Shein forces Amazon to lower seller fees
marketplacepulse.com
marketplacepulse.com
This has been my experience with Amazon too. Better to let direct sellers like Temu and Shein sell these products at much lower prices, and Amazon can stick to branded/expensive goods that might need to be returned.
Amazon has a hard time getting brands on the platform. Amazon has a problem with cheap unbranded stuff. What’s left in the future?
This is clearly a choice that's being made by Amazon US to turn the platform into this... whatever it is...
Reasons? Well, I guess they make sense to somebody.
USB Foot Pedal is just one random search that’ll show this.
Mens fleece hoodie, audio recorder, iphone case and electric blanket are full of random named crap.
The problem also extends past these random products and into the seller market too. Even if you search with brand names for a product you want it’ll often be sold by some random new seller preferentially selected due to price undercutting.
The whole platform is rotting from the inside out.
For example if I search for 'projector', I get the following brands: XUANPAD, MAGCCUBIC, LQWELL, VOPLLS, CLOKOWE
I have to say this really is weird, because there are reputable and high quality Chinese brands that just aren't participating here.
Why is it all crap? Where's the Xiaomi & Hasee tier of products?
The other problem with Amazon JP is that returns are not usually free, unless there's a real problem; it's not nearly as easy and free to return stuff as Amazon US.
There is definitely a problem with the cheap stuff but I wonder if they're concertedly trying to turn that around somewhat and attract proper brands.
(The fact that this information is so important and hidden is of course inexcusable)
If the ASIN was different it wouldn't be comingled, but I don't think Amazon wants sellers all creating their own ASINs and thus new product pages when one already exists for the product.
Anybody who has used Amazon enough has witnessed when there's multiple separate listings for the same product and how annoying it is to compare.
https://9to5google.com/2023/12/22/aawireless-android-auto-ad...
Review sites are just as bad, they get a product for free, give it a stellar review after 1 day of playing with it, and move on to create the next SEO spam article.
If AA Wireless is really good, maybe someone has a recommendation for the "other garden".
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CarPlay/comments/10eb6kg/does_wirel...
I can buy the same crap resold at 3x the price (sometimes even with the same slow shipping) with almost zero additional quality control, but that's just buying from Aliexpress with extra steps (and cost).
I can try to get something from a local seller (not necessarily locally made), but I'll have 1/10th of the selection with the price often being 5-10x plus local shipping that costs more than the Aliexpress product with shipping included.
Sure, it's cheaply made, and sure, some of it breaks within a month. But most of the stuff is actually engineered correctly: It's exactly good enough. Just very very barely good enough, but good enough.
The answer is to only buy stuff on Amazon that is sold by Amazon.
If a product is only FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) or just a plain third-party listing, then go buy elsewhere. Those listings are where the garbage is.
Sadly Amazon have made it more difficult to search for these. It used to be the case that you could tick a box to filter by seller and accordingly tick the Amazon box. They have now taken that filter away.
I'm not going to post on here how to do it (because they'll probably kill it off pronto), but if you spend a few minutes with Mr Google, you will find one or two work-arounds still exist which are not difficult if you are technically inclined, although admittedly could be tricky to teach a granny to use consistently.
First, the de minimis threshold was increased to $800. Second, CBP has introduced a new entry (Type 86) that makes it a lot easier to clear de minimis shipments.
This enables foreign retailers to easily import single shipments to US customers. Because they no longer need to deal with more complicated customs filings, they can instead use air freight and get shipments to customers quickly. They trade customs expense for premium air freight.
In other words, they’ve found a loophole to avoid customs on goods with otherwise high tariffs, pocketing some of the money for themselves and using the rest of the savings (and arguably difficult to return lower quality merchandise, we are talking about fast fashion) to undercut competition. I’d think that SV would worship this type of “disruption”.
I was going to flag this but did a double take: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gaylord#Noun_2
Please consider easing up on the itchy trigger finger. Even without knowing the meaning, there is no way any word used in the context above could ever be construed as offensive.
Would taxpayer dollars be better spent collecting $5 worth of duties from a shipment? Or would the customer (who are taxpayers) be better served by having to pay CBP fees for their $20 shipment from china? Would both the customer and the manufacturer (ie. "competition") be better served if the goods had to go through an intermediary in the US to reach the customer?
Sorry, this libertarian logic falls short because there are taxpayers who are not customers of bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese doodads, and thus are being hurt by this laxness. Why should I subsidize someone else’s “seen on social media” gadget addiction?
Thankfully computers exist now so it is really not onerous at all to charge the correct duties and massive fees if you want to make the customs people do work (this is basically now the EU approach, and AliExpress had no problem adjusting).
Seriously people, we have computers now. Every SaaS in Europe needs to pay correct VAT on every subscription sold based on the customer origin, it is not at all unreasonable to have online sellers pay duties for products shipped to US.
I’m fairly certain Amazon knew these consumers weren’t paying use tax instead. Local stores took a beating by having to play by rules that Amazon didn’t.
By starting with books (and then CDs/DVDs), Jeff picked a good target: inventory that doesn't depreciate too fast, subsidized shipping, not needing to collect sales taxes up-front, high costs at b&m level, high value per weight/volume, popularity of carrying large inventory (books aren't too fungible)
Much better than pets.com selling cat and dog food.
Specialization is one of the most important motors of economic development. Not every community can or should try to produce everything.
Type 86 filings are still necessary for di minimis shipments, so there isn't a material bureaucracy savings.
Given that, since it doesn't even make economic to inspect the packages even if you already knew they were mislabelled or misvalued, it's not clear to me that the taxpayer loses by increasing the de minimis threshold at least to a number where it would make sense. I'm thinking of the bureaucracy that the government incurs when they do decide to inspect and fine/confiscate, not the bureaucracy in the happy path, which as you've seen is very streamlined.
Your government did not protect your interests here in ensuring that the playing field is level.
Now we are justifying the baseline by unregulated and uncontrolled goods as a standard for quality so people use weak USB cables from an unknown or non-FCC compliant manufacturer in China and their home burns. It isn't the consumers fault because the product was sold falsely and the general consumer can't keep everything straight.
You need to be near Amazon warehouses, vs Amazon HQ
Or maybe they're short on drivers in your area?
Last month I had every single subscription switch addresses and had to fix multiple items I didn’t catch - in part because they’ve been coming to my address for a while. And then fixing required that the wrong items arrive before they would be willing to take any action on the problem.
This month I had another regular order and one subscription order get spontaneously canceled and refunded.
Maybe San Francisco is. The Bay Area in general does not get prime delivery speed, despite Amazon's assurances to the contrary. They don't even try.
Not only that, but Amazon long ago stopped packaging the stuff they ship out to prevent damage to it. Whatever comes from Amazon will come with shipping damage. If you return it, Amazon will ship you a replacement in equally inadequate packaging with similar resultant shipping damage.
If you're hoping to receive an item that meets the absolute bare minimum standard of arriving when the vendor says it will, without obvious damage from shipping, it's necessary to avoid Amazon.
I have switched my pets’ orders to Chewy completely. Their deliveries have consistently been 2 to 3 days even over weekends.
In Barcelona fwiw
It seems like it's only the Americans complaining about shipping speeds: probably a byproduct of the transportation network there being so bad and everything being so spread out. Their other problem is likely bad labor relations and a labor shortage.
Btw I had to cancel my Prime three times because it kept getting mysteriously reactivated with no action on my part.
Walmart free shipping even without Walmart plus is running 1-3 days. I cancelled prime.
I now try to buy direct or from mom & pop stores whenever possible and I find that the shipping speeds with UPS and USPS are more consistent and regularly faster than Amazon to boot. For the odd item that I need to buy from Amazon and need it quickly it's much cheaper to pay for one-off fast shipping instead of the yearly Prime fee.
However, last time I ordered something to a relative in NYC, I was surprised to find that they even have same day delivery for many items.
Our Amazon delivery people regularly drop off 4-5 orders with neighbours before they get back in their car...
It makes me feel as if they're aggressively picking up where Forever 21 left off.
The Men's section looks like it would all be worn by the same dude (a certain British vegan chef with a goatee on YouTube).
My guess is tiktok is doing what it's made for, advertising and possibly putting China first to the mass of consumers.
> Shein says it’s able to make affordable apparel by monitoring user behavior to predict customer demand and producing items in small quantities. The Chinese e-commerce company known for its $5 T-shirts and $20 cocktail dresses controls 40% of the fast-fashion market share in the U.S., with an estimated $8 billion in sales in the country last year. Shein’s inventory turnover rate is twice as fast as other competitor retailers such as H&M and Zara.
(the video also mentions "De minimis tax loophole" which I think another commentator here on HN mentioned)
I'm told there are people who care about this sort of thing. ($8B worth of other Americans, apparently)
Perhaps the colour but they are available in a super wide range anwyay (luckily, because Jack & Jones did only white, black and navy for a couple years).
Kids will always want to be cool. The old thing is not as cool as the new thing.
And fast fashion is a relentless machine to monetize that impulse.
It works something like this;
1. Somebody uploads a design they found (probably stole) and creates a piece of clothing
2. Somebody else with just a shred of desire clicks on a couple of buttons and pays $3.78
3. A Chinese sweat shop worker immediately picks up the order and creates the piece of clothing and gets paid $0.03 for the trouble (whilst working 18 hour days in leui of any breaks, weekends or holiday)
4. The clothes get air shipped across the world and delivered to the customer, skipping customs and taxes
5. The customer, who basically forgot they bought the clothes (it was after all purchased in a tiktok haze and didn't affect them much financially) trys on the item, takes a photo, and throws it in the closet
6. A year later it gets donated to charity, who assesses the quality and redirects it to landfill
(most of my information here has come from a documentary, "Inside the Shein Machine)
Everyone likes cheap things, but these policies are quite insane.
The U.S. is effectively subsidizing Chinese companies and penalizing its own companies and citizens.
Not new.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-subs...
All this does is allow us to also pay 10 cents per show (albeit without the logo on it).
Soon they will have to add value like target or Walmart. I guess in some sense that’s why they bought Whole Foods.