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I don’t get it. I had about 150 purchases last year. Toothbrushes, Apple Watch bands, hard drives, diapers, truffles, pasta, foot massagers, hats, books, etc

I don’t get it. I had about 150 purchases last year. Toothbrushes, Apple Watch bands, hard drives, diapers, truffles, pasta, foot massagers, hats, books, etc. I had 1 bad purchase. I bought a used Roomba 980 sold by Amazon. There was a used 680 in the box. Amazon apologized and sent a brand new 980 the next day. Am I some sort of uberresultsfilter, or do the whiners just get way too much attention?

visarga 7y ago
Depends on the seller. That's the whole point - they make it hard to know if you can trust or not the seller.
- techntoke 7y ago
  I have a very simple bookmark let that only shows items sold by Amazon.com without having to filter by category. I think part of the issue is that their site UI is pretty horrendous, and makes it difficult to limit searches. I do however notice issues with some items sold by them, but primarily with descriptions being incorrect or them combining a bunch of items with reviews, sometimes for completely unrelated products. I personally try to avoid third-party sellers for the most part. I would love to support smaller businesses, but to be honest you're probably doing most third-party sellers a disservice by buying on Amazon, especially if you think there is a possibility that you'll return the item.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  More than that, you have to trust every seller for the product you're buying, because all inventory from all sellers (including Amazon itself) goes into a single bin. You have no way of knowing which seller actually put the item you get into the bin.
untog 7y ago
Did your toothbrush have lead in it? Hyperbolic example I know but this reporting shows that you don't know definitively.
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  I have a kid and this is a real issue - he eats his toothbush.
mfer 7y ago
This assumes you know everything bad in those purchases. In the article they talked about buying some children's products and found one with levels of lead that exceeded federal limits. limits put in place for safety. Would you know that about any of the 150 items you purchased last year? In my purchase history I know I wouldn't. We don't tend to know all the details about everything we buy. We assume the purchase was fine if it looks like we got what we expected, it wasn't broken, and it was at the price we expected. But, when it comes to things like product safety we trust what it says on the label. In some cases those are known lies. Like the helmet in the article that was labeled as being DOT certified but wasn't. I would not have known this if I were in that situation. Would you have?
stillworks 7y ago
I am curious about this too. In US and Canada has Amazon completely stopped selling things and only acting as a platform for third party sellers ? Instinctively, most people are probably looking for the best i.e. lowest price which is fair enough. I was looking for something on Amazon yesterday and the item was not sold by Amazon, was not FBA (had free delivery though) However on the right hand side, there was a list of sellers and Amazon.co.uk was the second in the list with a price just £0.01 higher than the cheapest seller. I have found that most of the times, Amazon as a seller, comes second or third in the list but even then the price difference is not significant compared to non Amazon sellers. I end up buying the higher priced (but not by much) item due to the customer friendly returns and one year "warranty". I think one just needs to pay attention to that list appearing on the right hand side and decide if Amazon itself is selling the item at a reasonable price premium or not. If not then, shop around by all means.

visarga 7y ago

Depends on the seller. That's the whole point - they make it hard to know if you can trust or not the seller.

techntoke 7y ago
I have a very simple bookmark let that only shows items sold by Amazon.com without having to filter by category. I think part of the issue is that their site UI is pretty horrendous, and makes it difficult to limit searches. I do however notice issues with some items sold by them, but primarily with descriptions being incorrect or them combining a bunch of items with reviews, sometimes for completely unrelated products. I personally try to avoid third-party sellers for the most part. I would love to support smaller businesses, but to be honest you're probably doing most third-party sellers a disservice by buying on Amazon, especially if you think there is a possibility that you'll return the item.
0xffff2 7y ago
More than that, you have to trust every seller for the product you're buying, because all inventory from all sellers (including Amazon itself) goes into a single bin. You have no way of knowing which seller actually put the item you get into the bin.

untog 7y ago

Did your toothbrush have lead in it? Hyperbolic example I know but this reporting shows that you don't know definitively.

privateSFacct 7y ago
I have a kid and this is a real issue - he eats his toothbush.

mfer 7y ago

This assumes you know everything bad in those purchases. In the article they talked about buying some children's products and found one with levels of lead that exceeded federal limits. limits put in place for safety. Would you know that about any of the 150 items you purchased last year? In my purchase history I know I wouldn't. We don't tend to know all the details about everything we buy. We assume the purchase was fine if it looks like we got what we expected, it wasn't broken, and it was at the price we expected. But, when it comes to things like product safety we trust what it says on the label. In some cases those are known lies. Like the helmet in the article that was labeled as being DOT certified but wasn't. I would not have known this if I were in that situation. Would you have?

stillworks 7y ago

I am curious about this too. In US and Canada has Amazon completely stopped selling things and only acting as a platform for third party sellers ? Instinctively, most people are probably looking for the best i.e. lowest price which is fair enough. I was looking for something on Amazon yesterday and the item was not sold by Amazon, was not FBA (had free delivery though) However on the right hand side, there was a list of sellers and Amazon.co.uk was the second in the list with a price just £0.01 higher than the cheapest seller. I have found that most of the times, Amazon as a seller, comes second or third in the list but even then the price difference is not significant compared to non Amazon sellers. I end up buying the higher priced (but not by much) item due to the customer friendly returns and one year "warranty". I think one just needs to pay attention to that list appearing on the right hand side and decide if Amazon itself is selling the item at a reasonable price premium or not. If not then, shop around by all means.