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Comment by zamadatix | Hacker News Reader

One thing I absolutely cannot understand is the "price range" functionality seems to be broken as well. Maybe it's the same root cause and/or change which broke price sorting but when I put in a range of say $100-$200 searching for "network switch" the first result is $240, the 2nd result $90, and the 3rd result $120 and legitimate results go on for tens of pages. So it's not that there isn't anything for sale in that range, it's not that there weren't enough results to display so they needed to pad the numbers, and it's (seemingly?) not that they are just trying to push a higher dollar sale... it's just plain broken?

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Probably the preferred suppliers/partners or sponsored products that are close to the asked range that show up and are prioritised

Then call the category ~200. IMO This is prime enshitification. You cant search for anything reliably any more. You dont get to see what youre actually searching for.. just whatever a company thinks they can make more profit off of.

Yep. Google did it with their search and now it’s just what makes the world turn. And they have to be disingenuous about it or else people wouldn’t use it. I think it’s pretty plain and simple - realise this is the case, then vote with your feet

I’ve stopped trying to save by online ordering, within reason. If a store has what I need + points me in the right direction and demonstrates they are knowledgeable, they will get my business. 5-10 dollars is not worth saving at the expense of fuelling the enshittification machine. If that makes a huge difference to you, then reevaluate if you actually need the item

You’ll end up with less stuff, better stuff, with less hassle and noise, and a relationship to a vendor which may speed up returns and maintenance. As always, pick your poison

FWIW I just tried that exact search and every item I see listed at above $200 also has a "more buying options" listed on the search page with a price less than $200, so while it's annoying I guess I get the logic.

All those options (the ones I see anyway) are used, so when I limit the search to "Condition - New" they all go away.

It isn’t uncommon to say your price band is $100-200, then find something costing $250 which checks all the boxes. In this case, fuzzing prices while presenting results seems like an acceptable trade off.

As a user, when I set a price range, I want the search function to return results within that range. I don't want fuzz. I don't want you to second guess me. I want the results I asked for.

This is the natural, simple, user-friendly design I want.

Don't give me some bullshit instead.

What if you (the user not you you) don’t know what price range will net them the feature set they want?

E.g., would you know exactly the price range to pay for a tool set which lets you do general repairs around the house? Should it be ₹100? ₹500? How will a search engine know for sure that you’re an aware customer who knows their price ranges versus a newbie exploring the space? Even google claims to have millions of results per query meaning they, for all their talk about organising the world’s information, don’t know what exactly you want.

As a user, I don't want to be second-guessed. I can explore price ranges on my own, thanks.

How do you ever buy flight tickets then?

It’s all about trade offs and checkboxes(layovers, specific terminals, airlines, aircraft body types, price ranges, dates, non-stops, insurance, in-flight Wi-Fi, meals, early boarding) etc.

Do you first look through the page with all the options, then open different tabs with each unique combination of checkboxes and options enabled/disabled? That must exponentially (literally) harder than simply viewing fuzzy results on screen and pruning the decision tree in your head.

> How do you ever buy flight tickets then?

I input my source and destination and date and travel class and then choose from the listed results. At no point I would expect the website to show me business class if I chose economy. If I chose non-stop, I expect non-stop flights and nothing else.

If I say I want to fly on Tuesday, 2/2/2029, with a departure between 8-11am, economy, and ask you to show me options sorted by cost (descending), you should show me exactly those results.

You could offer me a flexible search option, as some sites do (+/- x days on flight times, etc.). Great! Now I can request that we search within a date range. Nice! That might be a good feature for some people!

Offering a simple query interface that returns what it says it will doesn't mean we can't offer flexible search parameters.

Flights are a terrible example of where I'd want to offer fuzzed results... having booked flights on the wrong day before, the last thing I want is to ask for X, but get offered Y.

There are so many decisions other than just the dates that you implicitly make (or are made for you when you book your flight). Do you want insurance? Wi-Fi? Extra leg room? Turbo prop aircraft? Jets only? 2-3-2 seating? 3-3 seating?

Logically, you should want to control each of these variables while searching for flights. If you are ready to trust a flight aggregator with these choices, some fuzziness in price seems acceptable too.

You are probably thinking that you don’t want to make a choice about aircraft type or seating configuration and so, whatever the search engine shows in whatever order is fine by you. If so, consider that others might have the same ambivalence towards price fuzziness.

I can kinda understand (though not always agree with) fuzzy matching in the case there are 0 results that match the given filters. Something like a heading entry "No matches found. Showing closest matches" or maybe even just always sticking them at the end of short results lists. I can't understand just assuming every match for any search should be fuzzy just because there might be a use case it helps for certain searches. Or even a "fuzzy match" type filter option, though I think you'd find extremely few people actually use it.

I.e. the UI needs to be there to efficiently help the user do what they ask not to try to be smarter than the user. Unless the user asks for fuzzy matches it doesn't make sense to make the response lead with them.

Agreed.

So many modern UX issues are from people presuming what users want, rather than just giving them well-designed tools and getting out of the way.

I don't think it's broken. It's intentional to push you to buy products that give Amazon the highest profit.

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