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Comment by dools | Hacker News Reader

Sorry for the tangent dang but since this video mentions Alexa I gotta say that as an Australian I find the ubuiquity of Amazon in the US perplexing.

To me, Amazon is a total mess. The account management is terrible. It has all these crazy region restrictions when you try to buy books, and I just assume that whenever I buy something from the store I'm getting scammed. Everything on Amazon looks like a scam.

Then I hear people in the US buy their groceries on Amazon and use Alexa. It's crazy, what am I missing? The entire company seems like it's strung together with duct tape. I have zero trust in Amazon as a brand to do anything right.

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Also in Australia, agreed about Amazon being a deeply scammy-feeling website. The only reason I'm subscribed is because I love Wheel of Time that much and I'll be damned if I'm going to wait a minute to watch it when it premieres (very convenient time for me in Australia, 10am). Then I figured well, if I've got a Prime account, I might as well check and make sure something I'm going to buy isn't on Amazon with free shipping for a lower price, and it turns out that happens very regularly. I see the value now, although it's probably not worth what I pay for it as the savings are small. But it's well worth it for me because of Amazon Prime Video, particularly Wheel of Time.

It's actually funny, ever since Wheel of Time released and we got Prime to watch it, it's not just that we started buying from Amazon instead of individual stores, but we've actually bought a bunch more stuff over the internet than we would have before anyway. Stuff like air blowers for cleaning out electronics, verifiably safe toys for the cats, spring-loaded arms to hold phones up, a Kindle to read ebooks. The Kindle is the other thing I'll give credit to Amazon for being just very good and very good value like their streaming service, the Kindle is a very good device. Annoying DRM on my books, sure, but I've got them backed up for when it gets cracked.

Amazon has been going downhill for a long time, when I first started using them it was quick, it was easy, and I knew what I bought was going to arrive within a reasonable time frame. I bought Alexa devices, I bought their TV box thing, all was good.

Fast forward a decade or so and it's exactly as you say, finding anything reputable on their website is an exercise in frustration and unpronounceable randomly generated "brands" which have paid to be pushed up the search results. Alexa works maybe 50% of the time when I try to use it now (mostly I've switched to HomePods and Siri), the devices with screens are a constant flurry of pointless distractions ("There's nothing on your shopping list"... cool, maybe just don't tell me about that then). FireTV is a barely functional shit show which often takes multiple seconds to validate I've entered the parental control PIN correctly, and can take anything up to half a minute to fully populate the home screen with adverts.

The thing that really took the biscuit for me was when I cancelled my Prime subscription recently. Now whenever I try to buy something from Amazon I get interstitials trying to dupe me into reupping, often cryptically worded such that it looks like I'll be paying £10 for delivery if I don't. This is probably a good thing as it just encourages me to go elsewhere.

I've used Amazon for ~10 years. It has certainly gotten worse, but it isn't bad.

I live in Seattle. A lot of random things I can get shipped the next day (sometimes even the same day!) for free (I pay for Prime, but there is no additional cost), like if I need a USB drive, compost bags, or dish soap.

I'd prefer to buy things from Amazon vs other sites simply because I'm used to Amazon. I have an account; they have my address and payment information. I just need to click a few buttons and have what I need the next day.

If something goes wrong, customer support is still pretty good in most cases, although sometimes Amazon has dropped the ball. Amazon is great with returns -- most of the time, I don't even need to box up and label my return. I just need to show up at an Amazon Fresh store or some other dropoff point (there are many in Seattle) and hand them my item/scan a QR code, and that's it.

People have complained about fake products on Amazon. I've bought hundreds of things from Amazon, from CPUs to consumer electronics to batteries. I'm sure I received some knockoff at some point, but I've never noticed.

I would gladly switch away from Amazon if something better popped up, but I don't see how any alternative could be better without eventually becoming Amazon again.

I'm in Europe and I only buy stuff that is sold by or delivered by Amazon. Never had a problem with any scam in years and hundreds of products. The prices are good. Delivery to pickup locations is very convenient. 30 day return policy for any reason and it's very easy and free to actually send it back.

I see a lot of hate for Amazon on HN, maybe it depends on the location. I never had a problem with them and neither did any of my friends.

Same here - my experience is that Amazon works very well in Europe. We picked up the Amazon habit when we moved house during the pandemic, and must have bought hundreds of times since.

for what its worth im also in europe and amazon isnt even in my country, if I want it I have to buy from neighboring country and it takes many weeks to months to arrive. Seeing as the interface and product selection seems tailored to getting you to buy the most flimsy knockoff imaginable for every product there is no reason to buy from them

Second this. I'm putting together a new computer and have bought some parts from Amazon and some components from other sellers. The Amazon purchases have been easy (not perfect of course), while the other purchases have been annoying or confusing (cancelled orders, unclear stock availability, confusing tracking, etc.).

Amazon is just so much more reliable than other retailers. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it is much less of a hassle than most others.

It is rare, but some fake products due get through even if you always get things fulfilled by Amazon. I've never had the problem myself in years of buying things including PC parts via Amazon, though a friend has. (we are both in the UK)

Due to the way things are co-mingled in the warehouses there isn't really much distinction between “sold by Amazon” and “fulfilled by Amazon”: if something has the same product code the system assumes it is the same thing, so the picker is sent to the closest one on the assumption that they are the same thing. In my friends case this resulted in him getting a counterfeit SD card. He noticed oddities on the packaging before actually opening it, so we don't know how far it was from spec. The return process was smooth and the right product was received the next day, but it was a faf he could have done without and if he'd not noticed he might have had a shock later if the card corrupted itself after writing a small amount (many fake storage devices pretend to be far larger than they are and stop writing (or worse: data is silently corrupted) once you approach their real size). Luckily it wasn't needed urgently, so the extra day wasn't a massive inconvenience.

Amazon isn’t great, but they are still better than their competitors for me. They are fast, have reasonable prices, and good customer service. AFAIK, I’ve never been shipped a counterfeit item and they’ve never given me a hard time when I want to return stuff.

The Alexa stuff is a little weirder for me. It’s gone in waves of being amazing and being terrible. I just noticed that for the last six months they’ve stopped with the “by the way” bs after I ask for the time, so that’s nice. A month from now they might turn the dials and make it annoying again.

Their e-Ink Kindle hardware is very nice and they have more ebook titles than anybody, but the DRM is such a downer. I’m cheering for the DeDRM people to crack it, but so far KFX seems to be holding…

My biggest Amazon complaint is their review system. It’s so gamed it’s almost useless. I pretty much only look at 3 star reviews because 1 and 5 are rarely fair or accurate.

It’s hard to overstate the scale of their offerings and ubiquity in consumer mindshare in the states. Comparatively, we’ve had Amazon in Australia for what, seven years at this point?

Possible tangent enabler, but as an Australian i've felt the same + have the same perplexion.

I've bought I think three things from amazon just to try it out. My lesson is that the entire site has a toxic interface and my credit card got falsely charged sometime afterward, which I cannot prove but I'm pretty sure was related to my use on their site. It looks like a cheap scam bazaar.

I don't understand its apparent US ubiquity...but then I don't understand the desire for something like Alexa either.

Canadian here who lived in the US for a few years. One thing I discovered while living stateside is that there are a lot of features in the big tech companies services which only exist for American users. When I put a US SIM card into my google pixel and got a US number, a bunch of stuff I had never seen before started appearing. Similarly the number of products available to me on Amazon grew by what felt like at least an order of magnitude, and I could have nearly all of them on my doorstep in days, sometimes on the same day I ordered them. And that was in a small city in a flyover state.

Agreed, the ubiquity of this stuff is hard to understand from the outside but for me it was extremely clear from within.

> I don't understand the desire for something like Alexa either

What people value them for varies. I had smart bulbs anyway (so I can vary between soft low light for watching TV and bright white for crafting, etc) and a compatible remotely control able heating control, I wanted to be even lazier than needing to pick up my phone to change things, and a pair of them were dirt cheap in an offer. Setting of timing reminders in the kitchen is pretty handy too. I don't use them for much else them that though. Occasionally I'll have an audiobook play that way via Audible, but the speaker isn't great for music.

I looked into open source variants for simple home automation like this. I look back every now and then and, while things are improving at a pace, it still seems like a chore to setup and potentially flaky (not that Amazon devices don't need resetting almost monthly because they are a bit flaky too) and more expensive in terms of getting good microphones/speakers/etc together.

[All the above would apply the same would to Google's offering; I went with Echo devices because they were cheap at a time that my wallet control was weak, and you can call them “computer” rather than “brand-name”]

I don't know of anyone personally who buys all their groceries on Amazon. However, I will buy a few some canned/bottled stuff on Amazon if it's hard to find in the stores around me, or if it's cheaper (sushi ingredients like nori and rice vinegar). I also think I only know about 3 people personally who have Alexa.

I think there are fewer region restrictions here, maybe because they were a US-first company. Their account management and customer service is certainly lacking.

It's easy to buy groceries on Amazon if you live somewhere that Amazon delivers fresh groceries from a grocery store. I did it for a few months. I go online, click a few buttons, and a few hours later, someone shows up to my door with bags of groceries. It works well, especially if you can't leave the house for whatever reason.

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