Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad
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Think on that for a moment. The other inescapable conclusion is that whenever the quality of the shopping experience on Amazon and the needs of Amazon's advertising business clash, advertising will win (just as it has on Google). That's an even more foregone conclusion since Andy Jassy took on the top job, he's from AWS and owes no special allegiance to the historical e-commerce business.
Saying that the e-commerce arm is worthless isn't really the right way to think about it - the ads business only exists to due the e-commerce product. Both Amazon and Google are well aware that their ad revenues depend on their having users, who will ultimately leave if the product (ecommerce and search, respectively) isn't compelling. Both of them know that long-term success requires them to prioritize user experience.
Do they make bad decisions, either due to misaligned incentives internally or due to simply making mistakes? Undoubtedly. But it's also worth considering that they probably get the tradeoff right a lot of the time and most people simply aren't bothered by ads nearly as much as you'd like them to be.
At least with e-commerce and advertising it's clear they're worth more together. Without advertising the profits would be thin, and without e-commerce the advertising couldn't exist.
I would be interested to see an analysis of income per business sector*, including their advertising sector, for Amazon. fmajid would need that information to be able to make the conclusions they drew.
From article: “After selling $31 billion in ads last year, Amazon became the third-largest online ad company in the United States”
Hard to know what this means, since we can’t know how much it “cost” Amazon for those ads (especially the cost of consumer dissatisfaction as the article mentions, and what is opportunity-cost?)
* and ideally assets per sector as well, plus a metric for internal capital reinvestment (VC style).
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/how-amazon-makes-money-4587523 Amazon unfortunately seems to only report on their segments: North America, International, and AWS.
Of course user experience is prioritized: below advertiser experience.
Prioritization doesn't just mean things are on top, for everything but the top item it means things are below other things.
I’m not sure how much you’re into the Google ads world, but they have screwed the pooch on that recently as well (e.g., by gimping “exact match” keywords).
How did we arrive at this conclusion? No argument or evidence was put forward!
My persobal experience on both Google and Amazon has declined to the point where I now prefer aliexpress - most of the time its the exact same item but cheaper
Like, on first page I've found in Google (https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/amazon-revenue/) it says: AWS – ~17B Ads – ~9B Online stores – ~66B
I actually wouldn't be surprised if I'm misunderstanding something and you're right, but can I ask where you got these numbers?
Edit: On second read I realized the source I sent was misleading – the title talks about annual revenue, but hidden in the text there's a note saying that sub-headings actually show quarterly revenue. I'm still not sure about AWS-to-sales ratio, but my apologies for earlier confusion.
Typically in mergers, you see accretion due to the removal of duplicate functions on the cost side (you don’t need two HR departments for example), but sometimes you get negative credit if you’re a too big / too opaque / too confusing.
Not an authoritative source. No rationale given.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/27/aws-earnings-q3-2022.html
For the ads business, from The Information, but it's paywalled.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-s-pain-is-ama...
the info is in the second paragraph. The conlusions are entirely mine.
The WaPo article does mention $31B for last year.
Cultural as well, it forces the e-commerce coders to take infra cost seriously and alleviates cost center toxicity from infra teams.
Of course, these loyalty programs would be worthless without the airline itself as rewards.
I am curious, how did you figure out this 70% number? Why not 60%, not 80%?
1. Search for thing
2. Filter by department (necessary for 3)
3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon
4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+
5: Sort by price, Low > High
6: (Further filters as appropriate)
7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews
8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show only reviews for {the product variant you're actually looking at}". Closely scrutinise 1 and 2 star reviews.
But sometimes even this _still_ doesn't get me quite what I want, because when an item is sold both by Amazon and a 3rd-party it can be sorted based on the non-Amazon price.
It does feel just a little like Amazon's goals might not be perfectly aligned with those of the customer.
Reviews for sellers themselves are a joke too, I was looking at some earlier today, via black friday deals. The number of reviews with a line through them and "Amazon takes responsibility for this fulfillment-related experience" was hilarious, when those reviews were things like "the motor doesn't work". I guess those then aren't included in the "90% positive" statistic.
I was offered a refund and replacement of a newer version of the case in return for a better review.
The phone case was simply not fit for purpose as it was and the review fairly (I hope) highlighted this.
I accepted the replacement newer version and agreed to a more flattering review once the improved case was seen to indeed be improved. If the flaw had been fixed then it would be fair to reflect this in my review.
The improved case was no different and my review remained unchanged, except for an update reflecting the bribe.
It's the new normal. Airbnb is even worse, they used to (and still might) actually have customer service edit reviews. Your review will get removed with no notice, Amazon will let you know.
If you remove some or most negative reviews but leave positive ones, what do you get.
As if reviews exist only to give constructive feedback to property owners, rather than to warn other renters away from a bad experience!
“Interesting locals in the area!” = homeless people on your doorstep
I was once even warned by Amazon that my account could be deactivated for violation of the ToS after posting a review that pointed out all of the other fake reviews on a particular product. Apparently the ToS allow fake reviews and disallow shining a light on it.
You have a good chance to end with some chinese crap if you rely only on Amazon.
On some product, I prefer finding a specialized seller (that isn't dropshipping). Or find a real blog (tends to be hard with all those fakes websites listing top 100 products, but they nmask hemselves when all products are chinese crap on Amazon). Reddit also work to get advice from peoples.
What's more. I make research on the compagny producing the thing. LinkedIn helps with that. Only commercials on a tech product ? Get out.
Have you heard of https://reviewmeta.com/ ?, If not, give it a try, I use it regularly and it does as advertised.
I knew exactly the kind to look for but I couldn't just search for that and pick the first item on the list. I could have easily bought the wrong thing in one click and not known it.
Instead I had to spend about 30 minutes tweaking my search query, scrolling through SEO-spam listings ("NEW iPhone 14 Galaxy S21 MacBook Pro Windows 95 SE USB 2.1A cable 6cm!") and other listings which were all just the same listing but with a different no-name logo laser printed on the casing. Was on Google cross-referencing some of them to see if they'd actually be legit, since I'd trust a post in a niche forum over a review on a marketplace.
It took me longer to verify what I was buying than it did to go through checkout. Reminded me why Amazon stopped being my go-to.
Amazon search is so useless that about half the time I use DuckDuckGo to search Amazon itself.
For example: I recently ordered a €600 printer at a local retailer. The printer shipped in an unusable state (it refused to print and one of the paper feeds spit out a metal spring at me, not a good sign), so I sent it back. It took 6 weeks and an angry email from me for them to ship the replacement unit. With Amazon this just doesn’t happen, or at least, has never happened to me.
I think Amazon is going back to being a place where you only get certain things when you know exactly what you're looking for.
Here in Japan, Amazon is really popular, especially with expats. Other online sites are Japanese-only, so if you don't read Japanese well, Amazon is just much easier to use because it can be set for English, and will auto-translate everything that's in Japanese. The checkout process is also really simple. Japanese websites tend to have really poor UI too, and Amazon doesn't. Also, Amazon has relatively easy returns, unlike most Japanese retailers.
However, according to the grapevine things are getting worse. Instead of using reliable local shipping companies like Yamato or Sagawa, supposedly they're doing more delivery with freelance contractors and the results aren't good.
- cheaper
- easiest to search
- do not sell knockoffs, counterfeits and fake products
I know some people will raise the "you need to create another account for it annoyance" but it is not that annoying when you are using a password manager and the additionnal time spent could even be considered a feature to avoid compulsive buying.
Not to mention the extortionate fees such places charge because they prey on the elderly and technically illiterate. One of the majors(can't recall if Staples, Kinkos etc.) recently tried to charge my parents $2/page to fax some records to a new doctor which would have been >$100.
Verified purchase only & 1-2 stars lets me quickly scan through for those people who come back months after purchase to write reviews because the thing broke in some way. I don't care about good/middling reviews except in aggregate, but the bad ones are worth delving into.
3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon
This is harder and harder to do, especially on the app. I’ve started to use walmart instead. They also have this third party seller garbage but at least they make easier to filter out.
"Cable didn't work, instead it shortcircuited my TV".
Why do you still use it? Is it just because it's cheap?
Sometimes it's because of price, if something's significantly cheaper on Amazon I'll buy it from Amazon. Free delivery tips it in Amazon's favour sometimes.
Sometimes it's availability. It can be quite painful to order things from outside the UK, most sellers aren't equipped to deal with VAT/duty their end so I end up with the delivery company holding packages hostage until I pay those (which is fine) plus a £20-30 "admin fee" for their package-hostage service. Pre-Brexit I could avoid this by ordering from elsewhere in the EU, but now I'm even more limited. Looking through my Amazon purchase history 3 of the last 5 things I've ordered are only available from Amazon in the UK (and at twice the price from a couple of dodgy looking online stores I've never heard of).
The other reason is their returns policy, if the thing I order doesn't work they'll take it back with no fuss and refund the money. Other major retailers in the UK make this difficult, frustrating and/or time-consuming.
I think they succeeded in retail because of a relentless focus on making the experience for customers better than their competitors. That's all still there, in the background - but it's being eclipsed by some other part of the org that wants to trick those customers into buying a load of shit.
Fake reviews are paid for by sellers shifting tat that Amazon themselves will not sell (because someone in that bit of Amazon still cares about quality). If Amazon themselves wanted to add fake reviews they could easily do it in a way undetectable by Fakespot etc.
Fakespot in particular is a business with a business model, and that is (I think) all about ads and affiliate links. Just a guess, but probably VC-funded with a pressure to actually make a profit somehow. I am thus not their customer, and their incentives may not always align with mine so it's hard to trust them.
Search ads on shopping websites are just capitalism taken to the natural end. Hopefully degradation of user experience will curb it somewhat. Our only other option is some sort of new Internet Bill of Rights being passed and I’m not optimistic lobbyists would ever allow it. We need some sort of fund for humanity that hires lobbyists with greater funds. We need voters that vote for candidates that would support the human right to freedom from manipulation from corporations.
> Search ads on shopping websites are just capitalism taken to the natural end.
The issue is not just with search ads or shopping websites, but advertising in general. It's the primary business model of the modern web, and the main revenue stream for most Big Tech corporations. Considering their symbiotic relationship with governments, neither side has much incentive to change the status quo. Some change is slowly happening, but I suspect it will become much worse until it gets better.
We're lucky that ads are still somewhat blockable. Wait until browsers become WebAssembly interpreters, so that this isn't possible anymore, or for XR to become mainstream, allowing adtech to do much more invasive tracking and advertisers to buy a chance to deliver ads straight to your eyeballs. Label me a pessimist, but I don't see how any of this will be unavoidable in the near future, other than by becoming a luddite.
Sometimes the ads even betray themselves. Like I, as a rule, hate ads. I block them where I can, and where I can't, I do my best to ignore them. But then you get instances where the ad _is_ what you're actually looking for. Like if you search Amazon for "iPhone", you get official first party iPhone stuff from Apple, but they're sponsored listings. My proclivity to skip ads would make me scroll right past the only quality products on the whole page, into a slew of AliExpress level garbage.
For example, I'm an avid Sonic fan, but no amount of fan service could get me to sit through the constant advertising woven into the script. I'm going to just skip this franchise entirely. Whatever happened to just slipping a sign in the background?
Donate $3 to the Presidential Election Fund every year on your US taxes. It costs you nothing, is a single checkbox, and redirects $3 of your taxes into the fund.
Candidates that take money from the fund have additional (mostly good) limits placed on their spending.
It's not perfect, but it's free to do and creates an alternative to lobbyist funding.
https://www.thoughtco.com/presidential-election-campaign-fun...
From the "Public funds received 1976-present" on this page[0], usage of these funds has steadily declined, likely because "To be eligible to receive public funds, the presidential nominee of a major party must agree to limit spending to the amount of the grant and may not accept private contributions for the campaign".
0: https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/understand...
But better to be a part of a solution, if the opportunity cost is $0.
Had a very similar experience for another product as well.
At this point, I hesitate to look up stuff on Amazon just considering the time it takes to find stuff. I much rather prefer a curated list of products so someone else has done the weeding out.
It seems like Amazon’s philosophy of having the widest set of options for every product is actually not that useful in practice, at least for me.
The only reason I still keep going back is that they deliver many products on the same day to the neighborhood I live in.
Even when I have to resort to amazon, I usually end up using that info to find non amazon sites to purchase from. Why support a fake goods laundry service?
As someone who has been in the same situation I just go to my local Lowes/Home Depot now. The lighting section actually shows you what they look like turned on which is nice.
After doing some competitive price shopping it is rare that amazon's prices are competitive. I guess not having to go to the store is convenient?
> I much rather prefer a curated list of products so someone else has done the weeding out.
With amazon's commingling of inventory this isn't a workable solution.
I avoid Amazon in principle since many years (unless I _really_ need a product there), but that has never been hard, considering that most smaller stores always offered me more convenient prices, less hassle in searching, and the relief of not giving money to such a controversial giant.
Worked out for everyone, given that her customers would rather order on eBay and pay a little extra, compared to dealing with us. We got the price we wanted, plus we didn't have to deal with customer service.
Amazon comingles listings from Amazon themselves, FBA, and independent sellers shipping things themselves, so there's not really a good way of telling if you'll have a good experience or not.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/amazon-choice-badge-recommen...
> The company applies the “Amazon’s Choice” badge to some products that are unsafe, mislabeled and violate its own policies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. The label appeared on dozens of products that were banned, didn’t meet safety standards and featured fake safety certifications. It was also applied to controlled substances, like steroids and marijuana products, the Journal reported.
> In other cases, “Amazon’s Choice” listings were manipulated with specific keywords that would ensure they’d be included in the recommendation engine. The Journal discovered some third-party merchants have developed ways to game the algorithms that help determine which products are featured, by pushing consumers to buy an item, which artificially juiced sales and made it appear more popular.
For example, "Amazon Choice" for "high security padlocks" is a poorly made Chinese knockoff that can be raked.
Sponsored links are always useless and should only be scrolled past on Amazon.
Typical disappointing Amazon experience:
Search for LED 8W. First result, sponsored link to an 11W bulb. Then a sponsored link to a fake marketing 21 watt bulb with fake lumen marketing. Then a sponsored link to six pack of 14W bulbs. The 4th link returned is a sponsored link to a 8W designer clear glass thing which is at least not off topic.
Not all searches are as toxic as LEDs. If you search for "oil 5w-30" only 10% or so of search results are totally wrong (like 10w-30, or 5w-40)
Another hilarious search term "chocolate almond milk" most of the results are bulk almonds, some milk-product made of bananas, several oat milk results, chocolate almondmilk pudding (OK, close enough, but weird), protein bars made of almonds, some soy shake drink, starbucks frappuccino vanilla, pea-protein fake milk, admittedly at least 1/3 of results are on topic.
I just searched for "4-40 SHCS" (a SHCS is a socket head cap screw, like to fix a car part). About 2/3 of the results are on topic, but then Amazon throws in "D'Moksha Small Short Thanksgiving Holiday Navy Table Runner Or Dresser Scarf (14 x 36 Inch)", what? Some of it is just bizarre. I specified 4-40 size so I get a search result for 5/8-11 machine bolts. OK then.
Its getting hard to buy stuff on Amazon, like they're actively trying not to sell what you ask for.
I do EE type stuff at work and home and I am spoiled by professional sites like Digikey, if you search for a 1K resistor they present you with a parametric search result of 1K resistors, not random assortments of 74HCT logic chips or teddy bears or rolls of solder like Amazon would.
Yet I still buy almost everything on Amazon, and I still go through the pains of navigating around the sponsored products. The checkout, shipping, and returns experience is why I still use Amazon - not sure how long that lasts
The cynical comments here align with my experience: when leadership demands now revenue, there is an iterative game where the only correct answer is "increase revenue now." If you run enough A/B tests and ask this question enough times over a large enough organization, more ads and 3p always result.
Most companies are trying hard to produce a great user experience. However, it's hard to measure subtle degradations to buyer experiences, especially when those degradations happen after the purchase or quality metrics corrupted by motivated sellers or advertisers. This is one reason obsession with A/B testing drives this poor user experience: it's hard to measure. Revenue now is easy to measure.
Another aspect you may not see as a buyer is that when the market is down, sellers are SCREAMING at their platforms to fix the problem. Same iterated game: give boost (discount, ad credits etc.), less screaming (for that team right now). What you see as bad as a buyer may be trying to appease sellers.
For recommended products, Amazon's algorithm prefers widgets that generate more revenue (which sponsored products has a huge advantage with), and thus those products typically get ranked higher.
The alternative is track down the original, individual vendor and deal with their custom sign up, shopping cart, shipping, and support on their site. Repeat with each different vendor for next purchase.
As much as Amazon hates its customers and vendors, it's got a consistent experience.
Where are these vendors that require you to sign up before you can buy their stuff? If you don't want to sign up... don't.
And since most of them actually outsource their websites to shopify or whoever, the user experience is basically as consistent as Amazon.
Home Depot
Best Buy
Walmart (this is getting polluted with "vendors")
The end of the (long) driveway is treed so sometimes we are literally hunting in the woods for our package after an OnTrac delivery.
I stopped prime a couple years ago, I buy from other stores when I can, but sometimes you just need protein powder, spray bottles, stove gaskets, a 300 piece puzzle, and a cello stand. Amazon makes it possible to just buy one spot.
It's much worse than that. They no longer offer fast shipping; you're not allowed to pay for it even if you want it.
I think Amazon lives off the backs of folks like me, or maybe people that shop slightly more than me but not much. If I was the type of person shopping for things everyday I'd imagine I would branch out. But for the vast majority of folks consistency is king.
I think this is the only thing keeping them afloat. How are you so sure you’re not getting ripped off? Did you know counterfeits can be sold under the “sold by anazon.com” branding because of co-mingling?
I used to have the same view as you until I started getting shoddy products consistently from brands that were otherwise high quality if I purchased in store. Then I realized I had no way to tell if what I was purchasing was real, and I started questioning why the lack of toothpaste I bought tasted different than normal and had off-color printing.
I’m just increasingly finding it not worth the worry, especially for things I put I my body.
If you do not _feel_ you've been ripped off, does it matter?
Feeling like you got ripped off is one thing, having your house burn down from faulty electronics is much worse etc etc.
When I arrived, I checked to see if it was legitimate, and… it was not. It was a knock-off.
It was fine as a ladle. It ladled things. I never would’ve noticed or complained if I hadn’t seen the rules. No harm, no foul, right?
Absolutely not. That day I made a rule that I do not buy anything that goes on your skin, in your body, or health and safety kit from Amazon. If I can’t trust their ladles are authentic, I can’t trust their sunscreen or thermometers are authentic.
So, while the ladle didn’t harm me directly, it did pretty significant change my purchase habits.
I have also had a bad experience with "Sold by Amazon.com" so I'm not questioning the veracity of what you are saying. But how does this work? How can someone get a counterfeit product under this umbrella?
Seller A sells real Product Z on Amazon. Seller B sells fake Product Z on Amazon. When you order Product Z that is "Sold on Amazon" you might get a real one provided by Seller A, or you might get a fake one sold by Seller B
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201125141347/https://www.forbe...
[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4495986/1/apple-inc-v-m...
[3] https://www.geekwire.com/2016/daimler-ag-sues-amazon-knockof...
People selling DVDs on Amazon were complaining about bad reviews because someone bought from them, but got a counterfeit sold by someone else.
Look at Keepa for historic prices
I'm not going to go out and make 3 different accounts on sites that aren't Amazon, when I could save time and buy anything ranging from auto parts to PC parts to groceries on the same website.
Yes, a lot of it is rebadged Ali junk, but guess what, sometimes that junk actually does the work it's supposed to. If I'm buying a plastic towel hook for the bathroom, I really don't care where it comes from or if it's 50c cheaper on another website.
My experience before I got rid of Amazon years ago started out similar but then I found that the process of shopping took longer and longer - trying to compare 50+ versions of the same thing, filtering out dubious looking sellers and brands etc. I actually started to feel like the experience was worse than just going to a store and carrying the the thing home. I also started to think the prices weren't really all that great because they became the same or or often slightly more expensive that what I could find in a brick and mortar store. Couple this with a general decline in Amazon's last mile delivery which seemed to be a whole other shit show where the contracting parcel service would mark them as delivered even though they hadn't actually been deliver yet and it just became a really miserable experience. Should you need to contact customer service and speak to someone you can pretty much dispense with another half hour of your time.
>"But for the vast majority of folks consistency is king."
For me there was very little consistency in the Amazon experience. It was hit and miss. From reading this article though it sounds like the thing that is consistent is an increasingly worse experience.
For every one of you, I'm sure there's a dozen who have had no issues with the product. And I'm sure there's been plenty of people who have had the same issue with a name brand product that was made in the same factory by the same process and people.
> Yet throwaway brands peddling junk that wouldn't have realistically made it onto the shelves of a big box store is a real problem on Amazon's marketplace, and other similar ones.
Either it's a defective batch of products that would have been sold under a brand name or its junk that would have never been sold at all. Both of these can't be true of the same product.
I'd also argue that being sold at a big box store is not really indicative of much in the 21st century.
If you haven't already, I'd recommend spending some time reading about what it takes to get a product on the shelf at Wal-Mart/Target/Costco. When a companies reputation relies on what it is selling, the bar becomes a lot higher.
I've seen people complain that the vendor contact info is obfuscated and untraceable when it's obviously the business owner's personal home address. People will say anything about Chinese vendors.
Returns are as easy as scanning a barcode at the post office. Product reviews are meaningful and don't have bi-modal distributions. Spam and knocks offs are non-existing.
The only downside is that I pay slightly more for shipping but arguably I am biased to believe that logistics couriers should have a living wage.
I can't think of a single reason to recommend Amazon to anybody.
I was able to get a label for one item and shove all the others in the same box and it worked. For now.
I don’t buy unknown Chinese brands for stuff like that. And that’s getting harder. But that’s a separate issue.
EDIT: Also collectables and randomised products such as trading cards.
2 day shipping costs more, they didn't even get it here in 2 days, they split my order into 8 orders, each tracked and emailed separately. I've been boycotting Amazon almost 5 years, but their competition really sucks to the point I'm thinking of going back. At least I've been able to avoid a lot of frivolous purchases for a while...
Amazon at least maintains the fig leaf of plausible deniability and part of that is no questions asked returns.
To use costco I have to buy at least $75 or shipping is not free. Walmart I have to fill out all my personal info and credit card info, and it's never same day shipping and sometimes there is a minimum amount I need to spend.
Driving to a store to pick up an item like this is just a giant waste of my time, gas, increases the chance of someone denting my side door in a parking lot from 0% to more than 0%.
There is no alternative that even comes close for simple items.
Write yourself a note if necessary (post-it, phone app, whatever) and buy Kleenex the next time you're at the supermarket.
Amazon is not driving the Kleenex from the warehouse to my house in an empty car!
My delivery is an incremental carbon footprint. Going to the supermarket is significantly worse.
- I see reviews for the items and some of them aren't fake. The negative reviews with specific issues are particularly important (weak hinge, plastic parts, noisy, difficult warranty support, etc.). I know some other marketplaces either don't have reviews (ebay) or can trivially remove negative reviews (shopify sites).
- I can return items without too much hassle.
This is undeniably a little more work that just searching on Amazon and buying the first option. But it's about the same amount of work as using Amazon properly (skipping the sponsored listings, filtering out the dubious non-Amazon sellers, figuring out which reviews are fake, trying to tell whether the nominal maker is a real company versus some weird algorithm cloner or re-reseller, worrying over whether Amazon's inventory-mixing means I'll get a fake, etc).
I still end up buying some things from Amazon, but it's fewer and fewer, and I'm usually happier with the total outcome now.
At first I thought it was gonna be an impossible effort, but since I'd take Google over Amazon any day (although also not super happily), I do a lot of the last mile (finding a good/non-shady offer for a specific product I've already decided to buy through reviews) there. And usually I find it cheaper with equally fast shipping. For stuff I commonly buy, there are really strong competitors (at least in Germany) that I buy from by going directly to their website.
Had to first realise that a lot of the stuff Amazon was at first unique for, is now pretty much a commodity. And their offering certainly hasn't improved in the last years in my eyes.
I only started using them in 2017 and I still do use them sparingly. But typically only for stuff I buy directly from the brand's store on Amazon.
There are a few brands I still trust. They may all be going downhill at some point and the "official store" may actually be some front for cheap copies that stole the brand name, I don't know... But so far it looks okay to me.
Anker, Osram, Makita, S.T. Dupont (for refills), etc.
Last thing I bought from Amazon from some random brand was a box of 200 firelighters, supposedly ecological. I don't know if the brand is "true" or not, I don't know if they're actually ecological or not (they look like but it may all be a scam) but... They were cheap and they do actually help greatly lighting the fireplace.
So far Anker stuff looks like it's actually Anker stuff. Makita tools do look and feels like Makita tools, etc.
That's why I keep using them.
Now I do find the experience painful and I'm 100% sure that all these identical products but branded different when I search on Amazon for, say, 316L stainless steel are stuff that are going to rust in six months.
So I'd say that people using it because even if Amazon broken, it's still convenient to find all your usual brands in one place.
Does this work? My spouse recently purchased some 3M N-95 masks directly from 3M’s Amazon store. They’re supposed to arrive in a box that has a code on it which you can enter into 3M’s website to verify it’s real and not a counterfeit. Instead they arrived in a clear plastic bag with no printing on it. There’s no code so I can only assume they’re either fakes or were pull from a larger box (which means potentially handled inappropriately). Given my spouse’s immune condition, that’s not a chance we really want to take so we’re going to throw them out.
Here's where you can report this fraud in the US: https://www.cbp.gov/trade/e-allegations/violations
At least in Germany, using Amazon is often the easiest way to buy copies of foreign-language (often, but not always English) textbooks about scientific topics.
Perhaps the reason is that the scientific textbooks that I love to buy are often "long-tail business", i.e. textbooks about very specialized topics.
The situation is even more biased towards Amazon if we are talking about used obscure textbooks in good condition for a fair price.
https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/fulfillment-by-ama...
Use a tool like Ahrefs (you can get 7 days free iirc, or just use it for a month and then cancel) to find keywords people search for in your niche and start writing. When you're selling stuff on the internet, keyword data is illuminating!
Use keyword data to think about why people want a Geiger counter (I see you have a survey!) and the kinds of problems they have, then show them how yours fixes their problem.
People don't have to worry about that problem when they walk into a Walmart. They know the pricing has been carefully reviewed before the product touches the shelves. They know they're not going to see two identical products at Walmart with different stamped logos selling for $5 and $30. There's a level of trust you can buy any item and it's a fair value.
Now, it’s always the choice of last resort. I really don’t like it when I have to shop on Amazon.
It feels like a combination of AliExpress and eBay. Delivery times are getting worse by the day too.
Along with that, I stream movies on my TV, running clients, usually Netflix or Prime Video, on my xbox. Increasingly the Amazon prime video client wants to present me with options to "Rent or Buy" instead of free offerings (I am a Prime subscriber after all, and seek to take advantage of the free streaming offerings), sometimes a page of results will contain nothing but pay-to-play offers.
In my experience Amazon has the best streaming service now. There's nothing on Netflix I want to see and I'd have cancelled the service a long time ago if it were not for my wife and 10 year old daughter.
Unlimited greed is what eventually sinks a company. We saw it with AltaVista in the '90's (when the search results were all ads) and Google is slowly repeating this opening a space for a competitor to jump into.
I'm not sure this is a helpful characterization. Greed is also what helped the same companies get where they were before they went to shit.
The problem is that you can only grow so far in a market before the only way to keep the appearance of growth is to make your product worse, either by producing it cheaper (like Toblerone) or by monetizing it harder (e.g. ads in paid video subscriptions).
Optimizing the best result for each query can result in a terrible result for the minority of shoppers for that query. More importantly, it can lead to a terrible result for the majority of shoppers across many queries.
The problem is other considerations that A/B testing metrics often leave out (Satisfaction in the long term, in searches that dont lead to sale, and across multiple changes)
That is to say, on average most shoppers might want cheap shit for a given search. but sometimes, they might want a different/better product and get frustrated.
If you over optimize for the typical use case, you might still lose the typically user because they not typical in every way and every day.
This is what Amazon has done. They took their Marketplace and turned it into a search engine for the cheapest drop shipped product
https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-49-inch-Odyssey-FreeSync-LC49...
There's a little box that says:
>Protect your purchase
>Coverage for drops, spills and breakdowns (plans vary)
If you click through you'll see that the plan specifically excludes drops and spills. Two of the three things they advertise for.
Like that's just fraud and someone at Amazon green-lit this knowing that it's just fraud. It's not optimization gone haywire. It's discovering that you can make money scamming people and not having any qualms about scamming your customers.
Maybe there are specific conditions, like it might help laundering or help deter competitors from entering their website, whatever that this scheme has a net positive gain for them, but this is insanity.
Theoretically being too greedy like that should open niche for competition with better product that's less exploitative but that is really hard if the near-monopolist on market is big enough or the product is hard enough.
Google too needs to be vigilant that it's decreasing utility isn't driving away users to a competitor.
It used to be that a fairly normal, mainstream company's purpose and goals were along the lines of "We make a product or provide a service, and doing that well enough/better than our competition makes us decent money."
Nowadays, it seems to be almost expected that the way a company operates is closer to "We are here to make as much money as we possibly can. If that means we have to make a product or provide a service, OK, but that's a necessary evil to the process of making absolutely ungodly amounts of money."
Google didn't get where it was before it went to shit because of greed. They got there because of genuine technical prowess, and a willingness to sacrifice possible revenue to provide an improved experience, with things like the bare-bones main Google page (as compared to things like Yahoo!, Altavista, and Infoseek when Google first appeared, which were laden down with all kinds of crap).
When greed took over, they shifted from the former mindset to the latter, and that's when things really started to go downhill.
Wish there was a way to filter out products by their country of origin. Is there any alternative out there?
I have to say, we have gotten extremely complacent if “half” your page being filled with ads is considered acceptable. I can understand the unfortunate reality that online services need ads to survive, but surely half of a screen is still far from acceptable.
And back to Amazon, i just don't search for generic products name on there. I just go to check if they have a specific product.
Same for the iOS app store etc. You just can't trust them.
It's a Poe's law world we live in.
I have to admit that it has become difficult also for me to find a simple item without too much bias on Amazon. Last search I did a few days ago was for some beard balms and things like that. Finally, for some items I bought a known "safe" brand, while for other things I couldn't decide on I chose a local shop nearby. Yes, this exclusively because of the issue described in the article.
So it seems: if you don't know ahead what to buy, Amazon is not a good place to search for things. On the other hand, it's convenient for subscriptions to items you know you want and need (pampers, toilet paper, etc.)
...and don't get me started on "let's search for products made in XYZ" to narrow down the search. It's just impossible.
While I don’t mind YouTube ads -- I have disabled ad blockers on that domain because I’m an electronic musician myself so strongly feel it’s important to support artists and musicians -- these Amazon ads are in my book unethical, since they look like legitimate results with only a light grey “sponsored” in small text underneath them.
Don’t get me started with how Amazon pesters me to join Prime every time I order with them.
[1] I've noticed the re-emergence of Experts Exchange style sites on Google recently. For technical questions Stack Overflow or official docs are often near the bottom of the first page, while sites like w3schools or geeksforgeeks are at the top with much less useful content.
(Kagi is worth the subscription even w/o that: user is paying for search, not advertisers paying for eyeballs.)
Is it just me or does it feel like the major tech companies
have completely lost the war against bots/spam?
That's a name I haven't heard for a long time. I decade ago, I worked for a company in that space. It was dying back then, getting killed by Google product ads and Amazon.
For example, I've been trying to find what 5k2k/WUHD monitors they have, but it completely ignores that and returns WQHD/etc, so I'm no better off than just scrolling through the entire monitor category myself.
All my other (amateur) residential construction tools are battery at this point, and I’d rather not buy a compressor and drag it around just for siding.
Why do you think the manufactures have avoided battery siding nailers? Too heavy?
This would've been unthinkable in the old days (Amazon customer since 1995).
I'm assuming you order from Amazon marketplace retailers who you trust, and do their own shipping.
Alexa is named after the Library of Alexandria. Their other products are named Kindle and Fire.
Got my attention more than than anything else. Seems to really be pushing antitrust to new heights?
In the early 2000s, I dont remember this being a problem.
It is not your imagination, reading on WaPo has gotten worse.
I don’t think they understand that when more than 50% of listings are obviously bogus you don’t have much confidence in the ones that remain. For me AMZN went from the first place I looked to the last.
It's probably the best price comparison website that I've seen, and it has soooo many dedicated filters for each category.
I don't know how to buy hardware when geizhals is gone, because both amazon and ebay are the most ignorant searches that I've used. No matter what you type in there, no matter how often, no matter what you "quote".
Everything gets pushed aside for the sake of useless ads that have nothing to do with the things you are searching there.
With geizhals, you see the price history, a lot of similar products, and a lot of feature based comparions that you can do when you're undecided on what to get. And a lot of private/ company online shops that are included in their dataset, so you can support them.
For example, take a look at the filter options in the CPU categories. It's insane what kind of development went into it. [1]
I've been floating like $100+ of amazon credits for months because I keep getting damn gift cards and more credit from returns. Sure there is things I kind of want, but I end up saving it for things I need, and then when I waste time researching what to buy on Amazon, I end up not buying it on Amazon because of their awful fake reviews and cloned YGGFSS named brand items.
It's a real shame that brick-and-mortar stores don't realize their advantage is that I'd rather pay more and drive to pick something up TODAY than waste time waiting and risking garbage on prime, yet they flood their own stores with "online seller marketplace items" or nothing is ever in stock.
What does this mean?
Examples from a search for bike fenders: TAGVO, XINBOUS, MEGHNA, NICEDACK, RBRL BRL, ENLEE, FETESNICE, JIVMEE
AMZN is killing them based on the strength of their product line but killing themselves because the product listings are flooded with bogus results that you just don’t get with reputable but failing retailers.
What I hate is all the fake reviews influencing my choice. You buy something highly reviewed then receive some giftcard/offer or something in the packaging saying to leave a review and get something in return.
Now I have to "reddit productX" and read there before making a choice.
Love the idea, and I actually used your site when shopping for espresso machines recently.
I just worry about social media agencies turning their tactics onto ranking in your algo. There are SEO kings reading this thread right now...
FMCG companies typically pay a lot of money in so called trade funds to the likes of Walmart, Tesco, and others. One company I worked for spent Approx 20pct of its topline a year on that - double digit billions. Ostensibly, this is to place the product on the right shelves, run promos and have the products featured in the chains' newsletters.
The real reason is, however, efficient taxation. The "trade funds" make all the profit for legacy retailers. Branded products are sold at near zero, or sometimes - if allowed - negative margins. The operating companies make near-zero taxable profits. The marketing spend is typically channeled to different legal entities than actual sales and taxed "efficiently". I think it might be the same with Amazon.
Results are loaded up with so much junk that I've started to wonder if there is a good arbitrage opportunity here. Basically filter out the garbage and fake reviews in your own curated search and recommendation site. Get paid via Amazon affiliate program.
AWS, on the other hand, feels pretty sustainable.
Maybe with enough time, non-Amazon services will pop up more and more with the same kind of reach.
I think postal shipping is still within reach in USA, but in Canada, the post sees parcels as a profit-centre and are shouting themselves in the foot as their volumes drop.
However they don't have this option probably because then none of these ads would be relevant.
By the way, another thing I've noticed is that Amazon sometimes doesn't even come up with the right products if you type the actual product name. It just comes up with suggested crap that's not what you're looking for. The actual thing I want does not come up, even on the further pages.
Often I think Amazon doesn't have the thing I want, and then I google (or duckduckgo more often) it to find it somewhere else, and the first result is... A link to Amazon with the thing I wanted! In stock, first-party and for a good price.
It's really ridiculous that I have to use a third-party search engine to find what I need when I specify exactly what I want!
Is this an affect of differing laws in the EU versus the USA? Differences in leadership of Amazon.com versus Amazon.de? Differences in perceived market expectations? Perhaps the average American consumer is expected to be more tolerant of this kind of thing? (I wonder because I compare the robo-call-infested hellscape that we've made of our telephone system compared to the rarity of such abuse where I live in Europe and wonder if we, in the US, are just more prone to behave in a way that produces tragedies of the commons.)
Just to ensure that you don’t buy a fake product, it’s now normal to check if there are any 3rd parties using Amazon warehouses in the Other Sellers section
Perhaps there is a way to get there directly but the only way I know is to search for the brand name, scroll down until one of the brand's products appears (even if the offered example isn't what you want), click on that, and then on the product page you'll see "visit the <brand> store", if there is one. I assume it's something the company has to pay for as well.
Actually I just tried searching for "kitchenaid store" and mirable dictu the first page of results was all kitchenaid products.
I would give up on Amazon but some smaller brands (e.g. Anker) sell only through Amazon.
- Fake products, including outrageously a Delonghi coffee machine (paint came off the buttons after a few days and then the machine just broke). - Chinese crap with brand names that sound computer generated - Here in EU you'll get some product descriptions in the wrong languages (Polish, Italian ... on the .fr domain), or images that have Chinese text on them.
Good
- The refurbished / Amazon warehouse stuff is great. Just bought 2x 27" computer screens at a price far, far lower than what any other shop was offering. Same for a PS4 a couple years back. Looking at doing the same for a television. Who cares it the remote doesn't have batteries or some cable is missing. No other store here in EU comes close to the prices Amazon has.
I don’t know if the filtered results are that much better. But it is free from blatant ads.
I was at Amazon for over a decade. Show YoY growth in terms of revenue, you’ll get a bigger empire. Sr. Managers become Directors. Directors become VPs. The senior engineers who worked on the low latency performance optimization becomes principals. The tech program managers become principals as well.
All the other cogs in the chain either get burned out, managed out, or they bounce to AWS, maybe Alexa.
All the analysis and commentary in this thread is interesting, but there’s nothing complex here. It’s basic incentive structures incentivizing undesirable outcomes.
I really can't see any differences (which I suppose is the point the article is making)... but if so, how are they confident what the highlighted listings are ads?
So the author has stockholm syndrome. What I do is go to the company website and see where I can order besides amazon. Though some sellers only do sell on amazon.
This is basically an echo of the Ticketmaster post a week or two ago. I hate them and they abuse me as a customer but I still keep giving them money.
Nowadays I just go to brand.com and shop from there, it cost 5-25% extra, but at least I have some guarantee that I will not end up with a fake.
If they were actually confident in this, they could give every user the option to toggle ads on or off. Maybe even limit that option to Amazon Prime subscribers.
These days when i buy something at Amazon it's because i found out elsewhere that one particular product is being offered at a good price there.
Lots of Amazon ads? Sure. But they're generally useful, and the teams building the "not as profitable e-commerce" will be making something people love.
Ads are pollution, cancer, and pandemic.
When will the masses buckle under this incessant accursed FATIGUE and demand enough be enough?
So you have to appear novel to early adopters, and grow into being a landfills cash cow in a politically correct way.
i noticed that i was needing to return way too much of the stuff i ordered.
clothes sizes were completely wrong or the material was just cheap.
cords and other accessories were cheap or just plain the wrong item.
household items _really_ didn’t match the pictures. scale was all wrong, etc…
it’s just so much easier to walk into a store, actually touch the product and literally walk away with it immediately knowing that it’s what i wanted.
it’s also just nice to be out and about.
i suppose im lucky that i live in a populated area and have physical stores i can go to tho. a lot of people don’t have that option.
it really is frustrating how low online shopping has sunk. but the amount of deception shops have turned to online is just an awful experience.
I find myself “shopping” by looking at my previous orders and selecting things that I liked before.
Amazon Prime is now more of a $10/month source of streaming entertainment content.
It does feel good to buy direct from manufacturers but I do a price comparison with Amazon first.
But part of me thinks the problem is not just digging it is that many vendors moved off Amazon in general.
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Sure it is. It's legalized production of mass-insanity.
When communication isn't intended to fuck your mind we call it "news" or "conversation" or something like that.
Advertising is most definitely 100% evil. The only reason anybody says otherwise is because that implies all kinds of scary stuff about our society and nobody wants to go there. Also, because such statements offend our sponsors. And also, if you are in the advertising business, talk like that makes you look like a real Morlock.
I think that's crystal clear.
We are seeing how capitalism is advancing to its next phase: false advertising. Shorty after will follow another phase: extortion (uncancellable subscriptions, automatically signed legal agreements, etc.)
amazon fucked up bad by chasing growth at all costs. sounds like a lot of tech companies these days.
(this comment is sponsored by Honey, the best way to save money online)
Might as well not have written the article in the first place.
Media is eating itself. And then they are all STUNNED to find out that Fox News has more readers then them. You know who else doesn't bombard you with paywall nagscreen shit? Infowars! Breitbart.
https://i.imgur.com/1Utp2dF.png
The results keep going like that. You see constant repetition of the exact same units with slightly different branding, often with the same stock photography, repeated for page after page. It used to be that you could count on Amazon to give you pretty solid results when you wanted something. It was great, it really took the fuss out of shopping when you didn't have to do 10 google searches when you needed to buy a USB cable or something. Now Amazon is nothing more than AliExpress with faster shipping. Shame.
The reason I say it isn't cheap is because when I ignore the fake labels and look at actual goods delivered equivalents can be bought locally for similar price (sometimes cheaper, sometimes more expensive) without insane wait time and with warrenty.
IMO 6000 is too fine for majority of Western kitchen knifes and most non-expensive Japanese knifes. I would go with 1000 and 3000-4000.
(*I said _often_, meaning I concede that it is sometimes actually not cheaper: please resist the urge to provide counter-examples, I know of their pricing trickery!)
I usually check things when they arrive pretty throughly no matter who I buy from and I hate how I have to waste my time doing it
Sometimes these goods may be good, but often or not they are low quality, have obvious defects or break down after few weeks / months of use.
https://www.amazon.com/External-Portable-11000GB-Compatible-...
(Um, yeah. And look at the reviews.)
Then there is this shady one with multiple amazon listings, similarly bait and switch, reviews are odd https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BJPWNZQQ https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BJDVZLYC https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BBB77M9C https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BJQ8MBMB
The products may actually be somewhat decent, but based on the tactics involved and the shady reviews, I wouldn't put my money on something that can shock you or burn your house down, so I eventually just went with reputable panasonic one.
https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/tools/shapton-sharpening-sto...
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802919678760.html
^ You have to click on the 1000/6000 grit to see the price of $26.53.
Pretty much everything people buy is cheap Chinese crap anyhow.
Interestingly enough though it shows me $16.70 for just the stone. Maybe they're doing some price discrimination or you're shipping to a cheaper place.
This.
Once i realized what was taking place on amazon I simply moved to AliExpress. I mean if i am going to get something from there anyhow i might as well save the middleman fees and take the hit on shipping.
I canceled my prime membership a while ago as well. I don't see how amazon can continue to simply be a front end for AliExpress for long. Wont most simply avoid the added fees and go to Ali directly?
Amazon's delivery date is friday? Want to guess where amazon's distribution warehouse is? A few blocks away from me.
The point you are attempting to make is unclear. If the distribution hub is within walking distance from me, why does it take days to ship?
Also — if you’re in the US, today is a holiday and nothing will move. So today and yesterday had/has limited movement between distribution centers. And as we get closer to Christmas, the entire network will start to approach saturation.
There are many reasons why things don’t always ship as fast as you’d like them to.
1) I am not assuming the products are from different warehouses. I know this for a fact. Look at my other post and i stated one item is being shipped from a warehouse ~120 KM away. I will guess the rest is from the local warehouse? Once amazon updates the shipping details (probably friday AM) it will show me where it came from..
2) I'm in Canada and it is not a holiday here so it is unclear why "today and yesterday had/has limited movement between distribution centers."
3) Amazon Canada rarely uses other carriers anymore. I cant tell you when the last time anyone i know received something that didnt use their own in-house shipping service so you cant really blame "UPS/Fedex"
And it doesn’t even ship (UPS) until a few days before the delivery date. And they still don’t do a good job combining orders.
But some things do take longer. I guess it depends on stock levels.
As i posted i ordered a few items on tuesday and delivery will be friday.
One of the items tracking details shows me that it is being shipped from a city ~ 120KM away yet there is a massive 1,000,000 square foot hub within waking distance from me??
Tracking hasn't updated to show me where the rest of the stuff is being shipped from so i can speak to the entire order.
This gets to the CORE issue with amazon. Because i no longer have prime my stuff is almost intentionally held back to encourage me to get prime?
It will not surprise me at all to see that when shipping is finally updated the other items on my list come from the local hub.
Not all hubs hold all items and because of this your shipping times can fluctuate.
OTOH I still notice the problem that other people have mentioned - that practically everything on Amazon these days is the same repackaged Chinese dropshipped garbage. Which is one reason I shop on Amazon far less than I used to.
Of course I'm sure things are different if you live on Mull or Fair Isle, but for the vast majority of us it seems reliable
The quality of what you get from amazon is of course somewhat different.
Then every once in a while you get something that takes a month to deliver, comes in a package covered with customs stamps, and is roughly the size and shape of what was ordered but wrong. I ordered a titanium tube one time - think the dimensions of a reusable drinking straw - and after a month got a solid titanium rod. "Mail it back and we'll give you a refund." There's a bit of unfair asymmetry there, friend, since you're mailing stuff to the US all day and I wouldn't have the faintest clue how to send something to China, and I'm guessing it's going to cost far more than the thing I'm returning.
But I'm an addict and I don't see myself cancelling Prime any time soon.
I've driven around large parts of the western US and there's a LOT of empty space. I don't know how many shipping centers Amazon has in the UK, but I am about 99.999% sure that there's areas of the US larger than all of the British Isle that are served by a single warehouse and shipping center.
So the variability in the US is going to be very high. Some places that happen to be near a shipping center, or two, will have consistent on-time delivery. Other places that are distant from one, and may have a high mountain pass that's dicey in winter or closed because of wildfires in the summer between them and that single center, are going to have problems.
To give you an idea:
I live just outside Toronto (Ontario, Canada) and if i want to drive east to the next province (Quebec) it will take me 4 hours to cover the 450 KM. If i want to go to the next province to the west (Manitoba) It will take me 20 hours to cover the 2,000 KM. So to cut across Ontario you are looking at something like 2,450 KM
This is just my province of Ontario. The other provinces are not as large, but the country is vast when looking at Europe.
Using google maps, i can drive from the south (footbridge) to the north (ChargePlace,Scotland) and this ~ 1,200 KM?
In the case of my very simple order, one item is being shipped from 120KM away?
How often do you order something simple and one of the distribution hubs is 120KM away from you? There is a massive 1 million square foot hub a few blocks away but i guess it isnt big enough to hold what i wanted?
I hope this provides some context for you.
25 years ago, I lived in a city of Rijeka. You could start from Croatia; enter & drive through entire country of Slovenia; enter into Italy and go shopping into Trieste, two countries over - in 75km.
Now I'm in the Greater Toronto Area, and my best friend lives about the same distance, officially in the same city or metro.
There's just over two thousand kilometers between the capitals of two neighbouring provinces in Canada (Winnipeg & Toronto). Or you could go through dozen countries, with all of their states and provinces in Europe for same distance (e.g. Geneva to Istanbul or similar).
Distances are vastly different and people's attitude toward them as well - what is daily commute in GTA used to be a yearly vacation pilgrimage in my childhood :)
This is something Europeans also overlook.
I use to commute to Toronto every day. 100KM return trip daily, 500KM a week...
I think Most Europeans would be surprised to know we have a train system which basically travels back and forth from Hamilton to Oshawa all day long.. 127KM one way. Basically the Width of England at the more narrow part and yet we consider this a "greater Toronto area" train system.
People in Toronto dont think about how there are countries which would fit in this distance, Europeans dont think about how a daily passenger train service would cross the country dozens and dozens of times each day.
Your 127km one way train is about the same as the new Reading-Shenfield Cross London service which runs 6 times an hour 18 hours a day (well will do from next year), and less than the 160km Bedford-Brighton Thameslink service. It's pretty much the "Greater London Area", although that term is of course steeped in politics. The Paris RER D line is 190km and runs 466 trains a day, and is a "greater Paris area" train system
The Greater Toronto Area has broadly the same population as the Frankfurt Rhine-Main area, but is only half the area.
The "Slovenia is only 75km wide" claim is meaningless. Greenwich, CT to Oakland NJ is 75km and crosses the entire state of New York, a state with 10 times the population of Slovenia.
Indeed talking about New Jersey and Slovenia, they're a similar size, but NJ has about 5 times the population of Slovenia.
If something works for Slovenia, why doesn't it work for New Jersey?
So why is Toronto so small compared with Europe?
It's not a Geography problem, the challenges of serving the tiny number of people that like in rural North Dakota are a cruch to hide America's other infrastructure failings.
Is it? What's politicised about this term? "Greater London" and "Greater London area" have pretty clear definitions; I'm not aware of anything that's controversial about it.
The contiguous Greater London Built Up Area [3] extends well beyond the boundary of Greater London (Bracknell, Gravesend, Harlow), yet doesn't include parts of Greater London (New Addington for example)
The London Commuter Belt is somewhat woolly [4], but certainly includes places like Slough and Maidenhead, Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells, Harlow and Southend.
Significant numbers of people additionally commute on high frequency (4tph or more) trains from places like Oxford, Milton Keynes, Basingstoke, Ashford into Zone 1 45 minutes or less.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London
[1] https://goo.gl/maps/2Zh9tuQnQoPyrnjC7
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAusbJmRB0c
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Built-up_Area
In the US unless you air freight ($$$) it you cannot rely on getting stock from warehouse A (say in NY) to warehouse K (say near LA) overnight. This then means you have to keep a lot more "duplicate" inventory sitting around various places as you cannot just in time move it, which is also extremely expensive.
I imagine the reports of shipping delays in the US are caused by Amazon intentionally trying to reduce the amount of inventory on hand and/or using less air freight.
Maybe it's down to competition - for lots of products I'd go elsewhere if they didn't offer at least next day delivery.
Not only that. Try searching while in Incognito Mode and you'll see the same products, sold by Amazon.com, without Prime, for a few bucks cheaper than when you're logged in and seeing them with "free" Prime shipping.
I've had the opposite experience. Everything comes within 1 day. Some items even come within 12 hours (overnight shipping delivering at 7am)
Walmart also provides all-paper packaging (they seem to have worked hard on developing it) - so you can burn / recycle packaging without say peeling off stuck plastic tape first.
To be fair, though, said worthless junk was like 1/5th the price it'd be in the USA, so it was still worth the gamble
the only major issue I have with AliExpress is how hard they make it to log in
I don't remember how this is called, something like a honeymoon period. Most of the web love bombed us with unsustainable (loss leaders like) offers until they got everybody hooked and now they rely on habit, laziness and reduced competition. It's somehow quite a shame.
I think you mean "blatant worldwide market manipulation"?
Dumping products until the competition is bankrupt and then using your monopoly to crush the consumers is a practice as old as commerce.
On Alibaba, you get business background info, whether it's a manufacturer or a reseller, a picture of the factory, info about whether someone checked out the factory, what certifications the product has, and how long it takes them to respond to inquiries. Amazon doesn't have any of that.
On Alibaba, search for "outlet strip". You can check "Verified supplier", "trade assurance" and "UL certified" to filter out the junk. Some good low-priced outlet strips show up. Amazon doesn't have any of that.
Alibaba is supposed to be B2B, but many items have a minimum order size of 1 or 2. If Alibaba had a "who retails this" link for products sold only in large quantities, they'd be more useful than Amazon. Often you can look on Aliexpress for the matching item.
I ended up giving up and went and built my own two-wheel wet diamond grinding machine.
Bonus: I can cut rocks as well as sharpen my knives down to 1/8 micron.
The usefulness of the brand filter seems to vary greatly by product. For instance when searching for SATA SSDs it only offers “Seagate, Crucial, Western Digital, Samsung”.
The search function was always capricious like that, from the get-go. Presumably there's method to that madness.
Fortunately there are few marketplace sellers, so it doesn't annoy me so much compared to Amazon US.
Maybe if you live in a town with a Cheesecake Factory (tracer for retail competition) you get two day shipping with Prime but if you live a little further out, two day shipping probably went out during the pandemic. This is not about the feasibility of AMZN offering it to you because it is frequently unavailable in the same zip code as their warehouse.
Every other retailer seems to get me things in two days or less but I get packages from Japan faster than from the AMZN warehouse that is a 3 hour drive away. They must be spending the money they saving on shipping on Alexa or something.
And then the actually unique stuff. I’m buying odd lots of used postage stamps. I’m sure as a seller doing one-offs, even if it’s a common item, eBay is the way to go.
Amazon has improved a lot, but eBay still king on that.
You just need to write the regexp.
The King whetstone on the bottom right is legit if you want to freehand. However, I recommend something like an Edge Pro if you have quality chefs knives, etc.