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Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

169 points by seagullz 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
justtopost 8y ago
I seem to return 1 out of 8 Amazon items, even eating the occasional cost of poor quality items, because I needed -something-. They seem more and more to make me print and mail stuff back, first making ups pickup no longer the default, and now removing the option altogether. I get lots of seemingly purposely mislabled products in the automotive section now. I think i get maybe 50% success rate ordering car parts. Lots of fakes. NGK, DENSO, and HONDA products seem to be prolific with counterfits. Had good luck with GM and Toyota parts so far, but I expect that to change, or be a fluke. Their automotive idea may see profit, bit I think they underestimated the extra complexity and returns inherent. Brick and mortar stores do much better at soaking up cost of returned parts I suspect.
- gaius 8y ago
  If a product is a counterfeit then the cost they are soaking up is not that of the return, but that of failing to police their supply chain. And they absolutely should be looking to minimise the hassle to the customers in that case.
vxNsr 8y ago
More and more I'm finding myself trying to find other ways to shop for things. A recent example is ice skates, I need a new pair, but no matter what I search for I can't seem to find anything on amazon with good reviews or a brand that I trust. At this point I'm probably gonna end up going to dickes and buying something in store even though it's a little over my budget, I just don't wanna play the return game. Plus, it seems at least in this case, most of the options aren't available on prime, so shipping in both directions is gonna cost.
- bpicolo 8y ago
  I’ve definitely reached the point where I’ll only make Amazon purchases for specifically branded goods. I tend to use social media networks to find product recommendations, like Reddit. There’s no question that some brands pay people to subtlety advertise there as well, but it usually feels easy to get through to the truth on hobbyist subreddits
nanoseltzer 8y ago
They may have ruined online shopping but they haven’t solved it either. The clothing retailers (an area hard for amazon to move in on) will remain competitive. I think the one area amazon absolutely has done right is customer service. If any other company made their customer service as good, easy, and simple, I think they would be able to catch up quickly as well. For example: I recently bought a jacket on sale from Columbia sportswear. It didn’t get delivered to my unit properly (despite their usps tracking saying that it did), and when I emailed them about it: absolutely no response. My issue went into a black hole. Of course I have now blacklisted Columbia sports: never again. If this was an amazon purchase, I would have been able to resolve it almost immediately.
- arkades 8y ago
  I find it interesting that we think of Amazon as having gotten "customer service" right. I've had two classes of experience with Amazon: Products they act as a seller for, and products they act as a producer for. When I'm buying item X and it's not up to par, Amazon's response is invariably "just send it on back and we'll refund you." At one point I complained I'm not taking a half-day off work to get this $5 item in the mail and they said never mind, just keep it, and we'll refund you anyway. Awesome. OTOH, they have a $10/mo (or so) a la carte book service, labelled "Prime Books," with a "free" subtitle (or it was - I haven't checked back recently.) Clicking on it was auto-enrolling. I didn't find out for a few months that they'd apparently one-click-enrolled me in a recurring monthly bill. It took me 3 hours on the phone to get them to partially refund it, and it ended with me closing my account then and there. Despite having been a member since they more or less "opened their doors," and a good chunk of my household spending going through their portal, refunding money from their own service was a line in the sand for them.
  - nanoseltzer 8y ago
    I can see that 3 hour call being real - I’ve had similar experiences with amazon customer service that I could foresee becoming a long call, such as canceling Prime: they certainly made me wait about 15-20 minutes while trying to “procure permission” and it ended up being some kind of verbal guarantee that another depr would email me the confirmation. After a few hours I did get the confirmation and refund. The entire call did take about 45 minutes: quite a frustratingly long time. Navigating amazon customer service itself has become a learning experience. Typically the fastest way when getting an annoying customer service agent who “just doesn’t get it” is to request a transfer to amazon USA customer service. You can also request speaking to a supervisot and continue escalating. Sometimes calls end up being 30-45 minutes regardless of method, since they do not always make transferring to amazon USA easy (and then once you get to amazon USA you play the same game over again). It’s certainly nowhere as good as my original post made it sound, but it’s still better than most online shops.
CyberDildonics 8y ago
Hyperbolic statements with question marks make terrible headlines?
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  Ending a statement with a question mark is also bad grammar.
  - CyberDildonics 8y ago
    Yes, it is a very obnoxious trend, this is the point I was making.
hirundo 8y ago
> But there’s a reason that we used to have shoe stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, bookstores, and all the rest: Those specialized retail spaces allow products, and the people with knowledge about them, to engage in specialized ways of finding, choosing, and purchasing them. There's a reason why so much commerce has moved online in general and to Amazon in particular: We often value price and convenience and oodles of consumer reviews and easy access to competition and related info more than we value meat space salespeople with specialized knowledge laying on personalized sales pressure. Not always. I drove for three hours to shop for an office chair in a brick and mortar store, because I had to actually try it before paying the big bucks. But often enough to remake the economy.
- NikolaNovak 8y ago
  It's a matter of trust as well. My parents generation, now in the 70's, has this implicit trust in salespeople. They know "in principle" that there are "bad apples", but if a salesperson shakes their hand, looks them in the eye, and says "Of course Mr. <Insert name>, we'll take care of you", they buy it wholesale. Which is how my dad bought $600 tires for $1800 at a dealership, a $1200 "DSLR camera" which was actually a superzoom point and shoot, a wired phone headset which was actually wireless headphones with no boom, etc. I have basically zero trust in the "specialized retail stores with specialized sales people". Any time I geek out a little bit about any retail area, I learn the 101 ways they have and do scam you, and my trust erodes further. A specialized expensive shoe store swore my shoes I bought specifically for air travel don't have metal shims in them; of course they do. The electronic stores are never staffed with people who know more than I do, or frequently anything at all other than to push extended warranty. Small car maintenance store I've dealt with regularly for 15 years have turned out to be skimming and scamming once I learned more about their product and service, all the while greeting me warmly by name and "taking care of me". And yes, my dad and his friends still go to them. So yes, bring on the faceless online warehouse. I feel safer there - or at least, am better equipped to determine fake/counterfeit/exploitative than I am in person. For all the decades that Amazon and the like had to develop methods to scam us, in-person salespeople had centuries, and I ain't winning that game.
  - 8y ago
lesdeuxmagots 8y ago
As part of the customer category that spends tens of thousands on Amazon per year, having shifted the majority of my non niche spending for physical goods to the platform, I've found their error rate to be well under 1%. I also return <1% of my orders for other reasons. I've contacted customer service maybe 3 times in total over the span of 10 years and each time the issue was resolved incredibly quickly and effectively. Maybe I'm in the minority here? Or is it just the errors that get all the attention. However, that confusion within categories has increased is undeniable. Try to buy a bath towel and be flooded with similar items with similar reviews. The ability to search and sort efficiently has definitely declined dramatically. It takes a lot more effort to make sure you're buying what you wanted for certain categories, particularly soft ones. I can no longer trust that the best selection is going to be on the first page of results. I wonder if Amazon will draw the line somewhere on how wide, how encompassing of a platform it is for third party vendors. It seems to have pushed itself over a limit.
- massysett 8y ago
  Amazon's solution to this is to create its own house brands and then promote those. I've had good luck with their brands. The quality and price are good. Bath towel is a good example. I'll only buy softlines like that on Amazon if they have their own brand. When I go search on Amazon and get the piles of random stuff, I just don't buy anything. It's not worth the trouble to sort through it all.
- Bayart 8y ago
  The lack of filtering options is really something that penalizes Amazon as a customer experience for me as well. But I'm starting to think they might be making it bad on purpose to give more visibility to their ranking schemes.
80mph 8y ago
I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable. I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downside of course, is that it will take 2-3 weeks to get here, but at least I know what I'm getting.
- mhb 8y ago
  This is one of the products which I have ordered frequently and with which I didn't expect any problems. Almost all the reviews are good, the price is good and I've been subscribing and saving for years. So I'm genuinely curious why you thought Amazon wasn't good for this item. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XEV9YE https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XEV9YE
  - mattkrause 8y ago
    Three of the eight reviews on that page call out quality issues....
    - mhb 8y ago
      Huh? There are 1,400 reviews on that page.
      - rgoodwintx 8y ago
        There are 1400 reviews but the "initial selection" of ~8 Top Reviews has almost 50% negative commentary. I'm trying to learn more and more to look at the bars on the left; in this case, 92% are 4 and 5 star, and factor in that most people with no issues don't write reviews at all. So my very random modifier would make that something like 95% positive and take a chance on it. This assumes you don't get the dice rolled to a counterfeiter when you happened to load the page. It would be great if you could filter the reviews not only by the form factor (8 pack, 1 pack, etc.) but also the vendor. If anyone at Amazon is reading this... TBH I recently bought an end table that had 0 reviews, and it was kind of an adrenaline ride. "I'm supposed to judge this product simply by what I see on the page, and my own investigative capabilities? How quaint!". :)
timonoko 8y ago
There are others, but they are much worse: https://youtu.be/61sN42E2WbE https://youtu.be/61sN42E2WbE
antidaily 8y ago
"the whole shopping experience is saturated with caprice and uncertainty". So very true. UNLESS I already know what I want. then, it's by far the easiest from checkout to delivery to possible returns. But if you're looking for a "robot toy for 5 year old", good luck.
city41 8y ago
Amazon makes it basically impossible to compare prices by unit of measure (ie $0.94 per gallon or what not). I’ve wanted to make a browser extension to attempt to fix that. I’ve always suspected this is intentional. But if I could compare prices this way and be confident I’m getting the best deal, I’d buy things on Amazon a lot more.
- chias 8y ago
  I find this especially infuriating -- they even do it within a single product! https://i.imgur.com/aeaeuT2.png https://i.imgur.com/aeaeuT2.png That's $0.98 / oz, but if you switch from fruit punch to blue raz it becomes $15.18 / lb, and if you switch from the 60-serving pack to the 30-serving pack it's $24.58 / lb, but if you want to subscribe and save that's $0.93 / oz. WHY
  - guitarbill 8y ago
    Because US customary units are a pain? :D Judging from shopping trips with housemates, I imagine most people don't look at those things, so putting more effort into that feature isn't worth it. But then again, Amazon's search is also notoriously bad, so maybe they simply don't have good metadata for products, and they're all derived in an ad-hoc way.
- Havoc 8y ago
  I wrote some code that does something like that. Learned very quickly that it's essentially impossible without a lot of manual data capturing - specifically is this a pack of 6 or 10 etc. Still for the bits where it worked I was surprised how big the variances per unit were
Dowwie 8y ago
Evidently, Amazon is ruining Whole Foods at breakneck speeds, too. The one near me was re-designed to a cold, commercial feel. Many items were removed. No more freshly roasted coffee on-site. etc. Cashier asked me if I was a prime member. No thanks, Amazon.
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  Agreed, Whole Foods' quality is suffering under Amazon. It's a crap-shoot now whether I'll actually find what I'm looking for. They've also implemented the most frustrating customer rewards program I've ever seen in a grocery store. You have an app with a QR code that you scan at PoS--but the scanners they've got almost never detect the code! Probably 60-80% of the time, the cashier has to scan it herself with the regular barcode scanner. I tried using my phone number once--a common practice at other store that always works--but it couldn't detect that I was a Prime member, despite my phone number being very clearly entered into my Amazon account. Even when I do finally get scanned in as a Prime member, I usually save less than $2. It's so much frustration that I often don't bother. Whoever was in charge of creating and implementing that program should be fired.
  - sam0x17 8y ago
    Yeah, for a while they did 30% off on all deli items, and we saved $100s with that, but otherwise it's like $1-$2.
mauvehaus 8y ago
I was never a Prime member, but I have bought stuff from Amazon in the past. As of about 2 years ago, I've basically quit Amazon for all the reasons listed in the article: confusing selection of products that I might want to buy (are those widgets the same as those other widgets or not?), the decreasing reliability of reviews, and the co-mingling of stock from different sellers. Admittedly, I'm buying "weird" stuff online: principally woodworking tools and hardware for furniture. Tools are a high-value item that lends itself counterfeiting. Somebody I knew bought a 3' (90 cm) Starrett blade for their combination square (MSRP ~$340) from Amazon, and got one that wasn't straight. Was it counterfeit? Was it a second that slipped out the back door of the factory? Was it a genuine one that slipped past quality control at Starrett? Who knows. He returned it and got a straight one, but there are other tools that are less obviously "wrong". Chisels with lower-grade steel, knock-off planes with poor quality castings or machining, counterfeit clamps (at $20-$30 a pair for basic handscrews you could probably make a tidy profit making sub-par ones and passing them off as the real thing). For my money, I'll buy from somebody who only sells tools, and stakes their reputation on delivering the tool I ordered, and a genuine one to boot. It turns out that dedicated retailers still exist for this stuff; beyond the US chains of Rockler and Woodcraft, there are a whole slew of independent vendors (Among others: Little Machine Shop, Infinity Cutting Tools, Lee Valley, Highland Woodworking). And they take far better care of their customers. On the hardware front, I ordered a lock and an escutcheon from (I think) Whitechapel, and when they picked the order, they determined that the key wouldn't fit through the hole in the escutcheon. /They called me/ to make sure I ended up with an escutcheon that would fit the key. To be sure, you pay for this level of service. Horton Brasses, Whitechapel, Brusso, etc all charge a handsome price. But at the end of the day, you know what you're getting, you can reach an actual human being if you need help picking something for your application, and they stand behind their products. I'm going to extrapolate from my area of interest here. Amazon only makes sense for stuff that's essentially fungible (e.g. USB cables), or you're just muggling around and don't mind exchanging a bit of your time to make something that isn't quite right work for you once. If you're doing anything in volume, predictability and repeatability matter a lot. Knowing that the X you order this year is going to work the same as the X you ordered 2 years ago counts for a lot.
- alacombe 8y ago
porknubbins 8y ago
I've had a pretty terrible experience trying to buy non stick skillets over the years on Amazon with most of even the top rated items coming with huge issues like warping on the first use, not being very non stick, flaking etc. I almost wonder if its counterfeit or if manufacturers just cutting corners on what used to be a good product? Either way reviews become almost useless when you don't know which version you will be getting. I've found Amazon works much better for items without potential latent quality issues like DVDs, books, or products that are just binary work/don't work.
- hirundo 8y ago
  I bought this non-stick pan on Amazon and it was one of my best purchases of last year. The trick with non-sticks is to buy cheap enough cookware to affordably replace regularly as they wear out. My previous non-stick pan cost four times as much, wore out, and is now just hanging from a rack, looking fabulous. With the new one, I plan to toss it in another year and buy another. https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80114-535DS-Professional-Restaurant/dp/B009HBKQ16 https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80114-535DS-Professional-R...
  - thatfrenchguy 8y ago
    I’ve had the same tefal skillet for 5 years bought at target for less than 20 bucks and it’s stoll going fine...
    - hirundo 8y ago
      Of course it makes a big difference how often you use it. I use mine about 12x per week. You?
      - thatfrenchguy 8y ago
        Around the same, ~9 times a week (once every weekday and twice every weekend day). Maybe I just got lucky with the one I bought :-)
  - 8y ago
datavirtue 8y ago
Amazon simply delivered the online shopping experience everyone wanted. In the beginning, you would scour the net looking for decent retailers and then get barraged by shipping charges and delivery times that drained all the value. Amazon's focus was on fast and free shipping, removing the friction from the experience. Having scratched that itch, they got the scale benefit of reviews. Gold for the consumer. Retail is based on a specialist buying products customers want and ensuring and backing up quality. Amazon made that into a digital platform. The other retailers lost site of thier value and took customers for granted. That was why they didn't recognize the opportunity.
JJMcJ 8y ago
I order from specialty merchants or manufacturers when I can. Books I trust from Amazon. The rest, not so much.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  In my experience, many of the books I've purchased from Amazon are actually illegally exported reprints from India. Those books tend to not make that fact obvious or even known.
  - lozenge 8y ago
    There's nothing illegal about importing books. "The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner." Labels like "not for sale in the US" are aimed at distributers and stores, but are not legally enforceable.
    - throwawaymath 8y ago
      Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for the citation!
    - roywiggins 8y ago
      Grey market textbooks saved me pretty good money in college. But they're only good if you know that's what you're getting- the print quality is lower, usually not in color, worse paper. Still a good deal if you just want the content.
Johnny555 8y ago
Amazon made online shopping feel safe and comfortable, at least mechanically, where once the risk of being scammed by bad actors felt huge Maybe this was true once, but now Amazon has brought back that fear and confusion of getting scammed. You used to be able to count on reviews for some idea of the quality of the product, but now you need to do research at someplace like www.fakespot.com to see if the reviews are fake. And even if the product is legit and works well and it's fulfilled by Amazon, when you get the product you need to check it carefully to see if it's a counterfeit knockoff that some vendor sold through amazon's commingled inventory. I've switched to https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ for most of my computer/electronics purchases now - they seem to price match Amazon automatically (or maybe amazon price matches them, many products have an identical price) and delivery is almost always within 2 - 3 days. I used to go to newegg, but have had a few issues with their third party sellers (product never shipped after ordering) so stopped going there.
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  Previously you were risking getting your card stolen by a shady seller. Now you're risking of getting your payment stolen. Bad product/no product delivered could be seen as equivalent to stole payment. It's an improvement, isn't it?
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    PayPal solved that problem already though, right?
    - tedmiston 8y ago
      Not necessarily. Card theft, yes; bad/no product is fuzzy. If a shady seller can prove delivery of a package to the buyer, it becomes much harder for the buyer to get through winning a dispute irrespective of what the package's contents were. Particularly if the merchandise is counterfeit but definitely proving that it's counterfeit is difficult. Also with forum commerce for used things, it's difficult to sort out "this item isn't is the condition that was communicated to me". If the seller can't prove delivery, then the buyer wins almost hands down. On the flip side, an unscrupulous buyer can use this to their advantage with international shipping where it is extraordinarily difficult (and expensive) to prove delivery all the way to the destination across different country's mailing services.
kerng 8y ago
The biggest reason I'm not shopping at Amazon as much anymore are the scams and fake products. It's really annoying.
gnicholas 8y ago
> On top of that, Amazon is more than willing to fix its errors. In my experience, this is less true than it used to be. For example, my mom ordered a DVD in early December to be given as a Christmas gift. It was a Prime item, and she is a Prime subscriber. For some reason, it wasn't showing that it would be delivered until just before Christmas. Even though this was odd — and arguably a breach of the Prime agreement — she figured it was no big deal because it would be in time for Christmas. Then, just before it was supposed to be delivered, Amazon updated the delivery to after Christmas. This was actually OK by her, since the recipient (my daughter) would still be at her house for a few days after Christmas. Again, just before it was to be delivered, they updated the shipping again, and now said it would arrive Jan 15 to Jan 30. When she chatted the Amazon reps, they just said sorry for the inconvenience, and offered nothing for this shipping miss. Eventually they agreed to put a credit on her account for the inconvenience, but the credit never actually materialized. We canceled the order and bought the DVD (plus digital copy!) from Walmart. This is just one of many negative customer service experiences we've had with Amazon in the last few months. The other big problem is that they now want each return put in its own box — even if it was shipped to us with multiple other items that are also being returned. We have been Prime customers for years, but perhaps not for much longer.
- CamelCaseName 8y ago
  I can't comment on the other points, but I can reply to this: >The other big problem is that they now want each return put in its own box — even if it was shipped to us with multiple other items that are also being returned. We have been Prime customers for years, but perhaps not for much longer The reason for this is because each seller can set their own return address. I receive all returns to ensure that they are destroyed and that no customer accidentally buys something new and receives a customer return. Beyond minimizing costs for Amazon/sellers, this also reduces waste and environmental impact because each good only has to be shipped once.
  - gnicholas 8y ago
    For what it’s worth, in every case where they’ve insisted on this, the return addresses were identical. We had to come up with multiple boxes to mail everything back but everything went to the same place.
GoodJokes 8y ago
Age people just coming around that Amazon is atrocious in all facets? I guess marketing does work huh..
techslave 8y ago
what they didn’t say is that amazon also created online shopping as we know it today. perhaps created is too strong but certainly they have set the bar. (focused specialty stores like mcmaster aside) the online shopping experience was theirs to ruin. which they have. i think it’s almost intentional that buying from the marketplace is a crapshoot, usually to be avoided. it’s a win win for amazon. it’s not surprising that the experience is poor these days. when you are a virtual monopoly that’s what happens. it is surprising that there’s no real competitor taking advantage.
arbuge 8y ago
I did notice that the rate at which I have to return unsatisfactory products from Amazon seems to have shot upwards in the last year or so. Obviously a hassle. I've now gone back to getting what I can locally in most cases.
LeoPanthera 8y ago
From the article: > There’s no ambiguity about what you’re getting when you buy a particular book, CD, or DVD. About a year ago I ordered a soundtrack CD from Amazon. It turned out to be a “fake”, it was a CD-R that had a printed label. If you didn’t know it was a CD-R, it looked reasonably convincing, the case was quite good quality. And it did contain the correct music - it was just a pirate copy.
LeoPanthera 8y ago
I increasingly find myself using eBay as a storefront. You can easily filter by “Buy it Now” and “New”, and then it works basically like Amazon marketplace, except that I trust the feedback system a lot more. There’s a lot of small and independent sellers on eBay - plus you can get a lot of stuff shipped directly from China and cut out the middleman, if that’s what you prefer.
freyir 8y ago
Recently, I was searching for a new office chair. Amazon offers the popular Steelcase Leap at full price, $978. You'd likely think you're paying full price to get a new chair. See if you can tell that you're getting ripped off: https://www.amazon.com/d/Office-Desk-Chairs/Steelcase-Fabric-Chair-Black-46216179FBL/B006H1QYBA https://www.amazon.com/d/Office-Desk-Chairs/Steelcase-Fabric... Spoiler: buried in the fine print, and listed as a "feature," it says "open box refurb". Customers are unwittingly paying full price for refurbished chairs, which typically sell for under $400. Many reviews claim that the chairs do not seem up to standard quality. You might think this is from some shady third-party seller, but it's in fact, "Ship from and sold by Amazon.com." And if you list all New/Used/Refurbished sellers, Amazon.com shows up in the New category, despite being described as a refurb in the product description. What a mess.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  That's either a mistake in the product description or an error in marking it new. Amazon is selling it's standard "new" warranties along with it, which wouldn't be possible if it's a refurb. My guess is the product description is inaccurate. Disclosure: I work at Amazon.
  - CamelCaseName 8y ago
    Definitely a product description error. The product description field should never comment on the new/used/refurbished nature of the product being purchased because different conditions can (usually) be sold on the same listing. What probably happened is someone copied and pasted the description from somewhere else where the listing was specifically for refurbished chairs, or the very first seller of this item was selling it refurbished and wanted to call it out explicitly. Amazon detail pages are confusing, but honestly, I don't know how to improve them. I get loads of returns for people claiming they bought something used that was sold as new, even though the condition is clearly marked as used and a lengthy description next to it about the condition.
- rasz 8y ago
  Special offers and product promotions Color: Black Buy Used and Save: Buy a Used "Steelcase Leap Fabric Chair, Black,46216179FBL" and save 78% off the $1,699.00 list price. Buy with confidence as the condition of this item and its timely delivery are guaranteed under the "Amazon A-to-z Guarantee".
wessorh 8y ago
This week I ordered from Amazon a 4tb Flash Drive. What arrived in 4tb packaging was a 250Gb flash drive with the manufacturer's label removed. Amazon did replace the fraud drive with a proper one.
Invictus0 8y ago
I was recently backpacking in Colombia. In Colombia, no one shops online: the mountainous terrain makes shipping extremely expensive. It was an extremely refreshing experience. There are malls of course but also many small stores for things like school supplies and niche clothing brands (I bought a sweater from a store that sold basically nothing but sweaters: they also had a fully stocked bar with a pillow lounge, loft, and a TV in the back.) The public transportation is well utilized and people walk in the streets. Small grocery/convenience stores are only a stone's throw from anywhere in the city. This is what we have lost to online shopping.
draw_down 8y ago
I had a string of issues buying from amazon and decided to just stop. Several things just never showed up and 4-5 weeks after I ordered I’d quietly receive a refund. One item I really needed, they never shipped to me. I signed up for Amazon prime to get the expedited shipping for the item, then when I didn’t get it they gave me a free month of prime in compensation. Gee, thanks. My confidence that I’ll actually receive something I buy from them is low enough that I don’t think it’s worth it to buy from them, plus the store is full of counterfeits. I don’t understand why people like buying from them so much, in my experience it’s markedly worse than almost any other e-commerce store. The whole selling point of e-commerce is convenience, but transacting with them is not convenient and their customer service sucks. What’s the point? This whole idea that they’re fanatically customer-obsessed, I just don’t see it.
throwaway98121 8y ago
There’s generally an anti Amazon post here often, especially so when Amazons stock starts trending upwards. I don’t have problems when I shop on Amazon, and their instant video collection let us cut cable. We do have a boomerang subscription for another $5 a month for the kids. Last Christmas, we did purchase All Clad cookware, and one of the items was damaged, like literally a hairline crack. I called amazon and they sent the replacement with next day delivery. Pain in the ass but the only defective product I’ve had from them since 2015. Imo there’s generally an anti Amazon article by one of these media sites each week. I’m not sure how true it is the writing are, but to say Amazon ruined internet shopping sounds pretty inaccurate and laughable. I grew up in Bellevue, WA but many years ago left for the Midwest. I’m not sure if there are some better services that blow Amazon out of the water used by these media, east/west coast elitists or if it’s just the anti corporate hate train of smearing companies that get too large and founders get too rich. I suspect Amazon has millions of shoppers each day and these threads just turn into the angriest crowd of the 100 or folks who didn’t like their experience. Out of millions of shoppers per day, a hundred or even a few thousand angry customers are a rounding error and probably well within their customer satisfaction metrics. Hence, Amazon doesn’t change how they sell things or their delivery promises.
- tracer4201 8y ago
  There’s an anti apple or Facebook post just about every week too. Not all of these companies are equal, but there’s just a general pattern of crap over all big tech. There are clear examples of carelessness or downright nefariousness (see FB), but there’s also a complete lack of government regulation. They’ve had crazy growth or valuations in the past several years. There’s a lot of hateful sentiment driven by that, imo. People get jealous. Amazon may have 1000s of misses among millions of customers, but those people are the loudest when it comes to writing their opinions. I do think outlets like the Atlantic are inherently against Amazon and see Bezos being too powerful. These articles are less objective and more politically driven. Just my 2 cents
TheLuddite 8y ago
Well, I never shop from Amazon, I'd rather use a specialized online shops or online storefronts of the company directly(ie TM Lewin for shirts)... Main reason is that I'm not used to Amazons' shopping experience and it's huge selection of items, once I tried buying a travel trolley and felt overwhelmed by the huge choice, so I went to the shop and bought one in person after inspecting it visually.
spricket 8y ago
Amazon's counterfeit problem has ruined it for me. Like eBay before it, it's mostly a place to window shop for me now. Despite the massive amount of work they put into their logistics, they seem to have no trusted supply chain.
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  eBay is actually easier to use for me, now. With eBay, you can sort by 'used' items, and there is some focus on the seller history- and by combining them you can form a reasonable expectation of whats going on. With Amazon, you're buying a lottery ticket, every time.
bookofjoe 8y ago
"Birkenstock quits Amazon in US after counterfeit surge" (2016)https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-us-after-counterfeit-surge.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-...
lizardwalk5 8y ago
I haven't gone through the 152 past comments so apologies if this is dupe. but recently I was on amazon to buy something and the original price was like $17 but it tried to snag me by presenting a deal like $12 so I added it to my cart. I think I might have misread the countdown clock which appeared to be like 5hours (maybe it was 5 min??). but later when I returned to the cart (less than 5 hours later but more than 5 min later), I had a note saying I had less than 2 min to make the purchase) which I thought I completed in time but was charged full price regardless. maybe this is a new feature(?) and buggy but I thought it was quite misleading and confusing. I still bought the product b/c it was useful to me but the pricing mechanism could have been more transparent.
toss1 8y ago
>>"The problem with an Everything Store is that there’s no way to organize everything effectively. The result is basically a giant digital flea market." I'd describe it instead as their search and filtering stinks, and it is not just Amazon. The first issue is that Amazon and almost everyone else seem to think that either we want, or it is in their best interest, to include in search results anything vaguely resembling the search terms. Perhaps sometimes this is nice, but the one thing that would help is: PROVIDE A STRICT BUTTON This would allow users to specify that the search items MUST include the specified terms. If it returns an empty set, fine, remove the STRICT criteria, or enter new terms. Simple. The author also touched on the issue that you can't find anything by a particular attribute (his example was a frame/matte of a particular size). This cannot be emphasized enough -- they really need a system in each class of products to extract and provide search/sort/filter on these particular characteristics. Ideally an AI-ish solution would identify attributes and list them. They could also simply require vendors to put up particular attributes, and accurately. It'd be REALLY nice if they had a usable API so we could setup our own search & select UI, but...
iheartpotatoes 8y ago
Amazon doesn't sell Everlane, Gustin or Allbirds. Three clothing line's I've bought from over the past 5 years (more recently Allbirds). IMHO /gets on soapbax/L I think Amazon has burned EVERYONE who has used it, and would argue it has taught us to become more savvy shoppers. The three companies I list go out of their way to be transparent about their products. This builds trust and loyalty. The faults of Amazon (and Yahoo! Shopping in the early 2000's) led to the emphasis on these new digital-shopping virtues. It sucks. Every time I buy something on Amazon, I'm always suspicious if I'm going to get what I ordered. 95% of the time I'm satisfied, but ironically only because I buy fewer things. But I'm glad that more and more companies are going out of their way to validate themselves in the same way brick-and-mortar stores are authentic.
jshowa3 8y ago
I closed my account on Amazon a while back and barely ever shop there due to how they treat their employees and their general bloated business model. I now actively shop from other online sites when I'm looking for a product and will gladly pay a little extra. The problem with Amazon is that every time I go there, I'm treated with a cluttered mess of ads and products all over the place. Whenever I search for what I want, I'm now treated with ads integrated into the product list that look exactly like a product listing, horizontal bar product listings of related/"recommended" products, and 300 (exaggeration) different spammy options for buying a product as a "subscription" or "bundled with amazon prime" at different price points when I only want to select a quantity. Its mostly horrendous garbage now and I'm so glad I closed my account and never use it. Its helped me save a lot of money (by removing temptation) and shop in other places that don't try and up-sell me on other products. Also, most products I can get immediately by just driving to a local store. I don't have to wait 2-4 days to get it.
gjm11 8y ago
Everyone (well, in some sense of "everyone") complains about the danger of getting counterfeit goods from Amazon. I've personally never noticed goods I've bought from Amazon being counterfeit, but I none the less feel like they've wrecked what used to be an excellent online shopping experience in a different way. If you search for anything that isn't (1) a book or DVD or (2) a specific item from a specific brand, you are likely to find that the top, oh, several hundred search results are near-indistinguishable things presumably drop-shipped from China, each of which is supposedly made by a company with a weird six-letter all-caps nonsense name. Perhaps some of these are actually excellent products, but the only way to tell whether they're any good is from the Amazon reviews, and we all know how reliable those are. I want a checkbox that says "only show me products from manufacturers with names I might recognize" or "don't show me anything that is shipped directly from China" or something. (Not because there is anything wrong with things being made in, or shipped from, China. And these might, for all I know, be excellent products. But I have no way I actually trust of knowing whether these particular goods are actually bads.) Random example: I was recently looking for an external USB-connected DVD drive. If I put <<<external usb dvd drive>>> into Amazon UK's search box, the "manufacturers" I get on my first page of results are: Rioddas, Rioddas, Patuoxun, Patuoxun, Oudekay, Asus, Oudekay, HOCOMO, LG, Rodzon, LG, PIAEK, Patuoxun, Amicool, Blingco, Inpher. This is actually an unusually good case: LG and Asus are "real" hardware vendors. So far as I can tell, the others are all Amazon-only pseudo-vendors.
oliwarner 8y ago
Google ruined it. Once upon a time if I wanted to buy something, I would stick its name in Google and click the Shopping tab to find the cheapest. Often a random online retailer. Products and prices were scraped from the internet like any other organic SERP. Then they started charging for access. The number of suppliers decimated. It was no longer competitive. That allowed Amazon and eBay to become the bazaars they now are, including what TFA is talking about.
ilamont 8y ago
Regarding the counterfeit problem: Amazon has a program called Transparency, which has been in development for some time: https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency The basic idea: Vendor places unique 2D barcode on each unit of a branded product, only products with those barcodes get placed into Amazon warehouse inventory, consumers can scan the barcode themselves to verify it's legit. It's restricted to trademarked items, though.
vkaku 8y ago
My assertion is: Amazon ruined shopping. It ruined workplace ethics. It ruined Seattle. It also ruined a lot of things. I felt happy today going to a mom and pop franchise to purchase stuff. Happier knowing that I've just started on my quest of moving away from Amazon. I make money and some regular non-tech people make money and I'm happy they do. AmazonBasics? Find a brand outlet - or go to AliExpress. Amazon is merely an expensive broker here. I'd rather Jack Ma make that money than Jeff does. Groceries? Go to your local offline vendor, preferable Mom and Pop. Computers? Set up a deal with the local distributor. Tell them that you respect reasonable prices and good support and they will give you a great experience. Books / Movies / Videos? Rent from a library. I've been a long time Amazon shopper and for the last two years I'm consciously moving offline. I'm doing my bit and I've never felt happier.
amalternative 8y ago
I noticed that the discussion about Amazon's decreasing quality comes up quite regularly on HN. It seems to be a huge issue and a lot of people have negative stories to tell. The best solution would be to move away from the big bad A and buy from alternative stores. I know that this is not always possible but let's try... Shameless plug: A few days ago I created the site amalternative.com [1] which lists alternative online stores. There is still a lot of work to do but I decided to launch as soon as I could. And I guess it meets a lot of HN requirements: - It's an MVP - It's a side project - There is no useless crap on the site - It's simple - It's fast (Static, on Netlify ;)) - It has an high information density (Okay, not yet. But I'm working on it) Let me hear what you think :) [1] https://www.amalternative.com/ https://www.amalternative.com/

169 points by seagullz 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

I seem to return 1 out of 8 Amazon items, even eating the occasional cost of poor quality items, because I needed -something-. They seem more and more to make me print and mail stuff back, first making ups pickup no longer the default, and now removing the option altogether. I get lots of seemingly purposely mislabled products in the automotive section now. I think i get maybe 50% success rate ordering car parts. Lots of fakes. NGK, DENSO, and HONDA products seem to be prolific with counterfits. Had good luck with GM and Toyota parts so far, but I expect that to change, or be a fluke. Their automotive idea may see profit, bit I think they underestimated the extra complexity and returns inherent. Brick and mortar stores do much better at soaking up cost of returned parts I suspect.

gaius 8y ago
If a product is a counterfeit then the cost they are soaking up is not that of the return, but that of failing to police their supply chain. And they absolutely should be looking to minimise the hassle to the customers in that case.

vxNsr 8y ago

More and more I'm finding myself trying to find other ways to shop for things. A recent example is ice skates, I need a new pair, but no matter what I search for I can't seem to find anything on amazon with good reviews or a brand that I trust. At this point I'm probably gonna end up going to dickes and buying something in store even though it's a little over my budget, I just don't wanna play the return game. Plus, it seems at least in this case, most of the options aren't available on prime, so shipping in both directions is gonna cost.

bpicolo 8y ago
I’ve definitely reached the point where I’ll only make Amazon purchases for specifically branded goods. I tend to use social media networks to find product recommendations, like Reddit. There’s no question that some brands pay people to subtlety advertise there as well, but it usually feels easy to get through to the truth on hobbyist subreddits

nanoseltzer 8y ago

They may have ruined online shopping but they haven’t solved it either. The clothing retailers (an area hard for amazon to move in on) will remain competitive. I think the one area amazon absolutely has done right is customer service. If any other company made their customer service as good, easy, and simple, I think they would be able to catch up quickly as well. For example: I recently bought a jacket on sale from Columbia sportswear. It didn’t get delivered to my unit properly (despite their usps tracking saying that it did), and when I emailed them about it: absolutely no response. My issue went into a black hole. Of course I have now blacklisted Columbia sports: never again. If this was an amazon purchase, I would have been able to resolve it almost immediately.

arkades 8y ago
I find it interesting that we think of Amazon as having gotten "customer service" right. I've had two classes of experience with Amazon: Products they act as a seller for, and products they act as a producer for. When I'm buying item X and it's not up to par, Amazon's response is invariably "just send it on back and we'll refund you." At one point I complained I'm not taking a half-day off work to get this $5 item in the mail and they said never mind, just keep it, and we'll refund you anyway. Awesome. OTOH, they have a $10/mo (or so) a la carte book service, labelled "Prime Books," with a "free" subtitle (or it was - I haven't checked back recently.) Clicking on it was auto-enrolling. I didn't find out for a few months that they'd apparently one-click-enrolled me in a recurring monthly bill. It took me 3 hours on the phone to get them to partially refund it, and it ended with me closing my account then and there. Despite having been a member since they more or less "opened their doors," and a good chunk of my household spending going through their portal, refunding money from their own service was a line in the sand for them.
- nanoseltzer 8y ago
  I can see that 3 hour call being real - I’ve had similar experiences with amazon customer service that I could foresee becoming a long call, such as canceling Prime: they certainly made me wait about 15-20 minutes while trying to “procure permission” and it ended up being some kind of verbal guarantee that another depr would email me the confirmation. After a few hours I did get the confirmation and refund. The entire call did take about 45 minutes: quite a frustratingly long time. Navigating amazon customer service itself has become a learning experience. Typically the fastest way when getting an annoying customer service agent who “just doesn’t get it” is to request a transfer to amazon USA customer service. You can also request speaking to a supervisot and continue escalating. Sometimes calls end up being 30-45 minutes regardless of method, since they do not always make transferring to amazon USA easy (and then once you get to amazon USA you play the same game over again). It’s certainly nowhere as good as my original post made it sound, but it’s still better than most online shops.

CyberDildonics 8y ago

Hyperbolic statements with question marks make terrible headlines?

eeZah7Ux 8y ago
Ending a statement with a question mark is also bad grammar.
- CyberDildonics 8y ago
  Yes, it is a very obnoxious trend, this is the point I was making.

hirundo 8y ago

> But there’s a reason that we used to have shoe stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, bookstores, and all the rest: Those specialized retail spaces allow products, and the people with knowledge about them, to engage in specialized ways of finding, choosing, and purchasing them. There's a reason why so much commerce has moved online in general and to Amazon in particular: We often value price and convenience and oodles of consumer reviews and easy access to competition and related info more than we value meat space salespeople with specialized knowledge laying on personalized sales pressure. Not always. I drove for three hours to shop for an office chair in a brick and mortar store, because I had to actually try it before paying the big bucks. But often enough to remake the economy.

NikolaNovak 8y ago
It's a matter of trust as well. My parents generation, now in the 70's, has this implicit trust in salespeople. They know "in principle" that there are "bad apples", but if a salesperson shakes their hand, looks them in the eye, and says "Of course Mr. <Insert name>, we'll take care of you", they buy it wholesale. Which is how my dad bought $600 tires for $1800 at a dealership, a $1200 "DSLR camera" which was actually a superzoom point and shoot, a wired phone headset which was actually wireless headphones with no boom, etc. I have basically zero trust in the "specialized retail stores with specialized sales people". Any time I geek out a little bit about any retail area, I learn the 101 ways they have and do scam you, and my trust erodes further. A specialized expensive shoe store swore my shoes I bought specifically for air travel don't have metal shims in them; of course they do. The electronic stores are never staffed with people who know more than I do, or frequently anything at all other than to push extended warranty. Small car maintenance store I've dealt with regularly for 15 years have turned out to be skimming and scamming once I learned more about their product and service, all the while greeting me warmly by name and "taking care of me". And yes, my dad and his friends still go to them. So yes, bring on the faceless online warehouse. I feel safer there - or at least, am better equipped to determine fake/counterfeit/exploitative than I am in person. For all the decades that Amazon and the like had to develop methods to scam us, in-person salespeople had centuries, and I ain't winning that game.
- 8y ago

lesdeuxmagots 8y ago

As part of the customer category that spends tens of thousands on Amazon per year, having shifted the majority of my non niche spending for physical goods to the platform, I've found their error rate to be well under 1%. I also return <1% of my orders for other reasons. I've contacted customer service maybe 3 times in total over the span of 10 years and each time the issue was resolved incredibly quickly and effectively. Maybe I'm in the minority here? Or is it just the errors that get all the attention. However, that confusion within categories has increased is undeniable. Try to buy a bath towel and be flooded with similar items with similar reviews. The ability to search and sort efficiently has definitely declined dramatically. It takes a lot more effort to make sure you're buying what you wanted for certain categories, particularly soft ones. I can no longer trust that the best selection is going to be on the first page of results. I wonder if Amazon will draw the line somewhere on how wide, how encompassing of a platform it is for third party vendors. It seems to have pushed itself over a limit.

massysett 8y ago
Amazon's solution to this is to create its own house brands and then promote those. I've had good luck with their brands. The quality and price are good. Bath towel is a good example. I'll only buy softlines like that on Amazon if they have their own brand. When I go search on Amazon and get the piles of random stuff, I just don't buy anything. It's not worth the trouble to sort through it all.
Bayart 8y ago
The lack of filtering options is really something that penalizes Amazon as a customer experience for me as well. But I'm starting to think they might be making it bad on purpose to give more visibility to their ranking schemes.

80mph 8y ago

I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable. I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downside of course, is that it will take 2-3 weeks to get here, but at least I know what I'm getting.

mhb 8y ago
This is one of the products which I have ordered frequently and with which I didn't expect any problems. Almost all the reviews are good, the price is good and I've been subscribing and saving for years. So I'm genuinely curious why you thought Amazon wasn't good for this item. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XEV9YE https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XEV9YE
- mattkrause 8y ago
  Three of the eight reviews on that page call out quality issues....
  - mhb 8y ago
    Huh? There are 1,400 reviews on that page.
    - rgoodwintx 8y ago
      There are 1400 reviews but the "initial selection" of ~8 Top Reviews has almost 50% negative commentary. I'm trying to learn more and more to look at the bars on the left; in this case, 92% are 4 and 5 star, and factor in that most people with no issues don't write reviews at all. So my very random modifier would make that something like 95% positive and take a chance on it. This assumes you don't get the dice rolled to a counterfeiter when you happened to load the page. It would be great if you could filter the reviews not only by the form factor (8 pack, 1 pack, etc.) but also the vendor. If anyone at Amazon is reading this... TBH I recently bought an end table that had 0 reviews, and it was kind of an adrenaline ride. "I'm supposed to judge this product simply by what I see on the page, and my own investigative capabilities? How quaint!". :)

timonoko 8y ago

There are others, but they are much worse: https://youtu.be/61sN42E2WbE https://youtu.be/61sN42E2WbE

antidaily 8y ago

"the whole shopping experience is saturated with caprice and uncertainty". So very true. UNLESS I already know what I want. then, it's by far the easiest from checkout to delivery to possible returns. But if you're looking for a "robot toy for 5 year old", good luck.

city41 8y ago

Amazon makes it basically impossible to compare prices by unit of measure (ie $0.94 per gallon or what not). I’ve wanted to make a browser extension to attempt to fix that. I’ve always suspected this is intentional. But if I could compare prices this way and be confident I’m getting the best deal, I’d buy things on Amazon a lot more.

chias 8y ago
I find this especially infuriating -- they even do it within a single product! https://i.imgur.com/aeaeuT2.png https://i.imgur.com/aeaeuT2.png That's $0.98 / oz, but if you switch from fruit punch to blue raz it becomes $15.18 / lb, and if you switch from the 60-serving pack to the 30-serving pack it's $24.58 / lb, but if you want to subscribe and save that's $0.93 / oz. WHY
- guitarbill 8y ago
  Because US customary units are a pain? :D Judging from shopping trips with housemates, I imagine most people don't look at those things, so putting more effort into that feature isn't worth it. But then again, Amazon's search is also notoriously bad, so maybe they simply don't have good metadata for products, and they're all derived in an ad-hoc way.
Havoc 8y ago
I wrote some code that does something like that. Learned very quickly that it's essentially impossible without a lot of manual data capturing - specifically is this a pack of 6 or 10 etc. Still for the bits where it worked I was surprised how big the variances per unit were

Dowwie 8y ago

Evidently, Amazon is ruining Whole Foods at breakneck speeds, too. The one near me was re-designed to a cold, commercial feel. Many items were removed. No more freshly roasted coffee on-site. etc. Cashier asked me if I was a prime member. No thanks, Amazon.

tvanantwerp 8y ago
Agreed, Whole Foods' quality is suffering under Amazon. It's a crap-shoot now whether I'll actually find what I'm looking for. They've also implemented the most frustrating customer rewards program I've ever seen in a grocery store. You have an app with a QR code that you scan at PoS--but the scanners they've got almost never detect the code! Probably 60-80% of the time, the cashier has to scan it herself with the regular barcode scanner. I tried using my phone number once--a common practice at other store that always works--but it couldn't detect that I was a Prime member, despite my phone number being very clearly entered into my Amazon account. Even when I do finally get scanned in as a Prime member, I usually save less than $2. It's so much frustration that I often don't bother. Whoever was in charge of creating and implementing that program should be fired.
- sam0x17 8y ago
  Yeah, for a while they did 30% off on all deli items, and we saved $100s with that, but otherwise it's like $1-$2.

mauvehaus 8y ago

I was never a Prime member, but I have bought stuff from Amazon in the past. As of about 2 years ago, I've basically quit Amazon for all the reasons listed in the article: confusing selection of products that I might want to buy (are those widgets the same as those other widgets or not?), the decreasing reliability of reviews, and the co-mingling of stock from different sellers. Admittedly, I'm buying "weird" stuff online: principally woodworking tools and hardware for furniture. Tools are a high-value item that lends itself counterfeiting. Somebody I knew bought a 3' (90 cm) Starrett blade for their combination square (MSRP ~$340) from Amazon, and got one that wasn't straight. Was it counterfeit? Was it a second that slipped out the back door of the factory? Was it a genuine one that slipped past quality control at Starrett? Who knows. He returned it and got a straight one, but there are other tools that are less obviously "wrong". Chisels with lower-grade steel, knock-off planes with poor quality castings or machining, counterfeit clamps (at $20-$30 a pair for basic handscrews you could probably make a tidy profit making sub-par ones and passing them off as the real thing). For my money, I'll buy from somebody who only sells tools, and stakes their reputation on delivering the tool I ordered, and a genuine one to boot. It turns out that dedicated retailers still exist for this stuff; beyond the US chains of Rockler and Woodcraft, there are a whole slew of independent vendors (Among others: Little Machine Shop, Infinity Cutting Tools, Lee Valley, Highland Woodworking). And they take far better care of their customers. On the hardware front, I ordered a lock and an escutcheon from (I think) Whitechapel, and when they picked the order, they determined that the key wouldn't fit through the hole in the escutcheon. /They called me/ to make sure I ended up with an escutcheon that would fit the key. To be sure, you pay for this level of service. Horton Brasses, Whitechapel, Brusso, etc all charge a handsome price. But at the end of the day, you know what you're getting, you can reach an actual human being if you need help picking something for your application, and they stand behind their products. I'm going to extrapolate from my area of interest here. Amazon only makes sense for stuff that's essentially fungible (e.g. USB cables), or you're just muggling around and don't mind exchanging a bit of your time to make something that isn't quite right work for you once. If you're doing anything in volume, predictability and repeatability matter a lot. Knowing that the X you order this year is going to work the same as the X you ordered 2 years ago counts for a lot.

alacombe 8y ago

porknubbins 8y ago

I've had a pretty terrible experience trying to buy non stick skillets over the years on Amazon with most of even the top rated items coming with huge issues like warping on the first use, not being very non stick, flaking etc. I almost wonder if its counterfeit or if manufacturers just cutting corners on what used to be a good product? Either way reviews become almost useless when you don't know which version you will be getting. I've found Amazon works much better for items without potential latent quality issues like DVDs, books, or products that are just binary work/don't work.

hirundo 8y ago
I bought this non-stick pan on Amazon and it was one of my best purchases of last year. The trick with non-sticks is to buy cheap enough cookware to affordably replace regularly as they wear out. My previous non-stick pan cost four times as much, wore out, and is now just hanging from a rack, looking fabulous. With the new one, I plan to toss it in another year and buy another. https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80114-535DS-Professional-Restaurant/dp/B009HBKQ16 https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80114-535DS-Professional-R...
- thatfrenchguy 8y ago
  I’ve had the same tefal skillet for 5 years bought at target for less than 20 bucks and it’s stoll going fine...
  - hirundo 8y ago
    Of course it makes a big difference how often you use it. I use mine about 12x per week. You?
    - thatfrenchguy 8y ago
      Around the same, ~9 times a week (once every weekday and twice every weekend day). Maybe I just got lucky with the one I bought :-)
- 8y ago

datavirtue 8y ago

Amazon simply delivered the online shopping experience everyone wanted. In the beginning, you would scour the net looking for decent retailers and then get barraged by shipping charges and delivery times that drained all the value. Amazon's focus was on fast and free shipping, removing the friction from the experience. Having scratched that itch, they got the scale benefit of reviews. Gold for the consumer. Retail is based on a specialist buying products customers want and ensuring and backing up quality. Amazon made that into a digital platform. The other retailers lost site of thier value and took customers for granted. That was why they didn't recognize the opportunity.

JJMcJ 8y ago

I order from specialty merchants or manufacturers when I can. Books I trust from Amazon. The rest, not so much.

throwawaymath 8y ago
In my experience, many of the books I've purchased from Amazon are actually illegally exported reprints from India. Those books tend to not make that fact obvious or even known.
- lozenge 8y ago
  There's nothing illegal about importing books. "The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner." Labels like "not for sale in the US" are aimed at distributers and stores, but are not legally enforceable.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for the citation!
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    Grey market textbooks saved me pretty good money in college. But they're only good if you know that's what you're getting- the print quality is lower, usually not in color, worse paper. Still a good deal if you just want the content.

Johnny555 8y ago

Amazon made online shopping feel safe and comfortable, at least mechanically, where once the risk of being scammed by bad actors felt huge Maybe this was true once, but now Amazon has brought back that fear and confusion of getting scammed. You used to be able to count on reviews for some idea of the quality of the product, but now you need to do research at someplace like www.fakespot.com to see if the reviews are fake. And even if the product is legit and works well and it's fulfilled by Amazon, when you get the product you need to check it carefully to see if it's a counterfeit knockoff that some vendor sold through amazon's commingled inventory. I've switched to https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ for most of my computer/electronics purchases now - they seem to price match Amazon automatically (or maybe amazon price matches them, many products have an identical price) and delivery is almost always within 2 - 3 days. I used to go to newegg, but have had a few issues with their third party sellers (product never shipped after ordering) so stopped going there.

NullPrefix 8y ago
Previously you were risking getting your card stolen by a shady seller. Now you're risking of getting your payment stolen. Bad product/no product delivered could be seen as equivalent to stole payment. It's an improvement, isn't it?
- roywiggins 8y ago
  PayPal solved that problem already though, right?
  - tedmiston 8y ago
    Not necessarily. Card theft, yes; bad/no product is fuzzy. If a shady seller can prove delivery of a package to the buyer, it becomes much harder for the buyer to get through winning a dispute irrespective of what the package's contents were. Particularly if the merchandise is counterfeit but definitely proving that it's counterfeit is difficult. Also with forum commerce for used things, it's difficult to sort out "this item isn't is the condition that was communicated to me". If the seller can't prove delivery, then the buyer wins almost hands down. On the flip side, an unscrupulous buyer can use this to their advantage with international shipping where it is extraordinarily difficult (and expensive) to prove delivery all the way to the destination across different country's mailing services.

kerng 8y ago

The biggest reason I'm not shopping at Amazon as much anymore are the scams and fake products. It's really annoying.

gnicholas 8y ago

> On top of that, Amazon is more than willing to fix its errors. In my experience, this is less true than it used to be. For example, my mom ordered a DVD in early December to be given as a Christmas gift. It was a Prime item, and she is a Prime subscriber. For some reason, it wasn't showing that it would be delivered until just before Christmas. Even though this was odd — and arguably a breach of the Prime agreement — she figured it was no big deal because it would be in time for Christmas. Then, just before it was supposed to be delivered, Amazon updated the delivery to after Christmas. This was actually OK by her, since the recipient (my daughter) would still be at her house for a few days after Christmas. Again, just before it was to be delivered, they updated the shipping again, and now said it would arrive Jan 15 to Jan 30. When she chatted the Amazon reps, they just said sorry for the inconvenience, and offered nothing for this shipping miss. Eventually they agreed to put a credit on her account for the inconvenience, but the credit never actually materialized. We canceled the order and bought the DVD (plus digital copy!) from Walmart. This is just one of many negative customer service experiences we've had with Amazon in the last few months. The other big problem is that they now want each return put in its own box — even if it was shipped to us with multiple other items that are also being returned. We have been Prime customers for years, but perhaps not for much longer.

CamelCaseName 8y ago
I can't comment on the other points, but I can reply to this: >The other big problem is that they now want each return put in its own box — even if it was shipped to us with multiple other items that are also being returned. We have been Prime customers for years, but perhaps not for much longer The reason for this is because each seller can set their own return address. I receive all returns to ensure that they are destroyed and that no customer accidentally buys something new and receives a customer return. Beyond minimizing costs for Amazon/sellers, this also reduces waste and environmental impact because each good only has to be shipped once.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  For what it’s worth, in every case where they’ve insisted on this, the return addresses were identical. We had to come up with multiple boxes to mail everything back but everything went to the same place.

GoodJokes 8y ago

Age people just coming around that Amazon is atrocious in all facets? I guess marketing does work huh..

techslave 8y ago

what they didn’t say is that amazon also created online shopping as we know it today. perhaps created is too strong but certainly they have set the bar. (focused specialty stores like mcmaster aside) the online shopping experience was theirs to ruin. which they have. i think it’s almost intentional that buying from the marketplace is a crapshoot, usually to be avoided. it’s a win win for amazon. it’s not surprising that the experience is poor these days. when you are a virtual monopoly that’s what happens. it is surprising that there’s no real competitor taking advantage.

arbuge 8y ago

I did notice that the rate at which I have to return unsatisfactory products from Amazon seems to have shot upwards in the last year or so. Obviously a hassle. I've now gone back to getting what I can locally in most cases.

LeoPanthera 8y ago

From the article: > There’s no ambiguity about what you’re getting when you buy a particular book, CD, or DVD. About a year ago I ordered a soundtrack CD from Amazon. It turned out to be a “fake”, it was a CD-R that had a printed label. If you didn’t know it was a CD-R, it looked reasonably convincing, the case was quite good quality. And it did contain the correct music - it was just a pirate copy.

LeoPanthera 8y ago

I increasingly find myself using eBay as a storefront. You can easily filter by “Buy it Now” and “New”, and then it works basically like Amazon marketplace, except that I trust the feedback system a lot more. There’s a lot of small and independent sellers on eBay - plus you can get a lot of stuff shipped directly from China and cut out the middleman, if that’s what you prefer.

freyir 8y ago

Recently, I was searching for a new office chair. Amazon offers the popular Steelcase Leap at full price, $978. You'd likely think you're paying full price to get a new chair. See if you can tell that you're getting ripped off: https://www.amazon.com/d/Office-Desk-Chairs/Steelcase-Fabric-Chair-Black-46216179FBL/B006H1QYBA https://www.amazon.com/d/Office-Desk-Chairs/Steelcase-Fabric... Spoiler: buried in the fine print, and listed as a "feature," it says "open box refurb". Customers are unwittingly paying full price for refurbished chairs, which typically sell for under $400. Many reviews claim that the chairs do not seem up to standard quality. You might think this is from some shady third-party seller, but it's in fact, "Ship from and sold by Amazon.com." And if you list all New/Used/Refurbished sellers, Amazon.com shows up in the New category, despite being described as a refurb in the product description. What a mess.

jhall1468 8y ago
That's either a mistake in the product description or an error in marking it new. Amazon is selling it's standard "new" warranties along with it, which wouldn't be possible if it's a refurb. My guess is the product description is inaccurate. Disclosure: I work at Amazon.
- CamelCaseName 8y ago
  Definitely a product description error. The product description field should never comment on the new/used/refurbished nature of the product being purchased because different conditions can (usually) be sold on the same listing. What probably happened is someone copied and pasted the description from somewhere else where the listing was specifically for refurbished chairs, or the very first seller of this item was selling it refurbished and wanted to call it out explicitly. Amazon detail pages are confusing, but honestly, I don't know how to improve them. I get loads of returns for people claiming they bought something used that was sold as new, even though the condition is clearly marked as used and a lengthy description next to it about the condition.
rasz 8y ago
Special offers and product promotions Color: Black Buy Used and Save: Buy a Used "Steelcase Leap Fabric Chair, Black,46216179FBL" and save 78% off the $1,699.00 list price. Buy with confidence as the condition of this item and its timely delivery are guaranteed under the "Amazon A-to-z Guarantee".

wessorh 8y ago

This week I ordered from Amazon a 4tb Flash Drive. What arrived in 4tb packaging was a 250Gb flash drive with the manufacturer's label removed. Amazon did replace the fraud drive with a proper one.

Invictus0 8y ago

I was recently backpacking in Colombia. In Colombia, no one shops online: the mountainous terrain makes shipping extremely expensive. It was an extremely refreshing experience. There are malls of course but also many small stores for things like school supplies and niche clothing brands (I bought a sweater from a store that sold basically nothing but sweaters: they also had a fully stocked bar with a pillow lounge, loft, and a TV in the back.) The public transportation is well utilized and people walk in the streets. Small grocery/convenience stores are only a stone's throw from anywhere in the city. This is what we have lost to online shopping.

draw_down 8y ago

I had a string of issues buying from amazon and decided to just stop. Several things just never showed up and 4-5 weeks after I ordered I’d quietly receive a refund. One item I really needed, they never shipped to me. I signed up for Amazon prime to get the expedited shipping for the item, then when I didn’t get it they gave me a free month of prime in compensation. Gee, thanks. My confidence that I’ll actually receive something I buy from them is low enough that I don’t think it’s worth it to buy from them, plus the store is full of counterfeits. I don’t understand why people like buying from them so much, in my experience it’s markedly worse than almost any other e-commerce store. The whole selling point of e-commerce is convenience, but transacting with them is not convenient and their customer service sucks. What’s the point? This whole idea that they’re fanatically customer-obsessed, I just don’t see it.

throwaway98121 8y ago

There’s generally an anti Amazon post here often, especially so when Amazons stock starts trending upwards. I don’t have problems when I shop on Amazon, and their instant video collection let us cut cable. We do have a boomerang subscription for another $5 a month for the kids. Last Christmas, we did purchase All Clad cookware, and one of the items was damaged, like literally a hairline crack. I called amazon and they sent the replacement with next day delivery. Pain in the ass but the only defective product I’ve had from them since 2015. Imo there’s generally an anti Amazon article by one of these media sites each week. I’m not sure how true it is the writing are, but to say Amazon ruined internet shopping sounds pretty inaccurate and laughable. I grew up in Bellevue, WA but many years ago left for the Midwest. I’m not sure if there are some better services that blow Amazon out of the water used by these media, east/west coast elitists or if it’s just the anti corporate hate train of smearing companies that get too large and founders get too rich. I suspect Amazon has millions of shoppers each day and these threads just turn into the angriest crowd of the 100 or folks who didn’t like their experience. Out of millions of shoppers per day, a hundred or even a few thousand angry customers are a rounding error and probably well within their customer satisfaction metrics. Hence, Amazon doesn’t change how they sell things or their delivery promises.

tracer4201 8y ago
There’s an anti apple or Facebook post just about every week too. Not all of these companies are equal, but there’s just a general pattern of crap over all big tech. There are clear examples of carelessness or downright nefariousness (see FB), but there’s also a complete lack of government regulation. They’ve had crazy growth or valuations in the past several years. There’s a lot of hateful sentiment driven by that, imo. People get jealous. Amazon may have 1000s of misses among millions of customers, but those people are the loudest when it comes to writing their opinions. I do think outlets like the Atlantic are inherently against Amazon and see Bezos being too powerful. These articles are less objective and more politically driven. Just my 2 cents

TheLuddite 8y ago

Well, I never shop from Amazon, I'd rather use a specialized online shops or online storefronts of the company directly(ie TM Lewin for shirts)... Main reason is that I'm not used to Amazons' shopping experience and it's huge selection of items, once I tried buying a travel trolley and felt overwhelmed by the huge choice, so I went to the shop and bought one in person after inspecting it visually.

spricket 8y ago

Amazon's counterfeit problem has ruined it for me. Like eBay before it, it's mostly a place to window shop for me now. Despite the massive amount of work they put into their logistics, they seem to have no trusted supply chain.

awakeasleep 8y ago
eBay is actually easier to use for me, now. With eBay, you can sort by 'used' items, and there is some focus on the seller history- and by combining them you can form a reasonable expectation of whats going on. With Amazon, you're buying a lottery ticket, every time.

bookofjoe 8y ago

"Birkenstock quits Amazon in US after counterfeit surge" (2016)https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-us-after-counterfeit-surge.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-...

lizardwalk5 8y ago

I haven't gone through the 152 past comments so apologies if this is dupe. but recently I was on amazon to buy something and the original price was like $17 but it tried to snag me by presenting a deal like $12 so I added it to my cart. I think I might have misread the countdown clock which appeared to be like 5hours (maybe it was 5 min??). but later when I returned to the cart (less than 5 hours later but more than 5 min later), I had a note saying I had less than 2 min to make the purchase) which I thought I completed in time but was charged full price regardless. maybe this is a new feature(?) and buggy but I thought it was quite misleading and confusing. I still bought the product b/c it was useful to me but the pricing mechanism could have been more transparent.

toss1 8y ago

>>"The problem with an Everything Store is that there’s no way to organize everything effectively. The result is basically a giant digital flea market." I'd describe it instead as their search and filtering stinks, and it is not just Amazon. The first issue is that Amazon and almost everyone else seem to think that either we want, or it is in their best interest, to include in search results anything vaguely resembling the search terms. Perhaps sometimes this is nice, but the one thing that would help is: PROVIDE A STRICT BUTTON This would allow users to specify that the search items MUST include the specified terms. If it returns an empty set, fine, remove the STRICT criteria, or enter new terms. Simple. The author also touched on the issue that you can't find anything by a particular attribute (his example was a frame/matte of a particular size). This cannot be emphasized enough -- they really need a system in each class of products to extract and provide search/sort/filter on these particular characteristics. Ideally an AI-ish solution would identify attributes and list them. They could also simply require vendors to put up particular attributes, and accurately. It'd be REALLY nice if they had a usable API so we could setup our own search & select UI, but...

iheartpotatoes 8y ago

Amazon doesn't sell Everlane, Gustin or Allbirds. Three clothing line's I've bought from over the past 5 years (more recently Allbirds). IMHO /gets on soapbax/L I think Amazon has burned EVERYONE who has used it, and would argue it has taught us to become more savvy shoppers. The three companies I list go out of their way to be transparent about their products. This builds trust and loyalty. The faults of Amazon (and Yahoo! Shopping in the early 2000's) led to the emphasis on these new digital-shopping virtues. It sucks. Every time I buy something on Amazon, I'm always suspicious if I'm going to get what I ordered. 95% of the time I'm satisfied, but ironically only because I buy fewer things. But I'm glad that more and more companies are going out of their way to validate themselves in the same way brick-and-mortar stores are authentic.

jshowa3 8y ago

I closed my account on Amazon a while back and barely ever shop there due to how they treat their employees and their general bloated business model. I now actively shop from other online sites when I'm looking for a product and will gladly pay a little extra. The problem with Amazon is that every time I go there, I'm treated with a cluttered mess of ads and products all over the place. Whenever I search for what I want, I'm now treated with ads integrated into the product list that look exactly like a product listing, horizontal bar product listings of related/"recommended" products, and 300 (exaggeration) different spammy options for buying a product as a "subscription" or "bundled with amazon prime" at different price points when I only want to select a quantity. Its mostly horrendous garbage now and I'm so glad I closed my account and never use it. Its helped me save a lot of money (by removing temptation) and shop in other places that don't try and up-sell me on other products. Also, most products I can get immediately by just driving to a local store. I don't have to wait 2-4 days to get it.

gjm11 8y ago

Everyone (well, in some sense of "everyone") complains about the danger of getting counterfeit goods from Amazon. I've personally never noticed goods I've bought from Amazon being counterfeit, but I none the less feel like they've wrecked what used to be an excellent online shopping experience in a different way. If you search for anything that isn't (1) a book or DVD or (2) a specific item from a specific brand, you are likely to find that the top, oh, several hundred search results are near-indistinguishable things presumably drop-shipped from China, each of which is supposedly made by a company with a weird six-letter all-caps nonsense name. Perhaps some of these are actually excellent products, but the only way to tell whether they're any good is from the Amazon reviews, and we all know how reliable those are. I want a checkbox that says "only show me products from manufacturers with names I might recognize" or "don't show me anything that is shipped directly from China" or something. (Not because there is anything wrong with things being made in, or shipped from, China. And these might, for all I know, be excellent products. But I have no way I actually trust of knowing whether these particular goods are actually bads.) Random example: I was recently looking for an external USB-connected DVD drive. If I put <<<external usb dvd drive>>> into Amazon UK's search box, the "manufacturers" I get on my first page of results are: Rioddas, Rioddas, Patuoxun, Patuoxun, Oudekay, Asus, Oudekay, HOCOMO, LG, Rodzon, LG, PIAEK, Patuoxun, Amicool, Blingco, Inpher. This is actually an unusually good case: LG and Asus are "real" hardware vendors. So far as I can tell, the others are all Amazon-only pseudo-vendors.

oliwarner 8y ago

Google ruined it. Once upon a time if I wanted to buy something, I would stick its name in Google and click the Shopping tab to find the cheapest. Often a random online retailer. Products and prices were scraped from the internet like any other organic SERP. Then they started charging for access. The number of suppliers decimated. It was no longer competitive. That allowed Amazon and eBay to become the bazaars they now are, including what TFA is talking about.

ilamont 8y ago

Regarding the counterfeit problem: Amazon has a program called Transparency, which has been in development for some time: https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency The basic idea: Vendor places unique 2D barcode on each unit of a branded product, only products with those barcodes get placed into Amazon warehouse inventory, consumers can scan the barcode themselves to verify it's legit. It's restricted to trademarked items, though.

vkaku 8y ago

My assertion is: Amazon ruined shopping. It ruined workplace ethics. It ruined Seattle. It also ruined a lot of things. I felt happy today going to a mom and pop franchise to purchase stuff. Happier knowing that I've just started on my quest of moving away from Amazon. I make money and some regular non-tech people make money and I'm happy they do. AmazonBasics? Find a brand outlet - or go to AliExpress. Amazon is merely an expensive broker here. I'd rather Jack Ma make that money than Jeff does. Groceries? Go to your local offline vendor, preferable Mom and Pop. Computers? Set up a deal with the local distributor. Tell them that you respect reasonable prices and good support and they will give you a great experience. Books / Movies / Videos? Rent from a library. I've been a long time Amazon shopper and for the last two years I'm consciously moving offline. I'm doing my bit and I've never felt happier.

amalternative 8y ago

I noticed that the discussion about Amazon's decreasing quality comes up quite regularly on HN. It seems to be a huge issue and a lot of people have negative stories to tell. The best solution would be to move away from the big bad A and buy from alternative stores. I know that this is not always possible but let's try... Shameless plug: A few days ago I created the site amalternative.com [1] which lists alternative online stores. There is still a lot of work to do but I decided to launch as soon as I could. And I guess it meets a lot of HN requirements: - It's an MVP - It's a side project - There is no useless crap on the site - It's simple - It's fast (Static, on Netlify ;)) - It has an high information density (Okay, not yet. But I'm working on it) Let me hear what you think :) [1] https://www.amalternative.com/ https://www.amalternative.com/