10 ms·

I'm now actively looking and buying from other places unless I desperately need something in 2-days or less and know exactly what I need. * Searching has simpl

I'm now actively looking and buying from other places unless I desperately need something in 2-days or less and know exactly what I need. * Searching has simply becoming wading through pages and pages of Chinese junk with incorrect, misleading, or straight-up lies in the description. * Similarly, the average quality of generic items is so poor, I'm trending back to brick-and-mortar stores. Walmart may have cheap stuff, but at least they put some effort into maintaining their brand. * Who knows what product a review was actually written for. Lots of basic products are being sold to pump up reviews then being switched to a much more expensive item. * I've also noticed I'll pay for many name brand items on Amazon that getting them directly from seller or another retailer. * At least 10% of my orders from Amazon now have something wrong with them. What good is 2 day shipping if I need to return and re-order an item - taking nearly a week total.

thearn4 7y ago
> Lots of basic products are being sold to pump up reviews then being switched to a much more expensive item. This is the most frustrating of them all, reviews mean absolutely nothing anymore when the item can be switched out at will while keeping any old reviews.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  The frustrating thing is that it seems like a trivial problem to solve. Changing too many attributes of a product should either be disallowed, or automatically wipe old reviews.
  - hk__2 7y ago
    > The frustrating thing is that it seems like a trivial problem to solve. Changing too many attributes of a product should either be disallowed, or automatically wipe old reviews. If it hasn’t been solved yet, it’s probably not that trivial. How many is “too many”? What happens if I change one attribute every week or so until I’ve completely changed the product?
    - CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > If it hasn’t been solved yet, it’s probably not that trivial. How many is “too many”? What happens if I change one attribute every week or so until I’ve completely changed the product? The problem seems trivial, especially for a company of Amazon's size. All they'd need to do is have some prominent part of the product description (say the product name) be unmodifiable without review and approval by Amazon, and have reviewers that are trained to spot patterns of fraudulent behavior. Any legitimate issues caused by the review can probably be mitigated by giving sellers the ability to get pending changes pre-approved before they go live [1]. If a seller doesn't want to go through the approval, they can delete the product listing and create a new one with a new description, but they'd lose all the reviews. Seems like a fair tradeoff. However, all that would cost a little bit of money, and would require staff. Amazon probably made the business decision that they like money, and don't mind the costs of allowing the fraud since it's mostly borne by customers. [1] so the Amazon review for a legitimate product name change can happen while the packaging is being redesigned, and it can all go live in a coordinated fashion
      - ethbro 7y ago
        > All they'd need to do is have some prominent part of the product description (say the product name) be unmodifiable without review and approval by Amazon It's more trivial than that -- the product physical dimensions and weight. Amazon, the store, may have no idea about the description or product specifics. But you think Amazon, the logistics company, doesn't know exactly everything needed for shipping and warehousing an item?
        mminer237 7y ago
        Sellers have the option to ship things themselves too. They just aren't eligible for Prime shipping.
    - rawrmaan 7y ago
      I think the simpler answer is that data shows that it’s good for Amazon’s sales, so they have no incentive to fix it.
Shivetya 7y ago
The review hijacking as covered in a recent consumer reports article [0] really makes me doubt any item with a significant number of reviews. I have seen similar myself and Amazon's excuse for it happening should not be accepted and probably requires intervention, they are in effect support false advertising and while I have not seen it myself I have seen people claim it occurs on amazon branded products too. it is just not acceptable a shopping site has so little product integrity that they cannot guarantee a review belongs to the product it is attached too. Amazon could fix a lot of this by assigning each product a unique number that can never be reused; as in ever. Let the retailer point back to the previous version if review history is important but never let it appear as review of the viewed product [0] https://www.consumerreports.org/customer-reviews-ratings/hijacked-reviews-on-amazon-can-trick-shoppers/ https://www.consumerreports.org/customer-reviews-ratings/hij...
- sharkmerry 7y ago
  Just as a note, Consumer Reports definitely has a financial interest in putting down online reviews. Not that these issues dont exist, but Consumer Reports has its own set of flaws that they dont publish articles about.
mitchty 7y ago
> I'm now actively looking and buying from other places unless I desperately need something in 2-days or less and know exactly what I need. Even then, its getting harder to find somewhere I can "trust". Example, I buy 8TiB Seagate drives, used to be I could depend on Newegg to get them, but now they have a market thing like amazon. My last box from them was empty, literally. I'm down to B&H photo for buying drives which is fine they're great but I'm getting pissed off at all the things that used to work fine to buy on amazon but now its total sketch. An Amazon example, I bought a NUC from some random store, but totes shipped by Amazon we promise so I was like well eh, its like the only place on the internet to buy this model. Didn't even get sent, fortunately I got a refund but I'm DONE buying electronics on Amazon or Newegg. I can't trust that I'll get what I want from either anymore. This ignores the crap like getting a power brick and finding out the stupid thing is a counterfeit and not the name brand it was supposed to be.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  Microcenter serves my computing supplies needs quite well. There's nothing like feeling the darn thing with your hands before buying it.
  - acheron 7y ago
    Yeah, I agree that finding a "good" place for some products is hard, but "computer parts" is not one of those categories, as Microcenter is perfectly fine.
    - blackearl 7y ago
      They only have so many locations. I recall being really disappointed being 100+ miles away and not being able to cash in on their CPU/MoBo deals
  - chefandy 7y ago
    Even if you don't live near one (there are only 25 locations in the country, including one in California which is well south of L.A.) the online prices are competitive, and the customer service is decent.
simias 7y ago
I've received a counterfeit item ordered through the amazon marketplace the other month. When I requested a refund there wasn't even an option to signal that it was a fake, the closest item on the list was something like "doesn't match the description" or something of the sort. I suppose it's technically true but the fact that they don't even attempt to single out scammers from potential honest mistakes at this level doesn't really bode well. I must say that I don't really understand this strategy, although of course it's hard to get the full picture when you don't have access to the raw numbers. It's not like Amazon is aching for money so why risk their reputation like this?
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  To anyone who receives counterfeit items sold on Amazon: alert the company that makes the real items. Amazon is violating the law by selling counterfeit products, and the companies can go after them for doing so.
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    I have had the companies reapond with everything from "yup, its another fake, we do not sell our product on amazon" to "here is the product for free because you helped us win a judgement aganst a longtime chinese counterfitting group that is one of amazons top sellers" Its really out of hand.
- savrajsingh 7y ago
  Listing “fake” in that reasons-for-return form would be an admission on amazon’s part :)
- Lammy 7y ago
  It’s a psychological thing where they don’t want somebody returning an item for a different reason to think “Are there so many counterfeits here that it warrants its own category?” even though yeah, there are. Same idea as anti-piracy adverts on DVDs being the thing that teaches somebody its possible and even easy to pirate a movie.
- GilbertErik 7y ago
agumonkey 7y ago
I'm quite hurt by the recent pattern. Disruption, freedom, ala internet diverts energy away from good old solutions.. for a while, until it spoils itself under its own flood. By the time we realize, old businesses have suffered tremendously. Stress is good for health, but too much too fast is called a disease.
- simias 7y ago
  Online commerce is a genuine improvement over "good old solutions" IMO, and Amazon used to be great at it. It's not like Uber or other startups who struggle to be profitable while effectively achieving popularity mostly by selling at a loss to kill the competition. Amazon clearly has a working business model that offers value over the brick-and-mortar shops of yore. Amazon is hurting itself on purpose here, because of greed, not because their model is fundamentally flawed.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    I don't think the differences between Uber and Amazon are that large. Lack of regulation, constant growth. Sure Uber was toxically funded from the get go, but amazon now being a near monopoly enjoys letting the system roll without caring anymore. Anyway, lesson learned.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      There are regulations, trademark law for one, the question is why don't enforcement teams act? In the UK Trademark enforcement seems to be something only large companies get action on against very smalltime operators. So, presumably it serves government aims not to enforce the laws, in this respect, that help citizens.
aaazunhpy 7y ago
Another side effect is that the signal to noise of product reviews on the internet have gone way down. It feels like you can only find glowing reviews of any product when you do a search. Youtubers, blog operators, etc are all incentivized to say a product is great and link to amazon with their affiliate code.
- downvoted 7y ago
  After all, how can you read a review on something if you're not going to use it? Which seems like a pretty big impact on the efficiency of the entire market.
Pigo 7y ago
I find it amusing how much Amazon has reminded me of the rise and fall of eBay. eBay was a fun experience when it first blew up. Then enough people decided they were going to leverage it into becoming a business, and it turned into an annoying mess of ads. It's not a perfect parallel of course, so some lessons were learned I suppose. It just seems like it was somehow fun at first, and then the people who sell on it find a way to ruin the experience.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  You realize Amazon went their route because of inspiration from eBay? There's a good ReplyAll podcast about that. All the big mega-sites (NewEgg, Amazon, eBay, Reverb, Etsy) are really just sites for tons of marketplaces.
- jotm 7y ago
  eBay never fell, you probably just stopped using it. It's still good, better than Amazon. You can see what you're buying and most of the time, where you're buying from (either in the listing, or when paying with Paypal). And the feedback system seems much better than Amazon. I dunno, I always get what I want from eBay, and any issues are resolved quickly and fairly, while Amazon it's pay and pray :/ This is in the EU, btw.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Amazon forgot that their core value proposition was shopping experience, not price or shipping speed. And they've managed to improve the latter while ignoring the former.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Thing is, Ebay is a skill. You get better prices, but the barrier to entry for buyers is substantially higher than Amazon.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      I don't think that's really true. At least, it's not true in the way that I use eBay -- I never participate in the auctions. If I'm buying something from eBay, I always go with "buy now". If you use it that way, the barrier to entry is no higher than with any other retailer.
ethbro 7y ago
The irony is... you know what Amazon's still amazing for? Books. They should spin off the retail company and keep books + AWS.
- MatthewWilkes 7y ago
  The same problem exists for books. Look at No Starch Press as an example: https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225?s=19 https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225?s...
- SignalsFromBob 7y ago
  They aren't that great for books anymore, either. They've starting shipping books in a padded envelope that don't do much to protect the book. I've ordered a number of books that have arrived all beat up. Not a big deal for a cheap novel that I'm going to read and then give away, or a school textbook that I don't care about beyond the class. However, the last book I ordered from them was Python in a Nutshell about a year ago. It's an expensive book, so I was less willing to tolerate damage to a $50 book that I want to keep and use a lot. I had to return it twice to get one that wasn't beat all to hell. And even then I feel like I settled for something not in as good condition as I expected. Amazon used to put books between two pieces of cardboard, shrinkwrap it, then put it in a box with padding. Books always arrived in good condition. Books in the padded envelope always arrive with crushed corners, and sometimes damage to the cover.
- shiftpgdn 7y ago
  Last book I got from Amazon was either a counterfeit or done on some sort of ultra low quality press. The paper was like cheap printer paper and the binding was falling apart. The printing was crooked too.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  If they could manage to ship them. I returned 5 in a row wanting an undamaged coffe table book, i was forced to give up. I have books from the 1700s in better shape than what regularly arrives from amazon.
takeda 7y ago
This is not a great alternative, but given how bad Amazon is to their employees, Walmart is also generally quick with their shipments.
shaneprrlt 7y ago
Most retailers have in-store pickup these days. I find myself hardly ever buying from Amazon anyways (unless can't get at a store within 10mi radius) because I'm too impatient haha.
JohnFen 7y ago
My solution may or may not work for you, but here's what I do. I work down this list, in this order, until I find one that will sell me what I need: 1) A local, physical store. 2) Directly from the manufacturer's website. 3) An online retailer that I have found trustworthy and reliable in the past. 4) eBay 5) Amazon, if I'm desperate enough.
- zo1 7y ago
  I think "local" stores are massively shooting themselves in the foot here immensely. Half the reason most people order online is due to price. So perhaps the "local" stores should be advertising their products online so people can see the price and make the call to just go there. But no... They hide the price because they want me to come in so a salesman can dazzle, confuse and up sell me to buy something else. To be fair, they also don't want to put their prices online because it means they'd have to compete with other physical retailers on price instead of relying on rash purchases by buyers that are driven by time and location constraints.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    I agree, but some get this right. My favorite local supermarket, for instance, makes their current inventory and prices available for download (in spreadsheet form, but still...) -- and they even tell you which aisle has which products. I'm finding more and more local businesses have similar data on their websites. I expect this trend to continue.
    - zo1 7y ago
      That's pretty neat! Could you send me a link, I'm curious to see it?
- gjs278 7y ago
  you must enjoy wasting time and money
RandomTisk 7y ago
I bought a new AOC monitor from Amazon, sold by Amazon.com Services, Inc last year. When it got here, It was obvious it had been an open box item. The stand was wrapped in the worst, most unprofessional packing I've ever seen. It wasn't even in a plastic bag, but rather the plastic bag was wrapped around it with twisted, old, previously-used tape was used to bind it back up. Whoever repackaged it didn't even bother using new tape, even though the old tape was all twisted and nearly worthless. I ended up not liking the monitor and shipped it back.

thearn4 7y ago

> Lots of basic products are being sold to pump up reviews then being switched to a much more expensive item. This is the most frustrating of them all, reviews mean absolutely nothing anymore when the item can be switched out at will while keeping any old reviews.

organsnyder 7y ago
The frustrating thing is that it seems like a trivial problem to solve. Changing too many attributes of a product should either be disallowed, or automatically wipe old reviews.
- hk__2 7y ago
  > The frustrating thing is that it seems like a trivial problem to solve. Changing too many attributes of a product should either be disallowed, or automatically wipe old reviews. If it hasn’t been solved yet, it’s probably not that trivial. How many is “too many”? What happens if I change one attribute every week or so until I’ve completely changed the product?
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > If it hasn’t been solved yet, it’s probably not that trivial. How many is “too many”? What happens if I change one attribute every week or so until I’ve completely changed the product? The problem seems trivial, especially for a company of Amazon's size. All they'd need to do is have some prominent part of the product description (say the product name) be unmodifiable without review and approval by Amazon, and have reviewers that are trained to spot patterns of fraudulent behavior. Any legitimate issues caused by the review can probably be mitigated by giving sellers the ability to get pending changes pre-approved before they go live [1]. If a seller doesn't want to go through the approval, they can delete the product listing and create a new one with a new description, but they'd lose all the reviews. Seems like a fair tradeoff. However, all that would cost a little bit of money, and would require staff. Amazon probably made the business decision that they like money, and don't mind the costs of allowing the fraud since it's mostly borne by customers. [1] so the Amazon review for a legitimate product name change can happen while the packaging is being redesigned, and it can all go live in a coordinated fashion
    - ethbro 7y ago
      > All they'd need to do is have some prominent part of the product description (say the product name) be unmodifiable without review and approval by Amazon It's more trivial than that -- the product physical dimensions and weight. Amazon, the store, may have no idea about the description or product specifics. But you think Amazon, the logistics company, doesn't know exactly everything needed for shipping and warehousing an item?
      - mminer237 7y ago
        Sellers have the option to ship things themselves too. They just aren't eligible for Prime shipping.
  - rawrmaan 7y ago
    I think the simpler answer is that data shows that it’s good for Amazon’s sales, so they have no incentive to fix it.

Shivetya 7y ago

The review hijacking as covered in a recent consumer reports article [0] really makes me doubt any item with a significant number of reviews. I have seen similar myself and Amazon's excuse for it happening should not be accepted and probably requires intervention, they are in effect support false advertising and while I have not seen it myself I have seen people claim it occurs on amazon branded products too. it is just not acceptable a shopping site has so little product integrity that they cannot guarantee a review belongs to the product it is attached too. Amazon could fix a lot of this by assigning each product a unique number that can never be reused; as in ever. Let the retailer point back to the previous version if review history is important but never let it appear as review of the viewed product [0] https://www.consumerreports.org/customer-reviews-ratings/hijacked-reviews-on-amazon-can-trick-shoppers/ https://www.consumerreports.org/customer-reviews-ratings/hij...

sharkmerry 7y ago
Just as a note, Consumer Reports definitely has a financial interest in putting down online reviews. Not that these issues dont exist, but Consumer Reports has its own set of flaws that they dont publish articles about.

mitchty 7y ago

> I'm now actively looking and buying from other places unless I desperately need something in 2-days or less and know exactly what I need. Even then, its getting harder to find somewhere I can "trust". Example, I buy 8TiB Seagate drives, used to be I could depend on Newegg to get them, but now they have a market thing like amazon. My last box from them was empty, literally. I'm down to B&H photo for buying drives which is fine they're great but I'm getting pissed off at all the things that used to work fine to buy on amazon but now its total sketch. An Amazon example, I bought a NUC from some random store, but totes shipped by Amazon we promise so I was like well eh, its like the only place on the internet to buy this model. Didn't even get sent, fortunately I got a refund but I'm DONE buying electronics on Amazon or Newegg. I can't trust that I'll get what I want from either anymore. This ignores the crap like getting a power brick and finding out the stupid thing is a counterfeit and not the name brand it was supposed to be.

dragontamer 7y ago
Microcenter serves my computing supplies needs quite well. There's nothing like feeling the darn thing with your hands before buying it.
- acheron 7y ago
  Yeah, I agree that finding a "good" place for some products is hard, but "computer parts" is not one of those categories, as Microcenter is perfectly fine.
  - blackearl 7y ago
    They only have so many locations. I recall being really disappointed being 100+ miles away and not being able to cash in on their CPU/MoBo deals
- chefandy 7y ago
  Even if you don't live near one (there are only 25 locations in the country, including one in California which is well south of L.A.) the online prices are competitive, and the customer service is decent.

simias 7y ago

I've received a counterfeit item ordered through the amazon marketplace the other month. When I requested a refund there wasn't even an option to signal that it was a fake, the closest item on the list was something like "doesn't match the description" or something of the sort. I suppose it's technically true but the fact that they don't even attempt to single out scammers from potential honest mistakes at this level doesn't really bode well. I must say that I don't really understand this strategy, although of course it's hard to get the full picture when you don't have access to the raw numbers. It's not like Amazon is aching for money so why risk their reputation like this?

heavyset_go 7y ago
To anyone who receives counterfeit items sold on Amazon: alert the company that makes the real items. Amazon is violating the law by selling counterfeit products, and the companies can go after them for doing so.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  I have had the companies reapond with everything from "yup, its another fake, we do not sell our product on amazon" to "here is the product for free because you helped us win a judgement aganst a longtime chinese counterfitting group that is one of amazons top sellers" Its really out of hand.
savrajsingh 7y ago
Listing “fake” in that reasons-for-return form would be an admission on amazon’s part :)
Lammy 7y ago
It’s a psychological thing where they don’t want somebody returning an item for a different reason to think “Are there so many counterfeits here that it warrants its own category?” even though yeah, there are. Same idea as anti-piracy adverts on DVDs being the thing that teaches somebody its possible and even easy to pirate a movie.
GilbertErik 7y ago

agumonkey 7y ago

I'm quite hurt by the recent pattern. Disruption, freedom, ala internet diverts energy away from good old solutions.. for a while, until it spoils itself under its own flood. By the time we realize, old businesses have suffered tremendously. Stress is good for health, but too much too fast is called a disease.

simias 7y ago
Online commerce is a genuine improvement over "good old solutions" IMO, and Amazon used to be great at it. It's not like Uber or other startups who struggle to be profitable while effectively achieving popularity mostly by selling at a loss to kill the competition. Amazon clearly has a working business model that offers value over the brick-and-mortar shops of yore. Amazon is hurting itself on purpose here, because of greed, not because their model is fundamentally flawed.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I don't think the differences between Uber and Amazon are that large. Lack of regulation, constant growth. Sure Uber was toxically funded from the get go, but amazon now being a near monopoly enjoys letting the system roll without caring anymore. Anyway, lesson learned.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    There are regulations, trademark law for one, the question is why don't enforcement teams act? In the UK Trademark enforcement seems to be something only large companies get action on against very smalltime operators. So, presumably it serves government aims not to enforce the laws, in this respect, that help citizens.

aaazunhpy 7y ago

Another side effect is that the signal to noise of product reviews on the internet have gone way down. It feels like you can only find glowing reviews of any product when you do a search. Youtubers, blog operators, etc are all incentivized to say a product is great and link to amazon with their affiliate code.

downvoted 7y ago
After all, how can you read a review on something if you're not going to use it? Which seems like a pretty big impact on the efficiency of the entire market.

Pigo 7y ago

I find it amusing how much Amazon has reminded me of the rise and fall of eBay. eBay was a fun experience when it first blew up. Then enough people decided they were going to leverage it into becoming a business, and it turned into an annoying mess of ads. It's not a perfect parallel of course, so some lessons were learned I suppose. It just seems like it was somehow fun at first, and then the people who sell on it find a way to ruin the experience.

djsumdog 7y ago
You realize Amazon went their route because of inspiration from eBay? There's a good ReplyAll podcast about that. All the big mega-sites (NewEgg, Amazon, eBay, Reverb, Etsy) are really just sites for tons of marketplaces.
jotm 7y ago
eBay never fell, you probably just stopped using it. It's still good, better than Amazon. You can see what you're buying and most of the time, where you're buying from (either in the listing, or when paying with Paypal). And the feedback system seems much better than Amazon. I dunno, I always get what I want from eBay, and any issues are resolved quickly and fairly, while Amazon it's pay and pray :/ This is in the EU, btw.
- ethbro 7y ago
  Amazon forgot that their core value proposition was shopping experience, not price or shipping speed. And they've managed to improve the latter while ignoring the former.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Thing is, Ebay is a skill. You get better prices, but the barrier to entry for buyers is substantially higher than Amazon.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    I don't think that's really true. At least, it's not true in the way that I use eBay -- I never participate in the auctions. If I'm buying something from eBay, I always go with "buy now". If you use it that way, the barrier to entry is no higher than with any other retailer.

ethbro 7y ago

The irony is... you know what Amazon's still amazing for? Books. They should spin off the retail company and keep books + AWS.

MatthewWilkes 7y ago
The same problem exists for books. Look at No Starch Press as an example: https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225?s=19 https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225?s...
SignalsFromBob 7y ago
They aren't that great for books anymore, either. They've starting shipping books in a padded envelope that don't do much to protect the book. I've ordered a number of books that have arrived all beat up. Not a big deal for a cheap novel that I'm going to read and then give away, or a school textbook that I don't care about beyond the class. However, the last book I ordered from them was Python in a Nutshell about a year ago. It's an expensive book, so I was less willing to tolerate damage to a $50 book that I want to keep and use a lot. I had to return it twice to get one that wasn't beat all to hell. And even then I feel like I settled for something not in as good condition as I expected. Amazon used to put books between two pieces of cardboard, shrinkwrap it, then put it in a box with padding. Books always arrived in good condition. Books in the padded envelope always arrive with crushed corners, and sometimes damage to the cover.
shiftpgdn 7y ago
Last book I got from Amazon was either a counterfeit or done on some sort of ultra low quality press. The paper was like cheap printer paper and the binding was falling apart. The printing was crooked too.
Jamwinner 7y ago
If they could manage to ship them. I returned 5 in a row wanting an undamaged coffe table book, i was forced to give up. I have books from the 1700s in better shape than what regularly arrives from amazon.

takeda 7y ago

This is not a great alternative, but given how bad Amazon is to their employees, Walmart is also generally quick with their shipments.

shaneprrlt 7y ago

Most retailers have in-store pickup these days. I find myself hardly ever buying from Amazon anyways (unless can't get at a store within 10mi radius) because I'm too impatient haha.

JohnFen 7y ago

My solution may or may not work for you, but here's what I do. I work down this list, in this order, until I find one that will sell me what I need: 1) A local, physical store. 2) Directly from the manufacturer's website. 3) An online retailer that I have found trustworthy and reliable in the past. 4) eBay 5) Amazon, if I'm desperate enough.

zo1 7y ago
I think "local" stores are massively shooting themselves in the foot here immensely. Half the reason most people order online is due to price. So perhaps the "local" stores should be advertising their products online so people can see the price and make the call to just go there. But no... They hide the price because they want me to come in so a salesman can dazzle, confuse and up sell me to buy something else. To be fair, they also don't want to put their prices online because it means they'd have to compete with other physical retailers on price instead of relying on rash purchases by buyers that are driven by time and location constraints.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I agree, but some get this right. My favorite local supermarket, for instance, makes their current inventory and prices available for download (in spreadsheet form, but still...) -- and they even tell you which aisle has which products. I'm finding more and more local businesses have similar data on their websites. I expect this trend to continue.
  - zo1 7y ago
    That's pretty neat! Could you send me a link, I'm curious to see it?
gjs278 7y ago
you must enjoy wasting time and money

RandomTisk 7y ago

I bought a new AOC monitor from Amazon, sold by Amazon.com Services, Inc last year. When it got here, It was obvious it had been an open box item. The stand was wrapped in the worst, most unprofessional packing I've ever seen. It wasn't even in a plastic bag, but rather the plastic bag was wrapped around it with twisted, old, previously-used tape was used to bind it back up. Whoever repackaged it didn't even bother using new tape, even though the old tape was all twisted and nearly worthless. I ended up not liking the monitor and shipped it back.