3 ms·

Can you elaborate on the actual claim you seem to be dancing around? I'm not completely following...

• phil21 10y ago
  I can't speak for the OP, but for me I've noticed this looking for hard-to-find specific products as well. You will find that what appears to be wide availability is usually 2 or 3 third-party vendors spamming the same thing multiple times to multiple sites. This becomes especially apparent once you actually order something, and it takes 2 weeks for the vendor to say it's not in stock. Repeat that process across 4 or 5 major sites like amazon/jet/walmart/sears/newegg/etc. and it gets a bit tiring. Seemingly everyone now has a "marketplace" section and purposefully makes it difficult to filter it. Basically it seems the "long tail" of on-line retail shares the same very few number of marginal-at-best players who take an approach of spamming tons of low quality listings in the hope of fulfilling even a fraction of it. Once you look for it, you notice this pattern (e.g. a spelling mistake in a given part listing you need) quite often and realize it might even be a single "root" vendor after you get through the chains of middlemen.
  • tzakrajs 10y ago
    Allow me to grant phil21 the ability to speak for me retroactively. These were exactly my thoughts.