Amazon is unusable at this point, and I don’t get how they have so many customers. Free and fast shipping is no longer exclusive to them, and there are others out there with far nicer websites and no shitty ad listings.
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.
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?
People selling DVDs on Amazon were complaining about bad reviews because someone bought from them, but got a counterfeit sold by someone else.
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...
If you do not _feel_ you've been ripped off, does it matter?
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.
Feeling like you got ripped off is one thing, having your house burn down from faulty electronics is much worse etc etc.
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.
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.
Look at Keepa for historic prices
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.