14 ms·

Tell HN: Amazon shopping is racing to the bottom of quality

197 points by z9znz 4y ago

Amazon shopping is becoming increasingly pointless as one or more of the following are true: - There are multiple products, sometimes dozens, which are actually the same product in the same or different colors, and often with a variety of nonsense manufactorer names. So there is the appearance of choice while actually the non-same items are difficult to find (needle in haystack) - Products tend to be very low quality. If you take time to read the reviews, it's obvious that many of the high reviews are stuffed. The low score reviews usually tell the same story: a critical part breaks on first use, or a critical flaw renders the item completely unsuitable for the task it is intended for. - Counterfeits... I don't even need to get into this, as it's a very well-known problem. Unfortunately, the Walmart effect applies here too, because the low prices attract most shoppers, and the small players (and brick and mortar stores) can't compete and go out of business. If they try to compete, they typically just find the same garbage manufacturers who are selling on Amazon. It's a race to the bottom. As consumers, we end up with items that are either useless on arrival (and not even worth returning), or they are far less than we would have hoped or wished for or been willing to pay for. The great irony is, with the ability to import items from around the globe, and the significant number of online stores, it can still be impossible to find even a decent simple item (such as an extended reach car wash brush). Even if you search more broadly than directly on Amazon, you see the same few items across most online retailers. And when you read reviews of the items on each retailer website, you see the same low score complaints... sometimes in such detail that you can be certain that it was the exact same product. I see no solution to this. There is one country where most of this garbage comes from, but any special measures to penalize their exports will just result in shifting the manufacturing to another don't-care country which will pick up the slack. Imagine the total cost of this situation, from materials consumption to trash piles (which is a short process for many of these products). It's an obscene waste. /rant

stakkur 4y ago
Amazon shopping is bifurcating into: 1. Drop shippers 're-branding' stuff from SE Asia 2. Amazon-branded clones of successful products. #2 is where Amazon has been headed all along.
- z9znz 4y ago
  #2 is exactly what Walmart and other big brick and mortar US retailers did. At least there is some hope that the rebranded products will share one brand, and so the critical mass of consumer anger will be reached faster. It's still all a wrong approach to doing business, however.
pengo 4y ago
The answer is so simple the problem isn't worth spending time on: delete your Amazon account and don't visit the site. Everything you need is available elsewhere. I've not bought anything on Amazon for more than ten years.
jaclaz 4y ago
I wouldn't categorize this as "news". I mean it is years that the situation is as you describe, I don't feel it has worsened (let alone bettered) recently.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I think Amazon's shipping got worse in the last two years. They were making noises about speeding up delivery to a lucky few people in chosen urban areas but in my rural area Prime shipping has slowed down considerably and they seem to make no effort at all to get Prime deliveries to me in two days. It is irksome because sometimes I've decided to buy something at Amazon rather than another store on the assumption I could get it in two days instead of two weeks, so it is an unfair form of anti-competition. Contrast that to shipping having sped up for most other major retailers (say Best Buy, Walmart, ...) such that I often get things in one day with free or low cost shipping. My falling out with AMZN started when I saw obviously fraudulent product listings and contacted AMZN only to be told they didn't care unless I had bought the product and been defrauded. What they don't seem to get is that when they have this attitude it calls into question whether I can trust ANY product listings on AMZN.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    > calls into question whether I can trust ANY product listings on AMZN I have this same problem, so I end up doing extra research both on and off amazon to try to be sure the product is legit. This boils down to time and work on my part, and when it gets to the point where I get frustrated or distracted, Amazon doesn't get a purchase from me. I suppose they're just too big and have too much momentum to care, but _eventually_ they will fall from their high position because they have become big and lazy.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      They can get away with it because conventional retailers are also pretty arrogant, particularly in that they decide what their customers want to buy. For instance Best Buy wants to sell you a SATA SSD but they won't sell you the mounting bracket to mount it in a desktop computer or to adapt the molex power connector to the drive. They sell low end mirrorless cameras but don't have a significant collection of lenses. I have a serious crafting programme but can find exactly one item at Michael's that I want because they are similarly opinionated. Amazon stocks the products I want to buy but the consistency of their service is awful.
PaulHoule 4y ago
When my son was small I remember him getting some junk toys from a relative and crying "Why don't people in China want kids to have toys?" I'd say though that there are some vendors in China that are very proud of what they make and who very much want to have satisfied customers. It's not most of them though.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I'm not going to blame them directly, because there's likely some thick layer of people in the middle who are deciding at a purely $$$ strategic level how to make and sell stuff. They're commissioning the manufacturers to cut as many corners as possible.
  - sitkack 4y ago
    Your Macbook Pro is made in China. Quality is a management decision, not the decision of a country or people.
    - z9znz 4y ago
      Indeed: thick layer of people in the middle who are deciding I have no objection to buying something from China that is decently made and of decent materials (and by workers who are not abused).
- dhdbdhe 4y ago
  Due to safety and quality issues, anyone who gives us made in china toys goes on not a real friend list. And we throw away those toys.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    > And we throw away those toys Exactly. It's a surpreme waste, especially in a time where we should be working to reduce our global environmental impact.
  - zucked 4y ago
scotty79 4y ago
Isn't it classic example of "market for lemons" when the market degrades, sometimes into oblivion, because customers know significantly less about products being sold than the sellers do, because Amazon doesn't care to find out relevant information to rely it to customers?
- jxramos 4y ago
  Yes. I always wished to see customer friendly metrics revealed. Years in service. Years since last company sale/ transfer of ownership etc in an acquisitional sense. Time since last one star review. Star rating time profile. Percentage of product returned vs sales. Maybe some other things I can’t even think of.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I'm not sure if the term "classic" can apply anymore. Aside from some upper level executive at Amazon, I don't think there's anyone who is aware and concerned of the scale of the returns they get (most likely due to the products being one of the cases I mentioned). Amazon reportedly has warehouses full of returns that they find cost effective ways to dispose of. It's not like they go back to the manufacturer. In the classic times, the goods would go back to the vendor. And the vendor would have to deal with them -- something that costs time and storage space (and maybe disposal cost). But now the sellers are insulated from it all. To them it is just a loss of profit. As long as the bottom line is positive, it's worth it to them to scale it up as much as is still profitable.
causi 4y ago
These days I shop Amazon because they have a robust return policy. If that ever stops I'm gone.
- irrational 4y ago
  It depends on the item. Recently I purchased a drill bit from Amazon. By the time I realized I would not need it for my project, the return window had passed. If I had just purchased it from a big box store, I still could have returned it.
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    Return it to REI.
- buildbot 4y ago
  I lost 2.5K USD because of a botched return, so YMV…
  - verytrivial 4y ago
    Ouch. Details?
    - buildbot 4y ago
      I bought a Amazon warehouse Titan V, got an empty box. Amazon asked me to return the empty box after I called their customer support, so I did. Then they denied the return saying I only returned the accessories… They kept claiming they would look into it and refund me each time I called, but then would reply 48 hours later saying they never received my return. I opened a chargeback case, and they actually lied to my credit card company that I had never returned anything at all and that my return was rejected. When I called amazon, they then told me they had processed my return and that I should have been refunded. I also filed a complaint with the AG my state, and they lied to them as well claiming no return was ever requested (this was perjury). Sometime when I have more energy I’ll find a lawyer.
    - 4y ago
rchaud 4y ago
It's a more expensive AliExpress and has been that way for several years now, ever since the drop-shipping trend started. Amazon is increasingly delegating its retail business to those sellers now, and making money by selling ads for premium positioning on search results, and of course taking a cut of each sale. They treat retail like its an embarrassing legacy offering, something that they'd rather not still be doing. It's clear that they have shifted their focus to things like AWS, Prime, Ring.com and the like.
- cardosof 4y ago
  > they treat retail like its an embarrassing legacy offering I agree, which is such a shame because their retail brings valuable customer data they'll later monetize with ads and other things.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    Their advertising generates almost half as much revenue as their Amazon Web Services division that accounts for a majority of their market cap. They’re third after Google and Facebook, absolutely massive.
jbullock35 4y ago
Amazon doesn't come close to occupying "the bottom" so far as shopping experiences are concerned. To see that it's still doing relatively well, just try this: shop for five items on Amazon, and then shop for the same five items on Walmart. The Amazon experience remains much better—in many cases, it's superior. Listings are more relevant and better sorted on Amazon. At least, this is my consistent experience. I want Walmart to be a good competitor…but at the moment, I find that it's still not close. Simple search strategies on Amazon help, too: to avoid counterfeit products, search for products that are sold by (and not just shipped by) Amazon itself. Don't attend to one- or five-star reviews; instead, read the two- and three-star reviews (if any at all) and consider the percentage of all verified reviews that give 1-3 stars. Of course, none of this is foolproof; you may still end up with a low-quality product. But I find that these strategies help a lot. I get >100 shipments from Amazon per year, and I have almost no problem with low-quality or counterfeit goods.
- wollsmoth 4y ago
  Walmart feels better to me as long as I filter it to only items sold by walmart. This used to work on amazon too but now it's possible to sell anything as "fulfilled by amazon" or whatever. For some items, I'm finding myself just heading down to a physical big box store or grocery store.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    You can still select "Amazon.com" or "Amazon Export" as the seller.
    - ac29 4y ago
      If they still comingle inventory, you dont know which seller is actually supplying the product you receive. This has been problematic in the past.
      - wollsmoth 4y ago
        Yeah I've seen a lot of suspect merchandise sold by amazon too. Meaning just poor quality stuff with incredibly high star ratings. Wal mart they tend to go through major distributors. For now anyway.
euroclydon 4y ago
I'm finding that if I'm willing to wait a month, I can get the same crap From AliExpress for half the price. But if you know what to search for, you can find quality goods, VESSEL screwdrivers from Japan for instance.
- z9znz 4y ago
  If you are so inclined, you should make an essay on how you do this and post it to HN. I bet many of us would be interested!
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Yep. In the past few months I've bought tools from VESSEL, Wera, Wiha, Tekton, Milwaukee, etc., all from Amazon. No issues with anything there.
  - jonfw 4y ago
    I like CPOoutlets for american tools and KCtools for the german ones. For tools and other big ticket items- I'm scared to deal with Amazon when I need warranty work
    - mindcrime 4y ago
      Awesome. Thanks for the heads-up!
jxramos 4y ago
I was wondering the other night when shopping for some US made wrenches and when finding all these SK wrenches sold out on Amazon, and going to the manufacturer website directly and seeing a banner about being out of stock due to global supply chain issues I then went to their reseller listings. One of them was https://www.maxwarehouse.com/pages/about-us https://www.maxwarehouse.com/pages/about-us And I started to wonder if we’ll see more curated shopping experiences and a resurgence of recognizing the value such a service offers.
- z9znz 4y ago
  As I wrote the Tell post, I was pondering this. I think curated shopping could be a solution, but as evidenced by some of the current popular "curated" sites, they tend also to race to a less-than-optimal level as well. There are old companies like Consumer Reports which were sort of doing this, but I suspect they have some intentional or unintentional biases. In the tech world we have sites which maybe started out trying to bring light to the best products, but it seems every site gets gamed or just sells out. Then you can't trust it. True word of mouth is reliable, but when none of the mouths can get their hands on the actual good product, there's nobody to recommend it. Or maybe it no longer even exists because the manufacturer couldn't compete with the garbage on Amazon.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >There are old companies like Consumer Reports which were sort of doing this, but I suspect they have some intentional or unintentional biases. Consumer reports was--probably still is--fine in a very mainstream, safe sort of way. Which is probably fine if you're looking for a dishwasher. In general these sites--CR, Wirecutter, etc.--are as appealing for more specialty products whose users have very strong opinions about what they want/need.
foodstances 4y ago
Perhaps a product idea is to make a front-end to Amazon that is able to better filter the results, to bring forward slightly higher priced items that are higher quality, and do a better job of filtering out spam than Amazon (something that filters out those six-letter all-capital-letter Chinese company names). Income would be generated by making all of the links to the actual products Amazon affiliate links, but just make the frontend look exactly like Amazon's search with better results.
- z9znz 4y ago
  Not a bad idea. But what if there is actually no good product for a given category in Amazon? If it were a meta-front-end and could offer possibilities greater than Amazon alone, then that would be great. And actually, there are enough very similar images that it should be possible to identify identical products across different websites by image alone. Then they could each by grouped by unique product with the website as a list of options of where to buy it. Then maybe I could find a good soft brush telescopic car wash tool.
cwoolfe 4y ago
As a consumer, I am well aware of this problem. I use Fakespot Fake Amazon Review browser extension to help weed out junk reviews and find quality products. (It seems almost all of them are 4.5 stars these days) Another strategy to counter bad-quality products is to buy items directly from the brand's website. i.e. buy socks from hanes.com instead of amazon. Another problem I see with the shopping experience is that I would sometimes spend 10 or 20 minutes looking for just the right product (which is absurd when you think about just how powerful modern filtering and search algorithms can be.) And then it dawned on me. Amazon is making money off of those 10 or 20 minutes of "engagement" because it gives them time to show a bunch of paid ads as I search. To counter that problem, I always filter my results with "Prime Only" and Filter: Show lowest price to highest. I use Prime Only as a proxy-variable to filter out unpopular items (they are probably unpopular for a reason) It's amazing how much money you can save doing this. Usually you can avoid paying double what the default results are.
- jszymborski 4y ago
  Is this still a better experience than seeking out reputable brand names that have their own online shop? I get my recommendations from user forums and YT channels I trust, and then go straight to the manufacturer.
  - konschubert 4y ago
    Usually the manufacturers websites have the highest prices
    - jszymborski 4y ago
      Anecdotally, that's not my experience. In fact, I often find sales on old warehouse stock I don't find elsewhere. Shipping is usually a sticking point, though.
    - chubbnix 4y ago
      Amazon’s seller policy demands that be the case. You can have your listings removed for policy violation if you offer a price lower than amazon including sales events and discounts. The product manufacturer can have priority control on the amazon listing so there is incentive for the manufacturer to be on amazon if only for that control. I see some sellers offer discounts in their website greater than amazon sometimes but they are vulnerable to expulsion if they are reported.
taylodl 4y ago
Amazon has so many scam products now I do my best to avoid them. Target and Walmart are two very good alternatives and since I live in an urban area, their delivery is comparable to Amazon's delivery. Any music gear I buy I go to Sweetwater or specialized retailers. To me it seems like Amazon is becoming a worse and worse shopping experience with each passing day.
- HaloZero 4y ago
  Whoever is in charge of quality as my Target sucks though. I expect a kind of meh quality at Target but the counterfeit crap stuff at Amazon is at least better than the stuff at Target. The worse is the patio deck chairs that won't actually fit together at Target. Like the welding/metal construction is just wrong.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    I bet that same patio set is listed on Amazon (multiple times under different names and with different photos), and it's the same mfg. This is kind of my point. It seems that we now have millions of psuedo-offerings which ultimately boil down to a fraction of actual sources, most of extreme low quality. If we don't do something about this soon, we better be practicing DIY constructions from the many good videos on youtube. Before you know it, the only tool which will actually suffice is the tool you make yourself.
- silicon2401 4y ago
  I will vouch for Sweetwater anywhere it's mentioned because I've never had such a good customer experience as I have through Sweetwater. I personally enjoy Target and Best Buy a lot. Shopping at Target is oddly enjoyable for me and using their online store has never given me issues. I only really buy from Best Buy online (for both in-store pickup and delivery) and that experience has been good as well.
  - Tarragon 4y ago
    Sweetwater's customer experience is so good that it freaks me out. You have an assigned "sales engineer" who calls after the first order you make. So I've talked to them. At one point I ordered a couple of different guitar hangers to try them out. I got a call asking if I meant to order 1 guitar hanger and 1 ukulele hanger. The sales engineer looked at the order, my history, and apparently had notes from one of our conversations and thought it might have been a mistake. It was and we corrected it before it shipped.
turtlebits 4y ago
If Amazon doesn't fulfill your needs, then don't shop there. There are lots of merchants I prefer not to shop at because of one or more dissatisfying reasons.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I bring it up for discussion because if enough people start talking about it, maybe something changes sooner. edit - and because web search results lean heavily toward the major sellers, and the most major seller is amazon. So even trying to avoid amazon (and other sellers with the same garbage) becomes increasingly difficult.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  this comment is about as clever as reccomending firewood for heating to a person who lived in a highrise apartment. The entire marketplace has changed. I see the same shit amazon sell in physical shops now
cryptozeus 4y ago
Market will correct itself eventually.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I think this mentality is about like saying the earth/climate will correct itself eventually. Yeah it probably will, but long after I would have liked it to (for my selfish benefit).
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  No it won't. "Sears" used to sell high-quality own-brand products, then eventually outsourced to China, now it's gone. Amazon is the next Sears. Eventually something will come along with a selection of curated high-quality products, everyone will celebrate how amazing it is, and it will replace Amazon. Then that too will eventually need to pay back investors and shareholders, exploit its dominant position in the marketplace, and race to the bottom, again. This is the natural cycle of commerce in capitalism.
  - cryptozeus 4y ago
    Yes sir you just explained in a paragraph what I said in one sentence haha
elforce002 4y ago
It's interesting. I have 2 years without shopping on amazon. I'm going straight to small businesses. The attention is better and, slowly but surely, pricing and shipping are getting better.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I thought I was doing that, but twice now, I have opted to pay the small business's website directly more than what I would have paid on Amazon, and I end up getting something from Amazon. So at least some have figured out how to price discriminate and pocket the extra money for ordering from the "official" website.
sharkweek 4y ago
Here's the problem: People are still shopping on Amazon em masse so this race to the bottom will continue to happen. Very few people are able to care that the spatula set or kid sunglasses or phone case or... etc etc etc is knockoff quality because it's available fast and cheap. I think (hope) this changes, but as price sensitively likely increases over the coming couple of years for many consumers, they're going to be able to look past the transgressions of environmental impact or durability because, hey, if it breaks, they'll just order another $3 widget to replace it. There is definitely a market for high end, high quality widgets, but price for most will be a roadblock.
workingon 4y ago
This is my favorite HN copypasta post.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. Can you elaborate on what you mean?
  - workingon 4y ago
    Have you been around long? There's one of these posts every couple weeks where everyone complains about everything you just posted about.
edmcnulty101 4y ago
Most reliable brands have a store on Amazon. Go to that store and buy from that store. You get the reliable brand plus the return policy and fast shipping.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I would love to do this. But I don't know the reliable brand; how can I find it in the sea of search results which is mostly this kind of stuff?
  - edmcnulty101 4y ago
    I mean things like Patagonia or North Face or Google or what not. You just go to their store. For weird one off shit like a suction cups for your car it's a bit of a gamble.
    - edmcnulty101 4y ago
      *go to their store on Amazon I mean
- yetanotherloser 4y ago
  Unfortunately, inventory mixing broke that some time ago. You can order from RealBrand's store on Amazon and Amazon can still deliver you something some other seller told them was the same item. It's pretty awful.
kube-system 4y ago
If you want an easy way to find premium products, buy from a retailer that specializes in selling premium products. Easy, cheap, good: pick two.
boboche 4y ago
Their latest financials asically show that without cloud, there would be operational issues. Interresting breakdown analysis of Q2 here (Tom Nash) https://youtu.be/g2D5YCJNtC0 https://youtu.be/g2D5YCJNtC0
- z9znz 4y ago
  I think Amazon cloud is "too big to fail", in that there would be an unbeliably high global financial cost if it stopped. As such, I think it's even more imperative that the US break Amazon into some pieces. Let the retail division stand on its own. I think that alone would improve their operation (out of necessity for survival).
denton-scratch 4y ago
> shifting the manufacturing to another don't-care country a.k.a. a poor country. So you're blaming businesses in foreign countries for seeing an opportunity to manufacture to a price-point, to satisfy a Western market that can't satisfy that demand domestically. Isn't that what businesses are supposed to do? Perhaps the don't-care countries are really the ones that generate the demand?
- z9znz 4y ago
  I don't blame the foreign manufacturers. I blame the companies that make decisions, contract the manufacturers, and specify the quality level. I don't care what country those decision makers are in; they are to blame. However, if there were environmental and human rights oversight in the manufacturing facilities, likely the quality of products would go up. Just look at the hoopla over Foxconn/Apple situations has caused. I don't want any product that someone has suffered unreasonably to produce. No comfort of mine is worth great suffering or damage of someone else. The don't care countries probably aren't creating the demand. More likley, it's "home country" people who were the same types who pushed the offshore software development in the previous 20 years (to enormous waste and failure) who are to blame. The poor countries are just a tool for the exploiters. Same as the African countries who get exploited for natural resources by US and western European copmanies.
NoblePublius 4y ago
The solution is called a “brand”. Buy Anker, not random made up Chinese name, electronic accessories. Buy Gildan, not random nameless made-in-Pakistan disposable clothing.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  How do you know it is not commingled in the Amazon warehouse with counterfeit products?
  - NoblePublius 4y ago
    Anker has its own store within Amazon, and you can see it as the verified seller on their product pages. But the general point of this post is correct: Amazon is a terrible shopping experience and it’s mostly because they’ve monetized the search
spicymaki 4y ago
Walmart learned that if people (in general) had a choice between cheap and good they would pick cheap. It made them billions. Amazon is just following that playbook, but it is even worse. At Walmart manufacturers at least had to vie for physical shelf space in Walmart so there was a floor on how bad things could get. If the product caused damage you could go after Walmart or an actual manufacturer. Amazon has completely turned that system on its head. You can hardly contact anyone for issues (although Amazon does now have a $1000 damage claim guarantee and an okay return policy for many items) and the manufacturers are just fronts. I still shop at Amazon for certain small items or very niche items, but for big ticket items I usually just go to a physical store. Best Buy has been rather good these last few years with price matching, store pickup (in-car or in-store), and fast shipping.
mkasberg 4y ago
I've found recently that walking into the local Walmart, Costco, or grocery store is a better experience than shopping on Amazon, and I increasingly try to do it instead. Need a spatula? You could look on Amazon and hope you get something relatively sturdy and that isn't filled with chemicals harmful for cooking/eating. Or, you could walk into a local grocery store or Walmart where they probably have 2 or 3 to choose from, they've already researched and selected the best items to stock, and you can feel and see the item before you buy it. I like to think that if enough people realize Amazon is selling garbage and start doing this more, Amazon will need to respond to consumer demand (or will fail).
- z9znz 4y ago
  I would tend to agree that in person is better/safer, but > they've already researched and selected the best items to stock I'm not convinced at all that the store buyers research and choose with materials consideration (such as BPA and other things we wish to avoid in our food products). Still, it has a better chance than from Amazon. In fact, if the Amazon listing says "BPA free", can you trust it? Is there any way to believe that it is verified? (almost certainly not)
  - hacym 4y ago
    Costco fits this model, I think. You might only have one selection for something but you know it’s a quality product and is usually a good deal.
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  Problem is, you still get shit quality from Walmart. They optimize for lower cost items. Everything from the spatula to clothing I'd have to rebuy from Walmart, in 3-6 months anyway. No thanks. I want quality items, and I want a store I can trust to get that at. It isn't Walmart, and it's no longer Amazon.
  - mmh0000 4y ago
    TL;DR: Even if you're buying "the same thing" from Walmart, it's likely a lower quality version. Many manufactures make lower-quality Walmart-specific SKUs. See: https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart
kazinator 4y ago
> There is one country where most of this garbage comes from ... ... as well as most of the stuff in people's homes, including their cherished iPhones.
parentheses 4y ago
There’s a similar race to the top for brands that are focused on luxury markets. Brands that have a hold on this market now charge exorbitant prices.
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
I cancelled Prime and lean more on target, costco, and brands own shopify/ecommerce sites. Each of these options has more than sufficient shipping speeds. 1 day shipping was a fun Amazon perk but never something I needed.
- notyourday 4y ago
  > lean more on target, costco, and brands own shopify/ecommerce sites If only shopify could fix the god damn Chrome issue.
arwineap 4y ago
I agree that there's a lot of junk on amazon. Is it really that hard to filter out? I very rarely end up getting something from amazon and have it be completely worthless and not even returnable.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Is it really that hard to filter out? This depends heavily on the category, in my experience. Clothing and some electronics categories seem to have zero outwardly legitimate listings. I had to buy plug adapters for travel and there wasn't a single brand I recognized except the AmazonBasics ones.
0xcafecafe 4y ago
I recently got an email from amazon saying they are charging my card again for items which I have already returned to them (via the whole foods store). I even have confirmation email of the said returns. Now the email claims they haven't gotten it (which I don't care about as I was only responsible for dropping them off to whole foods). I am sure this is a glitch and I can contact them and get this fixed. However as a new dad this takes time away from other stuff and I would rather not have to deal with this. Will be more wary of purchases from now on.
rr888 4y ago
Time for brands again? I remember when Amazon first started it was great that you could avoid the big, reputable but expensive branded product and buy some alternative from a smaller company. I guess now we should avoid the unknown brands and stick with an established manufacturer.
jeffrallen 4y ago
My local grocery and hardware store don't have this problem. I don't see what the problem is. Just shop locally.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
To provide another viewpoint: I have used Amazon for maybe 10 years. I have thousands of orders with them. I try to buy everything I can from them since it's convenient. I buy things from paper towels to computer components to tools to clothes. I've never received a counterfeit item as far as I know. Any time I buy from a strange company I have 30 days to return the item, and returning is incredibly easy with so many Amazon package drop-off points that now exist -- I don't even have to re-package the item. Companies using familiar, easy-to-use platforms like Stripe and Shopify greatly increases my chance of buying from them. I generally prefer Amazon though because they have consistent customer service, returns are super easy (click a button, take the item to an Amazon Fresh store), and shipping is free with Prime. I'd love for Amazon to have some serious competition, but I don't think there's anything quite as good as it.
- effingwewt 4y ago
  I can guarantee if you shop that much you've 100% had counterfeit items, you just didn't notice it. Or you're the online shopping equivalent of the 1.5 billion lottery winner the other day. I've said this before but it bears repeating- one good anecdote vesus decades of openly user hostile and duplicitous practices and counterfeits doesn't wash. At this point you are part of the problem by supporting them in their bullshit simply for your convenience.
  - 2c2c2c 4y ago
    I buy probably 10 things on amazon a month, none of which I can identify as counterfeit. purchases end up in 3 categories: an item so cheap and generic every version of the product was going to come from the same warehouse in china anyways, amazon basics products, and expensive name brand goods. looking through my past 5 pages of orders, I see an aeropress, old spice deoderant, an ipad magic keyboard, and "genuine hd600 earpad replacement". I guess maybe the latter could be seen as counterfeit and undersirable? there's no perceivable problem in quality with any of these. i get the feeling that people with this mentality don't even try to help themselves. the refund process at amazon takes at most 5minutes. I've had a couple dozen refunds over the years with 0 questions asked, for items upwards of $500. maybe such refund policies are geography based, so service is perceived as awful in these locations?
damnesian 4y ago
There is a solution to this. When it’s an option, buy locally: that is the way to be 100% sure about what you are buying. Many local shops, eager to make sales, will let you try before buying. If not, it’s unusual for stores to not have a return policy, though you do have to keep an eye peeled for “all sales final” signs. Buying local puts money into your community and adds to the sales tax base that finances schools and paves roads.
- z9znz 4y ago
  Absolutely. It's just becoming difficult to even find such local options :(.
dragontamer 4y ago
> I see no solution to this Small (online) shops focusing on their products, with a set of blogposts describing the products they stock that doubles as reviews. https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Guides/ct/9 https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Guides/ct/9 It can only scale as far as the jetpens owner's ability to write blogposts on pens / stationary. But it turns out that they're pretty good at writing about stationary.
tellmelies 4y ago
You can probably get same day delivery from Target. it might cost a little more and the selection limited to what is in your local store, but it seems like this is a feature given your complaints.
layer8 4y ago
Related sketch by Ryan George: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30 https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30
- z9znz 4y ago
  This was fantastic! :) I did laugh, and it's a good characterization. I only wish he had shown the same chair with different colors. The company names were great though.
silent_cal 4y ago
It also creates an impossible environment for sellers - you have to compete with people with terrible products and heavy marketing budgets.
borapdx 4y ago
All good points but what matters to them is positive correlation with increasing short term revenue and showing they are in a phase they are extracting (some) profits from what they got billions from investors through the years. On top of that, their relationships with gazillions of Chinese suppliers are heavily disrupted by the political situation but that is a subject nobody wants to talk about right now. The moment when Amazon is going to reap what they are sowing now is not here yet but it is rapidly approaching. It will be marked by a BIG negative earnings surprise (see Netflix for future guidance).
frou_dh 4y ago
This year I've done 4-5 online chats with Amazon's Customer Service trying to resolve a single issue (still unresolved). I've definitely wondered what happened to the old "Customer Obsession" and "World's most customer-centric company" principles that they used to quite legitimately crow about. In days gone by, they would have said sorry for my trouble, and doled out a gift card, months ago.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I suspect that Amazon Retail's days may be numbered. They know it, and don't care. They make most of their money from AWS/Cloud stuff (apparently, a lot of money). I suspect that Retail is becoming a boat anchor. They may spin off their Logistics into a separate business unit; as it's doing fairly well. They are more aware than anyone, about how bad things are. They have meters on everything. Amazon is famous for being a data-driven corporation. This means that someone, somewhere, has calculated the destruction of their brand, and has decided that the end justifies the means.
Ancalagon 4y ago
The solution is simple. Now what we need to do is - hang with me here - shop _inside_ the stores selling the product, so that you can see and test it first hand _before_ you buy it.
hacym 4y ago
Have you tried to buy something shipped from and sold by Amazon recently? I have had a couple promos in my account because of screw ups in shipping, so I’ve tried to use them. It’s impossible to find something that is both shipped from and sold by Amazon. Amazon as a logistics company is also a joke. Their customer service is now bottom of the barrel, which is a real shame because it used to be decent. As a paying Prime customer, my items are late or lost probably 1/3 of the time. Once a real competitor comes around that can compete on price and some level of good selection without being a horrendous experience, Amazon will be put on notice.
rpdillon 4y ago
It's weird...I've been a customer since 2000, and still shop there daily. I hear a lot about counterfits and terrible quality, but my purchases are almost universally perfectly satisfactory for my needs. I think I'm using Amazon differently from others, but I can't figure out the difference.

197 points by z9znz 4y ago

stakkur 4y ago

Amazon shopping is bifurcating into: 1. Drop shippers 're-branding' stuff from SE Asia 2. Amazon-branded clones of successful products. #2 is where Amazon has been headed all along.

z9znz 4y ago
#2 is exactly what Walmart and other big brick and mortar US retailers did. At least there is some hope that the rebranded products will share one brand, and so the critical mass of consumer anger will be reached faster. It's still all a wrong approach to doing business, however.

pengo 4y ago

The answer is so simple the problem isn't worth spending time on: delete your Amazon account and don't visit the site. Everything you need is available elsewhere. I've not bought anything on Amazon for more than ten years.

jaclaz 4y ago

I wouldn't categorize this as "news". I mean it is years that the situation is as you describe, I don't feel it has worsened (let alone bettered) recently.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I think Amazon's shipping got worse in the last two years. They were making noises about speeding up delivery to a lucky few people in chosen urban areas but in my rural area Prime shipping has slowed down considerably and they seem to make no effort at all to get Prime deliveries to me in two days. It is irksome because sometimes I've decided to buy something at Amazon rather than another store on the assumption I could get it in two days instead of two weeks, so it is an unfair form of anti-competition. Contrast that to shipping having sped up for most other major retailers (say Best Buy, Walmart, ...) such that I often get things in one day with free or low cost shipping. My falling out with AMZN started when I saw obviously fraudulent product listings and contacted AMZN only to be told they didn't care unless I had bought the product and been defrauded. What they don't seem to get is that when they have this attitude it calls into question whether I can trust ANY product listings on AMZN.
- z9znz 4y ago
  > calls into question whether I can trust ANY product listings on AMZN I have this same problem, so I end up doing extra research both on and off amazon to try to be sure the product is legit. This boils down to time and work on my part, and when it gets to the point where I get frustrated or distracted, Amazon doesn't get a purchase from me. I suppose they're just too big and have too much momentum to care, but _eventually_ they will fall from their high position because they have become big and lazy.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    They can get away with it because conventional retailers are also pretty arrogant, particularly in that they decide what their customers want to buy. For instance Best Buy wants to sell you a SATA SSD but they won't sell you the mounting bracket to mount it in a desktop computer or to adapt the molex power connector to the drive. They sell low end mirrorless cameras but don't have a significant collection of lenses. I have a serious crafting programme but can find exactly one item at Michael's that I want because they are similarly opinionated. Amazon stocks the products I want to buy but the consistency of their service is awful.

PaulHoule 4y ago

When my son was small I remember him getting some junk toys from a relative and crying "Why don't people in China want kids to have toys?" I'd say though that there are some vendors in China that are very proud of what they make and who very much want to have satisfied customers. It's not most of them though.

z9znz 4y ago
I'm not going to blame them directly, because there's likely some thick layer of people in the middle who are deciding at a purely $$$ strategic level how to make and sell stuff. They're commissioning the manufacturers to cut as many corners as possible.
- sitkack 4y ago
  Your Macbook Pro is made in China. Quality is a management decision, not the decision of a country or people.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    Indeed: thick layer of people in the middle who are deciding I have no objection to buying something from China that is decently made and of decent materials (and by workers who are not abused).
dhdbdhe 4y ago
Due to safety and quality issues, anyone who gives us made in china toys goes on not a real friend list. And we throw away those toys.
- z9znz 4y ago
  > And we throw away those toys Exactly. It's a surpreme waste, especially in a time where we should be working to reduce our global environmental impact.
- zucked 4y ago

scotty79 4y ago

Isn't it classic example of "market for lemons" when the market degrades, sometimes into oblivion, because customers know significantly less about products being sold than the sellers do, because Amazon doesn't care to find out relevant information to rely it to customers?

jxramos 4y ago
Yes. I always wished to see customer friendly metrics revealed. Years in service. Years since last company sale/ transfer of ownership etc in an acquisitional sense. Time since last one star review. Star rating time profile. Percentage of product returned vs sales. Maybe some other things I can’t even think of.
z9znz 4y ago
I'm not sure if the term "classic" can apply anymore. Aside from some upper level executive at Amazon, I don't think there's anyone who is aware and concerned of the scale of the returns they get (most likely due to the products being one of the cases I mentioned). Amazon reportedly has warehouses full of returns that they find cost effective ways to dispose of. It's not like they go back to the manufacturer. In the classic times, the goods would go back to the vendor. And the vendor would have to deal with them -- something that costs time and storage space (and maybe disposal cost). But now the sellers are insulated from it all. To them it is just a loss of profit. As long as the bottom line is positive, it's worth it to them to scale it up as much as is still profitable.

causi 4y ago

These days I shop Amazon because they have a robust return policy. If that ever stops I'm gone.

irrational 4y ago
It depends on the item. Recently I purchased a drill bit from Amazon. By the time I realized I would not need it for my project, the return window had passed. If I had just purchased it from a big box store, I still could have returned it.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  Return it to REI.
buildbot 4y ago
I lost 2.5K USD because of a botched return, so YMV…
- verytrivial 4y ago
  Ouch. Details?
  - buildbot 4y ago
    I bought a Amazon warehouse Titan V, got an empty box. Amazon asked me to return the empty box after I called their customer support, so I did. Then they denied the return saying I only returned the accessories… They kept claiming they would look into it and refund me each time I called, but then would reply 48 hours later saying they never received my return. I opened a chargeback case, and they actually lied to my credit card company that I had never returned anything at all and that my return was rejected. When I called amazon, they then told me they had processed my return and that I should have been refunded. I also filed a complaint with the AG my state, and they lied to them as well claiming no return was ever requested (this was perjury). Sometime when I have more energy I’ll find a lawyer.
  - 4y ago

rchaud 4y ago

It's a more expensive AliExpress and has been that way for several years now, ever since the drop-shipping trend started. Amazon is increasingly delegating its retail business to those sellers now, and making money by selling ads for premium positioning on search results, and of course taking a cut of each sale. They treat retail like its an embarrassing legacy offering, something that they'd rather not still be doing. It's clear that they have shifted their focus to things like AWS, Prime, Ring.com and the like.

cardosof 4y ago
> they treat retail like its an embarrassing legacy offering I agree, which is such a shame because their retail brings valuable customer data they'll later monetize with ads and other things.
- fmajid 4y ago
  Their advertising generates almost half as much revenue as their Amazon Web Services division that accounts for a majority of their market cap. They’re third after Google and Facebook, absolutely massive.

jbullock35 4y ago

Amazon doesn't come close to occupying "the bottom" so far as shopping experiences are concerned. To see that it's still doing relatively well, just try this: shop for five items on Amazon, and then shop for the same five items on Walmart. The Amazon experience remains much better—in many cases, it's superior. Listings are more relevant and better sorted on Amazon. At least, this is my consistent experience. I want Walmart to be a good competitor…but at the moment, I find that it's still not close. Simple search strategies on Amazon help, too: to avoid counterfeit products, search for products that are sold by (and not just shipped by) Amazon itself. Don't attend to one- or five-star reviews; instead, read the two- and three-star reviews (if any at all) and consider the percentage of all verified reviews that give 1-3 stars. Of course, none of this is foolproof; you may still end up with a low-quality product. But I find that these strategies help a lot. I get >100 shipments from Amazon per year, and I have almost no problem with low-quality or counterfeit goods.

wollsmoth 4y ago
Walmart feels better to me as long as I filter it to only items sold by walmart. This used to work on amazon too but now it's possible to sell anything as "fulfilled by amazon" or whatever. For some items, I'm finding myself just heading down to a physical big box store or grocery store.
- paulmd 4y ago
  You can still select "Amazon.com" or "Amazon Export" as the seller.
  - ac29 4y ago
    If they still comingle inventory, you dont know which seller is actually supplying the product you receive. This has been problematic in the past.
    - wollsmoth 4y ago
      Yeah I've seen a lot of suspect merchandise sold by amazon too. Meaning just poor quality stuff with incredibly high star ratings. Wal mart they tend to go through major distributors. For now anyway.

euroclydon 4y ago

I'm finding that if I'm willing to wait a month, I can get the same crap From AliExpress for half the price. But if you know what to search for, you can find quality goods, VESSEL screwdrivers from Japan for instance.

z9znz 4y ago
If you are so inclined, you should make an essay on how you do this and post it to HN. I bet many of us would be interested!
mindcrime 4y ago
Yep. In the past few months I've bought tools from VESSEL, Wera, Wiha, Tekton, Milwaukee, etc., all from Amazon. No issues with anything there.
- jonfw 4y ago
  I like CPOoutlets for american tools and KCtools for the german ones. For tools and other big ticket items- I'm scared to deal with Amazon when I need warranty work
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Awesome. Thanks for the heads-up!

jxramos 4y ago

I was wondering the other night when shopping for some US made wrenches and when finding all these SK wrenches sold out on Amazon, and going to the manufacturer website directly and seeing a banner about being out of stock due to global supply chain issues I then went to their reseller listings. One of them was https://www.maxwarehouse.com/pages/about-us https://www.maxwarehouse.com/pages/about-us And I started to wonder if we’ll see more curated shopping experiences and a resurgence of recognizing the value such a service offers.

z9znz 4y ago
As I wrote the Tell post, I was pondering this. I think curated shopping could be a solution, but as evidenced by some of the current popular "curated" sites, they tend also to race to a less-than-optimal level as well. There are old companies like Consumer Reports which were sort of doing this, but I suspect they have some intentional or unintentional biases. In the tech world we have sites which maybe started out trying to bring light to the best products, but it seems every site gets gamed or just sells out. Then you can't trust it. True word of mouth is reliable, but when none of the mouths can get their hands on the actual good product, there's nobody to recommend it. Or maybe it no longer even exists because the manufacturer couldn't compete with the garbage on Amazon.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >There are old companies like Consumer Reports which were sort of doing this, but I suspect they have some intentional or unintentional biases. Consumer reports was--probably still is--fine in a very mainstream, safe sort of way. Which is probably fine if you're looking for a dishwasher. In general these sites--CR, Wirecutter, etc.--are as appealing for more specialty products whose users have very strong opinions about what they want/need.

foodstances 4y ago

Perhaps a product idea is to make a front-end to Amazon that is able to better filter the results, to bring forward slightly higher priced items that are higher quality, and do a better job of filtering out spam than Amazon (something that filters out those six-letter all-capital-letter Chinese company names). Income would be generated by making all of the links to the actual products Amazon affiliate links, but just make the frontend look exactly like Amazon's search with better results.

z9znz 4y ago
Not a bad idea. But what if there is actually no good product for a given category in Amazon? If it were a meta-front-end and could offer possibilities greater than Amazon alone, then that would be great. And actually, there are enough very similar images that it should be possible to identify identical products across different websites by image alone. Then they could each by grouped by unique product with the website as a list of options of where to buy it. Then maybe I could find a good soft brush telescopic car wash tool.

cwoolfe 4y ago

As a consumer, I am well aware of this problem. I use Fakespot Fake Amazon Review browser extension to help weed out junk reviews and find quality products. (It seems almost all of them are 4.5 stars these days) Another strategy to counter bad-quality products is to buy items directly from the brand's website. i.e. buy socks from hanes.com instead of amazon. Another problem I see with the shopping experience is that I would sometimes spend 10 or 20 minutes looking for just the right product (which is absurd when you think about just how powerful modern filtering and search algorithms can be.) And then it dawned on me. Amazon is making money off of those 10 or 20 minutes of "engagement" because it gives them time to show a bunch of paid ads as I search. To counter that problem, I always filter my results with "Prime Only" and Filter: Show lowest price to highest. I use Prime Only as a proxy-variable to filter out unpopular items (they are probably unpopular for a reason) It's amazing how much money you can save doing this. Usually you can avoid paying double what the default results are.

jszymborski 4y ago
Is this still a better experience than seeking out reputable brand names that have their own online shop? I get my recommendations from user forums and YT channels I trust, and then go straight to the manufacturer.
- konschubert 4y ago
  Usually the manufacturers websites have the highest prices
  - jszymborski 4y ago
    Anecdotally, that's not my experience. In fact, I often find sales on old warehouse stock I don't find elsewhere. Shipping is usually a sticking point, though.
  - chubbnix 4y ago
    Amazon’s seller policy demands that be the case. You can have your listings removed for policy violation if you offer a price lower than amazon including sales events and discounts. The product manufacturer can have priority control on the amazon listing so there is incentive for the manufacturer to be on amazon if only for that control. I see some sellers offer discounts in their website greater than amazon sometimes but they are vulnerable to expulsion if they are reported.

taylodl 4y ago

Amazon has so many scam products now I do my best to avoid them. Target and Walmart are two very good alternatives and since I live in an urban area, their delivery is comparable to Amazon's delivery. Any music gear I buy I go to Sweetwater or specialized retailers. To me it seems like Amazon is becoming a worse and worse shopping experience with each passing day.

HaloZero 4y ago
Whoever is in charge of quality as my Target sucks though. I expect a kind of meh quality at Target but the counterfeit crap stuff at Amazon is at least better than the stuff at Target. The worse is the patio deck chairs that won't actually fit together at Target. Like the welding/metal construction is just wrong.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I bet that same patio set is listed on Amazon (multiple times under different names and with different photos), and it's the same mfg. This is kind of my point. It seems that we now have millions of psuedo-offerings which ultimately boil down to a fraction of actual sources, most of extreme low quality. If we don't do something about this soon, we better be practicing DIY constructions from the many good videos on youtube. Before you know it, the only tool which will actually suffice is the tool you make yourself.
silicon2401 4y ago
I will vouch for Sweetwater anywhere it's mentioned because I've never had such a good customer experience as I have through Sweetwater. I personally enjoy Target and Best Buy a lot. Shopping at Target is oddly enjoyable for me and using their online store has never given me issues. I only really buy from Best Buy online (for both in-store pickup and delivery) and that experience has been good as well.
- Tarragon 4y ago
  Sweetwater's customer experience is so good that it freaks me out. You have an assigned "sales engineer" who calls after the first order you make. So I've talked to them. At one point I ordered a couple of different guitar hangers to try them out. I got a call asking if I meant to order 1 guitar hanger and 1 ukulele hanger. The sales engineer looked at the order, my history, and apparently had notes from one of our conversations and thought it might have been a mistake. It was and we corrected it before it shipped.

turtlebits 4y ago

If Amazon doesn't fulfill your needs, then don't shop there. There are lots of merchants I prefer not to shop at because of one or more dissatisfying reasons.

z9znz 4y ago
I bring it up for discussion because if enough people start talking about it, maybe something changes sooner. edit - and because web search results lean heavily toward the major sellers, and the most major seller is amazon. So even trying to avoid amazon (and other sellers with the same garbage) becomes increasingly difficult.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
this comment is about as clever as reccomending firewood for heating to a person who lived in a highrise apartment. The entire marketplace has changed. I see the same shit amazon sell in physical shops now

cryptozeus 4y ago

Market will correct itself eventually.

z9znz 4y ago
I think this mentality is about like saying the earth/climate will correct itself eventually. Yeah it probably will, but long after I would have liked it to (for my selfish benefit).
LeoPanthera 4y ago
No it won't. "Sears" used to sell high-quality own-brand products, then eventually outsourced to China, now it's gone. Amazon is the next Sears. Eventually something will come along with a selection of curated high-quality products, everyone will celebrate how amazing it is, and it will replace Amazon. Then that too will eventually need to pay back investors and shareholders, exploit its dominant position in the marketplace, and race to the bottom, again. This is the natural cycle of commerce in capitalism.
- cryptozeus 4y ago
  Yes sir you just explained in a paragraph what I said in one sentence haha

elforce002 4y ago

It's interesting. I have 2 years without shopping on amazon. I'm going straight to small businesses. The attention is better and, slowly but surely, pricing and shipping are getting better.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I thought I was doing that, but twice now, I have opted to pay the small business's website directly more than what I would have paid on Amazon, and I end up getting something from Amazon. So at least some have figured out how to price discriminate and pocket the extra money for ordering from the "official" website.

sharkweek 4y ago

Here's the problem: People are still shopping on Amazon em masse so this race to the bottom will continue to happen. Very few people are able to care that the spatula set or kid sunglasses or phone case or... etc etc etc is knockoff quality because it's available fast and cheap. I think (hope) this changes, but as price sensitively likely increases over the coming couple of years for many consumers, they're going to be able to look past the transgressions of environmental impact or durability because, hey, if it breaks, they'll just order another $3 widget to replace it. There is definitely a market for high end, high quality widgets, but price for most will be a roadblock.

workingon 4y ago

This is my favorite HN copypasta post.

z9znz 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand. Can you elaborate on what you mean?
- workingon 4y ago
  Have you been around long? There's one of these posts every couple weeks where everyone complains about everything you just posted about.

edmcnulty101 4y ago

Most reliable brands have a store on Amazon. Go to that store and buy from that store. You get the reliable brand plus the return policy and fast shipping.

z9znz 4y ago
I would love to do this. But I don't know the reliable brand; how can I find it in the sea of search results which is mostly this kind of stuff?
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  I mean things like Patagonia or North Face or Google or what not. You just go to their store. For weird one off shit like a suction cups for your car it's a bit of a gamble.
  - edmcnulty101 4y ago
    *go to their store on Amazon I mean
yetanotherloser 4y ago
Unfortunately, inventory mixing broke that some time ago. You can order from RealBrand's store on Amazon and Amazon can still deliver you something some other seller told them was the same item. It's pretty awful.

kube-system 4y ago

If you want an easy way to find premium products, buy from a retailer that specializes in selling premium products. Easy, cheap, good: pick two.

boboche 4y ago

Their latest financials asically show that without cloud, there would be operational issues. Interresting breakdown analysis of Q2 here (Tom Nash) https://youtu.be/g2D5YCJNtC0 https://youtu.be/g2D5YCJNtC0

z9znz 4y ago
I think Amazon cloud is "too big to fail", in that there would be an unbeliably high global financial cost if it stopped. As such, I think it's even more imperative that the US break Amazon into some pieces. Let the retail division stand on its own. I think that alone would improve their operation (out of necessity for survival).

denton-scratch 4y ago

> shifting the manufacturing to another don't-care country a.k.a. a poor country. So you're blaming businesses in foreign countries for seeing an opportunity to manufacture to a price-point, to satisfy a Western market that can't satisfy that demand domestically. Isn't that what businesses are supposed to do? Perhaps the don't-care countries are really the ones that generate the demand?

z9znz 4y ago
I don't blame the foreign manufacturers. I blame the companies that make decisions, contract the manufacturers, and specify the quality level. I don't care what country those decision makers are in; they are to blame. However, if there were environmental and human rights oversight in the manufacturing facilities, likely the quality of products would go up. Just look at the hoopla over Foxconn/Apple situations has caused. I don't want any product that someone has suffered unreasonably to produce. No comfort of mine is worth great suffering or damage of someone else. The don't care countries probably aren't creating the demand. More likley, it's "home country" people who were the same types who pushed the offshore software development in the previous 20 years (to enormous waste and failure) who are to blame. The poor countries are just a tool for the exploiters. Same as the African countries who get exploited for natural resources by US and western European copmanies.

NoblePublius 4y ago

The solution is called a “brand”. Buy Anker, not random made up Chinese name, electronic accessories. Buy Gildan, not random nameless made-in-Pakistan disposable clothing.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
How do you know it is not commingled in the Amazon warehouse with counterfeit products?
- NoblePublius 4y ago
  Anker has its own store within Amazon, and you can see it as the verified seller on their product pages. But the general point of this post is correct: Amazon is a terrible shopping experience and it’s mostly because they’ve monetized the search

spicymaki 4y ago

Walmart learned that if people (in general) had a choice between cheap and good they would pick cheap. It made them billions. Amazon is just following that playbook, but it is even worse. At Walmart manufacturers at least had to vie for physical shelf space in Walmart so there was a floor on how bad things could get. If the product caused damage you could go after Walmart or an actual manufacturer. Amazon has completely turned that system on its head. You can hardly contact anyone for issues (although Amazon does now have a $1000 damage claim guarantee and an okay return policy for many items) and the manufacturers are just fronts. I still shop at Amazon for certain small items or very niche items, but for big ticket items I usually just go to a physical store. Best Buy has been rather good these last few years with price matching, store pickup (in-car or in-store), and fast shipping.

mkasberg 4y ago

I've found recently that walking into the local Walmart, Costco, or grocery store is a better experience than shopping on Amazon, and I increasingly try to do it instead. Need a spatula? You could look on Amazon and hope you get something relatively sturdy and that isn't filled with chemicals harmful for cooking/eating. Or, you could walk into a local grocery store or Walmart where they probably have 2 or 3 to choose from, they've already researched and selected the best items to stock, and you can feel and see the item before you buy it. I like to think that if enough people realize Amazon is selling garbage and start doing this more, Amazon will need to respond to consumer demand (or will fail).

z9znz 4y ago
I would tend to agree that in person is better/safer, but > they've already researched and selected the best items to stock I'm not convinced at all that the store buyers research and choose with materials consideration (such as BPA and other things we wish to avoid in our food products). Still, it has a better chance than from Amazon. In fact, if the Amazon listing says "BPA free", can you trust it? Is there any way to believe that it is verified? (almost certainly not)
- hacym 4y ago
  Costco fits this model, I think. You might only have one selection for something but you know it’s a quality product and is usually a good deal.
PenguinCoder 4y ago
Problem is, you still get shit quality from Walmart. They optimize for lower cost items. Everything from the spatula to clothing I'd have to rebuy from Walmart, in 3-6 months anyway. No thanks. I want quality items, and I want a store I can trust to get that at. It isn't Walmart, and it's no longer Amazon.
- mmh0000 4y ago
  TL;DR: Even if you're buying "the same thing" from Walmart, it's likely a lower quality version. Many manufactures make lower-quality Walmart-specific SKUs. See: https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart

kazinator 4y ago

> There is one country where most of this garbage comes from ... ... as well as most of the stuff in people's homes, including their cherished iPhones.

parentheses 4y ago

There’s a similar race to the top for brands that are focused on luxury markets. Brands that have a hold on this market now charge exorbitant prices.

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

I cancelled Prime and lean more on target, costco, and brands own shopify/ecommerce sites. Each of these options has more than sufficient shipping speeds. 1 day shipping was a fun Amazon perk but never something I needed.

notyourday 4y ago
> lean more on target, costco, and brands own shopify/ecommerce sites If only shopify could fix the god damn Chrome issue.

arwineap 4y ago

I agree that there's a lot of junk on amazon. Is it really that hard to filter out? I very rarely end up getting something from amazon and have it be completely worthless and not even returnable.

ceejayoz 4y ago
> Is it really that hard to filter out? This depends heavily on the category, in my experience. Clothing and some electronics categories seem to have zero outwardly legitimate listings. I had to buy plug adapters for travel and there wasn't a single brand I recognized except the AmazonBasics ones.

0xcafecafe 4y ago

I recently got an email from amazon saying they are charging my card again for items which I have already returned to them (via the whole foods store). I even have confirmation email of the said returns. Now the email claims they haven't gotten it (which I don't care about as I was only responsible for dropping them off to whole foods). I am sure this is a glitch and I can contact them and get this fixed. However as a new dad this takes time away from other stuff and I would rather not have to deal with this. Will be more wary of purchases from now on.

rr888 4y ago

Time for brands again? I remember when Amazon first started it was great that you could avoid the big, reputable but expensive branded product and buy some alternative from a smaller company. I guess now we should avoid the unknown brands and stick with an established manufacturer.

jeffrallen 4y ago

My local grocery and hardware store don't have this problem. I don't see what the problem is. Just shop locally.

shepherdjerred 4y ago

To provide another viewpoint: I have used Amazon for maybe 10 years. I have thousands of orders with them. I try to buy everything I can from them since it's convenient. I buy things from paper towels to computer components to tools to clothes. I've never received a counterfeit item as far as I know. Any time I buy from a strange company I have 30 days to return the item, and returning is incredibly easy with so many Amazon package drop-off points that now exist -- I don't even have to re-package the item. Companies using familiar, easy-to-use platforms like Stripe and Shopify greatly increases my chance of buying from them. I generally prefer Amazon though because they have consistent customer service, returns are super easy (click a button, take the item to an Amazon Fresh store), and shipping is free with Prime. I'd love for Amazon to have some serious competition, but I don't think there's anything quite as good as it.

effingwewt 4y ago
I can guarantee if you shop that much you've 100% had counterfeit items, you just didn't notice it. Or you're the online shopping equivalent of the 1.5 billion lottery winner the other day. I've said this before but it bears repeating- one good anecdote vesus decades of openly user hostile and duplicitous practices and counterfeits doesn't wash. At this point you are part of the problem by supporting them in their bullshit simply for your convenience.
- 2c2c2c 4y ago
  I buy probably 10 things on amazon a month, none of which I can identify as counterfeit. purchases end up in 3 categories: an item so cheap and generic every version of the product was going to come from the same warehouse in china anyways, amazon basics products, and expensive name brand goods. looking through my past 5 pages of orders, I see an aeropress, old spice deoderant, an ipad magic keyboard, and "genuine hd600 earpad replacement". I guess maybe the latter could be seen as counterfeit and undersirable? there's no perceivable problem in quality with any of these. i get the feeling that people with this mentality don't even try to help themselves. the refund process at amazon takes at most 5minutes. I've had a couple dozen refunds over the years with 0 questions asked, for items upwards of $500. maybe such refund policies are geography based, so service is perceived as awful in these locations?

damnesian 4y ago

There is a solution to this. When it’s an option, buy locally: that is the way to be 100% sure about what you are buying. Many local shops, eager to make sales, will let you try before buying. If not, it’s unusual for stores to not have a return policy, though you do have to keep an eye peeled for “all sales final” signs. Buying local puts money into your community and adds to the sales tax base that finances schools and paves roads.

z9znz 4y ago
Absolutely. It's just becoming difficult to even find such local options :(.

dragontamer 4y ago

> I see no solution to this Small (online) shops focusing on their products, with a set of blogposts describing the products they stock that doubles as reviews. https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Guides/ct/9 https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Guides/ct/9 It can only scale as far as the jetpens owner's ability to write blogposts on pens / stationary. But it turns out that they're pretty good at writing about stationary.

tellmelies 4y ago

You can probably get same day delivery from Target. it might cost a little more and the selection limited to what is in your local store, but it seems like this is a feature given your complaints.

layer8 4y ago

Related sketch by Ryan George: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30 https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30

z9znz 4y ago
This was fantastic! :) I did laugh, and it's a good characterization. I only wish he had shown the same chair with different colors. The company names were great though.

silent_cal 4y ago

It also creates an impossible environment for sellers - you have to compete with people with terrible products and heavy marketing budgets.

borapdx 4y ago

All good points but what matters to them is positive correlation with increasing short term revenue and showing they are in a phase they are extracting (some) profits from what they got billions from investors through the years. On top of that, their relationships with gazillions of Chinese suppliers are heavily disrupted by the political situation but that is a subject nobody wants to talk about right now. The moment when Amazon is going to reap what they are sowing now is not here yet but it is rapidly approaching. It will be marked by a BIG negative earnings surprise (see Netflix for future guidance).

frou_dh 4y ago

This year I've done 4-5 online chats with Amazon's Customer Service trying to resolve a single issue (still unresolved). I've definitely wondered what happened to the old "Customer Obsession" and "World's most customer-centric company" principles that they used to quite legitimately crow about. In days gone by, they would have said sorry for my trouble, and doled out a gift card, months ago.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I suspect that Amazon Retail's days may be numbered. They know it, and don't care. They make most of their money from AWS/Cloud stuff (apparently, a lot of money). I suspect that Retail is becoming a boat anchor. They may spin off their Logistics into a separate business unit; as it's doing fairly well. They are more aware than anyone, about how bad things are. They have meters on everything. Amazon is famous for being a data-driven corporation. This means that someone, somewhere, has calculated the destruction of their brand, and has decided that the end justifies the means.

Ancalagon 4y ago

The solution is simple. Now what we need to do is - hang with me here - shop _inside_ the stores selling the product, so that you can see and test it first hand _before_ you buy it.

hacym 4y ago

Have you tried to buy something shipped from and sold by Amazon recently? I have had a couple promos in my account because of screw ups in shipping, so I’ve tried to use them. It’s impossible to find something that is both shipped from and sold by Amazon. Amazon as a logistics company is also a joke. Their customer service is now bottom of the barrel, which is a real shame because it used to be decent. As a paying Prime customer, my items are late or lost probably 1/3 of the time. Once a real competitor comes around that can compete on price and some level of good selection without being a horrendous experience, Amazon will be put on notice.

rpdillon 4y ago

It's weird...I've been a customer since 2000, and still shop there daily. I hear a lot about counterfits and terrible quality, but my purchases are almost universally perfectly satisfactory for my needs. I think I'm using Amazon differently from others, but I can't figure out the difference.