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> Amazon is filled with garbage Full stop, no need to specify e-books. I've moved my purchasing dollars elsewhere at this point with the exception of some ver

> Amazon is filled with garbage Full stop, no need to specify e-books. I've moved my purchasing dollars elsewhere at this point with the exception of some very specific categories. Amazon is just too unreliable.

ethbr1 2y ago
Agreed. I let my Prime subscription expire a few days ago. Amazon's thrown in the towel on streaming and decided it'd rather be an ad-supported model with Freevee (which also eventually inherits Prime-exclusive shows). For the rare instances I do want to order something physical from Amazon, waiting isn't a problem. For the rest of the time, I'd rather my dollars go anywhere else. When someone like me looks at Walmart and says "There's a more ethical alternative", Amazon might have a problem. But I assume Amazon retail leadership is self aware they're milking the long tail of historical brand cachet while under-investing in their future, at this point. AWS and maybe some other businesses spin off, adios to the remainder as Sears 2.0.
- BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  The thing I always underestimate, in regards to bad / anti-consumer behaviour, is the size of the customer base (and sometimes in combination with the bell curve / normal distribution of intelligence, but maybe not in this case). The scope of humanity that use Amazon is gigantic, and the percentage of us pedantic, technically knowledgeable folks who'd give up some convenience, time, or even the purchase of an item, as part of a "righteous crusade" is vanishingly small. Amazon may even increase their sales as consumer X purchases a replacement "thing 2" because "thing 1" was dead on arrival, and money these days ain't worth the hassle of returning or getting a refund on "thing 1".
  - kredd 2y ago
    It works until people look at things like Temu, and figure out “why should I get from Amazon, when I can buy something for the same quality”. It’s just a battle of giants.
    - sph 2y ago
      Who? There's your problem. I have never heard of Temu, and neither have many who know (and use) Amazon.
      - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
        That’s only a matter of time and advertising though.
      - kredd 2y ago
        If you believe their stats, they have 70M+ active users in US, so I’m assuming you’re just not their target customer.
        sph 2y ago
        Not everybody lives in the US. Stats indicate that 53% of Temu users are from the US, and 7.5% are from the UK where I live. Thanks for advertising it to me, but it might be futile. After having had my experience with the Amazon shopping giant, and how it fell from grace, I do not care to "invest" in another giant that will eventually end the same way.
        roryirvine 2y ago
        It only launched in the UK a year ago, but is now the "UK's most-downloaded shopping app" according to The Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/money-mentor/consumer-rights/what-is-temu-and-is-it-legit https://www.thetimes.co.uk/money-mentor/consumer-rights/what... Sure, not all of those downloads will have resulted in a purchase - but the same is true of Amazon. The point is that Temu is takes the "masses of cheap crap" aspect of Amazon, and makes a virtue of it. It's effectively the Ryanair model - most people want cheap crap, so why bother with the last vestiges of Amazon-style customer service when you can ditch all that and be even cheaper and crappier?
        kredd 2y ago
        Yeah, fair. I’ve never used it to be honest, but from what I’ve heard from my friends it’s good at “cheap crap that I need” category. My point wasn’t advertising it to someone, but saying even the giants like Amazon could see its lunch being chipped away slowly if they don’t fix their issues. That being said, I won’t be surprising once the competition starts heating up, they’ll start banning other Chinese tech companies in US.
- dayjaby 2y ago
  I'm glad I did that years ago. Amazon Music playing ads even during purchased songs. Kindle tokens expiring as soon as you stop your monthly subscription. Enough is enough.
Animats 2y ago
Right. After I got a recall notice on some Amazon vitamins because they were counterfeit, I stopped ordering much of anything from Amazon. A competing "direct from the manufacturer" sales site would be useful. Only the business that actually makes the thing could sell it. No intermediaries.
- enobrev 2y ago
  I canceled prime earlier this year when they announced ads in prime video, which I rarely used but seemed like a red flag. I'd lost trust in them for consumable products long ago. I've saved a good deal of money, and waiting a couple extra days for delivery has only been a minor inconvenience . I had the same thought a couple weeks ago regarding direct-from-manufactuerer product search / purchase. I'd use it regularly.
  - jillesvangurp 2y ago
    I did the same thing. But for different reasons. I cancelled both Netflix and Amazon Prime last year and decided to do account hopping on a month by month basis. Their greed is what triggered this. Both have gone down a path of less and less interesting content, price increases, and now indeed this ad driven bullshit. I realized I'm paying 20 euros per month for both and struggling to find something worth watching for months. So, I cancelled both and went over to Apple TV. They don't have a lot but what they have is quite nice. Once I'm done with that, I'll consider what to subscribe to next. Criteria here: whatever I pick has to have stuff I want to watch (ad free, obviously) and I'll unsubscribe the second I get bored. I'm done paying for multiple streaming services at the same time. I only want the good stuff. I'm not interested in the generic filler content, B movies, etc. that are cheap to license but horrible to watch. I might come back to Netflix or Prime periodically to check certain shows. But not on a permanent basis. If more people do this, that gives them a nice price signal that they need to invest in quality.
- phatfish 2y ago
  I find good deals on manufacture online stores, so that would be helpful. It started from using Amazon to research and then looking for alternative larger online stores to buy from when product+shipping more or less matched Amazon. A couple of times I have found good deals direct from the manufacture that were not available elsewhere, so I make a point of checking there as well now. It feels like companies are able to setup a competent online store more easily now (billing and logistics).
Beldin 2y ago
Nevertheless, spam ebooks do deserve a separate category. There is an actual industry around spam ebooks that offers aspiring fraudsters the tools to quickly cobble together junk with enough stolen content that readers are getting their $0.99 worth. (That latter part helps raise the bar against refund requests.) Moreover, this industry has developed tools and mechanisms to SEO and spam your fraudulent book. Why launch it as ine book, instead of 20 by 20 different authors, with slight variations on the title? Some of these tricks may be used for physical products as well, but at least they need to deliver a physical product. In the case of spam ebooks, this pipeline takes care of everything. You click around for a few hours, launch the software: bam, 20 junk books with just enough content to not warrant refunds and SEO'd titles to get at least a few dozen sales. I looked into this well over a decade ago; back then, you could buy a set of DVDs that would teach (and, perhaps, assist) you in perpetrating this. I get the appeal: back then a popular category was tax tip books. Scrape some tips from here and there, slap on a dozen titles and author names, and sell for low enough that people don't mind taking a chance on your crap. Pity Amazon still hasn't made any successful steps against this.
- SXX 2y ago
  Dont you think problem with spam books is that someone actually buys them? Without enough demand no one would do it.
  - Beldin 2y ago
    If you can get a copy of "100 money-saving tax tips" for $1.99, and the preview already sounds promising, wouldn't you? Even one good tip would easily save you the price of the book. (Also: to me, blaming demand is a bit victim blaming - these scams are deliberately set up to entice as many readers as possible.)
    - SXX 2y ago
      I mean if a person buys one such book for $1.99, not refunds it and afterwards he continue to buy same low-quality books then might be it wasn't such a bad deal for them? Might be they actually think they extracted enough value from it? How it's different than any other low-quality literature which was always in abundance on the market? Except before copywriting cost $500 and now generated one cost $20 to produce. Who should be ultimate censor of what books must be released an what books shouldn't? PS: Same way some people love to buy cheap trash from AliExpress for $1.99 and at least generated books dont create actual e-waste, CO2 footprint and other pollution. And Amazon is now full with trash from AliExpress just 2x more expensive.
faluzure 2y ago
Every once in a while I try to become an Amazon seller through FBA. I sell quality goods without a huge markup. My latest attempt resulted in 1/3 of the goods being returned because they could be sourced cheaper elsewhere (eg AliExpress) after they were tested, or they were swapped by the buyer with defective goods purchase elsewhere returned (they had heavy wear). In the case where the goods were still functional, the packaging was damaged and I had to pay for the returns. My conclusion is that amazons liberal return policies only allow something to be sold profitably at a 2-3x markup. Hence everything being garbage. I won’t attempt it again.
- devoutsalsa 2y ago
  As a consumer I love liberal return policies, as I can buy something I’m not sure about to try it out. When I was in Colombia, but avoided buying some AirPods because I couldn’t try them on, and once purchased I could not return them. When I buy shoes online , I’ll buy maybe 7 pairs, find the best fit, and return rest. As a vendor, I can’t imagine dealing with a high percentage of returns. I don’t know what the solution is.
  - mattmanser 2y ago
    The solution is pricing it in. Like stores that sold physical goods had to price in things like staff or shoplifting or business rates.
  - myaccount80 2y ago
    how do you feel about the resource waste of such return policies? Shipping all these items to then return most of them is an insane amount of waste. And sometimes returned items cannot be resold so they are thrown away. Imo there should be clear limits on returns
    - devoutsalsa 2y ago
      I'd prefer not to. In my case, it's nearly impossible to find shoes that fit. My size is not available in stores.
birracerveza 2y ago
The problem is that unless you buy Brand stuff, you're just paying double the price for being dropshitted Aliexpress garbage. Yes, that was a typo but I'm leaving it.
jhbadger 2y ago
> Amazon is filled with garbage. Full stop, no need to specify e-books. But the problem is where else can you buy things online where this isn't a problem these days? Everywhere has become a marketplace akin to Alibaba (where people traditionally accepted the tradeoff of poor reliability in exchange for good prices when decent products were actually delivered).
- Free-is-Freedom 2y ago
  Here's the secret: Aliexpress is actually very good. If you can find an offering where the materials and processes are detailed AND the price reflects these details THEN you can get excellent value and items that last. Buying without meeting these conditions will only yield garbage and scams.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
What are the alternatives to Amazon?

ethbr1 2y ago

Agreed. I let my Prime subscription expire a few days ago. Amazon's thrown in the towel on streaming and decided it'd rather be an ad-supported model with Freevee (which also eventually inherits Prime-exclusive shows). For the rare instances I do want to order something physical from Amazon, waiting isn't a problem. For the rest of the time, I'd rather my dollars go anywhere else. When someone like me looks at Walmart and says "There's a more ethical alternative", Amazon might have a problem. But I assume Amazon retail leadership is self aware they're milking the long tail of historical brand cachet while under-investing in their future, at this point. AWS and maybe some other businesses spin off, adios to the remainder as Sears 2.0.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago
The thing I always underestimate, in regards to bad / anti-consumer behaviour, is the size of the customer base (and sometimes in combination with the bell curve / normal distribution of intelligence, but maybe not in this case). The scope of humanity that use Amazon is gigantic, and the percentage of us pedantic, technically knowledgeable folks who'd give up some convenience, time, or even the purchase of an item, as part of a "righteous crusade" is vanishingly small. Amazon may even increase their sales as consumer X purchases a replacement "thing 2" because "thing 1" was dead on arrival, and money these days ain't worth the hassle of returning or getting a refund on "thing 1".
- kredd 2y ago
  It works until people look at things like Temu, and figure out “why should I get from Amazon, when I can buy something for the same quality”. It’s just a battle of giants.
  - sph 2y ago
    Who? There's your problem. I have never heard of Temu, and neither have many who know (and use) Amazon.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      That’s only a matter of time and advertising though.
    - kredd 2y ago
      If you believe their stats, they have 70M+ active users in US, so I’m assuming you’re just not their target customer.
      - sph 2y ago
        Not everybody lives in the US. Stats indicate that 53% of Temu users are from the US, and 7.5% are from the UK where I live. Thanks for advertising it to me, but it might be futile. After having had my experience with the Amazon shopping giant, and how it fell from grace, I do not care to "invest" in another giant that will eventually end the same way.
        roryirvine 2y ago
        It only launched in the UK a year ago, but is now the "UK's most-downloaded shopping app" according to The Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/money-mentor/consumer-rights/what-is-temu-and-is-it-legit https://www.thetimes.co.uk/money-mentor/consumer-rights/what... Sure, not all of those downloads will have resulted in a purchase - but the same is true of Amazon. The point is that Temu is takes the "masses of cheap crap" aspect of Amazon, and makes a virtue of it. It's effectively the Ryanair model - most people want cheap crap, so why bother with the last vestiges of Amazon-style customer service when you can ditch all that and be even cheaper and crappier?
        kredd 2y ago
        Yeah, fair. I’ve never used it to be honest, but from what I’ve heard from my friends it’s good at “cheap crap that I need” category. My point wasn’t advertising it to someone, but saying even the giants like Amazon could see its lunch being chipped away slowly if they don’t fix their issues. That being said, I won’t be surprising once the competition starts heating up, they’ll start banning other Chinese tech companies in US.
dayjaby 2y ago
I'm glad I did that years ago. Amazon Music playing ads even during purchased songs. Kindle tokens expiring as soon as you stop your monthly subscription. Enough is enough.

Animats 2y ago

Right. After I got a recall notice on some Amazon vitamins because they were counterfeit, I stopped ordering much of anything from Amazon. A competing "direct from the manufacturer" sales site would be useful. Only the business that actually makes the thing could sell it. No intermediaries.

enobrev 2y ago
I canceled prime earlier this year when they announced ads in prime video, which I rarely used but seemed like a red flag. I'd lost trust in them for consumable products long ago. I've saved a good deal of money, and waiting a couple extra days for delivery has only been a minor inconvenience . I had the same thought a couple weeks ago regarding direct-from-manufactuerer product search / purchase. I'd use it regularly.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  I did the same thing. But for different reasons. I cancelled both Netflix and Amazon Prime last year and decided to do account hopping on a month by month basis. Their greed is what triggered this. Both have gone down a path of less and less interesting content, price increases, and now indeed this ad driven bullshit. I realized I'm paying 20 euros per month for both and struggling to find something worth watching for months. So, I cancelled both and went over to Apple TV. They don't have a lot but what they have is quite nice. Once I'm done with that, I'll consider what to subscribe to next. Criteria here: whatever I pick has to have stuff I want to watch (ad free, obviously) and I'll unsubscribe the second I get bored. I'm done paying for multiple streaming services at the same time. I only want the good stuff. I'm not interested in the generic filler content, B movies, etc. that are cheap to license but horrible to watch. I might come back to Netflix or Prime periodically to check certain shows. But not on a permanent basis. If more people do this, that gives them a nice price signal that they need to invest in quality.
phatfish 2y ago
I find good deals on manufacture online stores, so that would be helpful. It started from using Amazon to research and then looking for alternative larger online stores to buy from when product+shipping more or less matched Amazon. A couple of times I have found good deals direct from the manufacture that were not available elsewhere, so I make a point of checking there as well now. It feels like companies are able to setup a competent online store more easily now (billing and logistics).

Beldin 2y ago

Nevertheless, spam ebooks do deserve a separate category. There is an actual industry around spam ebooks that offers aspiring fraudsters the tools to quickly cobble together junk with enough stolen content that readers are getting their $0.99 worth. (That latter part helps raise the bar against refund requests.) Moreover, this industry has developed tools and mechanisms to SEO and spam your fraudulent book. Why launch it as ine book, instead of 20 by 20 different authors, with slight variations on the title? Some of these tricks may be used for physical products as well, but at least they need to deliver a physical product. In the case of spam ebooks, this pipeline takes care of everything. You click around for a few hours, launch the software: bam, 20 junk books with just enough content to not warrant refunds and SEO'd titles to get at least a few dozen sales. I looked into this well over a decade ago; back then, you could buy a set of DVDs that would teach (and, perhaps, assist) you in perpetrating this. I get the appeal: back then a popular category was tax tip books. Scrape some tips from here and there, slap on a dozen titles and author names, and sell for low enough that people don't mind taking a chance on your crap. Pity Amazon still hasn't made any successful steps against this.

SXX 2y ago
Dont you think problem with spam books is that someone actually buys them? Without enough demand no one would do it.
- Beldin 2y ago
  If you can get a copy of "100 money-saving tax tips" for $1.99, and the preview already sounds promising, wouldn't you? Even one good tip would easily save you the price of the book. (Also: to me, blaming demand is a bit victim blaming - these scams are deliberately set up to entice as many readers as possible.)
  - SXX 2y ago
    I mean if a person buys one such book for $1.99, not refunds it and afterwards he continue to buy same low-quality books then might be it wasn't such a bad deal for them? Might be they actually think they extracted enough value from it? How it's different than any other low-quality literature which was always in abundance on the market? Except before copywriting cost $500 and now generated one cost $20 to produce. Who should be ultimate censor of what books must be released an what books shouldn't? PS: Same way some people love to buy cheap trash from AliExpress for $1.99 and at least generated books dont create actual e-waste, CO2 footprint and other pollution. And Amazon is now full with trash from AliExpress just 2x more expensive.

faluzure 2y ago

Every once in a while I try to become an Amazon seller through FBA. I sell quality goods without a huge markup. My latest attempt resulted in 1/3 of the goods being returned because they could be sourced cheaper elsewhere (eg AliExpress) after they were tested, or they were swapped by the buyer with defective goods purchase elsewhere returned (they had heavy wear). In the case where the goods were still functional, the packaging was damaged and I had to pay for the returns. My conclusion is that amazons liberal return policies only allow something to be sold profitably at a 2-3x markup. Hence everything being garbage. I won’t attempt it again.

devoutsalsa 2y ago
As a consumer I love liberal return policies, as I can buy something I’m not sure about to try it out. When I was in Colombia, but avoided buying some AirPods because I couldn’t try them on, and once purchased I could not return them. When I buy shoes online , I’ll buy maybe 7 pairs, find the best fit, and return rest. As a vendor, I can’t imagine dealing with a high percentage of returns. I don’t know what the solution is.
- mattmanser 2y ago
  The solution is pricing it in. Like stores that sold physical goods had to price in things like staff or shoplifting or business rates.
- myaccount80 2y ago
  how do you feel about the resource waste of such return policies? Shipping all these items to then return most of them is an insane amount of waste. And sometimes returned items cannot be resold so they are thrown away. Imo there should be clear limits on returns
  - devoutsalsa 2y ago
    I'd prefer not to. In my case, it's nearly impossible to find shoes that fit. My size is not available in stores.

birracerveza 2y ago

The problem is that unless you buy Brand stuff, you're just paying double the price for being dropshitted Aliexpress garbage. Yes, that was a typo but I'm leaving it.

jhbadger 2y ago

> Amazon is filled with garbage. Full stop, no need to specify e-books. But the problem is where else can you buy things online where this isn't a problem these days? Everywhere has become a marketplace akin to Alibaba (where people traditionally accepted the tradeoff of poor reliability in exchange for good prices when decent products were actually delivered).

Free-is-Freedom 2y ago
Here's the secret: Aliexpress is actually very good. If you can find an offering where the materials and processes are detailed AND the price reflects these details THEN you can get excellent value and items that last. Buying without meeting these conditions will only yield garbage and scams.

shepherdjerred 2y ago

What are the alternatives to Amazon?