are not Amazon Basics versions for most product categories on the site, and the allure of Amazon is that you can get anything you want from one vendor, delivered quickly (A to Z).

(Not to mention, I've seen a lot of cases where Amazon Basic items are clones/knock offs of well-reviewed, high volume products designed and manufactured by third party companies. Amazon then copies these products and promotes its own listings, which isn't exactly the most ethical practice IMO)

“Amazon then copies these products and promotes its own listings”

…for the consumer’s benefit. It’s a win/win.

They are one our best companies. From the climate change perspective alone, think of how much better off we are, as a planet, thanks to Amazon. People are appallingly ungrateful. And the criticism is typically something along the lines that he allows too much freedom (“they let anyone sell stuff, even chinese vendors gasp) or oddly, they complain about logistical efficiency (“eww commingling! I would never!” as they clutch their pearls), when it’s acthually exactly what other retailers do. If people were so worried about their packets commingling we wouldn’t have the internet, the us postal service would stop functioning if mail didn’t get commingled. Commingling is good, progressive.

Amazon US used to be as you describe. But now its mostly just cheap knockoff stuff. I hardly purchase there anymore. Its really sad because they used to have such a wide selection.

> just cheap knockoff stuff.

By that you mean overpriced dropshipping from aliexpress.

Everything I've seen on AliExpress has a 30-60 day delivery window. Amazon gets it there within a couple days. I don't mind paying a couple extra bucks to get something in 2 days vs 60. And that's not really drop shipping anyway.

Where do you shop instead?

Locally mostly. Also, surprisingly on walmart.com.

Edit: Also from manufacturers' websites.

I dislike Amazon but yes, my experience in what you have outlined is that it's generally amazing.

The parts that aren't amazing is getting items that aren't representative of what I ordered. But refunding is always a breeze when that occurs.

My problem is that it shouldn't be a thing that happens so often (to me). I shouldn't be shipped shoes of the wrong size 3 times before I get shoes of the size I ordered. I shouldn't be buying open box items without being told it's open box. I shouldn't be buying things with the completely wrong thing in them.

Now, all of these can be problems with big box retailers. But the sheer frequency it happens to me on Amazon - it's never happened at this frequency to anyone I know when we would shop in store. Yes, my friend once bought a graphics card at Fry's that just contained a box of rocks. But that was one friend, one time. I've had more of these issues on Amazon, the last ~7 years, than I have for all shopping experiences everywhere else that I've ever shopped combined.

My US based Amazon experience is like yours with fast shipping and easy refunds/exchanges, so don't lose hope. I guess with 100e6 or so customers, there are bound to be some bad experiences.

>" The service is stellar, shipping both ways is free as long as you buy products covered by prime. Refunds are with no questions asked"

This is my exact experience in Canada so far. But they did something else weird. I wanted to buy Google Store gift card from Amazon and as soon as I made the purchase my account was suspended. It had taken me few hours including lengthy phone call to sort things out. I was told that gift cards are widely used in fraud. Sure, whatever but then why FFS they sell those?

shipping both ways is 100% not free in canada. I went to price match a power supply I had just purchased and they said they don't price match. I said no worries since it's unopened I'll return it and buy it again and they quoted me $30 shipping to return it. I had prime and it was a prime item.

I've also reported businesses who sneak 'give us a 5 star review and we'll give you $30' cards into their parcels and amazon did absolutely nothing.

Amazon is amazing until you realize it isn't. I got rid of prime and suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk because I wasn't incentivized to get junk by the prime membership. If I have to wait to have enough stuff for free shipping minimums I can wait enough to look locally and 1/2 the time I can find it locally for similar cost and the other 1/2 it turns out I never needed it just wanted it.

Highly recommend getting rid of prime and taking a couple months off ordering anything from them - you'll find out not only is amazon not worth it, they're easily replaced.

>"shipping both ways is 100% not free in Canada."

It is free for what I order.

>"suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk"

I do not buy "junk" just what I really need (mostly for business), so do not have this problem. I buy some things locally as well but it is not my goal to favor either.

>"Highly recommend getting rid of prime"

I am very service averse person and am trying to use as little as possible. My phone for example does not even have data plan. If I do use some however (Amazon in this case) it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.

>It is free for what I order.

I thought that too until suddenly it wasn't.

>it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.

Only you know your balance book I guess

> There's simply nothing here in Europe that gets even close to what Amazon offers.

I strongly prefer bol.com. No idea if they ship abroad, though.

I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is more strict in Europe because their behavior from the US would get them in legal trouble here.

Maybe that, to some degree. But amazon.de has a lot of problems, too.

There are a lot of fishy listings, but it's also often quite easy to detect those fishy offers, because the German text is usually full of grammar and spelling errors, and often obviously a result from Google translate, and often not even fully translated, with larger parts still in (shoddy) English. Outright counterfeit products seem to be somewhat rare still, at least from what I observed, but there is quite a number of low quality knockoffs.

Or e.g. multiple journalists reported on review-rigging operations - usually organized through whatsapp, and using regular folks for a few bucks as "mules", to get some coveted "verified buyer" reviews. Or bait-and-switch listings, where they had an original listing which gathered some good/ok reviews, and then they repurpose that listing for another product, while keeping their stars.

Or e.g. there was a report about one guy who got like 10 - 20 packets a day with junk he never ordered, every day, over months. Apparently some shady sellers got hold of his info, and were using him as a "garbage bin" for excess stock[0]. While he wasn't charged for any of the products or shipping, he still ended up in a situation where his door bell rang a few times a day, and he ended up throwing away most of the stuff, having to properly dispose of it. And when contacted, amazon just told him to throw away the stuff he doesn't want. It's unlikely he was the only involuntary garbage bin victim.

[0] It wasn't clear why they did that. Maybe to inflate sales numbers to get higher ranked in the amazon search? Or because just shipping it through amazon to some random people might be cheaper than just keeping that stuff in the amazon warehouse or disposing of it properly?

Honestly maybe you just have a better detector than most.

I don't agree. It's extremely obvious when a listing on Amazon.de is sketchy because the German used is quite bad compared to normal listings.

I'm also quite skeptical of most positive reviews, because it's a known problem in Germany too. I don't think most people are aware of that though and still believe high ratings still mean anything.

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