6 ms·

I don't live in US, and there is no amazon specifically catering to the country I live in, but my experience with Amazon as a shop has been that it is a really

I don't live in US, and there is no amazon specifically catering to the country I live in, but my experience with Amazon as a shop has been that it is a really bad user interface, with crappy search, filled with a bunch of questionable "spam" products. I wonder if this is the case in US also, or maybe just my individual experience. It is very hard for me to get how a company so successful has such a crappy flagship product.

blobbers 4y ago
It has a medium level of spam, but if you stick to name brands sold by amazon, you generally get what you pay for. It's replaced the department store, and usually has better service / return policy than a department store (Target etc.). Costco might be the exception but generally I don't go to costco to search for a specific product. They either have some general version of a product, and if I'm willing to buy that I will; swim goggles for example. Perhaps I want TYR swim goggles. Costco will have better pricing on Speedo goggles but won't sell the TYR mirrored version I'm looking for. Click, bought on amazon, arrives next day.
nonameiguess 4y ago
The flagship product is the logistical operation and it is pretty damn far from crappy. I can't speak for everywhere, but at least in most parts of the US, they can get you damn near anything on the same day. For products where you already know what you want in terms of brand, seller, and quantity, or regular recurring purchases of staple goods (cat litter, paper towels, dish soap, anything undifferentiated that you need to repeatedly purchase), even groceries now thanks to buying Whole Foods (provided you have the upscale price point that makes you willing to shop there to begin with), it's about as perfect an interface as you could hope for. Find and click in under a minute and you can probably have most goods in a few hours, at most next day. If you're trying to discover new products of unknown quality and reputation, then it's not so good. For whatever reason, that seems to be the use case people focus on when criticizing Amazon on Hacker News, but I don't see how that can possibly be the dominant use case. Most of what people ever buy is not something brand new to them that they know nothing about. I'm looking through my last several months of purchases here, and I'm seeing a bunch of automotive cleaning fluids, mostly from Adam's, polishing compounds and a respirator from 3M, a bunch of power tools from DeWalt, a Bose speaker. Known brands from reputable sellers, every item what I wanted and it got here quickly. In some cases, I either tried to or had to purchase elsewhere. For instance, Amazon had most of the DeWalt power tools I wanted, but was out of stock on rotary polishers, so I had to get it from some place called Acme Tools, and it took a week and a half. Amazon got me everything the next day. (I had a bunch of stuff stolen from my garage is why I needed all this at around the same time.) I tried to purchase the Bose speaker from Best Buy since I have one a five minute drive from me, and their website claimed it was in stock and I could pick it up the same day, but then right before the pick up window, they texted me to inform me they didn't actually have it and wouldn't for another week. So I canceled the order, went on Amazon, and they had free same day delivery. It should be obvious that anything that goes from not existing 25 years ago to top five market cap company in the world is probably offering value somehow.
- wronglyprepaid 4y ago
  > It should be obvious that anything that goes from not existing 25 years ago to top five market cap company in the world is probably offering value somehow. That is very true, I think probably from the outside looking in it was hard to see what value they were offering. But from the responses here I think I got a better picture of what people get out of it that makes it the best choice for them most of the time.
- notriddle 4y ago
  > If you're trying to discover new products of unknown quality and reputation, then it's not so good. For whatever reason, that seems to be the use case people focus on when criticizing Amazon on Hacker News, but I don't see how that can possibly be the dominant use case. Most of what people ever buy is not something brand new to them that they know nothing about. First of all, HN is full of entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs. A storefront that can't sell anything that doesn't have a good reputation outside the storefront is bad for small businesses, because nobody is willing to try anything new. A major part of the value proposition of a storefront is that the owners will vet the products they sell for a minimum standard of quality: it's not necessarily great, because greatness is subjective, but the food shouldn't poison you[1] and the AC/DC power converters shouldn't catch fire. The second problem is that sellers will pass off counterfeit goods as being from major manufacturers when they aren't. I know I'm falling for selection bias, since I've probably bought counterfeit goods without knowing it, but that's not even really the point. The point is that I've bought stuff on Amazon that just didn't work, sold in packaging that's identical to stuff I've bought before that did work. I knew they were counterfeit and not just duds because the actual product didn't have the branding on it that genuine ones always have. [1]: Well, okay, it might poison you if you have a special allergy. But anything with the common allergens like gluten or lactose will have labels.
bergenty 4y ago
Amazon has stunning logistics. I’ve almost never received anything late over the last 10 years and if there’s anything wrong with the product they just refund my money. There is some spam that’s unavoidable with opening up the platform to third party sellers but I think it works very well overall.
wincy 4y ago
It’s really nice for my 3D printing hobby since most of the brands I’m buying are based in China or Europe (mostly China). They send over a shipping container of printers and Amazon handles fulfillment so I get the stuff in a few days instead of waiting 45 days and pay $100 shipping to get a 20 pound device delivered. They also have all the replacement parts and stuff in their warehouses. Also, their returns process is painless. I thought I’d support local workers and had been shopping at Hobby Lobby instead of using Amazon. For my trouble, when I tried to return an airbrush that didn’t suit my needs (I used it once) they treated me like a criminal, it was a whole production. With Amazon I just head to the Whole Foods down the street (or Kohls sometimes?), return it, and get credited almost instantly. I do think Walmart is putting a lot of effort into their online offerings and if you can return online purchases in store that’d be a huge win. We bought my wife’s MacBook Air off Walmart’s online store and it was super convenient.
- smachiz 4y ago
  Hobby Lobby is also an awful company... and is by no means "buying local".
- bko 4y ago
  > Also, their returns process is painless. I thought I’d support local workers and had been shopping at Hobby Lobby instead of using Amazon. For my trouble, when I tried to return an airbrush that didn’t suit my needs (I used it once) they treated me like a criminal, it was a whole production. I had the same experience. I ordered a $70 worth of cleaning supplies directly from the manufacturer, thinking I'd support the brand and cut out the middle man. My package was stolen (box opened and left right there) so we contacted the seller and told them the situation and they said they can't do anything about it, even with a police report. Amazon would have refunded it immediately. Half the time when I return something they even let me keep the item and donate it rather than dealing with the return. I want to support smaller online retailers but not so bad that I'm okay with getting ripped off with no recourse every once in a while.
  - c22 4y ago
    The fact that they can afford to take a loss on many returns while their smaller competitors cannot kind of implies you're getting ripped off in some other way, doesn't it? Where does the money to pay for your stolen cleaning supplies come from? Why would you even think to contact the manufacturer about this? Why not the shipping company? Or your building's management? I've fumbled a soda and broken it on the ground right after checking out and the grocer replaced it for free, but I recognized this as a generous act of kindness and not an expected baseline of customer service. I've also lost a soda in the parking lot and I can't even imagine feeling entitled enough to go back into the store to complain about it.
missedthecue 4y ago
Never once in my history of ordering on Amazon have I received a fake, spam, or bait-and-switch product. I have deliberately purchased non-name brand products, and sometimes I have received defective products, as one would shopping anywhere, but even then Amazon's customer services and return process is second to none. It shocks me that everyone on HN and other popular forums has very little success buying on Amazon.
- cryptoz 4y ago
  Are you sure you haven't received a fake product? How do you know? The fakes are so good much of the time that you may never know if you have received a fake. I have received 5+ fake products and stopped ordering on Amazon a few years ago. Not worth it, too much risk. Would never, ever, order food from there, or anything you put on your body, or anything electronic, etc. Way too risky.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    If it is a fake and you cannot tell the difference maybe it doesn't matter.
    - joe5150 4y ago
      The (legitimate) manufacturer will be able to tell the difference and won't service or provide support for counterfeits. And warranty claims are obviously out of the question.
    - matsemann 4y ago
      It matters when it catches fire because they saved a few cents skipping some failsafe in the power supply.
      - abawany 4y ago
        You are right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSE_Nm7pAw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSE_Nm7pAw4 - this video from bigclivedotcom shows the unique failure of a usb-c power supply that also took out a MS Surface and associated monitor with it.
renewiltord 4y ago
Amazon is one of the most trusted brands in America. It is almost as trusted as USPS (the top trusted brand) and is, in general, considered by most Americans to be a reliable, safe, and high-performance source of goods.
usrn 4y ago
I hate Amazon as much as the next guy but IME international Amazon and US Amazon are completely different things and aren't really comparable, they just have a similar GUI. US Amazon has nearly any consumer product you'll buy (from most food up to really expensive stuff like small boats and sheds) and almost all of it shows up in 1-2 days with minimal shipping cost. I know people in Canada and it's nothing like that. What you can find is crazy expensive and it it takes weeks to ship.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  I'm an American, but I did my graduate degree in Canada, and the difference was so extreme I (and others) would just get stuff shipped to the border and go pick it up.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
HarryHirsch 4y ago
Up until the mid-2000's Amazon was mainly a bookstore with a very good catalog and recommendation system. Then it became the pile of spam that it is today, a marketplace of sellers worse then Mos Eisley. But they did get their foothold selling books.
xlix 4y ago
I have had friends receive items like candles already used or paint brushes already used. I've been duped into buying travel size bottles of mouthwash, toothpaste, soap, etc because the seller prices them at or around the same as full sized items. I guess that's on me for not paying attention to the weight though...

blobbers 4y ago

It has a medium level of spam, but if you stick to name brands sold by amazon, you generally get what you pay for. It's replaced the department store, and usually has better service / return policy than a department store (Target etc.). Costco might be the exception but generally I don't go to costco to search for a specific product. They either have some general version of a product, and if I'm willing to buy that I will; swim goggles for example. Perhaps I want TYR swim goggles. Costco will have better pricing on Speedo goggles but won't sell the TYR mirrored version I'm looking for. Click, bought on amazon, arrives next day.

nonameiguess 4y ago

The flagship product is the logistical operation and it is pretty damn far from crappy. I can't speak for everywhere, but at least in most parts of the US, they can get you damn near anything on the same day. For products where you already know what you want in terms of brand, seller, and quantity, or regular recurring purchases of staple goods (cat litter, paper towels, dish soap, anything undifferentiated that you need to repeatedly purchase), even groceries now thanks to buying Whole Foods (provided you have the upscale price point that makes you willing to shop there to begin with), it's about as perfect an interface as you could hope for. Find and click in under a minute and you can probably have most goods in a few hours, at most next day. If you're trying to discover new products of unknown quality and reputation, then it's not so good. For whatever reason, that seems to be the use case people focus on when criticizing Amazon on Hacker News, but I don't see how that can possibly be the dominant use case. Most of what people ever buy is not something brand new to them that they know nothing about. I'm looking through my last several months of purchases here, and I'm seeing a bunch of automotive cleaning fluids, mostly from Adam's, polishing compounds and a respirator from 3M, a bunch of power tools from DeWalt, a Bose speaker. Known brands from reputable sellers, every item what I wanted and it got here quickly. In some cases, I either tried to or had to purchase elsewhere. For instance, Amazon had most of the DeWalt power tools I wanted, but was out of stock on rotary polishers, so I had to get it from some place called Acme Tools, and it took a week and a half. Amazon got me everything the next day. (I had a bunch of stuff stolen from my garage is why I needed all this at around the same time.) I tried to purchase the Bose speaker from Best Buy since I have one a five minute drive from me, and their website claimed it was in stock and I could pick it up the same day, but then right before the pick up window, they texted me to inform me they didn't actually have it and wouldn't for another week. So I canceled the order, went on Amazon, and they had free same day delivery. It should be obvious that anything that goes from not existing 25 years ago to top five market cap company in the world is probably offering value somehow.

wronglyprepaid 4y ago
> It should be obvious that anything that goes from not existing 25 years ago to top five market cap company in the world is probably offering value somehow. That is very true, I think probably from the outside looking in it was hard to see what value they were offering. But from the responses here I think I got a better picture of what people get out of it that makes it the best choice for them most of the time.
notriddle 4y ago
> If you're trying to discover new products of unknown quality and reputation, then it's not so good. For whatever reason, that seems to be the use case people focus on when criticizing Amazon on Hacker News, but I don't see how that can possibly be the dominant use case. Most of what people ever buy is not something brand new to them that they know nothing about. First of all, HN is full of entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs. A storefront that can't sell anything that doesn't have a good reputation outside the storefront is bad for small businesses, because nobody is willing to try anything new. A major part of the value proposition of a storefront is that the owners will vet the products they sell for a minimum standard of quality: it's not necessarily great, because greatness is subjective, but the food shouldn't poison you[1] and the AC/DC power converters shouldn't catch fire. The second problem is that sellers will pass off counterfeit goods as being from major manufacturers when they aren't. I know I'm falling for selection bias, since I've probably bought counterfeit goods without knowing it, but that's not even really the point. The point is that I've bought stuff on Amazon that just didn't work, sold in packaging that's identical to stuff I've bought before that did work. I knew they were counterfeit and not just duds because the actual product didn't have the branding on it that genuine ones always have. [1]: Well, okay, it might poison you if you have a special allergy. But anything with the common allergens like gluten or lactose will have labels.

bergenty 4y ago

Amazon has stunning logistics. I’ve almost never received anything late over the last 10 years and if there’s anything wrong with the product they just refund my money. There is some spam that’s unavoidable with opening up the platform to third party sellers but I think it works very well overall.

wincy 4y ago

It’s really nice for my 3D printing hobby since most of the brands I’m buying are based in China or Europe (mostly China). They send over a shipping container of printers and Amazon handles fulfillment so I get the stuff in a few days instead of waiting 45 days and pay $100 shipping to get a 20 pound device delivered. They also have all the replacement parts and stuff in their warehouses. Also, their returns process is painless. I thought I’d support local workers and had been shopping at Hobby Lobby instead of using Amazon. For my trouble, when I tried to return an airbrush that didn’t suit my needs (I used it once) they treated me like a criminal, it was a whole production. With Amazon I just head to the Whole Foods down the street (or Kohls sometimes?), return it, and get credited almost instantly. I do think Walmart is putting a lot of effort into their online offerings and if you can return online purchases in store that’d be a huge win. We bought my wife’s MacBook Air off Walmart’s online store and it was super convenient.

smachiz 4y ago
Hobby Lobby is also an awful company... and is by no means "buying local".
bko 4y ago
> Also, their returns process is painless. I thought I’d support local workers and had been shopping at Hobby Lobby instead of using Amazon. For my trouble, when I tried to return an airbrush that didn’t suit my needs (I used it once) they treated me like a criminal, it was a whole production. I had the same experience. I ordered a $70 worth of cleaning supplies directly from the manufacturer, thinking I'd support the brand and cut out the middle man. My package was stolen (box opened and left right there) so we contacted the seller and told them the situation and they said they can't do anything about it, even with a police report. Amazon would have refunded it immediately. Half the time when I return something they even let me keep the item and donate it rather than dealing with the return. I want to support smaller online retailers but not so bad that I'm okay with getting ripped off with no recourse every once in a while.
- c22 4y ago
  The fact that they can afford to take a loss on many returns while their smaller competitors cannot kind of implies you're getting ripped off in some other way, doesn't it? Where does the money to pay for your stolen cleaning supplies come from? Why would you even think to contact the manufacturer about this? Why not the shipping company? Or your building's management? I've fumbled a soda and broken it on the ground right after checking out and the grocer replaced it for free, but I recognized this as a generous act of kindness and not an expected baseline of customer service. I've also lost a soda in the parking lot and I can't even imagine feeling entitled enough to go back into the store to complain about it.

missedthecue 4y ago

Never once in my history of ordering on Amazon have I received a fake, spam, or bait-and-switch product. I have deliberately purchased non-name brand products, and sometimes I have received defective products, as one would shopping anywhere, but even then Amazon's customer services and return process is second to none. It shocks me that everyone on HN and other popular forums has very little success buying on Amazon.

cryptoz 4y ago
Are you sure you haven't received a fake product? How do you know? The fakes are so good much of the time that you may never know if you have received a fake. I have received 5+ fake products and stopped ordering on Amazon a few years ago. Not worth it, too much risk. Would never, ever, order food from there, or anything you put on your body, or anything electronic, etc. Way too risky.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  If it is a fake and you cannot tell the difference maybe it doesn't matter.
  - joe5150 4y ago
    The (legitimate) manufacturer will be able to tell the difference and won't service or provide support for counterfeits. And warranty claims are obviously out of the question.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    It matters when it catches fire because they saved a few cents skipping some failsafe in the power supply.
    - abawany 4y ago
      You are right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSE_Nm7pAw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSE_Nm7pAw4 - this video from bigclivedotcom shows the unique failure of a usb-c power supply that also took out a MS Surface and associated monitor with it.

renewiltord 4y ago

Amazon is one of the most trusted brands in America. It is almost as trusted as USPS (the top trusted brand) and is, in general, considered by most Americans to be a reliable, safe, and high-performance source of goods.

usrn 4y ago

I hate Amazon as much as the next guy but IME international Amazon and US Amazon are completely different things and aren't really comparable, they just have a similar GUI. US Amazon has nearly any consumer product you'll buy (from most food up to really expensive stuff like small boats and sheds) and almost all of it shows up in 1-2 days with minimal shipping cost. I know people in Canada and it's nothing like that. What you can find is crazy expensive and it it takes weeks to ship.

Mezzie 4y ago
I'm an American, but I did my graduate degree in Canada, and the difference was so extreme I (and others) would just get stuff shipped to the border and go pick it up.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

HarryHirsch 4y ago

Up until the mid-2000's Amazon was mainly a bookstore with a very good catalog and recommendation system. Then it became the pile of spam that it is today, a marketplace of sellers worse then Mos Eisley. But they did get their foothold selling books.

xlix 4y ago

I have had friends receive items like candles already used or paint brushes already used. I've been duped into buying travel size bottles of mouthwash, toothpaste, soap, etc because the seller prices them at or around the same as full sized items. I guess that's on me for not paying attention to the weight though...