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Amazon "... is turning their marketplace into a flea market of total junk." Man if this isn't the dead-on honest truth. Amazon is so garbage now that Walmart.

Amazon "... is turning their marketplace into a flea market of total junk." Man if this isn't the dead-on honest truth. Amazon is so garbage now that Walmart.com is a trusted supplier by comparison. I can't believe Amazon gets away with the crap they do. They so obviously turn a blind eye to constant, serious anti-consumer crap from Chinese sellers. Why? And why doesn't the FTC or any other department do anything?

wollsmoth 4y ago
yeah... I kinda use walmart more since it has a better signal/noise ratio.
kmeisthax 4y ago
Half of the Twitter thread is just talking about literal bribes paid to Amazon staff to conveniently change things in the system in the black-hat sellers' favor. This is not a "why don't they fight the spam harder" problem. That's Google's problem. Amazon's problem is, apparently, that their corporate culture is so toxic and broken as to make any kind of internal controls or moderation outright useless.
DanAtC 4y ago
Walmart has third-party sellers now too.
drpgq 4y ago
I wonder if they would care more if they got split from AWS
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Just recently Amazon allowed me to buy a kindle book for my specific kindle device, which turned out to not be supported. But they still allowed me to purchase and deliver it to this kindle. Only once I went to the device to sync it did I learn that it was incompatible. I was not allowed a refund. The reasonable behaviour would of course be to give a pop-up like "hey, you're trying to buy a book that doesn't work for your Kindle, are you sure this is what you want?" I bet they have some sort of disclaimer hidden away in some giant heap of legalese making it "legal" but the whole flow was clearly designed to trick people this way. And I'm a programmer, I don't get tricked as easily as the average person in this context(I hope). Amazon is full of minor counts of fraud like this and at their scale I bet it adds up to real money.
- metalliqaz 4y ago
  I'm amazed they even sell books in the Kindle store that don't work with all the Kindles. Like, it's a book... what's not compatible???
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    Beats me. It's even a Paperwhite, not like it's completely prehistoric either. The book was Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. Hell it's even freely available in html format, but I wanted to buy it anyway because I like to support authors of great books whenever possible. I've not yet tried to sideload the free version, but I bet it would work...
- loloquwowndueo 4y ago
  All the books I’ve bought for my kindle have a “bought by mistake? Press here” thing which instantly removes and refunds it.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    I've never seen anything like that. I was able to request a refund, and I did, but it was denied. I then contacted support with no luck there either. Maybe you have consumer protections I don't in your country? Nevertheless, why on earth would it allow the purchase to happen when it was set to deliver to a specific unsupported kindle, my only one? It just makes no sense other than as a scam.
    - LaLaLand122 4y ago
      FWIW a few years ago I found the my-country-Amazon is not another-country-Amazon. I had a problem with a phone after 6-12 months and they just sent me a replacement. A similar thing happened a couple of years later, I contacted support like at 1am from another European country and apparently I was sent to Amazon US support, which were useless... On the way back to the UK (still in the EU), I contacted support again (at a normal time) and this time they gave me a refund.
Booktrope 4y ago
On the other hand, much of what passes for "reputable" brands is just reselling the crap from the same sellers, but with a "trusted" name on it.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  See also this blog post on USB-C hubs: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.h...
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
> Man if this isn't the dead-on honest truth. Amazon is so garbage now that Walmart.com is a trusted supplier by comparison. I would have agreed with this sentiment six months ago, but now Walmart allows third-party sellers. I could consolidate to "At least BRICK-AND-MORTAR Walmart stores should have reliable products", but physical Walmart seems to have gotten in bed with this Chinese brand "onn." Their products are absolute garbage, and they seem to have jettisoned everything else from their store. I've had to tell my parents to please stop buying any electronics stuff from Wal-Mart and go to a Target or something when their iPhone cable breaks so that they can at least get a proper Anker cable. It's really tiring how much time I have to spend protecting my family from junk products these days.
- metalliqaz 4y ago
  I should add that I always select "available for pickup" when searching for something. In other words, stuff that B&M stores sell. But even still, the third-party sellers aren't as bad on walmart as they are on amazon
  - zucked 4y ago
    They're literally the same - I see the same product sold by shady third parties being sold on both sites. At least with Walmart you can select "Available for pickup" and get products that Walmart themselves sell and stand behind.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  I think "onn" is just Walmart's "store brand" for generic electronics[1]. Kind of like "Insignia" and BestBuy. The design and manufacturing is all outsourced and these are usually quite crappy as one would expect. > Walmart is Onn’s parent company. Onn is Walmart’s generic brand electronics label, and Onn products, including Onn TVs, are only available in Walmart stores. [1] https://sycamorenet.com/blog/who-makes-onn-tv/ https://sycamorenet.com/blog/who-makes-onn-tv/
  - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
rexf 4y ago
TFA: > what's the root cause of all of this? > Amazon courting overseas manufacturers and sellers at all costs. Why though? How does it benefit Amazon to have endless, no-name, bad quality listings? It makes the consumer experience awful & dangerous, not to mention the continued lowering trust in the marketplace. As others have mentioned, it's often better to go to Target/Walmart/Costco/etc to buy from a reputable supply chain (instead of risking getting counterfeit goods from Amazon). Amazon excels on shipping speed (logistics), but why bother when it's mostly garbage that sometimes gets returned?
- metalliqaz 4y ago
  Yeah I wish he had elaborated on that point. What are they doing to court those sellers and most importantly, why? Surely they know that their reputation is going down the tubes. Are they just so dominant now that they don't care?
  - comicjk 4y ago
    Probably Amazon is afraid of being replaced by AliExpress, which has lots of these sellers and their low prices.
    - snazz 4y ago
      As long as Amazon has their fulfillment and delivery network, I don't think they'll ever be replaced by AliExpress (in the US, at least). I've never seen anyone delivering packages in an AliExpress van :)
- svachalek 4y ago
  It really seems like they want to be a shipping and warehouse service and get out of retail entirely. Maybe better profit margins, or an easier way out of looking like a monopoly. I'm sure they've got some metric to quantify how much profit they're getting for each ounce of reputation lost and they're #winning.
bendbro 4y ago
Walmart does dropshitting too. Hell, even Home Depot is getting into it. You can often find the same piece of garbage furniture on all 4

wollsmoth 4y ago

yeah... I kinda use walmart more since it has a better signal/noise ratio.

kmeisthax 4y ago

Half of the Twitter thread is just talking about literal bribes paid to Amazon staff to conveniently change things in the system in the black-hat sellers' favor. This is not a "why don't they fight the spam harder" problem. That's Google's problem. Amazon's problem is, apparently, that their corporate culture is so toxic and broken as to make any kind of internal controls or moderation outright useless.

DanAtC 4y ago

Walmart has third-party sellers now too.

drpgq 4y ago

I wonder if they would care more if they got split from AWS

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

Just recently Amazon allowed me to buy a kindle book for my specific kindle device, which turned out to not be supported. But they still allowed me to purchase and deliver it to this kindle. Only once I went to the device to sync it did I learn that it was incompatible. I was not allowed a refund. The reasonable behaviour would of course be to give a pop-up like "hey, you're trying to buy a book that doesn't work for your Kindle, are you sure this is what you want?" I bet they have some sort of disclaimer hidden away in some giant heap of legalese making it "legal" but the whole flow was clearly designed to trick people this way. And I'm a programmer, I don't get tricked as easily as the average person in this context(I hope). Amazon is full of minor counts of fraud like this and at their scale I bet it adds up to real money.

metalliqaz 4y ago
I'm amazed they even sell books in the Kindle store that don't work with all the Kindles. Like, it's a book... what's not compatible???
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  Beats me. It's even a Paperwhite, not like it's completely prehistoric either. The book was Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. Hell it's even freely available in html format, but I wanted to buy it anyway because I like to support authors of great books whenever possible. I've not yet tried to sideload the free version, but I bet it would work...
loloquwowndueo 4y ago
All the books I’ve bought for my kindle have a “bought by mistake? Press here” thing which instantly removes and refunds it.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  I've never seen anything like that. I was able to request a refund, and I did, but it was denied. I then contacted support with no luck there either. Maybe you have consumer protections I don't in your country? Nevertheless, why on earth would it allow the purchase to happen when it was set to deliver to a specific unsupported kindle, my only one? It just makes no sense other than as a scam.
  - LaLaLand122 4y ago
    FWIW a few years ago I found the my-country-Amazon is not another-country-Amazon. I had a problem with a phone after 6-12 months and they just sent me a replacement. A similar thing happened a couple of years later, I contacted support like at 1am from another European country and apparently I was sent to Amazon US support, which were useless... On the way back to the UK (still in the EU), I contacted support again (at a normal time) and this time they gave me a refund.

Booktrope 4y ago

On the other hand, much of what passes for "reputable" brands is just reselling the crap from the same sellers, but with a "trusted" name on it.

AlexandrB 4y ago
See also this blog post on USB-C hubs: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.h...

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

> Man if this isn't the dead-on honest truth. Amazon is so garbage now that Walmart.com is a trusted supplier by comparison. I would have agreed with this sentiment six months ago, but now Walmart allows third-party sellers. I could consolidate to "At least BRICK-AND-MORTAR Walmart stores should have reliable products", but physical Walmart seems to have gotten in bed with this Chinese brand "onn." Their products are absolute garbage, and they seem to have jettisoned everything else from their store. I've had to tell my parents to please stop buying any electronics stuff from Wal-Mart and go to a Target or something when their iPhone cable breaks so that they can at least get a proper Anker cable. It's really tiring how much time I have to spend protecting my family from junk products these days.

metalliqaz 4y ago
I should add that I always select "available for pickup" when searching for something. In other words, stuff that B&M stores sell. But even still, the third-party sellers aren't as bad on walmart as they are on amazon
- zucked 4y ago
  They're literally the same - I see the same product sold by shady third parties being sold on both sites. At least with Walmart you can select "Available for pickup" and get products that Walmart themselves sell and stand behind.
AlexandrB 4y ago
I think "onn" is just Walmart's "store brand" for generic electronics[1]. Kind of like "Insignia" and BestBuy. The design and manufacturing is all outsourced and these are usually quite crappy as one would expect. > Walmart is Onn’s parent company. Onn is Walmart’s generic brand electronics label, and Onn products, including Onn TVs, are only available in Walmart stores. [1] https://sycamorenet.com/blog/who-makes-onn-tv/ https://sycamorenet.com/blog/who-makes-onn-tv/
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

rexf 4y ago

TFA: > what's the root cause of all of this? > Amazon courting overseas manufacturers and sellers at all costs. Why though? How does it benefit Amazon to have endless, no-name, bad quality listings? It makes the consumer experience awful & dangerous, not to mention the continued lowering trust in the marketplace. As others have mentioned, it's often better to go to Target/Walmart/Costco/etc to buy from a reputable supply chain (instead of risking getting counterfeit goods from Amazon). Amazon excels on shipping speed (logistics), but why bother when it's mostly garbage that sometimes gets returned?

metalliqaz 4y ago
Yeah I wish he had elaborated on that point. What are they doing to court those sellers and most importantly, why? Surely they know that their reputation is going down the tubes. Are they just so dominant now that they don't care?
- comicjk 4y ago
  Probably Amazon is afraid of being replaced by AliExpress, which has lots of these sellers and their low prices.
  - snazz 4y ago
    As long as Amazon has their fulfillment and delivery network, I don't think they'll ever be replaced by AliExpress (in the US, at least). I've never seen anyone delivering packages in an AliExpress van :)
svachalek 4y ago
It really seems like they want to be a shipping and warehouse service and get out of retail entirely. Maybe better profit margins, or an easier way out of looking like a monopoly. I'm sure they've got some metric to quantify how much profit they're getting for each ounce of reputation lost and they're #winning.

bendbro 4y ago

Walmart does dropshitting too. Hell, even Home Depot is getting into it. You can often find the same piece of garbage furniture on all 4