Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market
latimes.com
latimes.com
The alternative is “here’s 450 other matches to your search that are definitely not what you’re looking for, that may be counterfeit, and may or may not give your kid dermatitis.”
I think some companies should lean more into that. We’ll pay for shipping if it spares us from those “skimming off the top”.
And somehow no local retailer had a corded phone (had to order off Amazon, unfortunately... friend's account) – not even the local telco! Exception: expensive fax machines (?!), with attached corded handset – in 2026.
You can now only order from their website which I am more than happy to do as their customer service is excellent.
actually... they gave up a while ago and have an amazon store.. it's been a few years IIRC
* One cart for everything you need to order
* Fairly predictable shipping and tracking, especially for FBA stuff vs. the random shipping companies vs random shippers you have never heard about or weird shipping options selected by the seller (i.e. ID checks required where that makes no sense at all, preventing the carrier from just dropping the package at the door when you're not home)
* Global shipping with tariffs/fees included in the checkout price - brand stores often don't even ship at all outside their operational area
* The ability to get your money back with high confidence when there are problems vs. smaller sellers that just ghost you.
Amazon has been doing their best to reduce these advantages by making it harder to report problems with orders and also having more sellers that do their own unpredictable shipping.
Of course, I'm still using Apple Pay, so that may not work for everyone.
The return experience is great, because it has to be. You buy so much crap because of drop-shippers and their search is atrocious due to paid placement.
If you know what you want (a Thermoscan was one of my last purchases), it can be cheaper to go elsewhere, you don’t deal with their search “engine”, and you don’t help Bezos buy the next election. My context is European, but I really don’t agree that Amazon is that great anymore.
There’s plenty of stuff I find cheaper in other places, plus I’ll know it’s authentic and not a drop-shipped counterfeit. Amazon was tremendous once, but that’s gone.
I closed my Amazon account, a few years ago, for similar reasons (both platforms seem to become the dumping grounds for brokens, defectives, and otherwise abandonables).
Most items I'll now purchase in-person, at a store – I want to feel the clothing's thickness, smell the hardware's newness, and/or pay more for warranted IRL customer support. Mandatory in-person purchases are memory (RAM or SSD), only because they have a supplier chain-of-custody, without mixed seller bins (which Amazon is attempting to resolve, albeit decades too late IMHO).
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Random shoutout to Duluth Trading Company (not-affiliated, no stock owned – just a great brand): I drive 2.5 hours round-trip, once a year, to visit one of their clothing stores. If you haven't worn their firehose contractor pants, you're missing out on the incredibility of 3% spandex pants – thick, breathable, don't tear... and when you feel them in person you will absolutely not care about their pricetag. They have traditional US wwXhh mens-sizing, but also three separate "fits" (tightnesses).
If you're a fattietradesman (like me), trying things on is essential. Really glad to see certainly higher-end storefronts "coming back," as these customers demand quality.
Just wish they sold computers – although I did visit my first MicroCenter, recently: WOW! (Reminiscent of early-2000s Fry's Electronics, but smaller/better).
Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice things.
How does that help them?
Amazon got it's start in that world undercutting the brick and mortar stores with their carefully curated manufacturers and buyers. In the process they completely destroyed it. Which is why 80% of the stuff for sale now is shitty.
> This is why we can’t have nice things.
i think you’ve hit the nail on the head. it’s the unmanaged part. it isn’t clear to me how We collectively are shocked when these marketing and execs convince us “oh, there’s nothing we can do. having customer service would be cost prohibitive. making sure there are no scams would be cost prohibitive. etc… etc…”
how about you get some customer service and protect us from scams and don’t buy your third private island and fourth mega yacht and have net worth larger than a lot of countries?
oh, that’s asking too much. you’re right, “nothing” can be done.
Why have customer service when the market doesn't seem to care and still buys your shit? Why crack down on scams when the market just does chargebacks, and yet keeps buying your shit?
So, we just deal with scammers, counterfeiters, drop shippers, fake brands, fake companies, fake products, all because regulation is seen as the worst thing that you could ever do to a business.
When the whole thing goes like this, then I really do find that I have no reason to complain:
Customer: "Hey, this widget is broken/never showed up/etc"
Rep: "Refunded"
(And that's me having that problem in English / England / GBP, not a weird combination.)
I also get a lot of “Dear CA Customer” type emails.
How long is your stuff from China taking to arrive?
a) You could search for keywords without also matching keywords that have your keyword as a sub-string
b) "Sort by lowest price including shipping" actually did what it says
As it is you often have to wade through tons of undesired crap to get to what you want.
I also don't like that eBay sellers can see that you viewed their product and send you price offers.
Oh and let's not forget the popup nagging you to use their app for a discount ... while you are typing something into the search bar.
Backwards indeed.
I wonder what the exact language was. If it included something like “5 star review” on that card, then the guy deserves getting kicked out from Amazon and getting his business shut down (it’s federally illegal to do that per ftc regulation). If it was just very neutral language asking for reviews, then that sucks, and hope he can get it resolved with Amazon eventually.
* there was no obvious way to do it. Closest thing was by reporting issue on product.
* there was no way to show the customer service agent a picture of the mail. Chat did not support sending pictures & they were unable to open imgur link.
* agent recommended me to leave a report it by leaving review to the seller page. I did that and next day review was deleted.
So it's pretty clear that Amazon didn't care and I doubt it has changed (unless the law you are talking about is recent one).
I also went looking for a way to report it. Eventually opened up a chat, didn't really get anywhere.
(I also didn't appreciate getting junk mail for ordering something).
If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!
IE folks will take a 4 pack of something that sells for $20 and sell each bottle individually for $10 each.
For heavy things the shipping ding is bigger, but they also usually cost at least $30. No one bothers to sell $5 items like 50lb bags of basic sand on amazon.
I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within their own listings to satisfy both properties), but left before implementation rolled out. Based on current search results, either they failed or the project was abandoned.
I’m shocked at how some categories just contain junk from random brands with unpronounceable names. Want a music player by Sony or even RCA? Those brands have left that market completely for B2B products or are a licensed name on top of some garbage. Now you can get a Zaqe, Picxiul, Lwyinp, Globluum, or Swofy!
The only way to have a reasonable level of privacy against a well funded attacker is to not provide anything private to companies in the first place.
It’s like Uber saying book and pay for a ride, cars are 2 min away. Great here’s my money, send a car. 15 min later still waiting for car…
I have not bought from them since 2005.
There is no need
If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it.
Then call your lawyer, who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal.
If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court.
The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
What do you think Bezos does when a contractor takes his money and doesn't fix one of his dozen swimming pools? Or a car dealership fucks up one of his hypercars?
Do you think he makes 20 calls to customer service numbers? Or do you think one of his personal assistants calls once and asks politely, and then if it isn't made right, it gets batted over to his law firm.
Wasting 2 months not getting any sales is far more costly than spending a few grand on a lawyer.
Yeah, if you are a private customer that might work out going to small claims court against a large company.
But if you are a commercial vendor? Tough luck, you probably signed some mandatory arbitration clause in your terms, maybe even a non-disparagement clause. Whoops. Arbitration can cost shitloads of money upfront or expose you to the risk of having to pay the counterparty's lawyers if you lose the arbitration, no referral to the regular court system possible. And even going to the press to complain is a risky move.
There's a lot of things I'd be willing to jump into. But I'd never ever want to be in a commercial relationship with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta or any of the other tech giants (or Walmart, they are just as infamous for squeezing suppliers), simply because they have all the cards and I have none. They decide to kick me out, my existence is gone.