8 ms·

Amazon overall quality has droped in recent years. I use to buy from Amazon because I knew I was buying original brands and no chinese cheap copies. Well, that

• leemcalilly 7y ago
  As a small niche retailer that makes and sells guitar straps in Nashville I couldn’t agree more. Our experiments selling on Amazon have only hurt us, but Prime is a huge time & shipping $$ saver for re-ordering supplies for our shop and even materials used to make our products. We’ve experimented with selling on a lot of different sites (Amazon, Etsy, Reverb, etc) and have found the best way to control the brand and customer experience is selling solely on our website https://originalfuzz.com https://originalfuzz.com. So we both rely on Amazon to run our business, while feel we’re actively doing harm to our brand when we sell our products there. We’re giving up revenue in the short term by not taking a multi-channel approach to sales, but we think it will pay dividends over the long term because we’re able to provide a consistent customer experience with each order.
  • burlesona 7y ago
    Very nice website and you offer Apple Pay. I’d totally buy direct from you over going to Amazon. I think you’re on the right track.
    • einpoklum 7y ago
      Subjugating economic activity to Amazon in part and Apple in another part isn't the right track, socially and IMHO.
      • lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Apple Pay is nothing at all like Amazon. Apple Pay is simply a convenient, secure way of paying without giving out your credit card number, and reduces risk of fraudulent transactions and chargebacks for merchants, who also don’t need to worry about storing credit cards and having them stolen. It’s a win win situation.
        • gamblor956 7y ago
          IOW, it's exactly like PayPal and Amazon Pay and Sanmsung Pay and Chase Pay...
          • lotsofpulp 7y ago
            The context of the discussion is selling products as a reseller on amazon.com, which has nothing to do with Amazon Pay or Apple Pay, hence when the previous poster claimed Apple Pay is just as bad as Amazon, I clarified that it’s apples and oranges. Maybe Amazon Pay and the others are good too, I’ve never used it so I can’t comment on it.
        • AdrianB1 7y ago
          It sounds like a commercial, not an argument in a discussion. It has all the claims, none of the proofs.
    • leemcalilly 7y ago
      Thanks!
    • maccard 7y ago
      Agreed - if I'm shopping for something and using a website I don't already trust, offering a well known payment method (even paypal will suffice) is a surefire way to build a lot of trust.
      • greyhair 7y ago
        When I am shopping online, and I find three or four suppliers that are close in product and price, the first thing I do is eliminate all those that don't allow PayPal. I only use PayPal for online purchasing. I will consider Google Pay or Amazon Pay (last resort) if needed.
  • circa 7y ago
    love the site!
  • sinker 7y ago
    My living depends on selling small-batch, high quality, independently made woodworking items and I've struggled with this. Selling on Amazon feels like you're relinquishing control over your product, much more so than Ebay or Etsy. Just yesterday I've had a third party seller somehow merge my product into their own product listing, taking the small number of 5 star reviews I earned organically with them. They sell a completely unrelated product and in their page you'll notice the reviews refer to a bunch of unrelated products. Meanwhile what the customer sees on the search page is a 4.5 star item. After some research it appears this is a common problem. How something so egregious can happen at all is puzzling. Well I've decided Amazon isn't for me, for now. I have a dedicated website for my business but I don't know what is the right way to drive traffic. Could you mind explaining what your approach has been?
    • cannonedhamster 7y ago
      I've had a review I wrote for one product entirely switched to another product. I've seen some products for USB cables with reviews for books made for infants. Amazon is so untrustworthy now I'll either go to Alibaba or buy direct. It's dangerous to buy from Amazon. I wish you the best in this, I've reported ads like this for fraud before.
      • cr0sh 7y ago
        It wouldn't surprise me to find out this is some kind of "business" - where you have an Amazon seller account post up various items charging only pennies, then you hire a bunch of people to purchase the products (so they are a "verified purchaser") then review them with high ratings (and maybe a few lower ratings just to make things look good). Then somehow sell those SKU codes for the items onward where the item information (description, photo, title, etc) are swapped out - so now you have an instant "best seller". This can also of course be done by an individual seller - they just get a good product, sell it, get some great ratings on it, then change out the information for another product but keep the SKU the same. Works best if the products are very similar (I've seen this too - where the reviews, if reading them carefully, seem to refer to say a USB thumbdrive, but what is being sold is an actual hard drive, or memory, or sdcard, etc). The other way, of course, is to sell multiple products with different "colors" (but each is actually a different product). Then you have reviews all over the map, all for the same SKU - or at least in the same general comment mix for the product being sold. So now you don't know if the comment is referring to the product you want, or some variant of it... All of that said, I can kinda understand why this is possible, even desirable - for Amazon to give that kind of control to the sellers. They could try to police it, but how do they police and enforce SKU usage and such, without also busting legitimate uses? That's probably the difficulty. There's a similar problem with some sellers posting items up with insanely large prices (like a pack of gum for $10,000); from what I understand, this is done to prevent an item from being purchased when it is out of stock, or to keep the reviews (maybe in conjunction with SKU swapping?), or a few other reasons, with the idea that nobody will buy that product with such a strange high price on it (plus sorting moves it to the bottom usually). Unfortunately, this also screws up when you want to sort high to low prices, to find a possible "better product" that is priced higher because it is made differently and better than "regular ole' generics" (I faced this recently while looking for a shielded audio cable). Here again, though, policing it would be nearly impossible - how is Amazon to determine that a particular package of gum isn't worth $10,000? For that matter, maybe there's a buyer out there looking for an elusive pack of gum and is willing to pay the higher price? Seems incredible, but I am certain there's at least one person out there ready and able to do so.
  • amoitnga 7y ago
    Flip through our latest look book. Check it out button leads to 404. Going from homepage to 404 is NOT GOOD
  • rgbrenner 7y ago
    Just FYI, prime tos prohibit its use for ordering items intended for resale. I would have done the same for my business, but I didn’t want to risk getting a huge bill later when they figure it out.
    • ekanes 7y ago
      I think he's saying they buy supplies, which they then turn into things to sell (versus reselling what they are buying).
    • retbull 7y ago
      What about products used in the production of items for sale?
      • pmiller2 7y ago
        Like tools and raw materials? Why would that be a problem?
    • lozaning 7y ago
      Can you extrapolate more on this? Am I understanding correctly that Amazon will not allow me to buy something off their site with prime shipping if i intend to resell that product? Is the the scope of this limited to only include me taking orders for item X at price y on my own Amazon marketplace account and then placing my order with an FBA partner who's price for X is below y? Otherwise wouldn't you run into all kinds of issues with first sale doctrine? Who is amazon to tell me I cant sell something I bought through them?
      • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        They can't tell you what to do with your purchases. They can remove perks if they suspect you're abusing them.
      • jfim 7y ago
        It's probably to avoid the situation where the same item sells for X at Amazon and X+n at Walmart, and someone sets up a shop on Walmart to forward the orders to Amazon, pocketing the n.
  • lowdose 7y ago
    Your online web store is a simple but absolute stunning display of a frictionless customer experience. I'm genuinely curious about the motivation to sell these products made-to-order, seems like a product that can be stocked. Care to elaborate on this?
  • sombremesa 7y ago
    All the 'shop now' links in your banner are leading to a 404.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• larntz 7y ago
  Exactly. For a while Amazon was the first place I'd look to shop online. They had legit stuff and it was super convenient. The last year, maybe two, it's become such an unpleasant experience that Amazon has become a last resort. Free fast shipping is awesome, but I'll be patient or pay more to avoid Amazon these days. I don't trust the products, and I'm done wasting time returning things.
  • smacktoward 7y ago
    They don't even offer free fast shipping anymore. You can get fast shipping, but only if you pay for Prime, or you can get free shipping, in which case it can take a week or longer before your order even leaves their warehouse (!). It's fast or it's free, pick one.
  • fitzroy 7y ago
    It also seems like Amazon now holds shipments until the last possible moment if you don't pay for Prime. Meanwhile, my Target orders often arrive in 2 days or even overnight (in NYC) for free. Wal-Mart's prices for most items I reorder regularly are almost always lower than Amazon and the shipments regularly arrive in 3 days even though they estimate up to a week. The unfortunate thing about Wal-Mart is that they seem to be adopting a lot of the website clutter that has made Amazon so frustrating (e.g. 3rd party listings with shipping/pricing all over the map, and aggressive recommendations on product pages).
• bonestamp2 7y ago
  Ya, my rule is that if it's under $10 then I can probably find it on aliexpress (unless I need it relatively quickly). If it's a well known brand, I'll probably buy it from that brand's website. Everything in between is usually ok to buy on amazon, but even that list is getting shorter and shorter for me.
  • pmiller2 7y ago
    I tend to buy mostly name brand stuff and books from Amazon (e.g. my TV, personal laptop, B&W laser printer, and water flosser came from Amazon). One exception is lightning cables, where I try to buy heavy duty, Apple certified cables, regardless of brand. Another exception is certain personal care items, like shampoo and conditioner, where if what I get is "fake," it won't be of much consequence.
• mehrdadn 7y ago
  > This also made me buy less stuff. Now I generally wait until I need more things or until my cart has enough stuff for a free delivery. Despite being inconvenient this seems like... a good thing for the planet?
• penagwin 7y ago
  > I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days. I use aliexpress for things I don't need for 2-4 weeks, I'm really curious, normally 2-3 delivery is like $40+ (Which I prefer not to spend on something that's $1.75)
  • Darmody 7y ago
    For most stuff it takes several weeks, yes, but they also have warehouses all over the world where they store the most popular products which are delivered within days. Also they opened their first store in Europe, yesterday, located in Madrid. It's called Aliexpress Plaza and since yesterday it was only an online shop for Spain.
  • cr0sh 7y ago
    Also - if the item you purchase is small enough, it might be able to fit into one of those China Post "e-packets" (or whatever they call 'em) - which is basically a government subsidized free fast airmail shipping option. Virtually bypasses customs it seems. But the parts have to be relatively small and fit into a padded envelope about 6x4" or something like that. I've gotten many electronic components in that manner, within a few days of ordering. Of course, anything larger, and you're looking at weeks - mainly because of customs on both ends. Big enough, they stick it in a shipping container (in addition to customs) and it takes the slow-boat over the ocean.
• ljm 7y ago
  I’ve started to become suspicious of Amazon too, and I have a feeling that Prime isn’t helping because it places instant gratification above quality or authenticity. The reason I say it is that I’ve ordered several books from Amazon, with no indication of them being supplied by a third party seller, and I’ve always picked next day with Prime above any other option. In almost every situation the book has arrived in a cheap, non-Amazon jiffy bag (like a book needs to be bubble wrapped?) and the quality of the paper and print has felt a bit off. And it makes me think that I’m unwittingly buying counterfeit books that might have been run through amazon’s publishing program. What really made me think that was when I bought a copy of House of Leaves, which is suppose to be printed in colour. The entire book was black and white, which meant it stopped making sense when trying to discuss the content with others (who consider the colours significant). The same with an O’Reilly book that I recently ordered. The screenshots were really poorly printed, no publisher with a reputation would be happy with the quality of that. Did I get get a dodgy, possibly pirate, print just because I wanted cheap and fast?
  • therealx 7y ago
    Yes, book piracy is huge.
• amelius 7y ago
  They are below the quality of what one would expect from a government-run organization. Perhaps an online sales platform should be a utility instead. At least it would be fair to third-party sellers, with their market regulated by the government instead of by a large corporation.
• lightedman 7y ago
  "Amazon overall quality has droped in recent years." Not to offer up my receipts or anything, but Amazon has about 70% of the time shipped me a counterfeit item. 1080p microscope? Best it gets is 1366x768 on a Windows XP 32-bit driver. Plastic welding kit for a 2002 Ford Explorer? Nope, wrong plastic welding rod, wrong nylon type. Meant for Mazda, not Ford. I won't touch Amazon after that bullshit. I'll buy directly from a known supplier, in this case, O'Reillys. They sell the plastic patch kit. Thanks, guys. Saved me $500 on a bullshit replacement fee.
• JVIDEL 7y ago
  >but on most things there's almost no difference between they and Aliexpress. I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days. That's what a lot of FBA vendors are, middlemen. Some Chinese companies learned about this and are now doing FBA directly.....but the quality is the same and so are the prices.