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As a user I find Amazon astonishingly hostile when searching for products. Sure - the delivery, order process, support etc. is excellent, but I find it difficul

As a user I find Amazon astonishingly hostile when searching for products. Sure - the delivery, order process, support etc. is excellent, but I find it difficult to actually find products in the first place. I appreciate they've used some kind of system to identify products and group the various options from different sellers into one listing. But I've never seen an example where this has worked well. The sizes, styles, colours and so on that are displayed are always completely mad. Like, enough to the point where I frequently abandon my attempt and just buy from somewhere with more sensible categorisation.

seanp2k2 9y ago
A lot of this is because of 3rd-party sellers. To make things easier, I usually filter by "ships from and sold by Amazon". Some of the pricing and "styles" for 3rd parties are ridiculous because they're algorithm-driven. That's likely why the $9.99/oz price happened. https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing-is-creating-an-arms-race-on-amazons-marketplace https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing-is-c... has some context on why and http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358 http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358 talks about how . TL;DR Amazon picks (using their secret algos, ofc) which selection should be the default among the sellers. Everyone wants to be that to get more sales. Sellers then fix the price to a different item which has the price sometimes fixed to that other item, or potentially a loop with more products involved. They then proceed to algorithmically price each other far beyond normal costs for the item.
- notatoad 9y ago
  sure, it's "because" of the third-party sellers but it's still amazon's fault. If they want to provide options for third-party sellers in their product listings, it's amazon's responsibility to make sure those listings are correctly categorized.
silencio 9y ago
Currently having this problem buying baby shoes on Amazon. The four sizes are duplicated and it's hard to tell which colors are just outright sold out for the size I want. Plus I need to weed out the third parties that are either selling this for more than retail, and I just can't figure out which combination results in the cheapest price that is listed. I will probably just give up on this and either buy whatever color I want or go in-person to a baby shop to buy them.
heymijo 9y ago
This is the underlying issue why Amazon is not ready to be a one-stop clothing shop.
pmoriarty 9y ago
Has anyone else been reduced to looking through hundreds of pages of results for common items like bottle openers or salt shakers? It's a nightmare, and there's often no good way to filter through them if you don't already know exactly what you're looking for and have an easy way to describe that. There's so much duplication even when the descriptions are different, and just so much junk. Really awful user experience there, unless you have simply expressible needs or are satisfied with the first page or two of results.
tolien 9y ago
Similar to the issues with categorisation and while people blame third-party sellers for a lot of the problems, one of the features that would be help would be being able to exclude third-party sellers from search results altogether. When the Nintendo Switch and Zelda had just launched, Amazon had no stock of either but third party sellers conveniently had loads at below RRP. Call me a cynic (I didn't test the claim) but I'm doubtful I wouldn't get a S-S-S-Switch instead of the genuine article.

seanp2k2 9y ago

A lot of this is because of 3rd-party sellers. To make things easier, I usually filter by "ships from and sold by Amazon". Some of the pricing and "styles" for 3rd parties are ridiculous because they're algorithm-driven. That's likely why the $9.99/oz price happened. https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing-is-creating-an-arms-race-on-amazons-marketplace https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing-is-c... has some context on why and http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358 http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358 talks about how . TL;DR Amazon picks (using their secret algos, ofc) which selection should be the default among the sellers. Everyone wants to be that to get more sales. Sellers then fix the price to a different item which has the price sometimes fixed to that other item, or potentially a loop with more products involved. They then proceed to algorithmically price each other far beyond normal costs for the item.

notatoad 9y ago
sure, it's "because" of the third-party sellers but it's still amazon's fault. If they want to provide options for third-party sellers in their product listings, it's amazon's responsibility to make sure those listings are correctly categorized.

silencio 9y ago

Currently having this problem buying baby shoes on Amazon. The four sizes are duplicated and it's hard to tell which colors are just outright sold out for the size I want. Plus I need to weed out the third parties that are either selling this for more than retail, and I just can't figure out which combination results in the cheapest price that is listed. I will probably just give up on this and either buy whatever color I want or go in-person to a baby shop to buy them.

heymijo 9y ago

This is the underlying issue why Amazon is not ready to be a one-stop clothing shop.

pmoriarty 9y ago

Has anyone else been reduced to looking through hundreds of pages of results for common items like bottle openers or salt shakers? It's a nightmare, and there's often no good way to filter through them if you don't already know exactly what you're looking for and have an easy way to describe that. There's so much duplication even when the descriptions are different, and just so much junk. Really awful user experience there, unless you have simply expressible needs or are satisfied with the first page or two of results.

tolien 9y ago

Similar to the issues with categorisation and while people blame third-party sellers for a lot of the problems, one of the features that would be help would be being able to exclude third-party sellers from search results altogether. When the Nintendo Switch and Zelda had just launched, Amazon had no stock of either but third party sellers conveniently had loads at below RRP. Call me a cynic (I didn't test the claim) but I'm doubtful I wouldn't get a S-S-S-Switch instead of the genuine article.