The Junkification of Amazon (nymag.com) 158
Why does it feel like Amazon is making itself worse? From a report: Efforts to find independent reviews of Amazon-exclusive products rarely turn up high-quality content; many sites just summarize Amazon reviews in an effort to collect search traffic from Google and eventually affiliate commissions from Amazon itself. You read a little feedback to quell your doubts or ease your mind, then eventually, or quickly, you pluck a spatula out of the cascade. There's a good chance, however, that it won't actually be sold by Amazon but rather by a third-party seller that has spent months or years and many thousands of dollars hustling for search placement on the platform -- its "store," to use Amazon's term, is where you will have technically bought this spatula. There's an even better chance you won't notice this before you order it. In any case, it'll be at your door in a couple of days.
The system worked. But what system? In your short journey, you interacted with a few. There was the '90s-retro e-commerce interface, which conceals a marketplace of literally millions of sellers, each scrapping for relevance, using Amazon as a sales channel for their own semi-independent businesses. It subjected you to the multibillion-dollar advertising network planted between Amazon users and the things they browse and buy. It was shipped to you through a sprawling, submerged logistics empire with nearly a million employees and contractors in the United States alone. You were guided almost entirely by an idiosyncratic and unreliable reputation system, initially designed to review books, that has used years of feedback from hundreds of millions of customers to help construct an alternative universe of sometimes large but often fleeting brands that have little identity or relevance outside of the platform. You found what you were looking for, sort of, through a process that didn't feel much like shopping at all.
This is all normal in that Amazon is so dominant that it sets norms. But its essential weirdness -- its drift from anything resembling shopping or informed consumption -- is becoming harder for Amazon's one-click magic trick to hide. Interacting with Amazon, for most of its customers, broadly produces the desired, expected, and generally unrivaled result: They order all sorts of things; the prices are usually reasonable, and they don't have to think about shipping costs; the things they order show up pretty quickly; returns are no big deal. But, at the core of that experience, something has become unignorably worse. Late last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon's customer satisfaction had fallen sharply in a range of recent surveys, which cited COVID-related delivery interruptions but also poor search results and "low-quality" items. More products are junk. The interface itself is full of junk. The various systems on which customers depend (reviews, search results, recommendations) feel like junk. This is the state of the art of American e-commerce, a dominant force in the future of buying things. Why does it feel like Amazon is making itself worse? Maybe it's slipping, showing its age, and settling into complacency. Or maybe -- hear me out -- everything is going according to plan.
The system worked. But what system? In your short journey, you interacted with a few. There was the '90s-retro e-commerce interface, which conceals a marketplace of literally millions of sellers, each scrapping for relevance, using Amazon as a sales channel for their own semi-independent businesses. It subjected you to the multibillion-dollar advertising network planted between Amazon users and the things they browse and buy. It was shipped to you through a sprawling, submerged logistics empire with nearly a million employees and contractors in the United States alone. You were guided almost entirely by an idiosyncratic and unreliable reputation system, initially designed to review books, that has used years of feedback from hundreds of millions of customers to help construct an alternative universe of sometimes large but often fleeting brands that have little identity or relevance outside of the platform. You found what you were looking for, sort of, through a process that didn't feel much like shopping at all.
This is all normal in that Amazon is so dominant that it sets norms. But its essential weirdness -- its drift from anything resembling shopping or informed consumption -- is becoming harder for Amazon's one-click magic trick to hide. Interacting with Amazon, for most of its customers, broadly produces the desired, expected, and generally unrivaled result: They order all sorts of things; the prices are usually reasonable, and they don't have to think about shipping costs; the things they order show up pretty quickly; returns are no big deal. But, at the core of that experience, something has become unignorably worse. Late last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon's customer satisfaction had fallen sharply in a range of recent surveys, which cited COVID-related delivery interruptions but also poor search results and "low-quality" items. More products are junk. The interface itself is full of junk. The various systems on which customers depend (reviews, search results, recommendations) feel like junk. This is the state of the art of American e-commerce, a dominant force in the future of buying things. Why does it feel like Amazon is making itself worse? Maybe it's slipping, showing its age, and settling into complacency. Or maybe -- hear me out -- everything is going according to plan.
What about the scam products? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the growing wave of outright scam products, I'm talking 10TB SSDs for under 100 Euros, also part of the plan?
Re:What about the scam products? (Score:5, Informative)
Not just that, the MASSIVE number of products where if you read the reviews, you can instantly tell they're either (a) paid-for spam reviews or (b) reviews for a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PRODUCT, because Amazon lets these shyster stores "update" a listing with a completely different product. [slate.com]
Between the scam stores, the shady/broken products, the various chinese-knockoffs and utter garbage products (just look at the various fake-named likely-to-explode cellphone and laptop batteries, or the fact that you can usually find the EXACT same product with EXACTLY the same photos [reddit.com] under a dozen or more chinese-ripoff brand names), Amazon is quickly becoming more worthless than Walmart.
Re:What about the scam products? (Score:5, Interesting)
And even when the reviews ARE for that product they're often utterly irrelevant because quality and production standards have dropped precipitously in the last 2 years alone, let alone the 10-20 before that.
And even if it hasn't you're STILL often screwed because amazon deliberately mixes inventory from chinese scammers with legitimate sellers, so even if you go out of your way to pay substantially more to order from a specific seller you're likely to still get a fraudulent knockoff.
Re:What about the scam products? (Score:5, Interesting)
I ordered a screen protector for a device I have the other day, it was labelled specifically for my device, but when it arrived it didn't fit because it was a generic SLR camera screen protector with a sticker on saying it was for my device (which wasn't a camera).
So I sent it back, and submitted a review to say it's being mis-sold as a protector for this device when it's not.
I looked back at my reviews a few days later and Amazon has crossed out the review saying "Amazon takes responsibility for this fulfilment experience". This wasn't a fulfilment issue, it was a seller mis-selling something, yet Amazon pretends it's their fault for sending the wrong thing when it wasn't the case. This seller has multiple reviews like this and their current seller rating is 100%, even though it would be significantly lower if Amazon wasn't own goaling itself by taking responsibility for a problem that doesn't exist just to cover up a seller's mis-selling.
I really have no words, I've never seen such dumb self-sabotage as to blame yourself for something that never happened to allow dodgy sellers to get away with mis-selling.
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A lot less work than actually vetting and culling bad merchants. Which inevitably opens them up for lawsuits or worse: an inquiry into abusing
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You're missing the point though. It was cheap! The fact that it didn't work, was broken, or kicked your dog is entirely secondary. Amazon is solving the one great American dream: an absolute race to the bottom all in the name of saving a precious George Washington bill.
Sure you could buy an e-bike for $1500 from Europe, or you could get one for $199 on Amazon. Will it burn my house down? Doesn't matter man $199 is an f-ing bargain!
Re:Don’t even get me started! (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the article. Amazon doesn't sell products much anymore. It provides seller services, fulfillment services, and shipping services to those who want to sell products. And that's where it makes its money.
Just like AWS doesn't run websites or applications; it provides compute services to those who need to run websites or applications.
Re:Don’t even get me started! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is they present the appearance of selling products directly to customers. Amazon is trying to have it both ways, to be regarded as the retailer when that is convenient, and to disclaim responsibility when it is not.
The identity of the actual seller, what country they are in, how you might contact them if you have questions, and so on are a footnote at best, so much so that it has led to legal disputes on the subject.
Re:Don’t even get me started! (Score:5, Informative)
If you look, and you don't even have to look that closely, you can immediately tell if something is sold by Amazon or by a third party. It's basically right there under the Add to Cart / Buy now buttons.
If it doesn't say "Ships from and sold by Amazon" Amazon I don't buy it. I've never had an issue with Amazon itself, and I'm not going to chance it with some fly-by-night third party.
Re: What about the scam products? (Score:2)
Their Market Place is where these scams appear. Market Place on the site is largely indistinguishable from actual Amazon listings. Amazon's unwillingness to apply standards is making buying from their site almost as bad as buying electrical goods on eBay.
When you're the only game in town.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a predictable pattern. Once you're on top, you don't have to care anymore. I've seen this manifest itself as a huge increase in damaged and late packages, and faulty goods.
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You were born, this means that for legal purposes you gave implied to consent to everyone on the internet.
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They're great. I look up products on their site, read reviews, then I get the model number and search for alternate sellers including local stores. Sometimes I back out, seeing the _actual_ product sometimes makes me back out of the purchase, but at least it's not the hassle of returning it. Amazon is great at pushing the popular products and the products who's makers pay Amazon to rate them higher, but it's terrible if you want to be discerning and get full details that aren't misleading.
Going to disagree here (Score:2)
I'm going to risk being unpopular and suggest the specific issue you bring up is likely not entirely Amazons fault. The service industry and most other industries at that level of employment have just gotten off a very well publicized multi year labor shortage as people were very slow to return to work after covid. The damaged and late packages are likely a result of that as less employees doing the same amount of work will create problems in any industry.
I have plenty of problems with Amazon that are very
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Customers should never apologize for a seller. That upends the entire market system. Customers and sellers _should_ be adversaries! Customers should look for cheap prices, or high quality, or convenience, or what not, and if they don't get what they want but still praise the seller, then the seller has no motivation to improve. It doesn't matter when it's not the seller's direct fault..
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> Once you're on top, you don't have to care anymore.
Indeed. Oligopolies and monopolies almost always drift into suckage because they can and no force corrects them.
Microsoft makes total crap and people live with it because enough lemmings use the crap that you can usually GoogleBing a fix or work-around. In biz-land they are large simply because they are large. Amazon is similar because the alternative is making lots of separate orders on different sites which you may not know well. Somebody called Amaz
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You know how to get a company to care (somewhat)? Stop buying from them. Don't go to their stores, don't buy online from them. That is the only way to get a company's attention. When their sales drop like a rock, that's when things will change.
However, as the vast majority of Americans are too lazy to do this simple thing, Amazon will keep raking in the money and not caring.
Walmart junk (Score:2)
When you're that big you've got manufacturers that make entire assembly lines just for you. And you run those manufacturers ragged so they're always looking to cut costs. I don't buy electronics from Walmart. Heck I don't buy
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You do know you are supposed to run a cycle with just water (Or water with vinegar) thru them when you get them, right?
A form of spam (Score:2)
There is certainly a race to the bottom, and part of that are the reviews. Some are obviously paid for by the seller, and they appeared to use the cheapest supplier too.
A while ago, I bough a cheap Chinese slot bracket for my computer and looked at the reviews. A lot of the "reviews" were not even for the same product. In one, for instance, someone complained about receiving the wrong motion detector.
The whole thing felt like the email spam I often get, where it seems the seller is content if you look at th
Re: A form of spam (Score:2)
They just recycle the same listing for multiple products over time so they can keep the reviews.
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A lot of the "reviews" were not even for the same product. In one, for instance, someone complained about receiving the wrong motion detector.
It's a known and reported-on problem. Amazon lets scam stores "update a product listing" and replace it with an entirely different product. [slate.com] It's a way for the chinese crapripoff companies to make something appear to have a ton of reviews out of the gate.
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The reviews were likely real. When you see this, the seller had some other (cheaper) product up to get the volume up and customer reviews. The next step is to change the title and description to the new more expensive product and it ranks to the top thanks to all of the good reviews.
Similar to recent essay by Cory Doctorow (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Similar to recent essay by Cory Doctorow (Score:2)
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One was written by a person. The other "copied" by an AI. Can you tell which is which?
also (Score:2)
Why does it feel like Amazon is making itself worse? Maybe it's slipping, showing its age, and settling into complacency. Or maybe -- hear me out -- everything is going according to plan.
or maybe people are just getting sick of the same online shopping experience. i know it seems silly to imagine people feeling some sort of ennui when they're buying a new pack of socks online, but people are like that. amazon is old now and the experience of shopping there is old hat to people. and people these days will co
People need something to hate on (Score:2)
People are feeling generally angsty about their economic situation. Inflation has robbed most of them of something on the order of 10% of their income. With their day to day expenses being something like 14% higher than just a year ago; while they only saw 2-3% salary bumps
Meanwhile the economy is slowing, they are starting to worry about their jobs again, and don't expect a raise to match their new expense reality.
Amazon's junkification - is really not an Amazon thing, been Walmart, Target, TSC, etc latel
No they’re garbage (Score:3)
Prime used to mean two day shipping. Now prime is whenever the hell they feel like. Maybe tomorrow maybe, next week. I see items listed as prime but with a ship date of 6 weeks from now. Plenty of times you can find better prices at Walmart and Target. Plus you can have it the same day because it’s actually in stock. The rest of Amazon is people buying local things like boxed soup mix and selling it for a few bucks extra. It’s like ebay but the search and service is much worse. When my prime ite
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I will give you prime shipping slipped for a while, during the pandemic. However living in the sticks where I do, I use prime a lot and nothing has been late for the last 5 or 6 months.
Rarely can you find better prices at Walmart on non-food items. When you can its usually a 'Walmart' version that is crappier than the normal SKU. Typically Dollar General or Tractor Supply will be Amazon on price - if and its a big if they have what you want; 8 times out of the 10 they don't or the examples they have in th
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Same here. Largest metropolitan area in the US. I've got multiple Amazon warehouses within 10 miles of me. One of their Amazon Air hubs not too far away. And about half the time, my shit either gets here late, or not at all. It used to be if you called and complained about stuff being late, they'd give you a free month of prime at least, now they don't even do that, you barely get an apology out of them. They're definitely not worth paying for Prime any more.
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Plus they keep adding unrelated crap to Prime to justify jacking up the price. I don't care about NFL football games, and I don't want to pay for them, but if you want Prime shipping, that's the only way.
I'm in an area without local Amazon delivery, so everything is either USPS or occasionally UPS. There are a couple of Amazon warehouses here though (one is for odd-sized stuff like patio furniture and rugs, one is more typical). I ordered something and saw it was shipping from the local warehouse... still t
Amazon is hard to find stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the article. It's just hard to find what you need on Amazon beyond just searching for keywords. So you will often find some products on what you need, but it doesn't feel like a shopping experience. You also tend not get all the 'official products'.
For example.
One of things I like to do is see all similarly categorized options. Say I am shopping for pants. If I go to most clothing stores, I can search for pants. I click on one, and generally they have breadcrumbs (I think it is the word) that will take you to the stores listing of ALL their pants. You can be pretty confident that you can reasonably browse all the available pants from that store.
Amazon does have categories, but it's just not very well organized and the way you search rarely leads to the nice breadcrumbs. You also generally lack complete collections from known name brands.
This has resulted in me generally buying from the official site or more targeted websites when I'm looking for a specific thing. Example, I bought some Ralph Lauren clothes recently. I did search on Amazon and it had some stuff (even stuff that looked official), but I couldn't find what I was looking for. The official Ralph Lauren website didn't ship to Canada, so I ended up ordering from the website of a Canadian retailer.
Amazon is still my first entry point because if it finds what I am looking for, it is just so convenient and free shipping. Like I bought an air fryer and I found the specific model by searching for that model and that worked like a charm. But more often that not, it fails at the actual shopping/browsing experience.
I think general retailers can definitely catch up to Amazon in a variety of ways.
1. Using existing logins, like Google Login. I just can't bring myself to create accounts for every website.
2. Using good shipping. As amazing as next day is, you don't even need to be that awesome. Just keep the customer informed and be prompt about it. I ordered recently from simons (Canadian retailer) and I was impressed with their shipping. They used intelcom (never even heard of it), but it was quick and they sent an email saying it would be delivered in the next 3 hours. It was pretty good. I'm not missing much from amazon with that kind of shipping. I didn't order enough to get free shipping, but it was cheap. I think like $10 or something. To contrast that good experience, I bought something from another retailer recently and they literally kept the order for like 2 months before cancelling the order saying they had no stock. That's just shitty. At least with Amazon they typically say how much they have in stock when there is low stock.
3. Have the good browsing experience. Keep things organized by category, so you can find all the options and curated. It's so much better seeing brands you recognize rather than ZWIFFD Amazon China brand. Honestly, I can't figure out why these China brands can't even just start uniting under 1 brand name. There's gotta be some business majors there or here who can organize it all.
Re: Amazon is hard to find stuff (Score:2)
It's worse than that. The actual branded pants on Amazon are all fakes. Buy the same pants elsewhere (yes, for a little more) and you'll get higher quality products.
Re:Amazon is hard to find stuff (Score:4, Informative)
beyond just searching for keywords
That works for you? My problem with Amazon is that the stupid search engine substitutes keywords in a way that makes searching for an exact product, or worse yet exact specs extremely difficult
Amazon's search has always sucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, sucked for the consumer - I assume it's serving Amazon and their crap dealers perfectly.
You can go to Amazon and search for a particular vendor part number, and get half a page of other similar products before the actual item you searched for (and that's not even accounting for the "sponsored results" crap). Amazon knows what you are looking for, and even though you searched for exactly one item, they show you other items first. Presumably they're sponsored (but not labeled as sponsored), higher margin, or just crap they have too much of in the warehouse closest to you.
Even if you want to buy from Amazon, if you know what you are looking for, you are usually better off using Google to find the Amazon page.
But even before amazon.com turned into such a crap hustler, the search was primitive. It's never been as good as something like Newegg for computer parts. Amazon usually has a bunch of category-related checkboxes on the side, but they don't actually categorize products correctly so they're largely useless. You can check "under $50" and the number one item will be $60 - again, I don't think it's because they can't do it correctly, I believe it's because they're not designing search results to serve you. The search results are ordered based on who pays them the most, what crap they have too much of, etc.
And then the co-mingling of seller products in the warehouses means that, even when you find the listing for part XYZ123 from vendor ABC, and it's a "sold by Amazon.com" listing, you may still get a counterfeit. Amazon doesn't care, because they still profit (I expect handling returns of counterfeit items is just figured into the cost). You just can't reliably buy small and easily-faked mass-produced items from Amazon. SD cards and batteries are especially bad.
Virtual impulse buys (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Amazon knows what you are looking for, and even though you searched for exactly one item, they show you other items first.
Amazon uses their search function the way physical stores use endcap displays or those maze of impulse item racks at the checkout. It's a poor way to run a search engine, but probably good for business, at least in the short term.
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The worst part is making sure you have something legitimate. If I buy a Coway Airmega, is it really from Coway, or a fake knockoff? The UI doesn't make it obvious. For hard drives the situation is far worse because a lot of the hard drives are completely fake.
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Newegg is (or at least was before they were sold) better than Amazon in many ways, but those free returns sure are a comfort.
Yes, Amazon seems to be going to shit (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon used to have the fastest free shipping in my area. Now, when I select free "super saver shipping", the package can take up until 2 weeks to arrive. It's like they're trying to punish me for not signing up for Prime... screw that. Walmart offers free two-day shipping now, so I'll just use that.
Don't use them (Score:2)
I've not bought anything from Amazon since they pulled the one-click patent scam. They're not the only game in town unless you're just too lazy to do anything about it, in which case don't whine about them.
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just because you don't care, doesn't mean everyone have to accept anything. If a company have bad policies is completely valid reason to stop using it. Amazon didn't improved in the last 20 years, only got worse, as you can see by this article... so no good reason to forgive them
And yes, one click buy is still awful, it just a weasel way to make people impulse buy without a good way to change their minds
Learn to write (Score:2)
It sounds like the author of this had so many feelings and opinions bursting out of them that it prevented them from writing (maybe thinking) clearly.
Needs the touch of a firm editor.
Its the result that matters (Score:2)
They order all sorts of things; the prices are usually reasonable, and they don't have to think about shipping costs; the things they order show up pretty quickly; returns are no big deal.
That's pretty much the result I am looking for.
If you BUY junk, you will GET junk.
Hint #1: if you buy the cheapest version of what you're looking for - it's probably junk.
Hint #2: if the item is not sold on any other website, it's probably junk.
I rarely get junk from Amazon. I rarely have to return stuff, and I do, it's usually something I would have never bought if they didn't have such an easy return policy.
I placed 154 orders in 2022 (may with multiple items per order). My wife placed another 69 order
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Hint #2: if the item is not sold on any other website, it's probably junk.
Amazon is very much a trust but verify type of environment. Having to Google a product I see on Amazon to try and verify if it really is what it says it is it drives me nuts.
Chinese Brands (Score:3)
Chinese Brands took over Amazon a few years ago. You have to really search now to try and avoid a ton of cheap products from brands you've never heard of. What is with all of the seemingly random name brands anyway?
Amazon made itself into Aliexpress with US prices. No one wanted or needed this, Amazon did this after so many popular US brands gave up on Amazon due to issues like knock-off products, customer service issues, and delivery issues.
Whiny New Yorkers (Score:2)
Ignore the whiny New Yorkers. They are, for the most part, irrelevant, like online commenters.
"The food here sucks." - a NY'er who somehow made it to Valhalla.
Ignore what the customer asks for, we know better! (Score:2)
Amazon literally ignores your search terms - search "DDR5 32GB" and sort by price, and get two pages of DDR4 memory before anything actually relevant to the search. Set the sort order and have it constantly reset to "Featured" on every new search. I'm falling back to searching using DDG on "site:amazon.com" as that at least respects my searches. Newegg is only slightly better, alas.
It's the same enshitification that pervades other lines of businses like commercial air travel in the US. Customers are just an
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I'm falling back to searching using DDG on "site:amazon.com" as that at least respects my searches.
Why not use bing directly? You're being tracked by it anyway.
Newegg is only slightly better, alas.
They really went to crap when they added other resellers to their site.
Isn't that the entire point? (Score:3)
Isn't the entire point of our modern consumption economy that reviews are essentially useless?
Let's start with the basic issue that you'd like to know if something you buy is reliable. That's literally impossible to know since literally everything has to be redesigned at least every 2 years. If the model of 3 years ago was reliable, first of all good luck finding any review talking about that, but even if you know, too bad, it's been redesigned, and with some luck the new model will also be reliable. Maybe it won't, who knows?
Also notice when you're asked to review something: right after buying it. Every had a mail after 2 years asking to review something? No, the most they want customers to know is whether it looked nice when it arrived, and if it seemed to work or not (but that second part is optional).
It's strange that this article singles out Amazon in this case. This is basically our entire economy. Just redesign everything contantly so it's "new and exciting", and any real reviews or reputation of your product is impossible, because why would you want your product to last long? People need to buy the next version asap.
It's been that way for a *long* time (Score:2)
Lest we forget, Amazon as recently as 2019 would strive to get items with Prime Shipping delivered in two days. Then they had a spat with Fed-ex, decided they could do it themselves, and shipping has gone downhill ever since. And since there's billionaire egos on the line, neither Fed-ex nor Amazon will offer the olive branch and go back to a partnership that was mutually beneficial.
Their search algorithms have been broken for years. I can search for a product that I know Amazon has by using the *exact*
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If you want to search an item on amazon you are better off searching in google. It will find the page on amazon far better than Amazon's search.
As previous posters have indicated Amazon ignores your terms, messes with the order of what comes back, and generally tries to make it look like:
1. there are loads of items available
2. all of them are from some unknown Chinese company
3. the ones they want to sell you are top of your list
I'm buying less and less from Amazon. The quality of most of the electronics s
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The Amazon search is not intended to show you the things you might actually want to buy, its designed to show you the things Amazon wants you to buy (which are presumably the things that make Amazon the most profit when people buy them)
FTC Sleeps (Score:2)
poor search results not new (Score:2)
More than a decade ago, did a search on Amazon for "30 inch 2560x1600 monitor".
Only 3 of the top 10 results, and 7 of the top 25, actually met even the "30 inch" spec.
So "poor search results" is not a new thing.
Sponsored links blocked by ad blockers (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard similar complaints from friends, but I wasn't seeing the same thing. I finally realized, my experience browsing Amazon with uBlock enabled is completely different. All of these sponsored links are served up by Amazon's ad network, not directly integrated into the results, and uBlock blocks all of them. You don't see all these Sponsored Links all over with an ad blocker.
Re:Sponsored links blocked by ad blockers (Score:4, Informative)
Wow. It's been years since I went online without an ad blocker. I disabled my blocker and loaded up Amazon. Yikes! I had no idea they had all those sponsored items mixed in with the regular listings. Thank you, uBlock Origin!
It's those third party sellers... (Score:2)
I know they'll never stop third party sellers because they make so much money off it - but - seriously.. the whole user experience would be so much better if Amazon stopped allowing these fly by night, "make up a brand name by having my cat jump on the keyboard" sellers to set up shop, scam a bunch of folks and disappear....
Rather than having 300 different brands (most of which are clearly cat-on-keyboard names) selling the same low quality thing sourced through alibaba, using pictures that may or may not
People have to vent (Score:2)
I rarely have trouble finding
'90s-retro e-commerce interface (Score:2)
This is one of the best things about Amazon, not having to work to use a "Modern" UI that is really just a billboard with poorly-defined, unpredictable controls.
Now let's talk (Score:2)
I stopped buying from Amazon years ago (Score:3)
Go Else (Score:2)
Reducing Choice, Increasing Options (Score:2)
Not all tech companies have maintained that philosophy of "the customer knows what they want". Netflix notoriously has removed almost all ability to find something to watch unless you know the exact name of the media you want to see. Back when they started, you could search by language, subtitle, country of origin, year released, and a variety of thematic descriptors. Today, you can choose type of media (show, movie), and general theme category. If you know where to click, you can sort by release year or al
The laziness of consumers? (Score:2)
... or maybe cluelessness?
What Amazon are "allowing" is nothing new, before the internet, before online shopping, there would be some sort of market in your town where you could buy goods - and in those markets, there would be shysters selling you shit - it's as old as time.
There is only ONE type of review worth anything, word of mouth from family, friends and experts you trust.
If you don't have that available for a product you want to buy, stop being lazy.
Do the research.
I have spent many many hours resear
Never buy an sd card from them now. (Score:2)
Ok, so I do, but I test every single named brand one I buy. 99% of the sdcards they sell outside Kingston, Samsung and Sandisk are counterfeit goods. A bunch of the ones they sell with those names are also counterfeit goods. They don't care. They refund them easily because they know they're bad, but your sister or uncle won't know this, and just assume that's the way these products work.
It has gotten so bad that they sell sponsored OBVIOUSLY fake goods:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/External-Portable-SSD-Desktops
Oh, delivery interruptions, is it? (Score:2)
From TFS:
Delivery interruptions??? No. Prime delivery used to be 2-day UPS blue, and they'd ship the same day if you ordered early enough. You also had the option of upgrading to 1-day (red.) UPS is still pretty much as fast as it ever was, meaning, almost always 2-days or one in the case of red. So this is 100% on Amazon.
Now it could be via th
Search is the entire problem. (Score:3)
The problem is that Amazon's search has no duty or incentive to be optimized for customers.
Instead, Amazon search is optimized to sell products which are most profitable for amazon. It is designed to prompt vendors to compete with one another. It is optimized to encourage you to buy something, anything from Amazon even if they do not sell the product you need. It is designed to get the customer to buy something as fast as possible. It is not designed to allow products to be transparently compared.
It's a product that looks like it is built for customers, but it's not. Amazon is not so stupid they can't build a good interface; they choose to do it this way instead.
If you want to search amazon for relevant products, it's best to use a regular web search like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. restricted to search amazon.com. Or even better, just stop buying from a storefront that sucks.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I shop at Amazon strictly for cheap crap. If I wanted something good, and thus expensive, I could find a good price on it anywhere. Amazon only has better prices than everyone else on shit.
Re:If you search for cheap shit... (Score:5, Insightful)
At that point you may as well just cut out the middle man and go straight to the big storefronts on aliexpress. You'll get the same thing but for a fraction of even Amazon's cost.
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At that point you may as well just cut out the middle man and go straight to the big storefronts on aliexpress. You'll get the same thing but for a fraction of even Amazon's cost.
Most aliexpress sellers don't have US warehouses, most amazon sellers do.
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Their shipping's a lot faster than it used to be, with their "plus" system guaranteeing arrival in about twoish weeks. Considering you pay a dollar vs ten dollars on amazon it's pretty worth it.
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I find the shipping times on aliexpress purchases to be extremely variable. But there are a lot of things on Amazon that literally aren't any cheaper on Aliexpress, and the chances of getting counterfeit goods are not necessarily higher on Amazon given that a number of Chinese brands (e.g. Baofeng) have an official US factory "store" on Amazon.
I got my pair of UV-5R8W radios cheaper on Amazon than I would have from Aliexpress, given the use of the official store in each case. Or at least, for the same price
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How are returns on aliexpress?
They used to be very bad, now they are only slightly bad plus slow. Amazon is faster and better in this regard, even though it's not as good as it used to be.
Go directly to the source (Score:3)
I buy my cheap crap on AliExpress. That's where most of the cheap crap on Amazon comes from anyway. Why pay extra to a middleman (2 middlemen actually; Amazon and the "store" owner) when you can go right to the source? Sure, it's not next-day delivery but I'm not usually in a hurry for my cheap crap.
Re:Go directly to the source (Score:5, Funny)
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Ali express is not cost effective for small lots. I got a couple of batteries there that would have cost $40 on Amazon. On Ali Express they were only $5, and the shipping from Turkey was $40. Amazon Prime free shipping creates a huge price and time differential.
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1-2 times a year I can drop some serious coin on something really nice.
Can you please share an example of something really nice you bought on Amazon? Many premier brands - take Patagonia, for example - will not sell any of their products on Amazon.
So a few examples of some premier brands that are still on Amazon will be welcome.
As easy as it is to set up an online shop, more quality brands should continue the trend and pull their merchandise off Amazon. It's a better customer experience to shop right from the company that produced the item.
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One example for me: chargers and charging cables. You _can_ buy cheap junk on Amazon... but you can also buy Anker, TwelveSouth, and Mophie. I've also found UGreen to be high quality as well.
When I'm buying stuff on Amazon - I don't just randomly search for "phone charger"... I put in "Anker phone charger" and get brought right to the good stuff. Then you double-check that you're buying it from Amazon or the "Anker Store" on Amazon and you're good to go.
I figure that most people have their ways of weedin
Re:If you search for cheap shit... (Score:4, Insightful)
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As far as I can tell..their batteries aren't sending home images or info on me to anyone...?
Never enough tinfoil when you need it... (Score:4, Funny)
There are tiny black drone helicopters in those batteries. They come out at night, shoot pictures, report in, and spew chemtrails all over your home when you're asleep.
You be careful now.
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At the time, one of the upper level LG OLED tv's...I've gotten a couple of $$ "L" Canon Lenses from amazon.
The LG tv was shipped free..no tax, was unpacked for me and brought into the house and placed where I wanted it...was a nice deal.
Now, most of those BIG ticket items I was thinking of, were back before Amazon started charging sales tax on everything...3rd party on Amazon still did this for a long time after Amazon itself
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At the time, one of the upper level LG OLED tv's...I've gotten a couple of $$ "L" Canon Lenses from amazon.
Same.
For higher end camera gear, I admit I now do mostly on B&H through their "PayBoo" in house charge card where they cover the sales tax.
Likewise. The 5% Amazon cash back from their card pales in comparison with the >9% instant savings from Payboo. Between that and B&H basically giving away two- or three-day shipping, I've stopped buying high-end electronics from Amazon entirely except when B&H doesn't have it.
I've also stopped buying a lot of other things now that Walmart+ gives free shipping. And when I can afford to wait for a couple of weeks or four, I buy my random Chinese-made electronics components from AliExpress n
Good stuff (Score:3)
Sure:
An anti-static mat for my desk/chair. Grounding lead, dual-layer, very tough, nicely textured. Large.
Several Geekpi ESD USB isolation modules for preventing static consequent to our extremely low humidity from killing things.
A Focusrite Scarlett Solo guitar interface so I can work directly with Logic at my desk.
Nishiki medium grain rice — truly the best rice I've ever eaten.
Proctor Silex Rice cooker and steamer (this is
Re:If you search for cheap shit... (Score:5, Funny)
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OK, very recent story, still unfolding as a matter of fact.
I ordered some books from Amazon in December last year (Sold by Amazon, delivered by Amazon, or so Amazon said). Two different packages, one with two sets of books, the other with one set.
The first one arrived... containing two cheap Chinese smartwatches. I contacted Amazon by chat, after three different interactions they understood the issue and promised to resend the package via DHL Express (which I loathe, bad experiences with them, but whatever)
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You know, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say one positive thing about DHL.
Oh, DHL (Score:2)
Here's one:
The no longer serve my region, so I never have to suffer those idiots any longer. :)
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Maybe it depends on country, I don't know.
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I just tried to buy some pool chemicals (chlorine, which for some reason has disappeared from the local stores). Local stores told me to just 'buy it from amazon'.
Stuff on Amazon that has the name brand on it is iffy. Half the packages are reused containers with random white powder in it (i'm not going to even guess what it is). One had sand in it rather than the chemical, and the third had what looked and smelled correct.
Generic ones were spotty at best. The problem with some of these chemicals is that
Lack of chlorine (Score:2)
Well, I can tell you why it disappeared: One of the two big factories for it in the USA suffered a major fire, shutting it down for an extended period.
The sand and such is probably from taking advantage of that. And while I could see a powder as people sold their various supplies for different things, it should smell correctly if it is the right stuff.
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Spot. Bloody. On. (Score:2)
Thank you.
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Sometimes not having very much money means the choice is between buying cheap, crappy pants and not having pants. So you do what you have to do.
But buying quality is almost always cheaper in the long run, if you can afford it up front. I'm reminded of this truth as I battle with several low-bid vendors who we were required to hire because of the state's rules. "Low-bid" requirements have cost us so much money.