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I like having a Wild West, but it should be clearly advertised as such. AliExpress and eBay are clearly Wild West platforms and I appreciate them. Getting scam

I like having a Wild West, but it should be clearly advertised as such. AliExpress and eBay are clearly Wild West platforms and I appreciate them. Getting scammed on Amazon is different. Amazon should be fully liable since very sophisticated customers can be confused by commingling, marketplace settlers, algorithmic recommendations, etc. all designed to look legitimate to the unwary while being completely unsafe. I stopped buying food and medical products on Amazon because... scams.

oceanplexian 3y ago
I like having an online store with better selection than whatever I can get at the local Big Box store. People forget how bad it was before Amazon, packages took weeks to deliver with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews). I remember the days of paying $40 for a 3 foot HDMI cable. Bought an unsafe or defective product at a “Trusted” retailer? Enjoy your $3.50 check from the class action lawsuit 3 years later.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews) Given that Amazon reviews are utterly worthless, I'm not sure that's an example of Amazon having more accountability.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yeah so many are paid for reviews. You can tell in Europe because they're obliged to mention it. Almost all reviews on sketchy products are from people recieving the product for free or getting paid.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  > I remember the days of paying $40 for a 3 foot HDMI cable. Only if you needed it right away, though? And even then, back when Google search actually worked, I was able to get an HDMI cable within walking distance (in Beverly Hills, no less) by searching for "cheap HDMI cable Beverly Hills". You'd only pay full freight if you were buying for something important, like a business meeting, that meant you needed it right now and didn't have time to look. That was over a decade ago. I bought most of my stuff from two local businesses that have, unfortunately, discontinued their retail sales in one case (it was never a big part of their business, they mostly do bespoke projects to wire auditoriums, churches, schools, etc. for AV gear) and gone out of business in the other.
Pxtl 3y ago
Right? Maybe at this point it's mostly historical inertia and they've converged to similar UIs, but the mental brand people have for these companies is very different. eBay is buying from Some Guy. AliExpress is buying from a sketchy unlicensed and unregulated warehouse in China. Amazon is a store. These are the reputations they cultivated for themselves.

oceanplexian 3y ago

I like having an online store with better selection than whatever I can get at the local Big Box store. People forget how bad it was before Amazon, packages took weeks to deliver with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews). I remember the days of paying $40 for a 3 foot HDMI cable. Bought an unsafe or defective product at a “Trusted” retailer? Enjoy your $3.50 check from the class action lawsuit 3 years later.

JohnFen 3y ago
> with even less accountability than Amazon (i.e no reviews) Given that Amazon reviews are utterly worthless, I'm not sure that's an example of Amazon having more accountability.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yeah so many are paid for reviews. You can tell in Europe because they're obliged to mention it. Almost all reviews on sketchy products are from people recieving the product for free or getting paid.
devilbunny 3y ago
> I remember the days of paying $40 for a 3 foot HDMI cable. Only if you needed it right away, though? And even then, back when Google search actually worked, I was able to get an HDMI cable within walking distance (in Beverly Hills, no less) by searching for "cheap HDMI cable Beverly Hills". You'd only pay full freight if you were buying for something important, like a business meeting, that meant you needed it right now and didn't have time to look. That was over a decade ago. I bought most of my stuff from two local businesses that have, unfortunately, discontinued their retail sales in one case (it was never a big part of their business, they mostly do bespoke projects to wire auditoriums, churches, schools, etc. for AV gear) and gone out of business in the other.

Pxtl 3y ago

Right? Maybe at this point it's mostly historical inertia and they've converged to similar UIs, but the mental brand people have for these companies is very different. eBay is buying from Some Guy. AliExpress is buying from a sketchy unlicensed and unregulated warehouse in China. Amazon is a store. These are the reputations they cultivated for themselves.