I use to buy from Amazon because I knew I was buying original brands and no chinese cheap copies. Well, that changed a lot. There are specific things that I still buy from Amazon but on most things there's almost no difference between they and Aliexpress. I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days.
Thankfully there are a lot of small online shops where quality and customer support are taken very seriously. The bad thing is these stores are very specific so if I need different unrelated products I have to buy from several stores, having to pay sometimes a few euro for the delivery. This also made me buy less stuff. Now I generally wait until I need more things or until my cart has enough stuff for a free delivery.
Well I've decided Amazon isn't for me, for now. I have a dedicated website for my business but I don't know what is the right way to drive traffic.
Could you mind explaining what your approach has been?
Check it out button leads to 404.
Going from homepage to 404 is NOT GOOD
I would have done the same for my business, but I didn’t want to risk getting a huge bill later when they figure it out.
The reason I say it is that I’ve ordered several books from Amazon, with no indication of them being supplied by a third party seller, and I’ve always picked next day with Prime above any other option.
In almost every situation the book has arrived in a cheap, non-Amazon jiffy bag (like a book needs to be bubble wrapped?) and the quality of the paper and print has felt a bit off. And it makes me think that I’m unwittingly buying counterfeit books that might have been run through amazon’s publishing program.
What really made me think that was when I bought a copy of House of Leaves, which is suppose to be printed in colour. The entire book was black and white, which meant it stopped making sense when trying to discuss the content with others (who consider the colours significant).
The same with an O’Reilly book that I recently ordered. The screenshots were really poorly printed, no publisher with a reputation would be happy with the quality of that.
Did I get get a dodgy, possibly pirate, print just because I wanted cheap and fast?
Free fast shipping is awesome, but I'll be patient or pay more to avoid Amazon these days. I don't trust the products, and I'm done wasting time returning things.
Meanwhile, my Target orders often arrive in 2 days or even overnight (in NYC) for free. Wal-Mart's prices for most items I reorder regularly are almost always lower than Amazon and the shipments regularly arrive in 3 days even though they estimate up to a week. The unfortunate thing about Wal-Mart is that they seem to be adopting a lot of the website clutter that has made Amazon so frustrating (e.g. 3rd party listings with shipping/pricing all over the map, and aggressive recommendations on product pages).
I use aliexpress for things I don't need for 2-4 weeks, I'm really curious, normally 2-3 delivery is like $40+ (Which I prefer not to spend on something that's $1.75)
Also they opened their first store in Europe, yesterday, located in Madrid. It's called Aliexpress Plaza and since yesterday it was only an online shop for Spain.
Virtually bypasses customs it seems. But the parts have to be relatively small and fit into a padded envelope about 6x4" or something like that. I've gotten many electronic components in that manner, within a few days of ordering.
Of course, anything larger, and you're looking at weeks - mainly because of customs on both ends. Big enough, they stick it in a shipping container (in addition to customs) and it takes the slow-boat over the ocean.
Despite being inconvenient this seems like... a good thing for the planet?
That's what a lot of FBA vendors are, middlemen. Some Chinese companies learned about this and are now doing FBA directly.....but the quality is the same and so are the prices.
Not to offer up my receipts or anything, but Amazon has about 70% of the time shipped me a counterfeit item. 1080p microscope? Best it gets is 1366x768 on a Windows XP 32-bit driver. Plastic welding kit for a 2002 Ford Explorer? Nope, wrong plastic welding rod, wrong nylon type. Meant for Mazda, not Ford.
I won't touch Amazon after that bullshit. I'll buy directly from a known supplier, in this case, O'Reillys. They sell the plastic patch kit. Thanks, guys. Saved me $500 on a bullshit replacement fee.
> A Wall Street Journal investigation found 4,152 items for sale on Amazon.com Inc. ’s site that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators—items that big-box retailers’ policies would bar from their shelves. Among those items, at least 2,000 listings for toys and medications lacked warnings about health risks to children.
> Of the 4,152 products the Journal identified, 46% were listed as shipping from Amazon warehouses.
This is a top-of-the-front-page, well-researched article in a leading newspaper -- it's the kind of coverage that destroys hard-earned reputations built over decades.
Shame on Amazon.
It's the kind of thing that _should_ destroy reputations. But that doesn't happen all that much anymore.
We're in a weird place with information and communication where shameful acts are accepted either in ambivalence, apathy, or bullheadedness.
"A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa."
The 1980s?
China takes a ton of US recycling. They often melt down metals, e-waste and solder and it's difficult to separated out lead and unleaded source material. A lot of it just gets put together and used in bulk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/business/worldbusiness/10...
FWIW, this article finally got my wife to say she'll stop buying from Amazon and I'm glad for that. I stopped years ago for this and other reasons, but have never quite explained my reasoning well enough to convince her.
This claim really doesn't say much on its own. There are millions (billions?) of products on Amazon. This would be potentially a lot more damning if they released how many items they searched through to identify those 4,152.
It would also be nice if they provided some data on how prevalent these problems are at other retailers and marketplaces.
There's reason to believe the problem is probably worse at Amazon (automated approval process, historic emphasis on low cost and selection) but how much worse is it?
Good point, but I think the point is that any mass violation (let's say more than 10 SKUs) is usually an isolated event (e.g. it's one small retailer in a local environment), as opposed to "this is just the cost of doing business for any large retailer". The more apt question would be - how many violations happen in the past at a place like Walmart.
Traditional retailers are slow to introduce SKUs compared to Amazon simply for this reason - everything is hand curated and has to go through gates to ensure safety.
> There's reason to believe the problem is probably worse at Amazon
What other marketplace in the western world has nearly as many SKUs? Like even in the same stratosphere? I'd be amazed if there is anyone even close. It's easy to manage that many SKUs at scale when you get to ignore regulation that has legitimate human safety implications. So, that's what the article is saying - don't consolidate power if you're unwilling to deal with edge cases.
Later we discovered that it has unacceptable levels of lead in the paint. We threw it out. This was done via an environmental science company, using xrf field testing. I have a certified report.
So, tell me again about how this isn’t a big deal problem. Also remind me what the date limit of lead exposure is. Actually I’ll do that one for you, it’s easy, it’s 0. There is no safe exposure to lead.
The fact that amazon could do something but is deliberately not is, well, expected. Sadly. Safe products isn’t in the mission statement of amazon.
Finally: I worked at amazon for 5 years. Right before fba came online. It’s a cost cutting culture of frugalism. Spending money on product safety doesn’t have a place there.
> At one point in 2013, some Amazon employees began scanning randomly selected third-party products in Amazon warehouses for lead content, say people familiar with the tests. Around 10% of the products tested failed, one says.
It's not valid to compare the rate of unsafe products on Walmart / Target shelves vs. in the Amazon inventory. Amazon is allowed much more slack (similar to eBay) about what gets sold through their store.
Also, it is much more appropriate for Amazon to do this work, than have the public do it.
Keep up the good work on other fronts!
>1,412 electronics listings falsely claimed to be UL certified—indicating they met voluntary industry safety standards—or didn’t provide enough information to verify the claim.
Falsely claiming to UL certified is dangerous. Not providing enough information to verify the claim is pretty benign if they actually meet standards.
This isn't to say that they aren't largely correct about Amazon's commitment to quality and safety. Just that this is an alarmist piece that doesn't rest on sound reasoning.
This crosses a higher threshold than many of the other anecdotes, it sounds like there’s an actual record of willful negligence.
What’s the likely big picture economic situation with Amazon? Is there any way to estimate where the bulk of fake goods are coming from and the money through Amazon is going to? China was mentioned several times in the article, is this a China problem, or actually bigger than that? Has Amazon formed a tunnel that primarily moves illegal low-quality product into the US and money out? Is Amazon the largest vector for foreign goods that are breaking US laws to be sold in the US, or is this an internet problem in general? I can’t think of other US retailers, even online, that I’m scared to shop at for fear of fake product.
So it's bad news that they found dangerous things amongst a category of things that we don't want to be at all dangerous (children's school supplies). It's not surprising news that these agencies are pretty good at knowing in advance which children's school supplies are likely to be dangerous.
BTW the link doesn't bring up a specific article. It brings up a list of articles.
One wonders why the press release didn't say, Wash AG indicts school supply suppliers after joint AG-DoEcology investigation?
* Amazon is a total mess right now, and this is great investigative reporting. I think Amazon is going to go through a rough year or two in PR terms. They need to get this under control quickly.
* Amazon can pretend that it's just a platform, but in practice they benefit from consumers assuming that everything on the site has some stamp of approval (even if it's not as full a stamp as, say, buying the item from Costco.) Right now, they're abusing that consumer trust by doing a lousy job of monitoring product listings on their site. Over the long term, they risk losing that trust altogether. That's a huge risk to them, and it's a little short-sighted to take no ownership of product listings on their site as the basis for legal defense.
* This reminds me of the recent reporting about AirBnb dealing with scammy listings in Canada [0]. I think that both AirBnb and Amazon are capable of getting these problems under control, but they haven't proven it as of yet. When the solution comes, it will be expensive and involve a lot of human labor. That is true no matter how many times they wave their magics wands and yell "Machine Learning!"
* Some of the violations pointed out here are pretty dumb. How much does not labeling balloons as choking hazards actually threaten safety? Of course, that reflects a tolerance of rule-breaking and law-breaking that reflects poorly on Amazon.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/airbnb-montreal-aj-h...
I was surprised to see the WSJ go into detail about balloons above the toys with 400x allowed lead and motorcycle helmets falsely stamped "DOT Approved" that crack open on contact.
From an engineering perspective, however, it shows that Amazon isn't even willing to devote a minimum of resources (or is actively avoiding its duty to check). How hard would it be to query for any product with "balloon" in its title that lacks "choking hazard" in its description?
as you point out, it's kind of surprising that Amazon seems to have entirely abandoned this "stamp of approval" concept. i thought "stamp of approval" was one of the few differentiators that retailers could use to compete effectively.
I get stuff that's like 5% cheaper but quality looks to be about 50% the quality pushed on me all the time on Amazon now.
I went to Amazon originally to find QUALITY products that my local stores didn't carry because of price pressures. Now Amazon seems to be switching to just being ... wall-mart and that's already near me...
It has gotten so bad that I've searched for good products on Amazon that I know were there, and they're gone. Like if you don't want a crappy HDMI switch that looks like every other cheap HDMI switch, your options seem to be fewer and fewer.
And that doesn't account for the questionable health products that they push on me for no apparent reason (i've never surfed for or bought such products form them...or anyone).
Increasingly Amazon wants to tell me what to buy, and what they tell me is they want me to buy garbage.
I know the folks at Amazon are talented, but the abject failure to optimize for quality over quantity is pretty much only explainable as intentional.
I guess a second runner up would be that they're so organizationally KPI-focused, and their KPIs are so myopic, that no one actually realizes how much they're screwing up customer experience. But that seems a stretch.
Interesting factoid: I’ve never seen Amazon attempt to take any net-promoter-score-like “Would you recommend Amazon to your friends” measure. Google does these (I just had one pushed on me while using the GCP console.) Apple probably does them somewhere, even if I haven’t noticed it. Facebook definitely does them. But Amazon seems to be actively resistant to collecting this information. They seem to not want to quantize customer-experience into a KPI.
Perhaps it is just "we're not eating enough of the wall-mart (call it what you want) market". And now they're going after that at the expense of the larger brand.
They're big enough now that they'll grow / maybe miss what they're doking up until it is too late.
I'm already shopping elsewhere more often / actively searching out alternatives to Amazon.
As for Amazon, I like them too. I know they have a lot of cheap Asian stuff. But sometimes, that is exactly what I want (cheap but good DC stick welders).
I guess the issue is with the knock-offs and dangerous items on Amazon. That's fraud. No question about it. Walmart does not have this issue at all. Amazon should do something about it.
If the selection is huge then they need to make recommendations to help people find products. I don't think many users will scroll through more than a page or two of options. The integrity of reviews makes a big impact here in how you are likely to make a choice on those first few pages.
3rd party sellers increase selection and the thought is that more selection creates a fly wheel effect that drives down prices which benefits the customer. Amazon has very limited control over 3rd party sellers but they need them to increase selection.
That said, if you go to any store there are typically a few different options in a product category with different price points and quality. Buyer beware applies in a physical store as much as at Amazon. It would be interesting to see how many consumers prefer less selection.
There is nothing stopping someone from creating a curated "quality" focused frontend that makes money on showing customers only high quality products and then making money on the affiliate referrals for the curation. If this was in high demand I think you'd see these curated stores in the wild. I've not seen one though and since I can use tools like fakespot to help determine the quality of the reviews.
Does anyone actually do that though?
Most retail stores that do a lot of promise on "higher quality things" in my experience are just looking for higher margins and can't help but tack on more to the price for marginally better goods.
And I don't know of any site that really tries to do what you describe, thus I am not sure that they would even if there was "demand" / they would even know.
I don't use Amazon for product discovery so I don't scroll through it at all.
I ordered something on Amazon Canada, it was listed as sold by Amazon.com.ca. It qualified for prime. I ordered expecting it to arrive in 2 days. It took over a week and it became clear after the fact that it had been sourced from a US supplier and because it happened over the 4th of July it sat in a warehouse for a few days over the holiday.
Amazon hid that it was a third party supplier. Amazon hid that it was coming from across the border. Amazon refused to cancel and refund the order once this became clear.
They've really gone down hill.
I have to disagree about the dispute process. My experience as a buyer on Amazon is definitely that the pricing is all over the place, but in every case I've asked for a refund I've received it, and in the majority of cases I've not returned the item, _or_ paid for return shipping.
They hid that it was third party supplied and then failed to respond when I asked them to cancel based on that.
The item I ordered was time sensitive. If I'd known it was coming from the US I would have ordered from a domestic supplier that would have shipped faster except the shipping was more.
I'm about there as well. I have Prime solely for free shipping, and it's frustrating as hell that when there are multiple listings for an item, the one with "Free Prime Shipping" is a few dollars more expensive, generally by an amount equal to the shipping cost.
Was the estimated delivery date in checkout and order confirmation e-mail in 2 days?
I've encountered some rare items (refurbished car parts) on Amazon EU that seemed to get sourced on-demand, but it was always accurately represented on the estimated delivery date so I haven't cared.
In a way it's her own damn fault. If I invest a significant amout of money into a branded product I'd probably visit the store of the brand, or a reseller licensed by the brand.
But I sure as hell wouldn't order a $1000 coat from Amazon. That just yells: RIP ME OFF!
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/count...
And, yeah, likely fraudulent.
Amazon was a mess - prices were all over the place, exact products were hard to find, etc. Dollarama had them all for $2.50, $3.50 and $4.00 a piece, usually in all three flavours (2700, 3000 and 5000K).
Made me want to start a Shopify store called "Bullshit Free Bulbs". bullshitfreebulbs.com is available btw.
I guess the core problem is that when you’re looking for something new, browsing Amazon is a total mess. It would be much easier to do a web search and find bullshitfreebulbs.com to make your purchase.
But if it’s something you buy often, Prime + order history is easily the fastest, most convenient way to buy something.
So, to your idea, I also appreciate the idea of one, trustworthy, site that would do all of that for me. The thing is, Amazon is that site, for the most part.
These days I typically do product research off-Amazon, not on Amazon itself.
If you browse the "LED Bulbs" section you can filter by lumen, color temperature, socket size etc. That's more accurate than the marketing labels ( "W equivalent", "warm") in the product titles.
the only washer collection i could find that was certain to have the desired washer size would have cost $32. again, this is a very common type of water valve. taking a trip to a big box retailer looks pretty attractive in that context.
As it stands, Amazon is just a conduit for goods to bypass consumer safety laws.
That's a great idea.
If you buy a defective thing from best buy, they are responsible.
They may turn around and sue the next person up the chain for doing the same (selling it to them).
This incentivizes companies to be careful who they buy from.
The problem here is that the article refers to them as "third party sellers". They aren't in most cases, amazon just has a large distributed supply chain.
If you want amazon to care, make them liable for the stuff sold on their website, the same way best buy is for the stuff in their store.
Problem solved.
This will not destroy their business - it has not destroyed any other business.
It will simply cause them to care.
This is also not as well known by consumers as it should be, and obviously, businesses sometimes try to claim otherwise (IE say you have to deal with the manufacturer)
But, the law is incredibly consistent about this if you take someone to court.
[1] In the US, there is a non-partisan uniform law commission that publishes model laws for states to adopt in various important areas. The main goal is to keep the law of each state similar in areas where that similarity is important to being able to do business across multiple states.
Outside of business, they sometimes tackle complex jurisdictional efforts where states would otherwise fight with each other based on their local social/public policy. An example would be the uniform child abduction act, which ensures if a parent who does not have sole custody takes a child across state lines, you don't get into a big fight over where the child should be based on social issues that differ between states.
Not all states sign everything, but they get very good uptake on most laws.
Not really. They just assume liability for competition's sake. They could effectively tell you to go pound sand, but that would hurt them competitively, so they offer a return policy instead. Same as if you get a defective product from a Craig's List seller - caveat emptor.
(there are other laws as well)
But they wrapped that socket with bubble wrap nine ways from Sunday! It was like this ball of bubble wrap and tape, with this huge socket in the middle.
My friend's cat came inches from dying because of flea treatment purchased there not too long ago. When it was purchased it had 4+ star reviews and generally seemed good. But if you look at the ratings today (months later), the average ratings went way down and there's just an endless amount of reviews saying the stuff is poison. Some people even lost their cat.
The messed up thing is it's the same exact brand and box you would see on the shelf at a store so there's no way to tell just by looking at the product. At least not from a laymen's POV (I looked at both boxes and didn't see any glaring differences).
Look at how many 1 star ratings there are. We sorted by 1 stars and then by newest reviews. If you go back for a few months it's just an endless amount of scary negative reviews but it wasn't so bad years ago.
One thing I haven’t seen people talking about much is how profound and impact Apple Pay is for direct online retail.
I used to find products on a company website and then go to Amazon to buy, mainly so I didn’t need to create yet another account, and because of prime shipping and Amazon’s return policy.
The amazing thing with Apple Pay is how much it creates an even better purchasing experience than Amazon’s “one-click,” while being open to any merchant. You don’t have to create an account, put in your shipping or billing info, or do anything really. You just click “buy with Apple Pay,” and click to confirm.
Between that, and offering “free shipping” (just include it in the product price), and a good return policy, I see retailers being much more able to sell direct and compete with Amazon’s fading reputation.
I'd love to use Apple Pay, but neither of the credit cards I use for online shopping (Capital One for CAD purchases, Home Trust for non-CAD) support it.
My Capital One card loaded to my iPhone has worked with Apple Pay in physical stores since the inception of the feature. I use it literally every day. In the last few days I used it at McDonald's and at Whole Foods.
(I've done so.)
> Amazon has ceded control of hi’s site to a 3rd party...
Obviously incorrect.
I prefer the handy jingle, "If it's supposed to be possessive, it's just i-t-s, if it's supposed to be a contraction it's i-t-apostrophe-s. Scalawag."
Just looked and we now spent less than $500 so far this year.
Reduced consumption, sometimes going without that new shiny thing and instead borrowing or buying used. For food, we simply cut out delivery (if we want resto food we go to a place that uses reusable cutlery, if we want staples, we just go to a store nearby and try to get bulk items).
Amazon has killed my trust in generic online stores. Fulfilled by Amazon sounds like a fraud engine, and I simply can't support that anymore. I'd like to know if there's a good alternative, but for now we just don't shop online if we can avoid it.
The reason is clear: they want to be compensated like a retailer or conference hall, but have the (relative lack of) liability of the phone company or the postal service, who don't make any claims that communications via their services are going to be honest, just that they allowed the two parties to communicate.
Gradually, they are all going to be forced by society (not only government) into one role or the other, but I am not surprised they are trying to put that off as long as possible.
Even if they could've argued that they themselves were fooled by the seller initially, not following up after the guy was killed points to a much bigger issue. Basically they just don't give a shit.
Side note: I'm filled with dread just thinking about buying a motorcycle helmet from amazon.
Buy it from a reputable source? There are specialist stores herearound, which sell nothing but helmets and have staff on payroll with an actual clue.
Sure, you actually have to leave the house. In return you get the possibility to actually try the helmets on display.
If price is the issue I think it's exactly that general attitude, which triggered that downward spiral in quality we're observing in the last few years.
But there are tons of other items that you either can't go someplace and purchase them (at least here in the USA), or if you can purchase them in some manner, you'll end up paying 5-10x or more for the privilege.
My goto example is DC gearmotors. There are plenty of USA based manufacturers and suppliers of such. One great brand is Ametek. Unfortunately, you're going to pay for that privilege. A motor I might purchase via a vendor that is made by, say, TSINY motor (a good chinese brand I might add), will only cost me around $15-30.00 each. An equivalent motor from a USA vender and/or manufacturer? Multiply those numbers by 10 - easily.
As a hobbyist - that's just insane.
Don't, I wouldn't. Revzilla, sells all sorts of motorcycle gear and has a great reputation. https://www.revzilla.com/
He probably saw the writing on the wall for the North American moto business with the boomers aging out and not enough consumers left to support the operation long term.
The most likely explanation why they would not remove the listing in a regression-safe way even after getting dragged to court is that the team dealing with the lawsuit is paid for being good at lawsuits, not for avoiding them, while the team responsible for managing third party listings is paid for snacking third party listings. It's almost surprising that the listing apparently did disappear while the court was watching.
Put all this into an organisation that has a multi-decade tradition of sidelining mundane, conventional company goals like striking a profit in favor of enigmatic founder strategy and nobody will ever risk rocking the boat by pointing out problems outside their job description.
"We Could Be Liable for Fraudulent or Unlawful Activities of Sellers
The law relating to the liability of online service providers is currently unsettled. In addition, governmental agencies could require changes in the way this business is conducted. Under our seller programs, we may be unable to prevent sellers from collecting payments, fraudulently or otherwise, when buyers never receive the products they ordered or when the products received are materially different from the sellers’ descriptions. We also may be unable to prevent sellers in our stores or through other stores from selling unlawful, counterfeit, pirated, or stolen goods, selling goods in an unlawful or unethical manner, violating the proprietary rights of others, or otherwise violating our policies. Under our A2Z Guarantee, we reimburse buyers for payments up to certain limits in these situations, and as our third-party seller sales grow, the cost of this program will increase and could negatively affect our operating results. In addition, to the extent any of this occurs, it could harm our business or damage our reputation and we could face civil or criminal liability for unlawful activities by our sellers."
I'm willing to pay a premium for the trust factor, because if I get burned with a bad product on even 10% of my purchases the value of my time dealing with it is probably more than I've ever saved ordering through Amazon - particularly if it's something I wanted quickly where I can't afford the chance of "Oh, sorry you got a counterfeit, we'll ship another and you'll have it in 2 days, hope it's legit this time."
Edit: And I don't think I'll EVER purchase a MicroSD card through Amazon.
I spoke with customer service and gave them specific examples to investigate. They didn't care in the slightest. It's made me realise that their reviews cannot be trusted. "Verified purchase" means nothing. I always chose Amazon over eBay and AliExpress because I thought it was worth the slightly higher prices to have peace of mind that the reviews were policed and what I would receive was genuine and safe. But that's clearly no longer the case.
[0] https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Communication-Skills-Training-T...
(The reviewers have since reviewed other books. But you'll still see the same pattern of the same books being reviewed.)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/COMMUNICATION-MARRIAGE-effective-comm...
(One recurring phrase "which made her realize she had a problem too"
Sadly fakespot.com rates that page an A so now I'm sceptical of that site too.
There are still blatant frauds that occur, though, that Amazon really has to answer for. There was the Atlantic story about the fake Canada Goose articles on Amazon-
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/count...
These products are still on Amazon! After all that publicity, they're still there.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=canada+goose
Which is a bit weird as Canada Goose is supposed to be a restricted brand.
Here's a screenshot (not in English but easy to understand what's going on): https://i.imgur.com/hRJIiKk.png
The first one has 1.5k votes and 1.5/5 stars. If you get into the commets to see what's wrong you will see it's a fake. It's a M4 Smart Band, nothing to do with the Mi Band 4.
The second one has 2.5/5 stars and looks like people are receiving also a fake.
The others look good but who knows. All of them are from 3d party sellers.
Now I can buy the Mi Band 4 from Aliexpress for 36 euro (33 if I wait for a promo in 3 days) and I can be 100% sure that I'll receive the original one within 2-4 days. I can also buy it a bit cheaper from China but delivery takes longer.
I can give you another example. I want to buy a bag for my laptop. Almost everything I see in Amazon is from Aliexpress but more expensive.
Just save yourself the headaches and skip Amazon, where you have no recourse, for Home Depot, Best Buy, Target, and even Wal-Mart. Everybody does price matching these days.
If you're buying something you know is cheap junk, then just cut out the middle man and again skip Amazon for Ali express or Alibaba like the parent mentioned.
The labels are inferior, the ink comes off, the labels unstick after a few days...how does Amazon even let this trash on their site?
Edit this was a couple of weeks before Christmas, so I figured it was a "seasonal" "feature".
Same here. It's pretty incredible that Amazon was once one of my favorite, and relatively well trusted, retailers. I now feel it's one of the worst major online retailers, and try to use them as little as possible
(I guess the fact that the xylophone wasn't tuned to any recognizable scale should have been a red flag.)
USB keys and SD cards are almost all universally garbage rip-offs, and I recently purchased a stroller from Amazon, but had a bit of a panic moment when I wondered whether the baby carrier itself was certified by Canadian authorities (it was, but I shouldn't have to ever wonder).
For all of my child's items, I'm now steering clear of Amazon.
that's a pretty decent description of the Amazon business model.
(i guess the only thing to add is that Amazon accepts product returns. but almost every retailer does that nowadays.)
What online store exists today, where I can be guaranteed to buy quality things? Do they no longer exist?
For a long time now it's been obvious they have brands make "special versions" of many products for walmart which are lower quality and cheaper.
Now they are offering free one and 2 day delivery on their site, but I just don't want to go there for fear that I'll end up getting what looks like a "good deal" but what I'll actually get is a worse more cheaply made product.
And like you I also avoid Amazon now for many things for fear of getting knockoffs. Most electronics and chargers/cables and things like it. Between their issues with commingling inventory from multiple sellers and 3rd party sellers basically having completely broken their review system (it's exhausting having to weed out the fake reviews from the real ones every time I'm looking at a product).
Amazon is quickly becoming another site that I'll start avoiding at all costs. I've started looking for replacements for many thing I buy, and once I've switched i'm really unlikely to go back just like how I'm basically never going to go back to Walmart because they burned all my trust.
I'm in Canada, and increasingly I'm buying direct from brick-and-mortar retailers w/ online ordering and delivery.
Best Buy, Staples, Walmart, the Apple Store, the Microsoft Store, etc. BB's site does have third party sellers, but the website has a useful, clearly marked toggle labeled "Best Buy Only" which I always click. Walmart's search function is terrible, but once you locate the product, you can usually pick it up same day or have it delivered to a pickup point in a couple of days if you live in a city.
the situation with usb-c is particularly bad, but I don't think there's ever been a time where you can just blindly buy tech and expecta high quality product. you have to be willing to do at least some research.
One of the things I explained that happened is that as Amazon got closer via more warehouses the shipping actually went to crap. I also explained how their Amazon shipping vans are sub par even to USPS.
I asked for a basic prime teir free shipping only for $79/yr and asked for shipping options to be available ~ I'd pay +$2-3 to choose fedex over ups for example...
If anything they gave me a chance to vent. I also followed up in email sharing how products are being hijacked for reviews and how there are facebook groups for fake review gathering..
It's time to reconsider the relationships with these kind of markets, which contributed to the demise of countless small businesses across the country, these were typically run by passionate people who cared both about their product and customer generally, sure, exceptions were to be found.
We need to move on from the get something for nothing attitude on top of the fact that we don't need to buy unlimited stuff (as one could say the smaller stores system cannot cater to all of our cravings).
Quality over quantity; and let's take back our internet, build a website, a nice following, take good care of your customers and build a brand. Personally, I never went for any kind of markets, stuck to my website and I am still in business (since 2004) due to my customers whom I care for dearly every time they need my services.
The internet was designed as a decentralized system, why would anyone give that up so easily? Cheap stuff and convenience.
A quality obituary is in order if we continue this way.
This should raise a number of questions.
So, why don't they put forth a solid effort? Is it due to regulatory reasons? If so, should they not publicly state that to put pressure on legislatures or to have a real public discussion.
Jeff Bezos signed the new purpose of a corporation [1]. The first bullet reads, "Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations."
Does he not mean it? How does he define value?
[1] https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redef...
Maybe we need a Facebook plugin through which people can (willingly) share their purchases. Don't look at ratings for products from rando strangers, only see the stuff your friends have bought. In the worst case, you're no worse off than the status quo, but maybe I could finally find a decent laptop bag.
The inability stems mainly from the same problem large content aggregators always have. Like Youtube's filter generating false positives or false negatives for blocking content or flagging IP issues, or the filter for Youtube Kids letting through inappropriate content. It's all too much to adequately police without unreasonably high (from their perspective) resources.
They've focused a lot on operations and efficiency. They already had 2-day shipping but they've worked to get that down to 1-day shipping where possible. Which is impressive, though 2-day shipping was already pretty good. They've optimized the hell out of their inventory, distribution, etc. They made that Haven joint-venture healthcare thing (together with two other huge companies) to drive down health insurance costs.
Another area they've focused on is new types of business, like cloud computing, buying Whole Foods, getting into video streaming, and hardware devices (Kindle, Fire, Echo).
But the store itself, the web site design and how the store functions, hasn't changed that much. They had a lot of issues with fake reviews, and they eventually did something, but it took a long time. They have some longstanding usability pain points that they haven't done anything about. Reviews are supposed to be about products, not sellers, but people leave comments and ratings about sellers in product reviews because there's no other place to put them (or if there is, it's not easy enough to find). Something (bad UI?) seems to encourage unhelpful "I don't know" type answers in products' "Customer questions & answers" section. If you click "There is a newer model of this item", it often leads to something that isn't. Product categories and the features within them are insufficient or out of date: I can browse the cell phone case category, but under "phone compatibility", Galaxy S10 isn't listed, only Galaxy S9, even though the S10 came out 6 months ago. Similar story with iPhone. And nothing with size variations of phone models (iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR would require different cases).
All of these things would probably benefit everybody if they fixed them. And it's not just a matter of adding polish. There are more innovative things they could do, too. But the attitude seems to be that the store is basically as done as it's going to get.
I bought a Blackberry Key 2 LE on Amazon.ca, advertised as a Canadian model and brand new. When it arrived, the box clearly labeled it as a refurbished product to be sold in India only. Thankfully they still offer a no-questions asked return policy , but maybe that's limited to Prime members. Once my student subscription expires, I'll be off Amazon forever. Just not worth the hassle.
Why? Amazon has broken down HUGE barriers, which make it incredibly easy to start selling. You (anyone reading this) can easily spend $5K on a product from China and start selling it almost risk-free. example1, Prop65 EXCLUDES Businesses with 9 or fewer employees.
Why would Amazon sell 1000 products from a single brand if they could sell 10 products from 100 brands while maintaining their margin structure and decreasing liabilities for everyone?
I am LONG $SHOP and wish brands would invest that direction more than they do.
If I wanted AliExpress I would have used it, but when I specifically ordered from Amazon UK I expected to have the merchandise come from inside EU. That was the whole point. The same product is listed in AliExpress much cheaper.
I wrote about the death of the mom-n-pop estore not too long ago:
https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-death-of-the-mom-and-pop-...
https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumers_safety/safety_produ...
Just scroll down a little and click on the weekly reports. The amount of kids toys being recalled every week for containing high amounts of harmful chemicals and other hazards is worrying.
Bad products and fake copies have been available for years you just had to know where to look... it's just easier to find it now.
1. Sellers pretending to be legitimate brands. I’ve bought things thinking I’m buying from this brand I know, turns out it’s just a copycat.
2. Accidentally buying used products which seem to be old models. I’ve made the mistake on a few occasions buying used when I specifically wanted a new item.
Amazon has plummeted in quality but I get a feeling they don’t care. Their ultimate goal is most likely to flush out the top sellers and replace their goods with amazons own brand.
You may have noticed $BABA's high earnings numbers, the late stage leeching is powerful.
Customers may miss the good old days that they could go to real retailers to feel products in person and still have the power to make brands care what they want.
Whole Foods often (always?) audits the supply chain of their products. Farmers’ markets sometimes audit the supply chain of their booths. Flea markets and eBay never do.
What burden of audit should be placed upon Amazon?
I had about 150 purchases last year. Toothbrushes, Apple Watch bands, hard drives, diapers, truffles, pasta, foot massagers, hats, books, etc.
I had 1 bad purchase. I bought a used Roomba 980 sold by Amazon. There was a used 680 in the box. Amazon apologized and sent a brand new 980 the next day.
Am I some sort of uberresultsfilter, or do the whiners just get way too much attention?
We don't tend to know all the details about everything we buy. We assume the purchase was fine if it looks like we got what we expected, it wasn't broken, and it was at the price we expected. But, when it comes to things like product safety we trust what it says on the label. In some cases those are known lies. Like the helmet in the article that was labeled as being DOT certified but wasn't. I would not have known this if I were in that situation. Would you have?
Instinctively, most people are probably looking for the best i.e. lowest price which is fair enough.
I was looking for something on Amazon yesterday and the item was not sold by Amazon, was not FBA (had free delivery though)
However on the right hand side, there was a list of sellers and Amazon.co.uk was the second in the list with a price just £0.01 higher than the cheapest seller.
I have found that most of the times, Amazon as a seller, comes second or third in the list but even then the price difference is not significant compared to non Amazon sellers.
I end up buying the higher priced (but not by much) item due to the customer friendly returns and one year "warranty".
I think one just needs to pay attention to that list appearing on the right hand side and decide if Amazon itself is selling the item at a reasonable price premium or not.
If not then, shop around by all means.
Hyperbolic example I know but this reporting shows that you don't know definitively.
https://store.wsj.com/shop/US/US/wsjussblds0919/
They are currently running a 2 months for $1 sale and a half off for 1 year sale, but a digital subscription normally goes for $38.99 per month.
Oddly, it's a couple of dollars cheaper per month to buy the print newspaper and digital subscription together than to buy the digital sub alone.
If they remove third party sellers from their platform, I might go back to buying things on Amazon.
What motivations do they have to change it? Amazon has very little incentive to change an API that is a cash cow. The AdWords API is much the same. It's a SOAP api that largely hasn't changed in 5+ years.
That was years ago, no surprise this is the result.
But, the states have been derelict in their duty to protect and apply the well established protections they insist other stores comply with.
Collecting taxes is not a free lunch. It comes with serious responsibilities.
It's telling that the states are not clamoring to take on these responsibilities. If they are unwilling or unable to take up these responsibilities, then they should not be collecting the taxes.
Small communities are far easier to police. But to do it pre-emptively with AI is an open problem. My interest is how can we make a system that will reliably converge in most cases to what’s true, like Wikipedia? It would be GREAT to have it for making sense collaboratively of news, politics, religion. People submit claims/evidence and each one has its own page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiality_and_Othe...
What is the incentive model? One I thought of is that you gain reputation points linearly but lose them exponentially in high-stakes challenges. The question is who can resolve a challenge one way or the other. And whether the result is immutable or can swing back if it turns out eg that the challenge was swayed by a coordinated effort.
If it’s a static system there are always going to be increasingly sophisticated attacks built on coordination (sybil attacks, sleepers). The most basic attacks require a net gain in credits to be sustainable. Namely, coordinated attacks (marauders) have to win challenges (and net positive points). But later on, attacks can be paid for by trading outside currency (eg BTC or USD) in exchange for using internal credits (“aged accounts”) in “vandalism” actions (attacks which do not gain credits but may even lose them, but are sustained by outside gain).
This is an issue for the source of truth for cryptocurrency as well, but at least the data is very well defined, and there doesn’t seem to be a huge gain from vandalism (except shorting). National elections in the US also have similar things for ballot counting. On Amazon and the sites I’m talking about, we are referencing outside events instead of internal processes. Wikipedia seems to have the most successful model w human editors of various kinds watching over the result.
Is there published research on the game-theoretic aspects of maintaining integrity of collaboratively edited information about the external world?
Is this really Amazon’s problem to solve, though? Or is this just a symptom of a bad value-chain ecosystem? Shouldn’t other players be cropping up to be external “shopping search engines” that find you the real, quality items on Amazon’s (and other stores’) huge junk-piles, the way that Google finds you real, quality web pages among the junk-pile that is the web?
Sure, it’d be nice if Amazon solved the problem itself. But I don’t see a reason that it has to be the one to solve the problem. Amazon can just provide infrastructure to allow anyone to sell anything, and then someone else can build “retail experiences” on top. Just like AWS isn’t trying to be Salesforce with a full platform experience.
