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The very quick decline in quality of Amazon products has led me to start shopping elsewhere. I don't spend an insignificant amount at Amazon. I'm sure I'm not t

The very quick decline in quality of Amazon products has led me to start shopping elsewhere. I don't spend an insignificant amount at Amazon. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this. When I can buy higher quality goods from my local dollar store or cheaper Chinese stuff directly from AliExpress with better service and quality, what's Amazon's benefit? It doesn't matter how fast something arrives if it costs me my health, home, or breaks within a single use.

throwayEngineer 7y ago
The price has me leaving to Walmart Online. I recently wanted a blue alarm clock. Amazon was 20$. Walmart Online 10$. I still use Amazon to price check, but I've started price checking numerous competitors. Here is a study we did for baby items, but it was clear online>brick and mortar. Walmart>Amazon https://efficiencyiseverything.com/target-vs-amazon-vs-walmart-and-store-to-store-comparison-baby-items-per-dollar/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/target-vs-amazon-vs-walma...
- Vomzor 7y ago
  There’s a plugin for price checking: http://www.shoptimate.com/extension/ http://www.shoptimate.com/extension/
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    What's the business model? Are they monetizing browsing history data?
    - Vomzor 7y ago
      Affiliate links.
      - gnicholas 7y ago
        Based on their privacy policy, it looks like they gather aggregate browsing data, which they may be monetizing. But they say that all data gathered is at the aggregate level. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shoptimate/privacy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shoptimate/pr...
        patd 7y ago
        Maker of Shoptimate here. As said by others, the business model is simply affiliate links. The gathering of browser data in the privacy policy is to cover things taken by my Apache logs or click statistics (which I sometimes need to charge stores that pay me per click). But I don't monetize this in any shape or form.
        gnicholas 7y ago
        Thanks for responding! That totally makes sense. I am a bit wary about these sorts of things because even my small-time (under 100k users) Chrome extension has had offers for data collection/infiltration. So when I read a privacy policy that doesn't disclaim browsing history monetization, I figure it's probably because it's happening. Glad to hear that's not the case!
    - blang 7y ago
      I'm guessing affiliate links.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
j_syk 7y ago
I've moved (back) to buying higher priced electronics from places like Best Buy. The prices are usually the same anyway for the name brand stuff, and I'm less worried about fakes. Last week bought a new smart watch and headphones and they arrived 2 days after ordering.
- paulmd 7y ago
  BB has started using their retail stores as a distributed shipping system, so they ship packages from very close to you and have pretty good delivery times, as long as it's something carried in a store. Pretty smart move. I think Target may be moving in that direction as well? They've started doing free 2-day shipping as well, I would not be surprised if that's how they're doing it. They seem like they're making a genuine attempt to compete with Amazon too.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    The stores in our local mall do this as well. You can see the mailman carrying a trolely full of packages out of the mall every day.
gingabriska 7y ago
One of the problem I face with Amazon in some other country is that they drop price of the product after I've already made a purchase and price difference is often $10 on $40 item. I am forced to return the item and cause Amazon so much loss, when Amazon can just offer price matching upto a week but no they don't do that Second, Amazon tells me that there is lightening offer on some product but the price has only changed like 1% and Amazon compares it with the fake price which it never before charged in its store.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  I would only guess they haven't yet noticed that behaviour of yours, so your account hadn't yet been flagged to disable hassle-free returns?
- imtringued 7y ago
  Honestly this sounds like abuse of goodwill if you were willing to buy the product at $40.
  - gingabriska 7y ago
    I don't always do it, many times a product is slightly damaged or has some issues but I still keep it if I get a good price and don't want hassle to return it specially after I've installed it in my house already. But when price also changes and there are issues, this leaves me no other option but to return the package. (Which I really hate)
  - threezero 7y ago
    Why should anyone have “goodwill” when dealing with an entity that abuses its employees and focuses solely on profit? My goal is to get the product at the lowest possible price from them.
pathartl 7y ago
I'm starting to be on the same boat, though not necessarily for the same reasons. Amazon Basics is still pretty strong... it's when you get to third party stuff that it becomes a real minefield. The amount of third party sellers re-using listings for multiple products to pad their reviews is honestly astonishing. Searching for a lightning to 3.5mm jack leads to this as the #2 result: https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Charging-Headphone-Splitter-Compatible/dp/B07QSQ2PFR https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Charging-Headphone-Splitter-... Not only does this not work (as discovered by my SO), but all of the reviews for it are for phone cases, utility knives, etc. In the past month or two, this has been happening WAY too often. It's gotten to the point, like you've said, where AliExpress has become more reliable. That seems insane to me.
- Deimorz 7y ago
  That's apparently called "brushing". It was mentioned in this article a couple of weeks ago that talks about some of the methods that are being used to manipulate the listings lately: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-marketplace-sellers-black-hat-scams-search-rankings https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-m... It links to this article from last year that seems to go into more detail about that particular method too: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-review-reuse-fraud https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...
- ChickeNES 7y ago
  eBay has a similar issue where sellers list, in the same listing, a high price item (eg a 3D printer) along with a low price item (a roll of filament). So then when you search for a certain keyword and search by price you'll see those listings gaming the system first
  - paulmd 7y ago
    I have started using minimum prices on my queries to filter this out. List an item for $1-499, you're no longer in my results. (I would really just like a way to filter out multiple-product listings entirely. The only valid use-case is like, multiple colors or something. 99% of the time they're used to game search results and the prices are almost never good enough to be worth manually sorting through 200 identical listings vs just filtering them out entirely. But at least minimum price queries filter out one way they are abused.) Also, filter to US sellers only. Usually if you buy from China then the savings aren't that huge, you'll be waiting a month to get your item, and if the item ends up not working then it's impossible to return it. On some items you are going to be getting the same junk anyway, but from a bulk importer shipping from the US, but other items with definite name-brands it does cut out a lot of the junk listings.
jerrysievert 7y ago
> When I can buy higher quality goods from my local dollar store or cheaper Chinese stuff directly from AliExpress with better service and quality, what's Amazon's benefit? It doesn't matter how fast something arrives if it costs me my health, home, or breaks within a single use. or when you order something from amazon while not having prime, choose free shipping and have it artificially delayed so that it comes 2 weeks later. not much different than ordering the same item from aliexpress for cheaper and waiting those same weeks for the free shipping.
Faark 7y ago
> what's Amazon's benefit? Packaging? As in neither your neighbor nor the delivery guy know there is a $500 SSD in that little package. What other company is able / willing to pack such a huge variety of products into its own branded boxes?
fullshark 7y ago
Amazon started by winning on price, now it's winning on convenience. Find whatever you need, get it within 2 days. For a lot of products quality / price isn't that important to you.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Getting a counterfeit product isn’t very convenient, nor is wading through mountains of shit trying to find what you want to purchase. Their convenience factor is rapidly fading.
Florin_Andrei 7y ago
It's very clear that Amazon is doing all the time quite deep optimizations to all its processes, with the obvious goal of maximizing profit. Of course, should the whole thing turn into a giant screwball of hidden links between manufacturer and end user, impossible to debug when things go wrong - well, that's just a collateral. As long as the decision makers get their bonuses, it's all good. /s
JTbane 7y ago
Same. For me it seems like Amazon is getting much too cozy with their market share and are starting to price goods in a monopolistic way- I can get equivalent or higher quality stuff at local stores for a better price.

throwayEngineer 7y ago

The price has me leaving to Walmart Online. I recently wanted a blue alarm clock. Amazon was 20$. Walmart Online 10$. I still use Amazon to price check, but I've started price checking numerous competitors. Here is a study we did for baby items, but it was clear online>brick and mortar. Walmart>Amazon https://efficiencyiseverything.com/target-vs-amazon-vs-walmart-and-store-to-store-comparison-baby-items-per-dollar/ https://efficiencyiseverything.com/target-vs-amazon-vs-walma...

Vomzor 7y ago
There’s a plugin for price checking: http://www.shoptimate.com/extension/ http://www.shoptimate.com/extension/
- gnicholas 7y ago
  What's the business model? Are they monetizing browsing history data?
  - Vomzor 7y ago
    Affiliate links.
    - gnicholas 7y ago
      Based on their privacy policy, it looks like they gather aggregate browsing data, which they may be monetizing. But they say that all data gathered is at the aggregate level. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shoptimate/privacy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shoptimate/pr...
      - patd 7y ago
        Maker of Shoptimate here. As said by others, the business model is simply affiliate links. The gathering of browser data in the privacy policy is to cover things taken by my Apache logs or click statistics (which I sometimes need to charge stores that pay me per click). But I don't monetize this in any shape or form.
        gnicholas 7y ago
        Thanks for responding! That totally makes sense. I am a bit wary about these sorts of things because even my small-time (under 100k users) Chrome extension has had offers for data collection/infiltration. So when I read a privacy policy that doesn't disclaim browsing history monetization, I figure it's probably because it's happening. Glad to hear that's not the case!
  - blang 7y ago
    I'm guessing affiliate links.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

j_syk 7y ago

I've moved (back) to buying higher priced electronics from places like Best Buy. The prices are usually the same anyway for the name brand stuff, and I'm less worried about fakes. Last week bought a new smart watch and headphones and they arrived 2 days after ordering.

paulmd 7y ago
BB has started using their retail stores as a distributed shipping system, so they ship packages from very close to you and have pretty good delivery times, as long as it's something carried in a store. Pretty smart move. I think Target may be moving in that direction as well? They've started doing free 2-day shipping as well, I would not be surprised if that's how they're doing it. They seem like they're making a genuine attempt to compete with Amazon too.
- bluedino 7y ago
  The stores in our local mall do this as well. You can see the mailman carrying a trolely full of packages out of the mall every day.

gingabriska 7y ago

One of the problem I face with Amazon in some other country is that they drop price of the product after I've already made a purchase and price difference is often $10 on $40 item. I am forced to return the item and cause Amazon so much loss, when Amazon can just offer price matching upto a week but no they don't do that Second, Amazon tells me that there is lightening offer on some product but the price has only changed like 1% and Amazon compares it with the fake price which it never before charged in its store.

heavenlyblue 7y ago
I would only guess they haven't yet noticed that behaviour of yours, so your account hadn't yet been flagged to disable hassle-free returns?
imtringued 7y ago
Honestly this sounds like abuse of goodwill if you were willing to buy the product at $40.
- gingabriska 7y ago
  I don't always do it, many times a product is slightly damaged or has some issues but I still keep it if I get a good price and don't want hassle to return it specially after I've installed it in my house already. But when price also changes and there are issues, this leaves me no other option but to return the package. (Which I really hate)
- threezero 7y ago
  Why should anyone have “goodwill” when dealing with an entity that abuses its employees and focuses solely on profit? My goal is to get the product at the lowest possible price from them.

pathartl 7y ago

I'm starting to be on the same boat, though not necessarily for the same reasons. Amazon Basics is still pretty strong... it's when you get to third party stuff that it becomes a real minefield. The amount of third party sellers re-using listings for multiple products to pad their reviews is honestly astonishing. Searching for a lightning to 3.5mm jack leads to this as the #2 result: https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Charging-Headphone-Splitter-Compatible/dp/B07QSQ2PFR https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Charging-Headphone-Splitter-... Not only does this not work (as discovered by my SO), but all of the reviews for it are for phone cases, utility knives, etc. In the past month or two, this has been happening WAY too often. It's gotten to the point, like you've said, where AliExpress has become more reliable. That seems insane to me.

Deimorz 7y ago
That's apparently called "brushing". It was mentioned in this article a couple of weeks ago that talks about some of the methods that are being used to manipulate the listings lately: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-marketplace-sellers-black-hat-scams-search-rankings https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-m... It links to this article from last year that seems to go into more detail about that particular method too: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-review-reuse-fraud https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...
ChickeNES 7y ago
eBay has a similar issue where sellers list, in the same listing, a high price item (eg a 3D printer) along with a low price item (a roll of filament). So then when you search for a certain keyword and search by price you'll see those listings gaming the system first
- paulmd 7y ago
  I have started using minimum prices on my queries to filter this out. List an item for $1-499, you're no longer in my results. (I would really just like a way to filter out multiple-product listings entirely. The only valid use-case is like, multiple colors or something. 99% of the time they're used to game search results and the prices are almost never good enough to be worth manually sorting through 200 identical listings vs just filtering them out entirely. But at least minimum price queries filter out one way they are abused.) Also, filter to US sellers only. Usually if you buy from China then the savings aren't that huge, you'll be waiting a month to get your item, and if the item ends up not working then it's impossible to return it. On some items you are going to be getting the same junk anyway, but from a bulk importer shipping from the US, but other items with definite name-brands it does cut out a lot of the junk listings.

jerrysievert 7y ago

> When I can buy higher quality goods from my local dollar store or cheaper Chinese stuff directly from AliExpress with better service and quality, what's Amazon's benefit? It doesn't matter how fast something arrives if it costs me my health, home, or breaks within a single use. or when you order something from amazon while not having prime, choose free shipping and have it artificially delayed so that it comes 2 weeks later. not much different than ordering the same item from aliexpress for cheaper and waiting those same weeks for the free shipping.

Faark 7y ago

> what's Amazon's benefit? Packaging? As in neither your neighbor nor the delivery guy know there is a $500 SSD in that little package. What other company is able / willing to pack such a huge variety of products into its own branded boxes?

fullshark 7y ago

Amazon started by winning on price, now it's winning on convenience. Find whatever you need, get it within 2 days. For a lot of products quality / price isn't that important to you.

mikeash 7y ago
Getting a counterfeit product isn’t very convenient, nor is wading through mountains of shit trying to find what you want to purchase. Their convenience factor is rapidly fading.

Florin_Andrei 7y ago

It's very clear that Amazon is doing all the time quite deep optimizations to all its processes, with the obvious goal of maximizing profit. Of course, should the whole thing turn into a giant screwball of hidden links between manufacturer and end user, impossible to debug when things go wrong - well, that's just a collateral. As long as the decision makers get their bonuses, it's all good. /s

JTbane 7y ago

Same. For me it seems like Amazon is getting much too cozy with their market share and are starting to price goods in a monopolistic way- I can get equivalent or higher quality stuff at local stores for a better price.