36 ms·

The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

17 points by fortran77 3y ago

otteromkram 3y ago
Two-day shipping was the best thing about Amazon. (Well, it was a reason to subscribe to Prime.) The example used in the article is confusing, too. A single-use purple wig? That's a great case for a generic, cheap product.
cratermoon 3y ago
https://archive.ph/Kz0Rn https://archive.ph/Kz0Rn “around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about” Enshittified
- tivert 3y ago
  > “around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about” And whenever you feel that, hop on AliExpress and find the exact same thing for about a tenth the price.
  - jfim 3y ago
    With two month shipping, instead of two days. It's still worth it sometimes, since Amazon is slowly turning into AliExpress.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > With two month shipping, instead of two days. It's still worth it sometimes, since Amazon is slowly turning into AliExpress. In my experience, it's not that bad. I usually get all my stuff within a couple weeks to a month. Also you have to pay a lot of money for a Prime subscription, and even then Amazon doesn't consistently hit its two day shipping targets (IIRC Amazon without Prime gets you something like no-rush shipping, which takes like week).
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
        Free shipping that you pay for
  - sottol 3y ago
    I guess it depends on the niche. 3D printer parts do often pop up on Amazon 1-2 months after Ali for 5-10% extra. I think many sellers on Aliexpress are aware of the true price people are willing to pay and charge close to that. And then someone does the arbitrage on Amazon close to that. Now if you want to see a "real" good price, go to Taobao and cough up for the MOQ of 1000, that's 1/10th in my niche.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Can you give an example? I keep hearing this, and I've started looking on AliExpress, and the prices are only a little bit cheaper, but the shipping takes forever. Like I recently was looking into desk globes, and the first one that popped up in search is $16 on AliExpress with 4-week shipping, or $20 on Amazon with 1-day shipping: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802137627481.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802137627481.html https://www.amazon.com/TTKTK-Decorative-Geography-Educational-Magnifying/dp/B0791H8BVT https://www.amazon.com/TTKTK-Decorative-Geography-Educationa... And this seems pretty representative. I've never found a single case where it was worth it to buy with AliExpress. Especially since I know I can return anything on Amazon pretty effortlessly, whereas with AliExpress I have no idea.
    - tivert 3y ago
      $15.99 for 1x https://www.amazon.com/Works-Portable-Emergency-Re-Charger-Batteries/dp/B09PC92SG8/ https://www.amazon.com/Works-Portable-Emergency-Re-Charger-B... $10.49 + $5.16 shipping ($15.65) for 5x https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805076529896.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.33.3582fSdxfSdx84&algo_pvid=40fc2982-9ddd-4bff-a0df-81ba4da61a8e&algo_exp_id=40fc2982-9ddd-4bff-a0df-81ba4da61a8e-16&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%2119.80%2110.49%21%21%2119.80%21%21%40210324f116959276758222355e7930%2112000032403959925%21sea%21US%210%21AB&curPageLogUid=jroMPV6SFMsD https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805076529896.html?spm=a2g... $1.50 + $2.59 shipping ($4.09) for 1x https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803289357326.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.7.62895af79WwZTI&algo_pvid=2c8b79a3-8e45-4b3b-b5d1-aeaf60713ce8&algo_exp_id=2c8b79a3-8e45-4b3b-b5d1-aeaf60713ce8-3&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%212.14%211.5%21%21%212.14%21%21%402101e9d516959284233658044e7d17%2112000025956123503%21sea%21US%210%21AB&curPageLogUid=I5rJcgbu0DJj https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803289357326.html?spm=a2g... Literally the exact same thing. I tend to use AliExpress for small electronic doodads and things like battery boxes. I'm not some AliExpress wizard, but I don't think the shipping is fixed per item (and I'm usually ordering several) and I think sometimes they batch orders together (which may lower the shipping price?). I don't know how to get a breakdown of the shipping cost I actually paid, which is one of the things that annoys me about the site.
      - crazygringo 3y ago
- sottol 3y ago
  I'd even say "around every corner lie 10 brands you've never heard of, selling 20 slight variations of the same product you're not sure about".
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  I choose to call it "fuzzed." The level of noise has increased to make it much harder to detect the signal. This is not about predatory monetization.
joenot443 3y ago
It's sort of funny - the author's first complaint was about the query "purple wig". Perhaps I'm getting better results since I'm using an adblocker, but is this not what the author was after? [1] I see lots of wigs in lots of different styles, all purple, all around $20. If I went to a costume store it'd be a little cheaper, but that's the idea of Amazon, is it not? They're concerned they've never heard of the brands (do you know any wig brands?), but remember this is for a kid's halloween costume. [1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=purple+wig https://www.amazon.com/s?k=purple+wig Look, at the end of the day, the consumer is still largely coming out on top here. They get what they want, shipped free, tomorrow. If you pitched that system to someone in 1999 they'd laugh you out of the boardroom, it's only due to Amazon's gargantuan scale that it's become possible. Of all the annoyances online these days, sponsored Amazon listings have never struck me as the ones to be distressed over.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jhbadger 3y ago
  I think the argument was there was no way to know which (if any) of the wigs were good quality because of their weird off-brand status as opposed to branded Raquel Welch, Jon Renau, etc. Of course many of the off brand wigs may be made in the same factory as the big names, but it is impossible to tell.
dosplatos 3y ago
> The problem isn’t that it lacks what you want, but that it offers infinite permutations of often unknowable quality. This the problem. The actual worthwhile products being buried in a sea of garbo. Along with the reviews being gamed, it's essentially the online equivalent of a flea market. It just means consumers have to be more careful and do a lot more research before they buy. While this isn't a new thing for anyone here, this will be a necessary behavior shift for everyone in order to avoid these dark patterns, and to get safe and quality products. This isn't just an amazon problem. Essentially: avoid impulse shopping.
- pixl97 3y ago
  This is something brick and mortar does, limits the amount of space far garbage. Most retailers were at least somewhat selective on what they sold just to avoid returns to the store they had to deal with.
crazygringo 3y ago
> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Which is actually great! I'm not even joking. There has been an explosion of helpful products that simply didn't exist before, because these Chinese manufacturers are so willing to experiment. Consumer-friendly shelves of every type and dimension. Massage balls/tools of a wide variety of textures and hardnesses. Highly specific niche costumes. And a million other things. I used to think "I really need this exact thing in this exact size but it doesn't exist", and 10 years it never did. These days, I look on Amazon, and -- son of a gun, there are 5 different versions of it all from the past year. You can see that the newest model from last month fixes problems that reviewers of the previous model were complaining about. No recognizable American brand has bothered to satisfy the market, but 5 different random Chinese "brands" have. And that's an amazing thing. > Good deals on name brands are harder to come by. Citation needed. All my Under Armour workout gear, for example, is usually 30-50% cheaper on Amazon that it is on the Under Armour site itself, or from somewhere like Macy's. Apple laptops and iPads are regularly 10-20% cheaper than from Apple. Name brand merchandise sold on Amazon is more consistently cheaper than from anywhere else in my experience. (It is highly dependent on the specific brand though, so I'm talking about in aggregate -- some brands just aren't discounted on Amazon or anywhere else at all.)
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  And on top of all that they're all hazardous and made poorly and pay people to lie to you about them being hazardous and made poorly. This is great!
  - joenot443 3y ago
    But you forgot the best part, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it! What a world! :)
  - kylebenzle 3y ago
    Amazon does seem to be going through a rapid Alibabaificaiton. For random big purchases I check Alibaba prices, most recently a solar powered water pump, and they'd have it cheaper and more variety, but someone has got their pipeline of: Alibaba scraping --> Amazon product hacking --> Drop shipping, figured out.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zaptheimpaler 3y ago
> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Amazon used to be a department store, now its a bazaar + department store. You can still find the old trusted brand stuff if you want, but now you can also get a much larger diversity of products. People in the department store model just assume that any weirdly named brand they haven't heard of is just automatically a shitty product but that hasn't been true for a long time. Actually pretty often the well known brand is selling the same thing at a 2x markup. The department stores have their own websites if you prefer that curated experience though.
dannygail556 3y ago
[dead]

17 points by fortran77 3y ago

Two-day shipping was the best thing about Amazon. (Well, it was a reason to subscribe to Prime.) The example used in the article is confusing, too. A single-use purple wig? That's a great case for a generic, cheap product.

cratermoon 3y ago

https://archive.ph/Kz0Rn https://archive.ph/Kz0Rn “around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about” Enshittified

tivert 3y ago
> “around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about” And whenever you feel that, hop on AliExpress and find the exact same thing for about a tenth the price.
- jfim 3y ago
  With two month shipping, instead of two days. It's still worth it sometimes, since Amazon is slowly turning into AliExpress.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > With two month shipping, instead of two days. It's still worth it sometimes, since Amazon is slowly turning into AliExpress. In my experience, it's not that bad. I usually get all my stuff within a couple weeks to a month. Also you have to pay a lot of money for a Prime subscription, and even then Amazon doesn't consistently hit its two day shipping targets (IIRC Amazon without Prime gets you something like no-rush shipping, which takes like week).
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
      Free shipping that you pay for
- sottol 3y ago
  I guess it depends on the niche. 3D printer parts do often pop up on Amazon 1-2 months after Ali for 5-10% extra. I think many sellers on Aliexpress are aware of the true price people are willing to pay and charge close to that. And then someone does the arbitrage on Amazon close to that. Now if you want to see a "real" good price, go to Taobao and cough up for the MOQ of 1000, that's 1/10th in my niche.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Can you give an example? I keep hearing this, and I've started looking on AliExpress, and the prices are only a little bit cheaper, but the shipping takes forever. Like I recently was looking into desk globes, and the first one that popped up in search is $16 on AliExpress with 4-week shipping, or $20 on Amazon with 1-day shipping: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802137627481.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802137627481.html https://www.amazon.com/TTKTK-Decorative-Geography-Educational-Magnifying/dp/B0791H8BVT https://www.amazon.com/TTKTK-Decorative-Geography-Educationa... And this seems pretty representative. I've never found a single case where it was worth it to buy with AliExpress. Especially since I know I can return anything on Amazon pretty effortlessly, whereas with AliExpress I have no idea.
  - tivert 3y ago
    $15.99 for 1x https://www.amazon.com/Works-Portable-Emergency-Re-Charger-Batteries/dp/B09PC92SG8/ https://www.amazon.com/Works-Portable-Emergency-Re-Charger-B... $10.49 + $5.16 shipping ($15.65) for 5x https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805076529896.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.33.3582fSdxfSdx84&algo_pvid=40fc2982-9ddd-4bff-a0df-81ba4da61a8e&algo_exp_id=40fc2982-9ddd-4bff-a0df-81ba4da61a8e-16&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%2119.80%2110.49%21%21%2119.80%21%21%40210324f116959276758222355e7930%2112000032403959925%21sea%21US%210%21AB&curPageLogUid=jroMPV6SFMsD https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805076529896.html?spm=a2g... $1.50 + $2.59 shipping ($4.09) for 1x https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803289357326.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.7.62895af79WwZTI&algo_pvid=2c8b79a3-8e45-4b3b-b5d1-aeaf60713ce8&algo_exp_id=2c8b79a3-8e45-4b3b-b5d1-aeaf60713ce8-3&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%212.14%211.5%21%21%212.14%21%21%402101e9d516959284233658044e7d17%2112000025956123503%21sea%21US%210%21AB&curPageLogUid=I5rJcgbu0DJj https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803289357326.html?spm=a2g... Literally the exact same thing. I tend to use AliExpress for small electronic doodads and things like battery boxes. I'm not some AliExpress wizard, but I don't think the shipping is fixed per item (and I'm usually ordering several) and I think sometimes they batch orders together (which may lower the shipping price?). I don't know how to get a breakdown of the shipping cost I actually paid, which is one of the things that annoys me about the site.
    - crazygringo 3y ago
sottol 3y ago
I'd even say "around every corner lie 10 brands you've never heard of, selling 20 slight variations of the same product you're not sure about".
slowmovintarget 3y ago
I choose to call it "fuzzed." The level of noise has increased to make it much harder to detect the signal. This is not about predatory monetization.

joenot443 3y ago

It's sort of funny - the author's first complaint was about the query "purple wig". Perhaps I'm getting better results since I'm using an adblocker, but is this not what the author was after? [1] I see lots of wigs in lots of different styles, all purple, all around $20. If I went to a costume store it'd be a little cheaper, but that's the idea of Amazon, is it not? They're concerned they've never heard of the brands (do you know any wig brands?), but remember this is for a kid's halloween costume. [1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=purple+wig https://www.amazon.com/s?k=purple+wig Look, at the end of the day, the consumer is still largely coming out on top here. They get what they want, shipped free, tomorrow. If you pitched that system to someone in 1999 they'd laugh you out of the boardroom, it's only due to Amazon's gargantuan scale that it's become possible. Of all the annoyances online these days, sponsored Amazon listings have never struck me as the ones to be distressed over.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jhbadger 3y ago
I think the argument was there was no way to know which (if any) of the wigs were good quality because of their weird off-brand status as opposed to branded Raquel Welch, Jon Renau, etc. Of course many of the off brand wigs may be made in the same factory as the big names, but it is impossible to tell.

dosplatos 3y ago

> The problem isn’t that it lacks what you want, but that it offers infinite permutations of often unknowable quality. This the problem. The actual worthwhile products being buried in a sea of garbo. Along with the reviews being gamed, it's essentially the online equivalent of a flea market. It just means consumers have to be more careful and do a lot more research before they buy. While this isn't a new thing for anyone here, this will be a necessary behavior shift for everyone in order to avoid these dark patterns, and to get safe and quality products. This isn't just an amazon problem. Essentially: avoid impulse shopping.

pixl97 3y ago
This is something brick and mortar does, limits the amount of space far garbage. Most retailers were at least somewhat selective on what they sold just to avoid returns to the store they had to deal with.

crazygringo 3y ago

> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Which is actually great! I'm not even joking. There has been an explosion of helpful products that simply didn't exist before, because these Chinese manufacturers are so willing to experiment. Consumer-friendly shelves of every type and dimension. Massage balls/tools of a wide variety of textures and hardnesses. Highly specific niche costumes. And a million other things. I used to think "I really need this exact thing in this exact size but it doesn't exist", and 10 years it never did. These days, I look on Amazon, and -- son of a gun, there are 5 different versions of it all from the past year. You can see that the newest model from last month fixes problems that reviewers of the previous model were complaining about. No recognizable American brand has bothered to satisfy the market, but 5 different random Chinese "brands" have. And that's an amazing thing. > Good deals on name brands are harder to come by. Citation needed. All my Under Armour workout gear, for example, is usually 30-50% cheaper on Amazon that it is on the Under Armour site itself, or from somewhere like Macy's. Apple laptops and iPads are regularly 10-20% cheaper than from Apple. Name brand merchandise sold on Amazon is more consistently cheaper than from anywhere else in my experience. (It is highly dependent on the specific brand though, so I'm talking about in aggregate -- some brands just aren't discounted on Amazon or anywhere else at all.)

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
And on top of all that they're all hazardous and made poorly and pay people to lie to you about them being hazardous and made poorly. This is great!
- joenot443 3y ago
  But you forgot the best part, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it! What a world! :)
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  Amazon does seem to be going through a rapid Alibabaificaiton. For random big purchases I check Alibaba prices, most recently a solar powered water pump, and they'd have it cheaper and more variety, but someone has got their pipeline of: Alibaba scraping --> Amazon product hacking --> Drop shipping, figured out.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zaptheimpaler 3y ago

> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Amazon used to be a department store, now its a bazaar + department store. You can still find the old trusted brand stuff if you want, but now you can also get a much larger diversity of products. People in the department store model just assume that any weirdly named brand they haven't heard of is just automatically a shitty product but that hasn't been true for a long time. Actually pretty often the well known brand is selling the same thing at a 2x markup. The department stores have their own websites if you prefer that curated experience though.

dannygail556 3y ago

[dead]