8 ms·

Way way back, when Amazon got bigger than just books, my motivation for using them was a) very good selection (in one order, I can order bagel chips, wiper blad

Way way back, when Amazon got bigger than just books, my motivation for using them was a) very good selection (in one order, I can order bagel chips, wiper blades and a router?) and b) price. Implicit in this was authenticity and good customer service -- for me, if the product isn't the real thing, or the company is a nightmare to deal with, it's a non-starter. Well now here we are. Fake reviews, counterfeit products, most things (IME) are actually FBA or just outright 3rd party sellers (not automatically bad, but more opportunities for problems), their prices aren't competitive anymore... So, they've still got a lot of selection, although it's really more like shopping at a bazaar, since really their website is almost nothing more than Ebay in some sense, and I will say their customer service has almost w/o exception been stellar. But that's not enough anymore. We'll see. Nothing lasts forever. Either Amazon will get the wakeup call and tighten its ship, or it will become the next Ebay/Myspace/Craigslist (I'm deliberately just throwing the kitchen sink here). One last footnote -- just within the last week or so, 2 Amazon tech products that I've praised -- the Ring Doorbell and the Eero router(s) -- had firmware problems. Ring bricked itself (firmware update gone wrong) and had to be RMA'ed (they did it w/o any problem, and this was almost 2 years after purchase). The Eeros went into a cycle of resets and couldn't update their firmware.

JKCalhoun 6y ago
> it's really more like shopping at a bazaar, since really their website is almost nothing more than Ebay in some sense So, yeah, eBay, Ali-express ... might as well go there.
- halbritt 6y ago
  I sometimes buy things from eBay when I know I'll get a counterfeit item from Amazon. ...strange world.
Loughla 6y ago
>their website is almost nothing more than Ebay in some sense I would argue that it's even worse. At least, IME, the ratings at E-bay for both sellers and products mean something. With Amazon, neither mean a damned thing anymore. It's just a crap shoot, unless you know exactly what you're already looking for. Amazon used to be nice, because you could actually do product research. The worst thing, again in my opinion, they've done is ruin the ability to actually compare products due to sketchy reviews.
- pas 6y ago
  > unless you know exactly what you're already looking for. I know what I'm looking for, but most of the products are impossible to evaluate, because there is just not enough info/data. Low res bad stock photos, terse description, no full technical specs, etc. And many Amazon sellers don't sell anywhere else, they don't even have a real website, so ... good luck deciding based on that. And since Amazon become so big, they set the bar for quality. So now the same shit is everywhere. (Plus there's the high-end overpriced but also not perfect segment too.)
  - cactus2093 6y ago
    I feel like you just entirely explained the situation. There is still a "high-end overpriced" segment for all kinds of industries. Sometimes luxury goods, but sometimes just mid-tier goods sold by companies that still follow the high-margin traditional retail model. With an MSRP price that leaves enough room for inefficient, high-touch stores to take a hefty margin as a middleman. But even someone who actively dislikes Amazon such as yourself would still rather get the lowest price and access to the largest selection, even if it means begrudgingly putting up with a worse experience.
    - pas 6y ago
      I try to simply don't buy things. Eg I want a new laptop for some time, but none seem like a good fit. The whole USB3 ecosystem is crazy, there are bad, ugly, expensive or all of the above ones only.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I don't know why Amazon has a "lowest price" reputation on HN. Everything on Amazon is overpriced. The only reason why I still use it is that people give me Amazon gift cards instead of cash. I use geizhals.de to find products and Amazon is rarely shown as the cheapest seller. The price difference isn't insignificant. Depending on the product you can expect to pay 15% more on Amazon and that's what I tell people giving me those amazon cards.
cactus2093 6y ago
I've been thinking this for years now, that the free-for-all for 3rd party sellers would eventually erode trust and make Amazon less appealing. But it hasn't collapsed yet and they still keep growing. Now I really view Amazon as two separate products in one interface - there's the Ebay style bazaar, and then there's the first-party store. If I'm looking for a brand-name item, like an iPad or some other gadget, or some camera gear, I can often find it on Amazon and it'll be "shipped from and sold by Amazon", or there are a few other sellers whose names I recognize (like Apple or Adorama for the camera gear I was recently looking at) that I trust to buy from. More and more there's also the Amazon Basics brand covering everything from batteries and usb cables to snacks like trail mix, and I have come to trust their brand as well. These things will generally ship with prime shipping and arrive in 1 or 2 days, I get 5% cash back on my amazon card, and it's convenient to check out and I generally can trust I won't have any issues. If I'm looking for something that's not brand-name, and I want to pay the cheapest price I can for something that gets the job done, I can venture into the bazaar land. I recently bought some patio furniture and a rug that were quite cheap, and they work pretty well and have been awesome for using my outdoor space during the lockdown. In this side of the platform I know I'm making sacrifices, I often don't get prime shipping, and I may even get counterfit items. I would never buy things like vitamins or lotion or make-up here in the seedy back alleys of the store. And often I do opt to use a different e-commerce site instead of Amazon, rather than risk it here. But I still buy from here occasionally. I still think Amazon should do more to differentiate these two worlds, the high-trust vs low-trust platforms. But as a frequent user I now know what to look for and am mostly able to distinguish between the two, and I have to admit I do appreciate that the low-trust, 3rd party world exists. It gives me more choice as a consumer, and the alternative is that most of these items wouldn't be available on Amazon at all.
- autoexec 6y ago
  > I've been thinking this for years now, that the free-for-all for 3rd party sellers would eventually erode trust and make Amazon less appealing. But it hasn't collapsed yet and they still keep growing. I think this has more to do with a lack of meaningful competition than anything else. I'd happily go back to 1-2 week shipping if I could order from a more trustworthy source. I've only had a few total duds from amazon and they were all under $50 and not worth even returning, but I accept that I'm basically rolling the dice with every amazon purchase at this point. > I do appreciate that the low-trust, 3rd party world exists. It gives me more choice as a consumer, and the alternative is that most of these items wouldn't be available on Amazon at all. I'm largely fine with it 100, assuming that amazon is wiling to refund or replace anything I buy that turns out to be crap. That gives them an economic incentive to do at least the most basic policing of people selling on their site.
buddylw 6y ago
I recently made this realization and that eBay is actually better. eBay doesn't want 30% of the sale. I can order one item at a time prices are generally lower and, imo quality and risk are the same.
- halbritt 6y ago
  For something, the risk of a counterfeit seems lower.
duxup 6y ago
For me Amazon was a way to find a selection of HIGHER quality products than I could at local stores that maybe had 1 item that was ok quality and 2 low quality products. Now when I go to Amazon they push the lowest cost thing even if by a $1 (like Wallmart). These weird "Amazon's Choice" options are increasingly lower quality cheap stuff. And Amazon day feels like a garage sale where I think they're pushing out their back stock of rock bottom quality garbage ... more than usual. And that's not to mention fakes and etc. At this point I'm shopping around the internet way more than I used to when I was all about Amazon first.
stiray 6y ago
I would add one more thing (and that are two things), they are really sleezy with the results. You already pick a seller when you figure out that they dont ship to your country. The second one is not seeing the final price untill you go trough all the hassle of ordering. I hate shopping at amazon and typically I do it only when I exhaust all other options.
samstave 6y ago
Who the hell tries to put bagel chips in a router and wipe their internet history with blades?!?!?
Non24Throw 6y ago
> their prices aren't competitive anymore... What do you mean by this? Amazon has had the lowest price for basically everything I’ve shopped for in the last 4 years. When it is higher on Amazon, it’s by pennies (because algorithms) and not for very long. At home there’s a grocery store at the bottom of my elevator. It costs less money for me to buy groceries on Amazon Fresh with same-day delivery, than it does for me to go downstairs and buy my own groceries. Not a little bit less either, like 20% less. Same products! I don’t even have to be home, the groceries just materialize at my front door whenever I schedule them to. I think HN just gets on a negativity roll sometimes, and the most extreme or exaggerated comments float to the top. I’m sure there are plenty of externalities, probably moreso with Amazon than most any other company... but let’s not pretend that Amazon isn’t doing amazing things for their customers. The efficiencies they’ve added to my life have saved me hundreds of hours. They’ve done that with a business model that (allegedly) monetizes the widespread violation of all kinds of regulations while (allegedly) externalizing all of the liability, and it’s devastating hundreds of businesses, and a million other things ... but on the other end of all of that is a very happy customer. There would be no point to playing so dirty if there was nothing in it for the customer. It wouldn’t even work, we would all just go back to K-Mart.
- adamc 6y ago
  Maybe you shop for different things? I've seen things lately that were clearly cheaper at the local grocery store. For things like PC components, I find them hit or miss. They might be the cheapest (or near it), but they might also be way more expensive than another legit retailer. These days, I always check, because they are so variable. A lot of that is probably that Amazon doesn't carry everything, and other sellers are a crapshoot. I don't know where you live that their groceries are so much cheaper, but it isn't true here in Texas, where HEB (the dominant grocery chain) is hard to beat.
  - Firehawke 6y ago
    This has been my experience-- I don't check Amazon and stop for almost anything at this point because I often find computer hardware might be cheaper elsewhere. Newegg is hit and miss but sometimes comes out way ahead-- I saved $100 on a monitor by going Newegg instead of Amazon, even after shipping. Groceries? I find that Amazon almost never wins there compared to the local grocery chain. That most certainly is going to end up being a "where you are right now" kind of thing compared to computer parts.
nipponese 6y ago
The trick is to look in the buy box on the right. If it doesn't have "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com", there's a high risk it's garbage.
- dwighttk 6y ago
  yeah, the problem for me is that more and more that isn't even reliable
sturgill 6y ago
I’m pretty steeped in the Amazon ecosystem. I’m a fan of the Alexa. I watch their content. I use AWS. But I don’t trust it for anything that goes into my body any more. I’ll make a trip to a GNC to buy ON protein powder. I don’t trust Amazon to sell my something from the actual manufacturer. That’s new for me. Just in the last couple of years. The risk profile of getting a bad knockoff is overwhelming now. And for ingestibles it’s just not worth it...
- alexhutcheson 6y ago
  > I’ll make a trip to a GNC to buy ON protein powder. costco.com has this at a good price with fast free shipping: https://www.costco.com/optimum-nutrition-gold-standard-100%25-whey-protein%2c-80-servings.product.100428750.html https://www.costco.com/optimum-nutrition-gold-standard-100%2...
bshanks 6y ago
For me, one big competitive advantage of Amazon is that i know that they will probably give me my money back if there is an issue (without me spending a ton of time wrangling customer support, and without me paying return shipping). For example, recently i had some items missing from Amazon and some items missing from Instacart. Refund from Amazon took a few minutes. By contrast, i've spent a very long time dealing with Instacart (and more hours sitting on hold, and weeks waiting for promised followups that never came) and no refund yet. Instacart is just an example; there are many other merchants with poor return policies (or poor execution of return policies), and many others with good return policies. The competitive advantage of Amazon here is that it's hard to quickly find out whether a merchant that you haven't used before has good customer support, which pushes you towards sticking with a merchant you know.
mikorym 6y ago
> the Ring Doorbell You can build something much, much better with about $100 with a Raspberry Pi, depending I guess on the camera quality. Are there any features unique to the Ring? I am an advocate of using something like RPi's for Computer Science in Africa but I am a missionary without a following (thank goodness there isn't another crank like me going to central Africa).
- michaelt 6y ago
  Ring is battery powered, with a battery life of 4 weeks. It may not be obvious to someone not experienced in the design of battery-powered electronics, but that much battery life from a device with wifi and streaming video is very impressive - they must be making extremely good use of low-power sleep modes on their CPU, radio and camera. Being battery powered means it can be self-installed, even by people who don't know a serial terminal from a screw terminal.
zxienin 6y ago
> I will say their customer service has almost w/o exception been stellar At individual level, I’ve markedly experienced degraded customer service in last 1 year. For instance, I have to deal with hassles in cases where product sold by amazon (not 3rd party) had defect. The key reason I moved to Amazon bandwagon was: no hassles. To me, Amazon’s day 2 looks likely now. It was great while it lasted.
didntknowyou 6y ago
one of my first ebay purchase turned out to be a fake headset. put me off them and i never bothered to look on the site again even though people said it was cheaper. with amazon it's convenient and honestly the support (while hit and miss) is still better than the effort you get from minimum waged retail workers. i am getting annoyed at the rise in rubbish and duplicate listings though.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

> it's really more like shopping at a bazaar, since really their website is almost nothing more than Ebay in some sense So, yeah, eBay, Ali-express ... might as well go there.

halbritt 6y ago
I sometimes buy things from eBay when I know I'll get a counterfeit item from Amazon. ...strange world.

Loughla 6y ago

>their website is almost nothing more than Ebay in some sense I would argue that it's even worse. At least, IME, the ratings at E-bay for both sellers and products mean something. With Amazon, neither mean a damned thing anymore. It's just a crap shoot, unless you know exactly what you're already looking for. Amazon used to be nice, because you could actually do product research. The worst thing, again in my opinion, they've done is ruin the ability to actually compare products due to sketchy reviews.

pas 6y ago
> unless you know exactly what you're already looking for. I know what I'm looking for, but most of the products are impossible to evaluate, because there is just not enough info/data. Low res bad stock photos, terse description, no full technical specs, etc. And many Amazon sellers don't sell anywhere else, they don't even have a real website, so ... good luck deciding based on that. And since Amazon become so big, they set the bar for quality. So now the same shit is everywhere. (Plus there's the high-end overpriced but also not perfect segment too.)
- cactus2093 6y ago
  I feel like you just entirely explained the situation. There is still a "high-end overpriced" segment for all kinds of industries. Sometimes luxury goods, but sometimes just mid-tier goods sold by companies that still follow the high-margin traditional retail model. With an MSRP price that leaves enough room for inefficient, high-touch stores to take a hefty margin as a middleman. But even someone who actively dislikes Amazon such as yourself would still rather get the lowest price and access to the largest selection, even if it means begrudgingly putting up with a worse experience.
  - pas 6y ago
    I try to simply don't buy things. Eg I want a new laptop for some time, but none seem like a good fit. The whole USB3 ecosystem is crazy, there are bad, ugly, expensive or all of the above ones only.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I don't know why Amazon has a "lowest price" reputation on HN. Everything on Amazon is overpriced. The only reason why I still use it is that people give me Amazon gift cards instead of cash. I use geizhals.de to find products and Amazon is rarely shown as the cheapest seller. The price difference isn't insignificant. Depending on the product you can expect to pay 15% more on Amazon and that's what I tell people giving me those amazon cards.

cactus2093 6y ago

I've been thinking this for years now, that the free-for-all for 3rd party sellers would eventually erode trust and make Amazon less appealing. But it hasn't collapsed yet and they still keep growing. Now I really view Amazon as two separate products in one interface - there's the Ebay style bazaar, and then there's the first-party store. If I'm looking for a brand-name item, like an iPad or some other gadget, or some camera gear, I can often find it on Amazon and it'll be "shipped from and sold by Amazon", or there are a few other sellers whose names I recognize (like Apple or Adorama for the camera gear I was recently looking at) that I trust to buy from. More and more there's also the Amazon Basics brand covering everything from batteries and usb cables to snacks like trail mix, and I have come to trust their brand as well. These things will generally ship with prime shipping and arrive in 1 or 2 days, I get 5% cash back on my amazon card, and it's convenient to check out and I generally can trust I won't have any issues. If I'm looking for something that's not brand-name, and I want to pay the cheapest price I can for something that gets the job done, I can venture into the bazaar land. I recently bought some patio furniture and a rug that were quite cheap, and they work pretty well and have been awesome for using my outdoor space during the lockdown. In this side of the platform I know I'm making sacrifices, I often don't get prime shipping, and I may even get counterfit items. I would never buy things like vitamins or lotion or make-up here in the seedy back alleys of the store. And often I do opt to use a different e-commerce site instead of Amazon, rather than risk it here. But I still buy from here occasionally. I still think Amazon should do more to differentiate these two worlds, the high-trust vs low-trust platforms. But as a frequent user I now know what to look for and am mostly able to distinguish between the two, and I have to admit I do appreciate that the low-trust, 3rd party world exists. It gives me more choice as a consumer, and the alternative is that most of these items wouldn't be available on Amazon at all.

autoexec 6y ago
> I've been thinking this for years now, that the free-for-all for 3rd party sellers would eventually erode trust and make Amazon less appealing. But it hasn't collapsed yet and they still keep growing. I think this has more to do with a lack of meaningful competition than anything else. I'd happily go back to 1-2 week shipping if I could order from a more trustworthy source. I've only had a few total duds from amazon and they were all under $50 and not worth even returning, but I accept that I'm basically rolling the dice with every amazon purchase at this point. > I do appreciate that the low-trust, 3rd party world exists. It gives me more choice as a consumer, and the alternative is that most of these items wouldn't be available on Amazon at all. I'm largely fine with it 100, assuming that amazon is wiling to refund or replace anything I buy that turns out to be crap. That gives them an economic incentive to do at least the most basic policing of people selling on their site.

buddylw 6y ago

I recently made this realization and that eBay is actually better. eBay doesn't want 30% of the sale. I can order one item at a time prices are generally lower and, imo quality and risk are the same.

halbritt 6y ago
For something, the risk of a counterfeit seems lower.

duxup 6y ago

For me Amazon was a way to find a selection of HIGHER quality products than I could at local stores that maybe had 1 item that was ok quality and 2 low quality products. Now when I go to Amazon they push the lowest cost thing even if by a $1 (like Wallmart). These weird "Amazon's Choice" options are increasingly lower quality cheap stuff. And Amazon day feels like a garage sale where I think they're pushing out their back stock of rock bottom quality garbage ... more than usual. And that's not to mention fakes and etc. At this point I'm shopping around the internet way more than I used to when I was all about Amazon first.

stiray 6y ago

I would add one more thing (and that are two things), they are really sleezy with the results. You already pick a seller when you figure out that they dont ship to your country. The second one is not seeing the final price untill you go trough all the hassle of ordering. I hate shopping at amazon and typically I do it only when I exhaust all other options.

samstave 6y ago

Who the hell tries to put bagel chips in a router and wipe their internet history with blades?!?!?

Non24Throw 6y ago

> their prices aren't competitive anymore... What do you mean by this? Amazon has had the lowest price for basically everything I’ve shopped for in the last 4 years. When it is higher on Amazon, it’s by pennies (because algorithms) and not for very long. At home there’s a grocery store at the bottom of my elevator. It costs less money for me to buy groceries on Amazon Fresh with same-day delivery, than it does for me to go downstairs and buy my own groceries. Not a little bit less either, like 20% less. Same products! I don’t even have to be home, the groceries just materialize at my front door whenever I schedule them to. I think HN just gets on a negativity roll sometimes, and the most extreme or exaggerated comments float to the top. I’m sure there are plenty of externalities, probably moreso with Amazon than most any other company... but let’s not pretend that Amazon isn’t doing amazing things for their customers. The efficiencies they’ve added to my life have saved me hundreds of hours. They’ve done that with a business model that (allegedly) monetizes the widespread violation of all kinds of regulations while (allegedly) externalizing all of the liability, and it’s devastating hundreds of businesses, and a million other things ... but on the other end of all of that is a very happy customer. There would be no point to playing so dirty if there was nothing in it for the customer. It wouldn’t even work, we would all just go back to K-Mart.

adamc 6y ago
Maybe you shop for different things? I've seen things lately that were clearly cheaper at the local grocery store. For things like PC components, I find them hit or miss. They might be the cheapest (or near it), but they might also be way more expensive than another legit retailer. These days, I always check, because they are so variable. A lot of that is probably that Amazon doesn't carry everything, and other sellers are a crapshoot. I don't know where you live that their groceries are so much cheaper, but it isn't true here in Texas, where HEB (the dominant grocery chain) is hard to beat.
- Firehawke 6y ago
  This has been my experience-- I don't check Amazon and stop for almost anything at this point because I often find computer hardware might be cheaper elsewhere. Newegg is hit and miss but sometimes comes out way ahead-- I saved $100 on a monitor by going Newegg instead of Amazon, even after shipping. Groceries? I find that Amazon almost never wins there compared to the local grocery chain. That most certainly is going to end up being a "where you are right now" kind of thing compared to computer parts.

nipponese 6y ago

The trick is to look in the buy box on the right. If it doesn't have "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com", there's a high risk it's garbage.

dwighttk 6y ago
yeah, the problem for me is that more and more that isn't even reliable

sturgill 6y ago

I’m pretty steeped in the Amazon ecosystem. I’m a fan of the Alexa. I watch their content. I use AWS. But I don’t trust it for anything that goes into my body any more. I’ll make a trip to a GNC to buy ON protein powder. I don’t trust Amazon to sell my something from the actual manufacturer. That’s new for me. Just in the last couple of years. The risk profile of getting a bad knockoff is overwhelming now. And for ingestibles it’s just not worth it...

alexhutcheson 6y ago
> I’ll make a trip to a GNC to buy ON protein powder. costco.com has this at a good price with fast free shipping: https://www.costco.com/optimum-nutrition-gold-standard-100%25-whey-protein%2c-80-servings.product.100428750.html https://www.costco.com/optimum-nutrition-gold-standard-100%2...

bshanks 6y ago

For me, one big competitive advantage of Amazon is that i know that they will probably give me my money back if there is an issue (without me spending a ton of time wrangling customer support, and without me paying return shipping). For example, recently i had some items missing from Amazon and some items missing from Instacart. Refund from Amazon took a few minutes. By contrast, i've spent a very long time dealing with Instacart (and more hours sitting on hold, and weeks waiting for promised followups that never came) and no refund yet. Instacart is just an example; there are many other merchants with poor return policies (or poor execution of return policies), and many others with good return policies. The competitive advantage of Amazon here is that it's hard to quickly find out whether a merchant that you haven't used before has good customer support, which pushes you towards sticking with a merchant you know.

mikorym 6y ago

> the Ring Doorbell You can build something much, much better with about $100 with a Raspberry Pi, depending I guess on the camera quality. Are there any features unique to the Ring? I am an advocate of using something like RPi's for Computer Science in Africa but I am a missionary without a following (thank goodness there isn't another crank like me going to central Africa).

michaelt 6y ago
Ring is battery powered, with a battery life of 4 weeks. It may not be obvious to someone not experienced in the design of battery-powered electronics, but that much battery life from a device with wifi and streaming video is very impressive - they must be making extremely good use of low-power sleep modes on their CPU, radio and camera. Being battery powered means it can be self-installed, even by people who don't know a serial terminal from a screw terminal.

zxienin 6y ago

> I will say their customer service has almost w/o exception been stellar At individual level, I’ve markedly experienced degraded customer service in last 1 year. For instance, I have to deal with hassles in cases where product sold by amazon (not 3rd party) had defect. The key reason I moved to Amazon bandwagon was: no hassles. To me, Amazon’s day 2 looks likely now. It was great while it lasted.

didntknowyou 6y ago

one of my first ebay purchase turned out to be a fake headset. put me off them and i never bothered to look on the site again even though people said it was cheaper. with amazon it's convenient and honestly the support (while hit and miss) is still better than the effort you get from minimum waged retail workers. i am getting annoyed at the rise in rubbish and duplicate listings though.