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I wonder if Amazon’s days as the de facto online retailing site are numbered. For nearly everything I buy on Amazon now, I wonder: “is this real? Are these rev

I wonder if Amazon’s days as the de facto online retailing site are numbered. For nearly everything I buy on Amazon now, I wonder: “is this real? Are these reviews real? Will it break in 10 minutes?” Obviously, Amazon is doing just fine, and we are a long way from my parents asking those same questions, and they have tons of businesses beside retail. So yes, they’ll be ok. But I think they’ve left the door open for competition with their approach to third party sellers.

Innominate 8y ago
This is my concern as well. They're becoming victims of their own success with knockoffs and scammers increasingly gaming the system. Everything from knockoffs piggybacking on real listings, to entire lines of products being dominated by no-name Chinese companies throwing armies of shills at the reviews. Amazon figuring out how to deal with the problem is critical for their future.
- my_username_is_ 8y ago
  They've had a long time to figure that out. It's been an issue for a while. They've just neglected to do anything about it. It doesn't take a genius to look at all the reviews that some products have and realize that they're fake
  - mhaymo 8y ago
    This is a common sentiment, but seems wrong to me. It doesn't take a genius to recognise a spam or phishing email either, and yet no company has created a perfect email filter. It's not neglect, it's a very hard problem, as is any problem where you are trying to make an inference with limited information controlled by an adversary. Amazon could spend billions on incredibly sophisticated fake-review-detection algorithms, but they still couldn't stop sellers finding real amazon customers and paying them to buy and review their products.
    - schredder 8y ago
      Neither the sentiment nor the difficulty of the problem matters. Big A gets a cut of a sale whether or not the reviews or products are genuine so they won’t do more than the bare minimum to deal with it, until their tide starts to change.
skohan 8y ago
Who in your mind could replace them? I am sure they have issues, but it seems like they have such a massive lead in terms of logistics it's hard to imagine anyone delivering a comparable customer experience anytime soon.
- iambateman 8y ago
  I don’t know, but that’s how people felt with Yahoo, AOL, IBM, etc at different times. A few ideas: Walmart. Their grocery delivery service is already baked into our weekly workflow. Plus they benefit from having X000 stores around the USA. They really are getting their act together. Wayfair and friends. Wayfair is demonstrating that certain verticals really benefit from having a dedicated site and customer service matters.

Innominate 8y ago

This is my concern as well. They're becoming victims of their own success with knockoffs and scammers increasingly gaming the system. Everything from knockoffs piggybacking on real listings, to entire lines of products being dominated by no-name Chinese companies throwing armies of shills at the reviews. Amazon figuring out how to deal with the problem is critical for their future.

my_username_is_ 8y ago
They've had a long time to figure that out. It's been an issue for a while. They've just neglected to do anything about it. It doesn't take a genius to look at all the reviews that some products have and realize that they're fake
- mhaymo 8y ago
  This is a common sentiment, but seems wrong to me. It doesn't take a genius to recognise a spam or phishing email either, and yet no company has created a perfect email filter. It's not neglect, it's a very hard problem, as is any problem where you are trying to make an inference with limited information controlled by an adversary. Amazon could spend billions on incredibly sophisticated fake-review-detection algorithms, but they still couldn't stop sellers finding real amazon customers and paying them to buy and review their products.
  - schredder 8y ago
    Neither the sentiment nor the difficulty of the problem matters. Big A gets a cut of a sale whether or not the reviews or products are genuine so they won’t do more than the bare minimum to deal with it, until their tide starts to change.

skohan 8y ago

Who in your mind could replace them? I am sure they have issues, but it seems like they have such a massive lead in terms of logistics it's hard to imagine anyone delivering a comparable customer experience anytime soon.

iambateman 8y ago
I don’t know, but that’s how people felt with Yahoo, AOL, IBM, etc at different times. A few ideas: Walmart. Their grocery delivery service is already baked into our weekly workflow. Plus they benefit from having X000 stores around the USA. They really are getting their act together. Wayfair and friends. Wayfair is demonstrating that certain verticals really benefit from having a dedicated site and customer service matters.