Amazon sellers say they made a good living – until Amazon figured it out

Why do I always get funneled to shoes and jackets from UPCASEBRAND or MADEUPNAME, even though I know I want something from a known brand?

Yes. This is one of the large reasons why I stopped going to Amazon entirely.

> Now if I want to shop online, I visit a store's website and buy directly

This is what I do as well. Interestingly, my experience doing that has generally been better than Amazon in every way, except that if I want 2 day shipping (which I rarely want very much) then there is often a minimum order or additional fee. Which is fine.

This a perfect situation for cheap knockoffs to proliferate though.

My dad wanted a Theragun and bought one on Amazon. He thought he got a deal and it looked just like a Theragun until it arrived and he saw the cheap power connectors and no external battery.

Amazon is more than happy for cheap knockoffs to spread and rip people off by gaming thr product search system. Sure, middlemen are being cut out, but in many cases, so is the previously trusted vendor.

A number of companies produce products only sold outside of the host country. The only way those citizens in the host country can access the goods is through an importing company with exclusive distribution rights. This often happens in the food and drink industries. An USA importer may be importing products manufactured in the US but only sold outside of the USA. This happens in the alcohol industry frequently.

Couldn’t one argue Amazon is the middleman too?

Not in every case but these sellers do provide value. They find obscure items for an underserved market and sell something people want.

Amazon literally has a team looking at data that basically leverages the work done by these sellers to turn a profit.

At minimum it’s like getting sherlocked.

>ultimately, if you're just a middleman, someone's going to try and cut you out of the transaction

Unless it's healthcare, in which case, "Yeah! Bring on the middlemen!"

As it stands, most high value items on Amazon.in are sold by a small number of sellers: Dawntech, Cocoblu, Rocket Commerce etc.

These are more or less annointed by Amazon and it is very unlikely that some third party seller will be able to compete with them in their respective categories.

It’s one single place where you can search for most everything you could want, while also being only one place to hand out your monetary info and address to. It also heavily favors buyers (like ebay), so if there is an issue, it’ much more of a sure thing to get a no hassle refund. Entering your credit card into dozens of differently designed websites the owner of whom may or may not know how to even spell “security” and stores everything in plaintext, or just outright may be a scammer, requires more mental overhead and risk.

Now, in reality amazon is basically an internet flea market, and those supplements you bought are probably either a fake knockoff of a brand and made with lead, or “genuine” but falsely reporting it’s contents with no oversight and also filled with lead, but it’s the idea of buying them through “a familiar and therefore trustworthy place” that matters.

Also the 2 day “free” shipping with prime really brought a lot of people onboard.

It comes the next day, shipping is free with prime, you can return it easily.

An EBay listing often has buyers contacting you through email trying to do the transaction outside of ebay. The lower the price the higher the shipping cost. Forced to use paypal. Gambling you get the product listed not scammed and can fight your way through the dispute process.

Individual vendors are great but you must do your own vetting. Going in and finding out they have no stock and you are directed online is getting more common.

Quick delivery and extremely, convenient, easy free returns with no questions asked.

I am always surprised that anyone ever used Amazon for anything other than books. Since 2010, other than e-books.

Even with e-books, I only ever go there after identifying it as a last resort.

In the early days of Amazon Prime I ordered a grill and got it delivered literally the next day for cheaper than I could purchase it locally. Since then the delivery delays have extended and the knockoffs have increased dramatically and local retailers price match, so I no longer bother with Amazon. But for a short while, it was an amazing service.

I can order it and get 90% delivered by tomorrow afternoon and a lot of it before 10am. I hate that they are so far ahead of everyone else. I will order direct from specialty websites for higher quality foods when I can, but more often than not, that will end up taking 6-10 days to be delivered and will be a hassle.

Why should they have to do that?