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I never understood this obsession with Amazon. Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items. It’s conv

I never understood this obsession with Amazon. Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items. It’s convenient, but there’s plenty of competition: you can get many of the same goods on AliExpress or eBay for a lot cheaper. And when you need something more specific like audio equipment, electronics components or even a Raspberry Pi, you’ll need to go to a specialised online store as it’s unlikely to be available on Amazon, and if it is it won’t be Prime and will have a massive mark-up. Their cloud offering are the real money-maker, although I’m not personally a fan due to their high price and non-intuitive interface.

hakfoo 7y ago
Amazon hit a sweet spot of "good enough, so why bother looking elsewhere." If you wanted a widget, they'd have it, it would be roughly what you expected, at the right price, shipped quickly. That's what got them where they were. Once you're committed to that philosophy, stuff like paying for Prime or using their automatic-services (Dash buttons before they were deprecated) is a feasible leap and encourages their stickiness. The moment you lose that perception, things fall apart rapidly. People go back to comparison shopping and I'm not convinced Amazon wins that battle. They lost "They'd have it" with terrible search and attempts to salvage a cross-sell out of anything. Their search might still be able to work for "I want a FooCorp model 37ABC34567 television" but a simple browsing-focused request like "PCI-E 802.11ac cards" is going to be a nightmare of miscategorized items and terrible filters. They're losing "It would be roughly what you expected" with the combined-inventory scandal, but also the product line so broad that there's going to be room for inherently dodgy crap. Specialist retailers provide value in curation-- they won't sell the absolute worst junk that sneaks into essentially unpoliced AliExpress/eBay/Amazon listings. "At the right price" is surprisingly spotty. They often aren't the cheapest, and some items are locked behind a $120-per-annum paywall. They also put their pricing reputation on the line with third-party sellers on board-- for the last month, they'd have been happy to sell you a Ryzen 3900X, but at 50% over MSRP. Even now, they're still $60 over sticker. Retailers: It is not a sign of weakness to say you're out of stock, rather than hand off the sale to a bottom-feeder reseller who's treating their wares like Cabbage Patch Kids in 1982. "Shipped quickly" has become a joke. Maybe if you buy Prime it's different, but I never know what to expect for paid shipping. They'll quote a range 5-10 days from now, and sometimes it will take 1 day and sometimes the full 10. I hesitate to buy time-sensitive gifts with them and would fear to trust it for business-critical timing. You've built one of the most sophisticated logistics networks on Earth, cutting out USPS/UPS/etc. and you can't get me a more accurate delivery estimate than a mail-in offer from the back of a cereal box?
- isostatic 7y ago
  It's the failure of modern capitalism. Growth is what's important, not size. It doesn't matter how much you're worth, how good your product is, you have to constantly extract an extra ounce, and that leads to a collapse.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  The search results I get for your wireless card are pretty on-target for me. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=PCI-E+802.11ac https://www.amazon.com/s?k=PCI-E+802.11ac Not all of the faceted search items make sense, but I get pretty good results for the search overall.
imtringued 7y ago
>It’s convenient, but there’s plenty of competition: you can get many of the same goods on AliExpress or eBay for a lot cheaper. My local discounters have cheaper prices than amazon and I don't even have to pay or wait for shipping.
kwanbix 7y ago
I cannot talk about Aliexpress because I never ordered there (seems absolutely chaotic for my taste), but rarely do I see better prices on ebay or other merchants. It happens, but it is very rare for my use case. In contrast, Amazon's customer service is superb. Let me give you an example of many years ago. I bought an external hard drive in Rakuten, and instead of being 2 TB, I received a 1.5 TB one. I called to complain, and they told me I was outside their complain window. The crazy thing was that for them, their claim window was since they shipped, and this purchase took 4 days to arrive. I was off by 2 days according to them, but totally fine if you count the time from when I received it. This is the opposite experience I have had with Amazon. They are always trying to help and fix things. Now that I live in Germany, Amazon has auto translate so I can keep purchasing things easily. Another example of going the extra length. That said, I try to purchase from other merchants, because a monopoly is never good, so I go to Saturn and MediaMarkt a lot.
- distances 7y ago
  Check also other online shops. Geizhals.de is your friend in Germany.
- kylebenzle 7y ago
  Your answer is perfect. Amazon is a Customer Service company. Not an online retailer/reseller, not cloud computer, is just Customer Service.
jansan 7y ago
I find their product ratings and reviews very valuable, although they have suffered a lot recently especially for Chinese products, which usually have a ton of fake reviews. As opposed to this, Ebay's seller ratings never had any value to me, because I am not really interested in who is selling the item. Maybe it was useful fifteen years ago, but nowadays I simply expect an item to be delivered on time if I order through a large retail website.
ekianjo 7y ago
> Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items you forgot the excellent return policy, almost no question asked. Before Amazon that was almost unthinkable and you would wait weeks to be paid back. They have improved e-commerce to the point that it's better than most other previous (online) shopping experiences.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  It used to be better, not anymore. I used to buy on Amazon first, but these days on Amazon I've had too many fake products, and refurbished products sold as new. True, they refund easily. But I'd rather not have to return half of my purchases.
  - notyourwork 7y ago
    Half sounds like a over dramatization of a minority issue.
    - kardos 7y ago
      Even if it was 10% used-products-sold-as-new, that's not acceptable.
      - ericd 7y ago
        I’ve ordered hundreds of items from Amazon, I’ve never gotten any that I thought were used.
  - wahern 7y ago
    So why not only buy products sold by Amazon? I've never had a problem buying third-party products through Amazon, but long before I started reading about fraud stories I always tended to avoid those, anyhow. I like Amazon because of the consistency. For anything expensive, if Amazon doesn't sell it directly I'll go to a local retailer rather than take the risk. Only rarely do I buy, say, German deodorant from some random importer selling through Amazon. Alternatively, I'll buy from an eBay seller as long as they have a solid reputation. The problem with Amazon's review system is that it's not obvious to me from which seller a customer purchased the product, which sort of makes the review system useless in that regard. So, yes, the review system is problematic, but why avoid Amazon entirely when you can simply avoid non-Amazon sellers? This refrain about fraudulent third-party sellers seems like a non sequitur to me, at least the way it's presented. If you're avoiding Amazon out of spite for the way they obfuscate seller reputations, then just say that; that's a fair argument. EDIT: Here's what I look for: "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com." If you see that, then it means Amazon is getting the product through the same channels as, say, Target. As far as I understand, Amazon won't intermingle their inventory in the same bins as third-party inventory, or if they did long ago they no longer do. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
> Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items. You say this like it's a bad thing? This is exactly what I use Amazon for.
mschuetz 7y ago
> Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items. Here are some of the main reason why I look for things on amazon first: * Fast shipping * Reliable * Huge variety of goods * I've already set things up. I don't want to register and add payment details to hundreds of web shops. If one already sells everything I need, I'm using that one. * Very buyer friendly * All invoices online, in digital form, in one place. Saves a lot of headache when it's tax time.
- H1Supreme 7y ago
  > Fast shipping This is only if you have a Prime account. Otherwise it takes over a week for me to get orders that are two business days away. I believe this is deliberate on their part, as I experienced it multiple times.
  - goldcd 7y ago
    Prime is a pretty awesome tool in their arsenal though. Initially "Pay up-front for discounted shipping" is a bit of a hard sell. Works fine for customers who've shopped with them for years and can tot up the shipping fees they've already spent (or annoying waits). So for new customers - how about free music and video? Now nobody's going to say it's better than spotify + Netflix (or your providers of choice)... but it's not a bad bundle to get for a year for that one prime payment. Then once you've made that Prime payment - well might as well shop from Amazon.. I'm a prime member and mentally file it alongside by cable provider.. I might be able to get better individual services, but collectively they'd all cost more - and more importantly you get stung massively if you don't transition in one go. Amazon ups this even further by just having a single priced 'Prime' service. i.e. No reduction in cost if you just want the free shipping and spend the saving on spotify/netflix/hulu/apple/whatever. Nor can you pay to watch "Grand Tour" (or your show of choice, legally) without having that tempting free postage from amazon available to you. Only possible way I can see of breaking this stranglehold is for external companies to play nice with each other. e.g. If a few online providers (one in each area) get together and brand themselves - and then this brand can be bundled with other services. e.g. "NewEgg provides free next day to spotify subscribers" If this doesn't happen Amazon can't be defeated.
Kiro 7y ago
> Their cloud offering are the real money-maker Amazon has a 50% share of the US e-commerce market. Not sure what you're implying here.
- phnofive 7y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/aws-earnings-q4-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/aws-earnings-q4-2018.html AWS makes most of Amazon’s profit, though profit had always been avoided.
Simulacra 7y ago
>> you can get many of the same goods on AliExpress Unless you’re opposed to using a Chinese system.
HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
apart from fast shipping That alone is huge value. I ordered a torque wrench this morning. I live on a farm out in the country and Amazon says it will be at my door Sunday. I have every reason to believe them. As for the rest of your comment... if I need standardized electronics with a known supply chain, I order from Digi-Key, and living in Minnesota, it will be here within two days. But for anything else including Raspberry Pi's I'll order from Amazon because the prices are competitive and, again, fast shipping. Amazon isn't unstoppable, but they're pretty damn good.
P_I_Staker 7y ago
A few things: * Prices are competitive (maybe not best of the best, but you don't really get ripped off) * One stop shop * Lots reviews (yes they're dubious, but I still find them useful, and some sites only have reviews of a few products) * Fast shipping * Great return policy
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
Amazon.com has ~50% of the e-commerce market in the US [0]. 2nd place is Ebay with... 6.6%! Third is Apple with 3.9%, then Walmart with 3.7%. That, to me, means there's not much real competition. You are right, there are cheaper way to buy, but people simply don't use them. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-commerce-market-is-now-49-or-5-of-all-retail-spend/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-...

hakfoo 7y ago

Amazon hit a sweet spot of "good enough, so why bother looking elsewhere." If you wanted a widget, they'd have it, it would be roughly what you expected, at the right price, shipped quickly. That's what got them where they were. Once you're committed to that philosophy, stuff like paying for Prime or using their automatic-services (Dash buttons before they were deprecated) is a feasible leap and encourages their stickiness. The moment you lose that perception, things fall apart rapidly. People go back to comparison shopping and I'm not convinced Amazon wins that battle. They lost "They'd have it" with terrible search and attempts to salvage a cross-sell out of anything. Their search might still be able to work for "I want a FooCorp model 37ABC34567 television" but a simple browsing-focused request like "PCI-E 802.11ac cards" is going to be a nightmare of miscategorized items and terrible filters. They're losing "It would be roughly what you expected" with the combined-inventory scandal, but also the product line so broad that there's going to be room for inherently dodgy crap. Specialist retailers provide value in curation-- they won't sell the absolute worst junk that sneaks into essentially unpoliced AliExpress/eBay/Amazon listings. "At the right price" is surprisingly spotty. They often aren't the cheapest, and some items are locked behind a $120-per-annum paywall. They also put their pricing reputation on the line with third-party sellers on board-- for the last month, they'd have been happy to sell you a Ryzen 3900X, but at 50% over MSRP. Even now, they're still $60 over sticker. Retailers: It is not a sign of weakness to say you're out of stock, rather than hand off the sale to a bottom-feeder reseller who's treating their wares like Cabbage Patch Kids in 1982. "Shipped quickly" has become a joke. Maybe if you buy Prime it's different, but I never know what to expect for paid shipping. They'll quote a range 5-10 days from now, and sometimes it will take 1 day and sometimes the full 10. I hesitate to buy time-sensitive gifts with them and would fear to trust it for business-critical timing. You've built one of the most sophisticated logistics networks on Earth, cutting out USPS/UPS/etc. and you can't get me a more accurate delivery estimate than a mail-in offer from the back of a cereal box?

isostatic 7y ago
It's the failure of modern capitalism. Growth is what's important, not size. It doesn't matter how much you're worth, how good your product is, you have to constantly extract an extra ounce, and that leads to a collapse.
sokoloff 7y ago
The search results I get for your wireless card are pretty on-target for me. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=PCI-E+802.11ac https://www.amazon.com/s?k=PCI-E+802.11ac Not all of the faceted search items make sense, but I get pretty good results for the search overall.

imtringued 7y ago

>It’s convenient, but there’s plenty of competition: you can get many of the same goods on AliExpress or eBay for a lot cheaper. My local discounters have cheaper prices than amazon and I don't even have to pay or wait for shipping.

kwanbix 7y ago

I cannot talk about Aliexpress because I never ordered there (seems absolutely chaotic for my taste), but rarely do I see better prices on ebay or other merchants. It happens, but it is very rare for my use case. In contrast, Amazon's customer service is superb. Let me give you an example of many years ago. I bought an external hard drive in Rakuten, and instead of being 2 TB, I received a 1.5 TB one. I called to complain, and they told me I was outside their complain window. The crazy thing was that for them, their claim window was since they shipped, and this purchase took 4 days to arrive. I was off by 2 days according to them, but totally fine if you count the time from when I received it. This is the opposite experience I have had with Amazon. They are always trying to help and fix things. Now that I live in Germany, Amazon has auto translate so I can keep purchasing things easily. Another example of going the extra length. That said, I try to purchase from other merchants, because a monopoly is never good, so I go to Saturn and MediaMarkt a lot.

distances 7y ago
Check also other online shops. Geizhals.de is your friend in Germany.
kylebenzle 7y ago
Your answer is perfect. Amazon is a Customer Service company. Not an online retailer/reseller, not cloud computer, is just Customer Service.

jansan 7y ago

I find their product ratings and reviews very valuable, although they have suffered a lot recently especially for Chinese products, which usually have a ton of fake reviews. As opposed to this, Ebay's seller ratings never had any value to me, because I am not really interested in who is selling the item. Maybe it was useful fifteen years ago, but nowadays I simply expect an item to be delivered on time if I order through a large retail website.

ekianjo 7y ago

> Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items you forgot the excellent return policy, almost no question asked. Before Amazon that was almost unthinkable and you would wait weeks to be paid back. They have improved e-commerce to the point that it's better than most other previous (online) shopping experiences.

benhurmarcel 7y ago
It used to be better, not anymore. I used to buy on Amazon first, but these days on Amazon I've had too many fake products, and refurbished products sold as new. True, they refund easily. But I'd rather not have to return half of my purchases.
- notyourwork 7y ago
  Half sounds like a over dramatization of a minority issue.
  - kardos 7y ago
    Even if it was 10% used-products-sold-as-new, that's not acceptable.
    - ericd 7y ago
      I’ve ordered hundreds of items from Amazon, I’ve never gotten any that I thought were used.
- wahern 7y ago
  So why not only buy products sold by Amazon? I've never had a problem buying third-party products through Amazon, but long before I started reading about fraud stories I always tended to avoid those, anyhow. I like Amazon because of the consistency. For anything expensive, if Amazon doesn't sell it directly I'll go to a local retailer rather than take the risk. Only rarely do I buy, say, German deodorant from some random importer selling through Amazon. Alternatively, I'll buy from an eBay seller as long as they have a solid reputation. The problem with Amazon's review system is that it's not obvious to me from which seller a customer purchased the product, which sort of makes the review system useless in that regard. So, yes, the review system is problematic, but why avoid Amazon entirely when you can simply avoid non-Amazon sellers? This refrain about fraudulent third-party sellers seems like a non sequitur to me, at least the way it's presented. If you're avoiding Amazon out of spite for the way they obfuscate seller reputations, then just say that; that's a fair argument. EDIT: Here's what I look for: "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com." If you see that, then it means Amazon is getting the product through the same channels as, say, Target. As far as I understand, Amazon won't intermingle their inventory in the same bins as third-party inventory, or if they did long ago they no longer do. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago

> Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items. You say this like it's a bad thing? This is exactly what I use Amazon for.

mschuetz 7y ago

> Their online store does not offer particularly good value apart from fast shipping for commodity items. Here are some of the main reason why I look for things on amazon first: * Fast shipping * Reliable * Huge variety of goods * I've already set things up. I don't want to register and add payment details to hundreds of web shops. If one already sells everything I need, I'm using that one. * Very buyer friendly * All invoices online, in digital form, in one place. Saves a lot of headache when it's tax time.

H1Supreme 7y ago
> Fast shipping This is only if you have a Prime account. Otherwise it takes over a week for me to get orders that are two business days away. I believe this is deliberate on their part, as I experienced it multiple times.
- goldcd 7y ago
  Prime is a pretty awesome tool in their arsenal though. Initially "Pay up-front for discounted shipping" is a bit of a hard sell. Works fine for customers who've shopped with them for years and can tot up the shipping fees they've already spent (or annoying waits). So for new customers - how about free music and video? Now nobody's going to say it's better than spotify + Netflix (or your providers of choice)... but it's not a bad bundle to get for a year for that one prime payment. Then once you've made that Prime payment - well might as well shop from Amazon.. I'm a prime member and mentally file it alongside by cable provider.. I might be able to get better individual services, but collectively they'd all cost more - and more importantly you get stung massively if you don't transition in one go. Amazon ups this even further by just having a single priced 'Prime' service. i.e. No reduction in cost if you just want the free shipping and spend the saving on spotify/netflix/hulu/apple/whatever. Nor can you pay to watch "Grand Tour" (or your show of choice, legally) without having that tempting free postage from amazon available to you. Only possible way I can see of breaking this stranglehold is for external companies to play nice with each other. e.g. If a few online providers (one in each area) get together and brand themselves - and then this brand can be bundled with other services. e.g. "NewEgg provides free next day to spotify subscribers" If this doesn't happen Amazon can't be defeated.

Kiro 7y ago

> Their cloud offering are the real money-maker Amazon has a 50% share of the US e-commerce market. Not sure what you're implying here.

phnofive 7y ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/aws-earnings-q4-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/aws-earnings-q4-2018.html AWS makes most of Amazon’s profit, though profit had always been avoided.

Simulacra 7y ago

>> you can get many of the same goods on AliExpress Unless you’re opposed to using a Chinese system.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago

apart from fast shipping That alone is huge value. I ordered a torque wrench this morning. I live on a farm out in the country and Amazon says it will be at my door Sunday. I have every reason to believe them. As for the rest of your comment... if I need standardized electronics with a known supply chain, I order from Digi-Key, and living in Minnesota, it will be here within two days. But for anything else including Raspberry Pi's I'll order from Amazon because the prices are competitive and, again, fast shipping. Amazon isn't unstoppable, but they're pretty damn good.

P_I_Staker 7y ago

A few things: * Prices are competitive (maybe not best of the best, but you don't really get ripped off) * One stop shop * Lots reviews (yes they're dubious, but I still find them useful, and some sites only have reviews of a few products) * Fast shipping * Great return policy

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

Amazon.com has ~50% of the e-commerce market in the US [0]. 2nd place is Ebay with... 6.6%! Third is Apple with 3.9%, then Walmart with 3.7%. That, to me, means there's not much real competition. You are right, there are cheaper way to buy, but people simply don't use them. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-commerce-market-is-now-49-or-5-of-all-retail-spend/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-...