5 ms·

Great, but doesn't come close to solving the actual problem: Amazon's retail catalog is flooded with fakes, drop shippers, bots and low quality products with fa

by ruddct 10y ago

Great, but doesn't come close to solving the actual problem: Amazon's retail catalog is flooded with fakes, drop shippers, bots and low quality products with fake reviews. I almost entirely avoid using them for purchasing home goods at this point, the risk is too great and the customer service is too poor. For things that Amazon itself sells, the cost is often not competitive. For everything else, I can get it cheaper by shopping locally, getting from big box stores or by using Alibaba. "Prime" two day shipping is often inexplicably 3-5 day shipping (and I live in a major US metro). All this saddens me, a former Amazon employee who was a loyal user of their products for a long time. But at this point it doesn't seem like Amazon is too concerned about the quality of their retail catalog. My business will go elsewhere.

kayfox 10y ago
And even when its not a fake or not the correct brand, it can be expired.
patejam 10y ago
I haven't had this experience at all. Prime ships in two days almost always. Same day prime does was it says. I've had refunds without having to ship back products, and when I did have to ship back a product (shoes) I got the refund right away and free return shipping like they advertised. I'm also in a major US metro area. Prices don't seem too bad. My latest purchase was head and shoulders. Looked up the price at Walmart and it was 10 cents more expensive than Amazon. This is my experience for most home goods. For anything not home goods, they're certainly cheaper than any in-person store that I can think of. I'm not sure which of our experiences is the outlier. One thing that might be different is that almost all my purchases are Prime shipping items.
- dazc 10y ago
  In the UK Prime was supposed to be 'next day' but this seems to have slipped back over the past year or so? My pet gripe is the 'preparing for dispatch' black hole that generally (in my experience) means 'you're going to be waiting a long, long time'. Recently ordered a keyboard in UK to be delivered to Spain. Despite being in stock it stayed in 'preparing to dispatch' for a week and I couldn't cancel. In frustration I ordered another one thinking I could just refuse to accept delivery of whichever didn't arrive first and get a refund. Sure enough, that time I left the office for half an hour I returned to find two packages on my desk waiting for me :)
  - malnourish 10y ago
    They were just trying to batch process ;)
  - pidg 10y ago
    The service you experience with Prime definitely depends on where in the UK you live, or rather where the item is going. I live in a city centre, within 50 miles of an Amazon distribution centre, and it often offers me same day delivery. Like, order at 3am, items arrive at 8pm. But if I change it to my parents' address (more remote but still in civilisation), it takes them 1-2 days to deliver.
- CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
  I recently moved from being twenty miles from a distribution center to the middle of nowhere. After eventually getting annoyed enough to contact Amazon, it was explained that Release Date Delivery and Prime 2-Day Shipping aren't actually guarantees. And that mostly lines up. When I lived next door they were super fast to refund instantly. Now that I don't, they are a lot less likely. A proper return and refund is the same, but just a "So... where the hell is my coffee grinder that I ordered last Friday?" exchange results in "It is on the way. You might see it Thursday" response. I still prefer Amazon and still go for prime shipping products (it is still worth it price wise), but I am a lot less likely to buy time sensitive stuff through them anymore and a lot more likely to just go with the "I don't care when it gets here, give me some store credit" shipping.
  - Caerus 10y ago
    There is a bit of compensation available. If an item doesn't arrive in 2 days you can request a free month of Prime: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201117450 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... "If you received free shipping through Amazon Prime, you may be eligible for a free one-month extension when the promised delivery date isn't met. Prime Extensions are limited to one per free trial and 12 for an annual membership. Free Amazon Student Memberships do not qualify for this extension." Just contact support about that order and tell them the item didn't arrive in time and you'd like your free month of Prime. Since they switched to the Amazon delivery service I'm about to max out my 12 free months.
    - ruddct 10y ago
      Huh, interesting. I (and my wife) have contacted Amazon a number of times about shipping estimates being off/wrong and have only ever received the same form response (even when we respond to the form response, CS reps just mail back the same form response again). I'll keep this in the pocket for the next time it happens.
      - Caerus 10y ago
        I'm not positive, but I think you specifically have to ask for it. Before I found that the best I ever got was a shipping refund if I paid for the 1-day upgrade. Now I just quote that line and paste the link and it's always approved. They usually act like it's only done as a customer retention move and at the discretion of the support rep.
- citizenkeen 10y ago
  I pretty much only get two day shipping if I go into the chat and ask for it. Been a Prime member for years; I just went to look at some more baby stuff being sold by Amazon - overnight is guaranteed by Tuesday, 2 Day Prime Shipping is Thursday. Amazon is pretty good about "making an exception" if I open a chat with a rep and call them on their bullshit. I make four or five Prime purchases a week, and rarely do my goods get a guaranteed date of 2 days. (They often show up in two days, but that's not the same thing.)
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  I have. Many items are "Prime (ships in 3-5 days)". Seemingly at random, be they big or small (I usually shop more in the electronics and household sector). I also live ~15mi from an Amazon distribution center, and ~50 miles from a second.
menacingly 10y ago
I didn't renew prime this year, for the first time since its launch. I started getting bizarrely frequent errors with small items too inexpensive to bother with returning. I'd get 1 package of floss when I'd ordered a pack of 10, or just the top part of a soap dispenser. It's also kind of tedious to always have to go through and make sure you're buying from amazon, because otherwise the odds you're getting a knock-off or an already-expired supplement are way too high.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
phyzome 10y ago
My biggest gripe is that they merge the reviews of different vendors of the same product, so for heavily-scammed items like laptop batteries, the reviews are almost useless.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  I've experienced this problem as well. I really wish a customer review of an Amazon purchase were tied to a particular seller. For example, I was recently looking at a Hario Buono kettle [1] to make coffee. There are two versions of it, one made in Japan and one made in China. Unfortunately they share the same model number. The Japanese version is considered better quality. Of course Amazon has the lowest price compared to specialty coffee retailers, but since they don't differentiate between the two origins, it's a gamble. Different third party sellers stock one version or the other. You can see in the reviews that people have received both. Without the reviews being tied to a particular seller, it's hard to say what you'll get, so I'll end up buying from somewhere else instead. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Hario-VKB-120HSVV60-Buono-Pouring-Kettle/dp/B000IGOXLS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/Hario-VKB-120HSVV60-Buono-Pouring-Ket...
  - fencepost 10y ago
    If you go down to the right and click on the "Used & New (161) from $xx.yy" link, you can see the individual sellers including notes from them about origin and where it ships from. The bigger problem for some of these is actually going to be with anything "Fulfilled by Amazon" because there's some chance that the products with identical numbers will be mingled in Amazon's warehouses. Never having sold through them, does supposedly-identical stock get mingled like that? I think that was one of the problems people were having with counterfeiting.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      Some specify "shipping from Japan", but most don't seem to say "Made in China" or "Made in Japan" (it would be really convenient if they did). I don't think the shipping country necessarily implies the origin of the product, at least, I'd rather not gamble based on that. It would be nice if every seller specified where their version was made, or really more correctly that the two units would be listed with different SKUs.
bsharitt 10y ago
I stay away from third party sellers on Amazon these days as much as possible(as in I'll look elsewhere and only come back to them if they're the only viable option) and Amazon had been getting a lot closer to regular retail for stuff they sell directly, but I still find them cheaper in a lot of instances. I've not had problems with two day Prime shipping. They seem to have good relationship with USPS locally and things get delivered quickly and smoothly. Where I've been less impressed is their so-called "same day delivery" that has been very unreliable. The company they use here for it is Lone Star Overnight, and they drop the ball all the time, sometimes badly enough that I would have gotten it as fast with 2 day shipping. Only bright side there is that I've got lots of partial refunds and a few months of Prime for free.
falcolas 10y ago
> Amazon's retail catalog is flooded with fakes, drop shippers, bots and low quality products with fake reviews. I've been noticing this more and more as well. For example, searching for a manual coffee grinder results in three dozen pages of the same four items rebranded and sold by hundreds of individual sellers (and a few chair parts for good measure). All with plenty of good reviews. Finding an actual product amongst all the dreck is getting pretty damned hard.
dingaling 10y ago
Yes, much too little too late for myself and several colleagues. I seldom use Amazon now except as an ISBN-lookup and general book review facility and even then they often mix together reviews of different but similarly-titled ( non-fiction ) books, despite discrete ISBNs. Their subsidiary ABEBooks is much better for actually buying second-hand books. What a sad state when I have been shopping on Amazon since 1999 but now find eBay a better experience. I haven't even written an Amazon review in a couple of years, just don't have the motivation anymore.
kdamken 10y ago
I can't stand the "incentivized" reviews, and found this chrome plugin to be really helpful, it basically goes through and tries to remove the fake reviews for you and give you a new, more correct score without them - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reviewmetacom-review-anal/fjifglfkcaipnmhngbigdebkoikioend https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reviewmetacom-revi...
- pragmaddux 10y ago
  This is rather helpful. When I was looking for a cheap carry-on duffel with particular dimensions a few months ago, most items had ~10 incentivized reviews, and nothing genuine. You almost start looking for 4-star products, just because the reviews may actually be legitimate.
- Ajedi32 10y ago
  Aren't incentivized reviews banned now? https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/abpto3jt7fhb5oc https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/abpto3jt7fhb5oc
  - kdamken 10y ago
    I didn't realize they had added that to their policy. While that's awesome, I still see a ton of them on there. From some quick googling - https://www.amazon.com/Sentey-LS-4232-Headphones-Microphone-Rotation/dp/B014LMTYXG/ref=sr_1_22?s=aht&ie=UTF8&qid=1480363911&sr=1-22&refinements=p_n_feature_two_browse-bin%3A2266980011 https://www.amazon.com/Sentey-LS-4232-Headphones-Microphone-...
xt00 10y ago
Any particular example of a problem you had with products that you could point to? It's fairly easy to link to a particular "home good" that you had problems with. I use Amazon all the time for virtually everything and have had practically zero problems over the past 5 years.

by ruddct 10y ago

kayfox 10y ago

And even when its not a fake or not the correct brand, it can be expired.

patejam 10y ago

I haven't had this experience at all. Prime ships in two days almost always. Same day prime does was it says. I've had refunds without having to ship back products, and when I did have to ship back a product (shoes) I got the refund right away and free return shipping like they advertised. I'm also in a major US metro area. Prices don't seem too bad. My latest purchase was head and shoulders. Looked up the price at Walmart and it was 10 cents more expensive than Amazon. This is my experience for most home goods. For anything not home goods, they're certainly cheaper than any in-person store that I can think of. I'm not sure which of our experiences is the outlier. One thing that might be different is that almost all my purchases are Prime shipping items.

dazc 10y ago
In the UK Prime was supposed to be 'next day' but this seems to have slipped back over the past year or so? My pet gripe is the 'preparing for dispatch' black hole that generally (in my experience) means 'you're going to be waiting a long, long time'. Recently ordered a keyboard in UK to be delivered to Spain. Despite being in stock it stayed in 'preparing to dispatch' for a week and I couldn't cancel. In frustration I ordered another one thinking I could just refuse to accept delivery of whichever didn't arrive first and get a refund. Sure enough, that time I left the office for half an hour I returned to find two packages on my desk waiting for me :)
- malnourish 10y ago
  They were just trying to batch process ;)
- pidg 10y ago
  The service you experience with Prime definitely depends on where in the UK you live, or rather where the item is going. I live in a city centre, within 50 miles of an Amazon distribution centre, and it often offers me same day delivery. Like, order at 3am, items arrive at 8pm. But if I change it to my parents' address (more remote but still in civilisation), it takes them 1-2 days to deliver.
CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
I recently moved from being twenty miles from a distribution center to the middle of nowhere. After eventually getting annoyed enough to contact Amazon, it was explained that Release Date Delivery and Prime 2-Day Shipping aren't actually guarantees. And that mostly lines up. When I lived next door they were super fast to refund instantly. Now that I don't, they are a lot less likely. A proper return and refund is the same, but just a "So... where the hell is my coffee grinder that I ordered last Friday?" exchange results in "It is on the way. You might see it Thursday" response. I still prefer Amazon and still go for prime shipping products (it is still worth it price wise), but I am a lot less likely to buy time sensitive stuff through them anymore and a lot more likely to just go with the "I don't care when it gets here, give me some store credit" shipping.
- Caerus 10y ago
  There is a bit of compensation available. If an item doesn't arrive in 2 days you can request a free month of Prime: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201117450 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... "If you received free shipping through Amazon Prime, you may be eligible for a free one-month extension when the promised delivery date isn't met. Prime Extensions are limited to one per free trial and 12 for an annual membership. Free Amazon Student Memberships do not qualify for this extension." Just contact support about that order and tell them the item didn't arrive in time and you'd like your free month of Prime. Since they switched to the Amazon delivery service I'm about to max out my 12 free months.
  - ruddct 10y ago
    Huh, interesting. I (and my wife) have contacted Amazon a number of times about shipping estimates being off/wrong and have only ever received the same form response (even when we respond to the form response, CS reps just mail back the same form response again). I'll keep this in the pocket for the next time it happens.
    - Caerus 10y ago
      I'm not positive, but I think you specifically have to ask for it. Before I found that the best I ever got was a shipping refund if I paid for the 1-day upgrade. Now I just quote that line and paste the link and it's always approved. They usually act like it's only done as a customer retention move and at the discretion of the support rep.
citizenkeen 10y ago
I pretty much only get two day shipping if I go into the chat and ask for it. Been a Prime member for years; I just went to look at some more baby stuff being sold by Amazon - overnight is guaranteed by Tuesday, 2 Day Prime Shipping is Thursday. Amazon is pretty good about "making an exception" if I open a chat with a rep and call them on their bullshit. I make four or five Prime purchases a week, and rarely do my goods get a guaranteed date of 2 days. (They often show up in two days, but that's not the same thing.)
FireBeyond 10y ago
I have. Many items are "Prime (ships in 3-5 days)". Seemingly at random, be they big or small (I usually shop more in the electronics and household sector). I also live ~15mi from an Amazon distribution center, and ~50 miles from a second.

menacingly 10y ago

I didn't renew prime this year, for the first time since its launch. I started getting bizarrely frequent errors with small items too inexpensive to bother with returning. I'd get 1 package of floss when I'd ordered a pack of 10, or just the top part of a soap dispenser. It's also kind of tedious to always have to go through and make sure you're buying from amazon, because otherwise the odds you're getting a knock-off or an already-expired supplement are way too high.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

phyzome 10y ago

My biggest gripe is that they merge the reviews of different vendors of the same product, so for heavily-scammed items like laptop batteries, the reviews are almost useless.

tedmiston 10y ago
I've experienced this problem as well. I really wish a customer review of an Amazon purchase were tied to a particular seller. For example, I was recently looking at a Hario Buono kettle [1] to make coffee. There are two versions of it, one made in Japan and one made in China. Unfortunately they share the same model number. The Japanese version is considered better quality. Of course Amazon has the lowest price compared to specialty coffee retailers, but since they don't differentiate between the two origins, it's a gamble. Different third party sellers stock one version or the other. You can see in the reviews that people have received both. Without the reviews being tied to a particular seller, it's hard to say what you'll get, so I'll end up buying from somewhere else instead. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Hario-VKB-120HSVV60-Buono-Pouring-Kettle/dp/B000IGOXLS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/Hario-VKB-120HSVV60-Buono-Pouring-Ket...
- fencepost 10y ago
  If you go down to the right and click on the "Used & New (161) from $xx.yy" link, you can see the individual sellers including notes from them about origin and where it ships from. The bigger problem for some of these is actually going to be with anything "Fulfilled by Amazon" because there's some chance that the products with identical numbers will be mingled in Amazon's warehouses. Never having sold through them, does supposedly-identical stock get mingled like that? I think that was one of the problems people were having with counterfeiting.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    Some specify "shipping from Japan", but most don't seem to say "Made in China" or "Made in Japan" (it would be really convenient if they did). I don't think the shipping country necessarily implies the origin of the product, at least, I'd rather not gamble based on that. It would be nice if every seller specified where their version was made, or really more correctly that the two units would be listed with different SKUs.

bsharitt 10y ago

I stay away from third party sellers on Amazon these days as much as possible(as in I'll look elsewhere and only come back to them if they're the only viable option) and Amazon had been getting a lot closer to regular retail for stuff they sell directly, but I still find them cheaper in a lot of instances. I've not had problems with two day Prime shipping. They seem to have good relationship with USPS locally and things get delivered quickly and smoothly. Where I've been less impressed is their so-called "same day delivery" that has been very unreliable. The company they use here for it is Lone Star Overnight, and they drop the ball all the time, sometimes badly enough that I would have gotten it as fast with 2 day shipping. Only bright side there is that I've got lots of partial refunds and a few months of Prime for free.

falcolas 10y ago

> Amazon's retail catalog is flooded with fakes, drop shippers, bots and low quality products with fake reviews. I've been noticing this more and more as well. For example, searching for a manual coffee grinder results in three dozen pages of the same four items rebranded and sold by hundreds of individual sellers (and a few chair parts for good measure). All with plenty of good reviews. Finding an actual product amongst all the dreck is getting pretty damned hard.

dingaling 10y ago

Yes, much too little too late for myself and several colleagues. I seldom use Amazon now except as an ISBN-lookup and general book review facility and even then they often mix together reviews of different but similarly-titled ( non-fiction ) books, despite discrete ISBNs. Their subsidiary ABEBooks is much better for actually buying second-hand books. What a sad state when I have been shopping on Amazon since 1999 but now find eBay a better experience. I haven't even written an Amazon review in a couple of years, just don't have the motivation anymore.

kdamken 10y ago

I can't stand the "incentivized" reviews, and found this chrome plugin to be really helpful, it basically goes through and tries to remove the fake reviews for you and give you a new, more correct score without them - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reviewmetacom-review-anal/fjifglfkcaipnmhngbigdebkoikioend https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reviewmetacom-revi...

pragmaddux 10y ago
This is rather helpful. When I was looking for a cheap carry-on duffel with particular dimensions a few months ago, most items had ~10 incentivized reviews, and nothing genuine. You almost start looking for 4-star products, just because the reviews may actually be legitimate.
Ajedi32 10y ago
Aren't incentivized reviews banned now? https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/abpto3jt7fhb5oc https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/abpto3jt7fhb5oc
- kdamken 10y ago
  I didn't realize they had added that to their policy. While that's awesome, I still see a ton of them on there. From some quick googling - https://www.amazon.com/Sentey-LS-4232-Headphones-Microphone-Rotation/dp/B014LMTYXG/ref=sr_1_22?s=aht&ie=UTF8&qid=1480363911&sr=1-22&refinements=p_n_feature_two_browse-bin%3A2266980011 https://www.amazon.com/Sentey-LS-4232-Headphones-Microphone-...

xt00 10y ago

Any particular example of a problem you had with products that you could point to? It's fairly easy to link to a particular "home good" that you had problems with. I use Amazon all the time for virtually everything and have had practically zero problems over the past 5 years.