5 ms·

Ugh, the third party seller marketplace! I loathe sites that do this: Walmart, Bestbuy, and NewEgg come to mind. They seem to all be trying to half copy Amazon

Ugh, the third party seller marketplace! I loathe sites that do this: Walmart, Bestbuy, and NewEgg come to mind. They seem to all be trying to half copy Amazon? The ironic thing is this is now one of the worst features since they started "fulfilled by Amazon". If you're not benefiting from the logistics chain, you're just adding a middleman they adds markup and makes disputes and returns more complex. In some cases they're just drop shipping it from Alibaba/AliExpress/etc and you might as well order directly at 25% the cost.

jinto36 5y ago
I do miss pre-marketplace NewEgg, but they do at least make it pretty easy to show only items "sold and shipped by NewEgg" in the search filter.
- capitainenemo 5y ago
  Yeah. That's the one awesome thing about all the not-Amazon options out there. Walmart: All Filters => Retailer (Walmart) Target: More Filters => Sold By (Target) It's the first thing I look for after having been repeatedly burned by fake/damaged/obviously used items on Amazon. Also their prices are usually better so it often pays to crosscheck.
emodendroket 5y ago
It's lucrative and dramatically increases the perceived selection so nobody is going to stop, probably. On the consumer side it might be a little more mixed but at least you can deal with a big retailer if you have problems rather than some fly by night operation.
- travisporter 5y ago
  I don’t see the point tho. It’s not like Best Buy makes laptops so they bulk purchase and sell. What is the benefit of this drip shipping nonsense. No I won’t buy a sata cable from “ePC tech” just feels shady
- pfranz 5y ago
  I wonder what the long term hit is to their brand? I have to think that's brought up because it happens all the time to declining brands and I don't see that digging them out of their problems. I tend to avoid those sites mentioned after being burned a few times. In the past, they were the first place I would check. It hurts when I see family members get burned.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The problem is the hit to the brand is over decades. You can do a few stupid things without a brand hit so long as you see the mistake and revert back. Back in their day my Grandparents bought from Montgomery Wards or Sears Robeck (note they used the full name of both stores - odds are if you remember those stores at all is just by part of the name, or perhaps from a history book) They had a lot of stuff from those stores, and it was all good stuff, so they could confidently just buy it if the store sold it. In the final decades of Sears they often didn't have the best and so I had to think about quality (I don't remember Wards). Amazon always mixed the best stuff with junk, but it was real - now who knows if it is real. Walmart used to be "made in the USA" (or made in Canada for stores in that country), but that policy is gone - they are still a step above dollar store, but only a small step: everyone knows you often get better quality elsewhere. Amazon mixed counterfeit with real not long after starting, while WalMart had "Made in the USA" for decades (made in Canada lasted a little longer). There is a reason why some companies talk about the value of the brand. Coke needs to be very careful about losing trust (they almost lost it with "new coke" back in the 1980s - which my uncle says it was a way to introduce classic coke with HFCS instead of real sugar without losing the value of the brand - though he isn't in position to know what went on at Coke). My company often says we need to keep making high quality products to protect the value of our brand, we are well aware that we can rest on our brand reputation for a while, but bad quality has caught up to our competitors over decades and out market share shows is.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    NewEgg killed themselves for me with their marketplace; I don't even bother looking at them ever anymore.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
siruncledrew 5y ago
Next step is for those retailers to just form a partnership with Waste Management because for a non-negligible percent of the time it’s basically garbage express.
mschuster91 5y ago
From a customer POV, marketplaces make sense. No need to worry about creating yet another account with payment details on some obviously outdated Wordpress shop for ordering a cat toy or whatever small scale purchase.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
I suppose it depends on who's being catered for by the platform. In Poland, we have an interesting situation in which most brands that operate their own stores end up selling their products on Allegro (local Amazon/eBay equivalent) anyway. I usually defaulted to brand's own stores, but my wife turned me around - you get the same products, from the same vendors, for the same price, but in case of any problems, dispute process is streamlined and extremely favorable to buyers.

jinto36 5y ago

I do miss pre-marketplace NewEgg, but they do at least make it pretty easy to show only items "sold and shipped by NewEgg" in the search filter.

capitainenemo 5y ago
Yeah. That's the one awesome thing about all the not-Amazon options out there. Walmart: All Filters => Retailer (Walmart) Target: More Filters => Sold By (Target) It's the first thing I look for after having been repeatedly burned by fake/damaged/obviously used items on Amazon. Also their prices are usually better so it often pays to crosscheck.

emodendroket 5y ago

It's lucrative and dramatically increases the perceived selection so nobody is going to stop, probably. On the consumer side it might be a little more mixed but at least you can deal with a big retailer if you have problems rather than some fly by night operation.

travisporter 5y ago
I don’t see the point tho. It’s not like Best Buy makes laptops so they bulk purchase and sell. What is the benefit of this drip shipping nonsense. No I won’t buy a sata cable from “ePC tech” just feels shady
pfranz 5y ago
I wonder what the long term hit is to their brand? I have to think that's brought up because it happens all the time to declining brands and I don't see that digging them out of their problems. I tend to avoid those sites mentioned after being burned a few times. In the past, they were the first place I would check. It hurts when I see family members get burned.
- bluGill 5y ago
  The problem is the hit to the brand is over decades. You can do a few stupid things without a brand hit so long as you see the mistake and revert back. Back in their day my Grandparents bought from Montgomery Wards or Sears Robeck (note they used the full name of both stores - odds are if you remember those stores at all is just by part of the name, or perhaps from a history book) They had a lot of stuff from those stores, and it was all good stuff, so they could confidently just buy it if the store sold it. In the final decades of Sears they often didn't have the best and so I had to think about quality (I don't remember Wards). Amazon always mixed the best stuff with junk, but it was real - now who knows if it is real. Walmart used to be "made in the USA" (or made in Canada for stores in that country), but that policy is gone - they are still a step above dollar store, but only a small step: everyone knows you often get better quality elsewhere. Amazon mixed counterfeit with real not long after starting, while WalMart had "Made in the USA" for decades (made in Canada lasted a little longer). There is a reason why some companies talk about the value of the brand. Coke needs to be very careful about losing trust (they almost lost it with "new coke" back in the 1980s - which my uncle says it was a way to introduce classic coke with HFCS instead of real sugar without losing the value of the brand - though he isn't in position to know what went on at Coke). My company often says we need to keep making high quality products to protect the value of our brand, we are well aware that we can rest on our brand reputation for a while, but bad quality has caught up to our competitors over decades and out market share shows is.
- bombcar 5y ago
  NewEgg killed themselves for me with their marketplace; I don't even bother looking at them ever anymore.
- MereInterest 5y ago

siruncledrew 5y ago

Next step is for those retailers to just form a partnership with Waste Management because for a non-negligible percent of the time it’s basically garbage express.

mschuster91 5y ago

From a customer POV, marketplaces make sense. No need to worry about creating yet another account with payment details on some obviously outdated Wordpress shop for ordering a cat toy or whatever small scale purchase.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

I suppose it depends on who's being catered for by the platform. In Poland, we have an interesting situation in which most brands that operate their own stores end up selling their products on Allegro (local Amazon/eBay equivalent) anyway. I usually defaulted to brand's own stores, but my wife turned me around - you get the same products, from the same vendors, for the same price, but in case of any problems, dispute process is streamlined and extremely favorable to buyers.