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I find myself ordering less and less from Amazon. For almost any product now there are tons of foreign "brands" with random all caps names that are whitelabelin

by cyral 5y ago

I find myself ordering less and less from Amazon. For almost any product now there are tons of foreign "brands" with random all caps names that are whitelabeling products with questionable quality. With no oversight, if anything goes wrong, doesn't conform to safety regulations, etc, they can easily just go and set up shop under a different name.

seanp2k2 5y ago
Don’t forget how they also remove and re-list items all the time to avoid bad reviews, and copy/paste reviews and ratings from other unrelated products. I’m guessing that it’s worth it to pay people in call center type operations pennies per review to do this if the bot detection is usually good enough to catch it, or if they’re doing the “verified buyer” thing, to pay people to “buy” their products, etc etc. The point is that what Amazon does to try to stop this isn’t working, and Amazon feels like a flea market with a few “official” stores. The categories and requirement to pick a category before getting more advanced parameters has been broken for years, and I doubt anyone in power there is very interested in fixing it. I’ve also been buying less on Amazon, but their easy returns if something arrives truly broken or mismatched from the description are a lot more peace of mind than one typically gets with random small businesses. I’ve had to file a chargeback before after a small biz refused to let me cancel an order after informing me after charging me that one thing I ordered was no longer available in the configuration I ordered it (auto parts so it literally wouldn’t have worked). It was a huge hassle and a few hours of wasted time, plus I still had to find the hard-to-source part somewhere else. On Amazon I’ve been refunded immediately, no questions asked, when I’ve been sent the wrong thing. I’m sure that people who return stuff at a higher rate are super annoying for merchants with how Amazon puts seemingly all of the burden on them, but for consumers who mostly buy stuff in good faith (e.g. not buying a tool to use it then return it when done), it’s a great experience. I’m sure they have metrics on customers around how much they return and what that “free shipping” really costs.
FredPret 5y ago
What is the deal with those weird names? I have a lamp called the "Deunbr". Maybe there's an AI creating Amazon shops and randomizing the name every time

by cyral 5y ago

seanp2k2 5y ago

Don’t forget how they also remove and re-list items all the time to avoid bad reviews, and copy/paste reviews and ratings from other unrelated products. I’m guessing that it’s worth it to pay people in call center type operations pennies per review to do this if the bot detection is usually good enough to catch it, or if they’re doing the “verified buyer” thing, to pay people to “buy” their products, etc etc. The point is that what Amazon does to try to stop this isn’t working, and Amazon feels like a flea market with a few “official” stores. The categories and requirement to pick a category before getting more advanced parameters has been broken for years, and I doubt anyone in power there is very interested in fixing it. I’ve also been buying less on Amazon, but their easy returns if something arrives truly broken or mismatched from the description are a lot more peace of mind than one typically gets with random small businesses. I’ve had to file a chargeback before after a small biz refused to let me cancel an order after informing me after charging me that one thing I ordered was no longer available in the configuration I ordered it (auto parts so it literally wouldn’t have worked). It was a huge hassle and a few hours of wasted time, plus I still had to find the hard-to-source part somewhere else. On Amazon I’ve been refunded immediately, no questions asked, when I’ve been sent the wrong thing. I’m sure that people who return stuff at a higher rate are super annoying for merchants with how Amazon puts seemingly all of the burden on them, but for consumers who mostly buy stuff in good faith (e.g. not buying a tool to use it then return it when done), it’s a great experience. I’m sure they have metrics on customers around how much they return and what that “free shipping” really costs.

FredPret 5y ago

What is the deal with those weird names? I have a lamp called the "Deunbr". Maybe there's an AI creating Amazon shops and randomizing the name every time