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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

> What Amazon really nailed, and the reason I buy like 90% of things from them, is the easy and known shipping and return policy.

Don't forget reviews.

Decoupling these (in a trusted way) from the seller's storefront is probably not impossible, but still hard enough to add to Amazon's moat.

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Can you really trust an Amazon review? It's one of the most gamed systems in all of e-commerce...

I do trust that at least negative ones don't get deleted (if drowned in fake positive ones, sometimes), unlike on merchant-operated sites.

Good point. Although on several occasions, I've left a negative review on a top rated product, only to have the seller contact me immediately in an attempt to bribe me to delete it.

Not only do they delete reviews (I'm sure you can find thousands of complaints online if you google it), they also allow sellers to take products with 5 star reviews and repurpose them for a completely different product, reviews and all, and many 3rd party sellers will bribe you in exchange for a positive review (e.g. free products).

Having not shopped on Amazon for years now, I'm sure the problem has only gotten worse but for a while an easy to use heuristic that I would personally apply was to strip all 5 star reviews, check for a minimum number of reviews, recalculate the final rating, and then read through some of the 3/4 star reviews.

These days I make it a general rule to find AMZ alternatives particularly for highend items.

- Electronics: B&H

- Music Equipment: Sweetwater

- Computer related: Local Microcenter

The return policy yes but moreover, its the speed. They intensely focused on making sure that speed of delivery combined with choice of selection would be incredibly attractive for many purchases via the internet.

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