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This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their exp

This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings for the same item, sizes and quantities that mysteriously move from one listing to another, prices that vary 10x or more... It's utterly baffling to me why Amazon created this consumer-hostile nightmare. I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but everything home and toiletries I buy from Target online, simply because the listings and prices are totally consistent. Even though I have Prime! I don't understand why Amazon doesn't figure out that Prime consumers like me buy from Target instead because Amazon's household supplies listings are such utter unpredictable garbage, while Target just works like a normal store.

booi 2y ago
It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Vote for politicians that campaign on consumer protection legislation. Here in Europe, it's been mandatory to show a price related to a reasonable common base point (e.g. liter, kilogram, piece, usage-unit for laundry detergent) adjacent to the actual product's price for many years now. You can go and use 1/10/100 grams/milliliters though for small scale packages where that is reasonably common (e.g. spices), and that's it. Fun fact, that piece of legislation significantly contributed to Brexit propaganda, the campaign was based on "the EU wants to take away our pints/stones/pounds/whatnot".
  - zyberzero 2y ago
    Fun fact: my local store uses different units for the comparisons. Not that you can choose from that many different units, but for example brand A corn flakes comparison price is price/serving while brand B corn flakes is compared by price/kg. Sure, the serving is based on weight but I still need to do some math to figure out which one is cheaper :) This is one of the biggest food chains in Sweden.
    - fbdab103 2y ago
      Incredibly common in the US as well to use different units per item. All the better because our garbage measuring system can make unit switches significantly trickier.
      - Arrath 2y ago
        I had to do a double take a few weeks ago when I found the price/unit to be drastically different for the name brand to the store brand of something, until I realized they strategically switched the <unit> (# to oz I think it was) to make the store brand look astronomically cheaper instead of just slightly cheaper.
        newzisforsukas 2y ago
        > strategically More like deceptively... If a person did that, I would consider the behavior antisocial.
        bombcar 2y ago
        The one I’ve seen a couple of times recently is where the bigger item is more expensive per unit volume unit weight. This is sneaky as hell.
    - rqtwteye 2y ago
      "Serving" is the biggest vector for manipulation ever. They can make up whatever they want. I still remember looking at a small bag of potato chips that had 3 servings.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It'd not even that I care much about small deviations--I just don't trust that something really crazy won't happen if I put it on autopilot. If I walk into Walmart and grab a big armful of Bounty I'm fairly confident things will be fine.
  - bsimpson 2y ago
    I'm in the process of moving. I thought maybe I'd give Prime Day a try and send some soaps ahead to my new place. In my last apartment, I used Method's pump-dispenser laundry detergent and their basil-scented kitchen hand soap. Amazon is selling the laundry detergent for $75 and the hand soap for $15. I'm guessing Method discontinued the SKUs I was used to, and there's some leftover stock on Amazon with crazy prices.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      Or: There's third-parties that are selling the stuff at seemingly-outrageous prices just because there aren't other sellers moving them in large, efficient [at least pallet-sized] quantities on Amazon. People sometimes want whatever they want, and some people are willing to pay a lot for whatever that is. That is not necessarily abusive. eg, I like sardines, and there's some very particular sardines that I'm rather fond of. I'd love to pay $1 or $2 per tin for them, but I'll also pay $6 per tin for them if I must when they just aren't available otherwise for whatever reason. Much of this can be explained with just supply and demand. Don't even ask me about the price of Heinz canned beans in tomato juice or bottles of HP Sauce in grocery stores in my part of Ohio. They're inexpensive staples in some parts of the world, but if I can even find them here they're ludicrously expensive. Amazon (and third-party sellers using Amazon) are no different than my local grocer is in that particular way. Back in context of TFA: The problem isn't that things can be expensive; the problem is primarily that one must be able to easily compare prices and products, and an Alexa device is presently a terrible interface for letting that happen. (The Amazon website is also sometimes not very good at this, even on a real computer.)
  - prepend 2y ago
    I switched to Walmart a few years ago and their online experience has been more consistent. Although I detect it’s starting to drift as they switch to a “marketplace” approach similar to Amazon.
- polynomial 2y ago
  This creates the opportunity for a start up offering such spreadsheet management as a service to flourish in the ecosystem whether or not Amazon ends up acquiring them. Yes I am being facetious. (obvi)
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    Unfortunately, another commenter is indicating that they’ve done just that. This is truly some darkest timeline stuff.
- juxtaposicion 2y ago
  We're building that spreadsheet as a product. I'd love to show you. I'd message you a private link to a prototype but you have no contact info on your profile. If you are interested, can you email or DM me using my profile info?
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    You also don't have an email on your profile, for what it's worth. I don't use Twitter. I'd be interested in something like this as well.
    - juxtaposicion 2y ago
      Oh, thanks! I added my email to my profile. Look forward to replying to your note!
  - b3ing 2y ago
    Oh wow, I’ve had that idea for 14yrs but never wanted to start coding it
- supportengineer 2y ago
  Prescription drugs have something called "NDC number" ( National Drug Codes ). What we need is NDC numbers but for consumer goods.
  - n_plus_1_acc 2y ago
    European Article number
  - doubled112 2y ago
    Like a UPC?
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Are UPCs stable at scale and over time? It's been a minute since I was in retail, but I remember there being a bunch of asterisk-but's around them.
      - neltnerb 2y ago
        They're not perfect, and I think Amazon does combine listings for the same item (see "other sellers"), but the bigger issue is that the system prioritizes getting you exactly what you ask for over warning you of weird market shenanigans or out of stock sellers meaning prices are way higher than usual. If Target is out of the brand of paper towels I like I don't go to the next store and buy them no matter the price, I get a different brand or skip it. If I had a human shop for me, they would also get a different brand of skip it. But that logic doesn't work with Amazon so it's not safe to trust it.
      - zo1 2y ago
        Last time I looked at it, they fell prey to the region-locking-franchise nonsense. Something like each country had a registered office that would manage their namespace of codes with some sort of segregation or grouping. Ofc what inevitably happened: same product from same company had two codes because because. Heinz Ketchup in Germany is not the same as Heinz Ketchup in Australia...and no one can tell you why. Different recipe? Labeling? Different sizes... 160ml vs Country Z standard of 13.2oz, etc. Oh and different codes for different groupings. Pack of 6 somethings got a new code VS the item itself as the barcode. Not sure if you encountered the same shenanigans but I just stayed away. This is ultimately a people co-ordination problem and everyone thinks they're special. Meanwhile China spams all our market places with "Wish Wonder Elements Store" sellers that sell "40mm 1/2/6 pack of nail screws, woodworking, drill, conical shape, amazing product $1.22" and 5000 variations across all their sellers.
- jonhohle 2y ago
  I worked at Amazon when Fresh was rolling out in Seattle. A coworker thought he was ordering 10 bananas but when his order arrived he received 10 bunches of bananas. Generously, he brought them in to share along with the story. I’m sure they made a lot of banana bread the following week.
  - wombatpm 2y ago
    All stores have problems with produce. Is that 2.99 a pound for peaches, bag or each?
    - gessha 2y ago
      They typically list out the unit but what ticks me off is when adjacent items have different units. One is in ounces, the second is per unit, their third one is per bag.
  - senderista 2y ago
    Was that the origin of the banana stand?
    - camkego 2y ago
      For a little context, Amazon has one or more “community banana stands” For more info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Banana_Stand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Banana_Stand
    - jonhohle 2y ago
      I don’t think it was related. This incident would predate those by 4-5 years.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Same, but different. I once ordered qty. 6 bananas from Instacart, expecting one fairly-medium bunch of bananas to show up with about 6 fruits in that bunch. The listing clearly showed that it was for "quantity", not "weight." But I got 6 pounds of bananas, which is a ton for a single person living by themself. [And I don't bake, so I got plenty of fresh potassium that week.] It only happened once. After that, I started leaving careful notes that describe each item where quantity/volume/weight might be confusing and things have been fine. (I could have complained and Instacart would have rubber-stamped a refund for that part of the order without discussion, but it wasn't worth that much effort.)
- ssl-3 2y ago
  I buy a lot of household stuff from Amazon. I also buy a lot of household stuff from lots of other places, mostly bricks-and-mortar. I don't keep a spreadsheet. I find that when I buy a thing enough times (a particular size of a particular shampoo, say), I get a vague feel for what it "should" cost, and I definitely have a range of values around that expected cost that may be acceptable to me. I don't need a spreadsheet for this. (A spreadsheet wouldn't hurt at all, but it just isn't necessary for me; I don't want to spend the time to get that level of accuracy since the return on my time isn't there for me.) But sometimes, an item is relatively unfamiliar or the price "feels" somewhat high or low -- whether at Amazon or locally. When this happens, I comparison shop. I've gotten pretty quick at it. Charts of historic Amazon pricing for things -- often pretty good but sometimes with large granularity -- are available at camelcamelcamel.com, which scrapes Amazon pricing and has done so for quite a long time. So I look there to see if Amazon's price is good, relative to Amazon's previous pricing. And then, if I still haven't found clear direction, I fire up Instacart's website. This lets me search many local stores all at once. (Their prices are often [but not always] inflated, but that's easy to get a feel for as well.) After that, I have enough vaguely-accurate data to say to myself "Self, this shampoo is a terrible deal at Amazon and I'll just pick some up at the store," or "Self, this shampoo is a fantastic deal at Amazon, and I should order one or two extra bottles while it is cheap." I wish Amazon's prices were more consistent (why is it $13 this week for a 24-pack of cans of V8 juice delivered to my door, and $60 the next week?), but meh. I can deal with it, as long as I have a real computer or time to fiddle with my pocket supercomputer. It's not so different from conventional "shopping." I just can't deal with it using an Echo speaker and the limited interactions possible with Amazon's broken Alexa "AI". That's a non-starter, as things are today. --- In terms of quantities, I don't think I've ever been surprised by Amazon. I do not think I've never experienced a thing on Amazon like my parents once did, where they bought mustard at a wholesale club ("Wow, 208 ounces [or whatever] of mustard! What a great price!") and wound up with several hundred individual packets of Heinz mustard loose-packed in a cardboard box. They were pretty surprised by this. Discussions were had. "What will we ever do with these mustard packets? Should we take it back? What if they refuse to accept it? Is it even worth the money to drive over there again just for this? We still need mustard right now, too..." They elected to keep it, and that wasn't the end of the world at all: We had plenty of mustard for a very long time, and it was indeed priced right; it just wasn't packaged in a particularly good way for what we were using it for. (But then, maybe that experience when I was a kid made a lasting impression on me. And perhaps this was reinforced every time I went to retrieve some mustard from that huge box, wherein: I looked at that box. And when I looked at that box, I could always see that it was neatly labeled from the factory and that the contents wouldn't be surprising at all to anyone who was actually paying enough attention. It is entirely possible that I might automatically scrutinize the offerings at Amazon, and also at the local grocery store, more than others do.)
_alex_ 2y ago
Third party sellers make up most of the inventory. Means Amazon has less inventory risk, but the buyer experience is terrible. Really unfortunate.
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LiquidPolymer 2y ago
I gave up trying to purchase Nikon OEM batteries on Amazon. It's easy on B&H, but I cannot (or do not know how to) exclude the hundreds of cheaper knock-off batteries that are inferior in every measure. I also tried to get an OEM battery grip for my Nikon D850 - but again near impossible on Amazon. This grip is $380 from Nikon, and its possible to get a knock-off for $29. Why get the original? It increases the camera's max frame rate for stills. it is also far more durable.
- hinkley 2y ago
  B&H is one of the places I check first before ordering on Amazon, which is about fifth on any list because fuck Amazon. There’s a CS book I want to read but because the author self published I can only find it on Amazon. I need to try the book store at his university, and I’m not going to buy from Jeff until I’ve tried that avenue.
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derefr 2y ago
Nothing on Amazon is going to work like books on Amazon do. Amazon is, originally and primarily, a bookstore. Amazon has long-established direct contracts with all book publishers (and in fact, a stranglehold over those publishers.) Any time you see a book listed on Amazon, it's a book sold by Amazon, attained directly from one of these publishers. AFAIK no third-party sellers are even allowed to sell "books" Fulfilled By Amazon; if you see a third-party FBA "book" on Amazon, it's because the seller slipped it in under some category other than "books." (The "novelties" and "calendars" sections are often abused for this.) But for categories other than books, Amazon never built up this same direct logistical pipeline to suppliers, let alone the sort of stranglehold over suppliers in other categories that they have over book suppliers. So Amazon doesn't have the ability to force constant, even, predictable supply with contractually-set pricing in other categories, the way they can with books. Often, this means that Amazon's first-party supply chain for something, might just run out of that thing entirely. Part of the reason the FBA program exists is that it allows Amazon to take advantage of third parties' connections to suppliers to compensate for their own supply-chain deficits. Amazon-the-asset-holder might have run out of e.g. Kleenex, but that doesn't mean that Amazon-the-site or Amazon-the-pool-of-warehouses has run out of Kleenex, because Amazon has allowed some third-party FBA seller to stock stuff in their warehouses, and that seller happens to have brought in some stock that have the UPC code for Kleenex. So hey, there you go, we have Kleenex after all! Only now Amazon has to follow the seller's dictates on pricing and discounts — and your experience on availability (unless/until first-party supply comes back) will be dictated by the seller's (usually much-less-predictable) ability+desire to resupply. There are situations where this model actually makes sense! Some mid-sized OEMs that Amazon doesn't feel are worth their while to engage with directly, instead sell their products directly through Amazon as FBA sellers. In these cases, buying the product on Amazon is just like buying the product through the seller's website, but you get it faster because it's already in an Amazon warehouse. That said, despite FBA having times where it makes a lot of sense, I also find Amazon Marketplace distinctly baffling. A thing sold by a third party, shipped by that third party, with returns handled by that third party, shouldn't be able to be conflated with an Amazon.com/Amazon FBA listing just because of a shared UPC code! Those are two very distinct experiences and are not fungible, and it's bizarre to pretty much everyone I know that Amazon has tried to conflate them.
ipaddr 2y ago
You have one supplier of a book. You have many suppliers of generic products. Target gets from one supplier. The multi vender estore offers something different. The low prices, large selection more supplied inventory are some benefits.
- samplatt 2y ago
  Not just many suppliers of generic products, but suppliers come and go on an almost weekly basis thanks to always choosing the cheapest, suppliers going out of business, etc. Hooray capitalism.
- hinkley 2y ago
  See I don’t understand how they have multiple vendors for Kraft or Johnson and Johnson products. There are no multiple suppliers. Coca Cola I can understand, but those are all franchisees and the parent company watches them like a hawk. Mostly what they make is purified water to mix with the syrup they got from corporate to reduce shipping costs and losses.
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    For branded products a seller would need an agreement with Kraft or Johnson and Johnson as a reseller before Amazon will let you list. Many companies do have multiple reseller (most with geographical limitations) but some like shoe companies are more strict. Then you have Apple and Amazon creating the brand Amazon renewed to sell watches.
Spooky23 2y ago
Don’t be baffled… “worlds largest selection” pivoted to worlds largest fence. Financially, the third party product is better for Amazon (no inventory - the third party stuff is a revenue generator!) How exactly does Spooky23 have the buying power to price competitively with a major retailer? The answer is pretty obvious. It’s cheaper to pay crackheads to loot CVS than to troll for clearance blowouts.
- TimTheTinker 2y ago
  > It’s cheaper to pay crackheads to loot CVS than to troll for clearance blowouts. Is that where all the crazy stuff on Amazon is coming from?
  - toddmatthews 2y ago
    Wouldn’t be surprised https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/ https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/
  - conductr 2y ago
    Probably not all but it’s well known they’re just stealing consumer durables because they’re easy to convert to cash
ggm 2y ago
You lost me when you said their processes for books was "fine" -It may be good in some ways, but my experience of how they wrap it for consumer use is a giant mass of anti-patterns. Charles Dickens should be the top match on the actual author, or at the very least biographies. But no. Amazon want us to go to "in the style of" or "related to a series which tangentially discussed Oliver twist" linkages "for your convenience" Amazon will no doubt have A/B testing which shows net beneficial to revenue overall.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Amazon gets a lot better with an ad blocker because most of the crap is sponsored results at the top of the search which if they’re gone, you get stuff that’s closer to an actual result for your search.
jhgvhi 2y ago
[dead]
dsclough 2y ago
The crazy thing to me is that you’re confused about this. These companies make huge margin fooling consumers who aren’t paying attention. Nearly all the consumers I know are barely conscious, the first promoted link on Amazon is the one they buy. Losing customers like you who actually inspect the listed price is a pittance to the Amazon machine. How much time have you spent in physical stores observing the physically listed price per volume labels? These things are all labeled specifically to fool people who are alive but not conscious. Again, we are just a rounding error to these monoliths
- mlsu 2y ago
  It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store or online. I try to do the calculation nonetheless. But every time I just need to buy some ordinary staple, I’m up against the Relentless Spirit of Pure Deception, who attempts an ever evolving and always brand new form of trickery, at every engagement. Sometimes, I simply make the $1.00 donation to P&G or whoever just to avoid having to think of strategies to outsmart. This too feels terrible and exhausting in a different way.
  - pmontra 2y ago
    > It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store Where I live price labels must carry the per liter or the per kilo price too. It's printed with a smaller font size but it's visible and it's often the only price I look at.
    - xp84 2y ago
      The unit price labels here in the US are hilariously messed up. The items you want to compare will be say, a pack of 6 granola bars or a 10 pack. The unit prices will be like: #1: $0.37 / ounce #2: $6.50 / pound or even: #3: $1.82 / each (a price per item) This will even be common within the same exact brand too. The stores seem so bad at picking a consistent unit for a product category that it seems malicious, but it stretches my belief that they have the time to get it so wrong intentionally.
hnbad 2y ago
What the replies seem missing is that books are not just the thing Amazon started with but also subject to regulation around pricing in places like Germany, which Amazon sells in. The reason they seem to have good and consistent data on many books is that it's necessary in order to avoid violating laws and regulations.
rickdeckard 2y ago
To be fair, Amazon didn't create this. Even supermarkets position products at different height to steer their sales, and the majority of customers grab the laundry detergent from the mid-shelf with the most sensational pricing-tag. A specific book is also a far more unique product than i.e. "laundry detergent". To be comparable, you would have to compare laundry detergent to a genre of books, and maybe also the publisher. And then the absurdity of some of Amazon's "Smart Shopping" strategies becomes quite obvious: Is there a market for an Amazon Dash-button that blindly ships i.e. a "fiction book from Penguin publishing"...?
- bombcar 2y ago
  I wonder how true that is. I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves.
  - rickdeckard 2y ago
    > I wonder how true that is. The fact that the middle shelf of a supermarket is usually the first one to be empty is quite compelling evidence. > I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves. Just to validate that assumption: Would you say this is the same for toilet paper? Soap? garbage bags? Sponges? Pencils? cooking-oil? There are lots of commodity items I use where I don't know the brand, I cannot even tell how often I switched the supplier of them in the past year... Subjectively, most people _I_ know buy out of a pool of detergent-brands, all looking quite similar (and most belonging to the same parent company). If they are bombarded with advertisement inside and outside of the shop, and maybe a stacked palette of a different brand of detergent, many of them will "try" this new product instead and end up expanding their pool of brands they will buy.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      For most of the items like toilet paper and paper towels and soap, we have specific brands that we always get the only differences which size seems to be the cheapest to me at the time. The wife is very adamant about those.
K0balt 2y ago
I don’t think Amazon created this on purpose. They did create a system where individual vendors are incentivised to scam consumers though. The most common and irritating one I see is making a listing for a product at a low price, selling lots of said item and getting people lulled into reordering, then bump the price, change the per-order quantity, or even change the brand or product sold under that listing, 10xing your profit on residual reorders, while you relish the original deal on a new item number. Rinse and repeat.
ant6n 2y ago
Plus, Amazons search is garbage. Available items that exactly match the query get ignored. Actually the query only vaguely resembles the results. There is basically no filter functionality (even simple things like which item I can get tomorrow), and the few filters that do exist are ignored. It's like they're playing some funny psycho game with you in order to make you buy stuff that's not quite what you want, even though they do have what you want.
cschmidt 2y ago
Cory Doctorow has a good blog post explaining why Amazon is so bad. Amazon is now an ad business https://doctorow.medium.com/how-monopoly-enshittified-amazon-83f42a585c3c https://doctorow.medium.com/how-monopoly-enshittified-amazon...
aswegs8 2y ago
Agreed. Everytime I order supplements, I have to create a spreadsheet to compare the price per active ingredient weight. Hard to standardize such a thing, of course, but for a lot of other household articles it would definitely be possible.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
I believe an awful lot of it is due to allowing third party sellers. And I think a lot of it is third party sellers uploading their catalogs without trying to sanely de-dupe it vs what's already there. And Amazon certainly doesn't help in how they organize their search results. Please give me a simple size and quantity separate from the description. So often I have to open up a bunch of entries because the description is long enough to push that off the summary you see on the search page. I also think there are a lot of entries on there where the main objective is to get accidentally grabbed when the main supplier is out of stock.
gandalfian 2y ago
Yes there should be a simple test such as "show me the cheapest three meter hdmi cable including shipping". Both ebay and amazon fail it spectacularly. Perhaps they don't want a race to the bottom?

booi 2y ago

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

mschuster91 2y ago
Vote for politicians that campaign on consumer protection legislation. Here in Europe, it's been mandatory to show a price related to a reasonable common base point (e.g. liter, kilogram, piece, usage-unit for laundry detergent) adjacent to the actual product's price for many years now. You can go and use 1/10/100 grams/milliliters though for small scale packages where that is reasonably common (e.g. spices), and that's it. Fun fact, that piece of legislation significantly contributed to Brexit propaganda, the campaign was based on "the EU wants to take away our pints/stones/pounds/whatnot".
- zyberzero 2y ago
  Fun fact: my local store uses different units for the comparisons. Not that you can choose from that many different units, but for example brand A corn flakes comparison price is price/serving while brand B corn flakes is compared by price/kg. Sure, the serving is based on weight but I still need to do some math to figure out which one is cheaper :) This is one of the biggest food chains in Sweden.
  - fbdab103 2y ago
    Incredibly common in the US as well to use different units per item. All the better because our garbage measuring system can make unit switches significantly trickier.
    - Arrath 2y ago
      I had to do a double take a few weeks ago when I found the price/unit to be drastically different for the name brand to the store brand of something, until I realized they strategically switched the <unit> (# to oz I think it was) to make the store brand look astronomically cheaper instead of just slightly cheaper.
      - newzisforsukas 2y ago
        > strategically More like deceptively... If a person did that, I would consider the behavior antisocial.
        bombcar 2y ago
        The one I’ve seen a couple of times recently is where the bigger item is more expensive per unit volume unit weight. This is sneaky as hell.
  - rqtwteye 2y ago
    "Serving" is the biggest vector for manipulation ever. They can make up whatever they want. I still remember looking at a small bag of potato chips that had 3 servings.
ghaff 2y ago
It'd not even that I care much about small deviations--I just don't trust that something really crazy won't happen if I put it on autopilot. If I walk into Walmart and grab a big armful of Bounty I'm fairly confident things will be fine.
- bsimpson 2y ago
  I'm in the process of moving. I thought maybe I'd give Prime Day a try and send some soaps ahead to my new place. In my last apartment, I used Method's pump-dispenser laundry detergent and their basil-scented kitchen hand soap. Amazon is selling the laundry detergent for $75 and the hand soap for $15. I'm guessing Method discontinued the SKUs I was used to, and there's some leftover stock on Amazon with crazy prices.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Or: There's third-parties that are selling the stuff at seemingly-outrageous prices just because there aren't other sellers moving them in large, efficient [at least pallet-sized] quantities on Amazon. People sometimes want whatever they want, and some people are willing to pay a lot for whatever that is. That is not necessarily abusive. eg, I like sardines, and there's some very particular sardines that I'm rather fond of. I'd love to pay $1 or $2 per tin for them, but I'll also pay $6 per tin for them if I must when they just aren't available otherwise for whatever reason. Much of this can be explained with just supply and demand. Don't even ask me about the price of Heinz canned beans in tomato juice or bottles of HP Sauce in grocery stores in my part of Ohio. They're inexpensive staples in some parts of the world, but if I can even find them here they're ludicrously expensive. Amazon (and third-party sellers using Amazon) are no different than my local grocer is in that particular way. Back in context of TFA: The problem isn't that things can be expensive; the problem is primarily that one must be able to easily compare prices and products, and an Alexa device is presently a terrible interface for letting that happen. (The Amazon website is also sometimes not very good at this, even on a real computer.)
- prepend 2y ago
  I switched to Walmart a few years ago and their online experience has been more consistent. Although I detect it’s starting to drift as they switch to a “marketplace” approach similar to Amazon.
polynomial 2y ago
This creates the opportunity for a start up offering such spreadsheet management as a service to flourish in the ecosystem whether or not Amazon ends up acquiring them. Yes I am being facetious. (obvi)
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  Unfortunately, another commenter is indicating that they’ve done just that. This is truly some darkest timeline stuff.
juxtaposicion 2y ago
We're building that spreadsheet as a product. I'd love to show you. I'd message you a private link to a prototype but you have no contact info on your profile. If you are interested, can you email or DM me using my profile info?
- jaggederest 2y ago
  You also don't have an email on your profile, for what it's worth. I don't use Twitter. I'd be interested in something like this as well.
  - juxtaposicion 2y ago
    Oh, thanks! I added my email to my profile. Look forward to replying to your note!
- b3ing 2y ago
  Oh wow, I’ve had that idea for 14yrs but never wanted to start coding it
supportengineer 2y ago
Prescription drugs have something called "NDC number" ( National Drug Codes ). What we need is NDC numbers but for consumer goods.
- n_plus_1_acc 2y ago
  European Article number
- doubled112 2y ago
  Like a UPC?
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Are UPCs stable at scale and over time? It's been a minute since I was in retail, but I remember there being a bunch of asterisk-but's around them.
    - neltnerb 2y ago
      They're not perfect, and I think Amazon does combine listings for the same item (see "other sellers"), but the bigger issue is that the system prioritizes getting you exactly what you ask for over warning you of weird market shenanigans or out of stock sellers meaning prices are way higher than usual. If Target is out of the brand of paper towels I like I don't go to the next store and buy them no matter the price, I get a different brand or skip it. If I had a human shop for me, they would also get a different brand of skip it. But that logic doesn't work with Amazon so it's not safe to trust it.
    - zo1 2y ago
      Last time I looked at it, they fell prey to the region-locking-franchise nonsense. Something like each country had a registered office that would manage their namespace of codes with some sort of segregation or grouping. Ofc what inevitably happened: same product from same company had two codes because because. Heinz Ketchup in Germany is not the same as Heinz Ketchup in Australia...and no one can tell you why. Different recipe? Labeling? Different sizes... 160ml vs Country Z standard of 13.2oz, etc. Oh and different codes for different groupings. Pack of 6 somethings got a new code VS the item itself as the barcode. Not sure if you encountered the same shenanigans but I just stayed away. This is ultimately a people co-ordination problem and everyone thinks they're special. Meanwhile China spams all our market places with "Wish Wonder Elements Store" sellers that sell "40mm 1/2/6 pack of nail screws, woodworking, drill, conical shape, amazing product $1.22" and 5000 variations across all their sellers.
jonhohle 2y ago
I worked at Amazon when Fresh was rolling out in Seattle. A coworker thought he was ordering 10 bananas but when his order arrived he received 10 bunches of bananas. Generously, he brought them in to share along with the story. I’m sure they made a lot of banana bread the following week.
- wombatpm 2y ago
  All stores have problems with produce. Is that 2.99 a pound for peaches, bag or each?
  - gessha 2y ago
    They typically list out the unit but what ticks me off is when adjacent items have different units. One is in ounces, the second is per unit, their third one is per bag.
- senderista 2y ago
  Was that the origin of the banana stand?
  - camkego 2y ago
    For a little context, Amazon has one or more “community banana stands” For more info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Banana_Stand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Banana_Stand
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    I don’t think it was related. This incident would predate those by 4-5 years.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Same, but different. I once ordered qty. 6 bananas from Instacart, expecting one fairly-medium bunch of bananas to show up with about 6 fruits in that bunch. The listing clearly showed that it was for "quantity", not "weight." But I got 6 pounds of bananas, which is a ton for a single person living by themself. [And I don't bake, so I got plenty of fresh potassium that week.] It only happened once. After that, I started leaving careful notes that describe each item where quantity/volume/weight might be confusing and things have been fine. (I could have complained and Instacart would have rubber-stamped a refund for that part of the order without discussion, but it wasn't worth that much effort.)
ssl-3 2y ago
I buy a lot of household stuff from Amazon. I also buy a lot of household stuff from lots of other places, mostly bricks-and-mortar. I don't keep a spreadsheet. I find that when I buy a thing enough times (a particular size of a particular shampoo, say), I get a vague feel for what it "should" cost, and I definitely have a range of values around that expected cost that may be acceptable to me. I don't need a spreadsheet for this. (A spreadsheet wouldn't hurt at all, but it just isn't necessary for me; I don't want to spend the time to get that level of accuracy since the return on my time isn't there for me.) But sometimes, an item is relatively unfamiliar or the price "feels" somewhat high or low -- whether at Amazon or locally. When this happens, I comparison shop. I've gotten pretty quick at it. Charts of historic Amazon pricing for things -- often pretty good but sometimes with large granularity -- are available at camelcamelcamel.com, which scrapes Amazon pricing and has done so for quite a long time. So I look there to see if Amazon's price is good, relative to Amazon's previous pricing. And then, if I still haven't found clear direction, I fire up Instacart's website. This lets me search many local stores all at once. (Their prices are often [but not always] inflated, but that's easy to get a feel for as well.) After that, I have enough vaguely-accurate data to say to myself "Self, this shampoo is a terrible deal at Amazon and I'll just pick some up at the store," or "Self, this shampoo is a fantastic deal at Amazon, and I should order one or two extra bottles while it is cheap." I wish Amazon's prices were more consistent (why is it $13 this week for a 24-pack of cans of V8 juice delivered to my door, and $60 the next week?), but meh. I can deal with it, as long as I have a real computer or time to fiddle with my pocket supercomputer. It's not so different from conventional "shopping." I just can't deal with it using an Echo speaker and the limited interactions possible with Amazon's broken Alexa "AI". That's a non-starter, as things are today. --- In terms of quantities, I don't think I've ever been surprised by Amazon. I do not think I've never experienced a thing on Amazon like my parents once did, where they bought mustard at a wholesale club ("Wow, 208 ounces [or whatever] of mustard! What a great price!") and wound up with several hundred individual packets of Heinz mustard loose-packed in a cardboard box. They were pretty surprised by this. Discussions were had. "What will we ever do with these mustard packets? Should we take it back? What if they refuse to accept it? Is it even worth the money to drive over there again just for this? We still need mustard right now, too..." They elected to keep it, and that wasn't the end of the world at all: We had plenty of mustard for a very long time, and it was indeed priced right; it just wasn't packaged in a particularly good way for what we were using it for. (But then, maybe that experience when I was a kid made a lasting impression on me. And perhaps this was reinforced every time I went to retrieve some mustard from that huge box, wherein: I looked at that box. And when I looked at that box, I could always see that it was neatly labeled from the factory and that the contents wouldn't be surprising at all to anyone who was actually paying enough attention. It is entirely possible that I might automatically scrutinize the offerings at Amazon, and also at the local grocery store, more than others do.)

_alex_ 2y ago

Third party sellers make up most of the inventory. Means Amazon has less inventory risk, but the buyer experience is terrible. Really unfortunate.

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LiquidPolymer 2y ago

I gave up trying to purchase Nikon OEM batteries on Amazon. It's easy on B&H, but I cannot (or do not know how to) exclude the hundreds of cheaper knock-off batteries that are inferior in every measure. I also tried to get an OEM battery grip for my Nikon D850 - but again near impossible on Amazon. This grip is $380 from Nikon, and its possible to get a knock-off for $29. Why get the original? It increases the camera's max frame rate for stills. it is also far more durable.

hinkley 2y ago
B&H is one of the places I check first before ordering on Amazon, which is about fifth on any list because fuck Amazon. There’s a CS book I want to read but because the author self published I can only find it on Amazon. I need to try the book store at his university, and I’m not going to buy from Jeff until I’ve tried that avenue.

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derefr 2y ago

Nothing on Amazon is going to work like books on Amazon do. Amazon is, originally and primarily, a bookstore. Amazon has long-established direct contracts with all book publishers (and in fact, a stranglehold over those publishers.) Any time you see a book listed on Amazon, it's a book sold by Amazon, attained directly from one of these publishers. AFAIK no third-party sellers are even allowed to sell "books" Fulfilled By Amazon; if you see a third-party FBA "book" on Amazon, it's because the seller slipped it in under some category other than "books." (The "novelties" and "calendars" sections are often abused for this.) But for categories other than books, Amazon never built up this same direct logistical pipeline to suppliers, let alone the sort of stranglehold over suppliers in other categories that they have over book suppliers. So Amazon doesn't have the ability to force constant, even, predictable supply with contractually-set pricing in other categories, the way they can with books. Often, this means that Amazon's first-party supply chain for something, might just run out of that thing entirely. Part of the reason the FBA program exists is that it allows Amazon to take advantage of third parties' connections to suppliers to compensate for their own supply-chain deficits. Amazon-the-asset-holder might have run out of e.g. Kleenex, but that doesn't mean that Amazon-the-site or Amazon-the-pool-of-warehouses has run out of Kleenex, because Amazon has allowed some third-party FBA seller to stock stuff in their warehouses, and that seller happens to have brought in some stock that have the UPC code for Kleenex. So hey, there you go, we have Kleenex after all! Only now Amazon has to follow the seller's dictates on pricing and discounts — and your experience on availability (unless/until first-party supply comes back) will be dictated by the seller's (usually much-less-predictable) ability+desire to resupply. There are situations where this model actually makes sense! Some mid-sized OEMs that Amazon doesn't feel are worth their while to engage with directly, instead sell their products directly through Amazon as FBA sellers. In these cases, buying the product on Amazon is just like buying the product through the seller's website, but you get it faster because it's already in an Amazon warehouse. That said, despite FBA having times where it makes a lot of sense, I also find Amazon Marketplace distinctly baffling. A thing sold by a third party, shipped by that third party, with returns handled by that third party, shouldn't be able to be conflated with an Amazon.com/Amazon FBA listing just because of a shared UPC code! Those are two very distinct experiences and are not fungible, and it's bizarre to pretty much everyone I know that Amazon has tried to conflate them.

ipaddr 2y ago

You have one supplier of a book. You have many suppliers of generic products. Target gets from one supplier. The multi vender estore offers something different. The low prices, large selection more supplied inventory are some benefits.

samplatt 2y ago
Not just many suppliers of generic products, but suppliers come and go on an almost weekly basis thanks to always choosing the cheapest, suppliers going out of business, etc. Hooray capitalism.
hinkley 2y ago
See I don’t understand how they have multiple vendors for Kraft or Johnson and Johnson products. There are no multiple suppliers. Coca Cola I can understand, but those are all franchisees and the parent company watches them like a hawk. Mostly what they make is purified water to mix with the syrup they got from corporate to reduce shipping costs and losses.
- ipaddr 2y ago
  For branded products a seller would need an agreement with Kraft or Johnson and Johnson as a reseller before Amazon will let you list. Many companies do have multiple reseller (most with geographical limitations) but some like shoe companies are more strict. Then you have Apple and Amazon creating the brand Amazon renewed to sell watches.

Spooky23 2y ago

Don’t be baffled… “worlds largest selection” pivoted to worlds largest fence. Financially, the third party product is better for Amazon (no inventory - the third party stuff is a revenue generator!) How exactly does Spooky23 have the buying power to price competitively with a major retailer? The answer is pretty obvious. It’s cheaper to pay crackheads to loot CVS than to troll for clearance blowouts.

TimTheTinker 2y ago
> It’s cheaper to pay crackheads to loot CVS than to troll for clearance blowouts. Is that where all the crazy stuff on Amazon is coming from?
- toddmatthews 2y ago
  Wouldn’t be surprised https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/ https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/
- conductr 2y ago
  Probably not all but it’s well known they’re just stealing consumer durables because they’re easy to convert to cash

ggm 2y ago

You lost me when you said their processes for books was "fine" -It may be good in some ways, but my experience of how they wrap it for consumer use is a giant mass of anti-patterns. Charles Dickens should be the top match on the actual author, or at the very least biographies. But no. Amazon want us to go to "in the style of" or "related to a series which tangentially discussed Oliver twist" linkages "for your convenience" Amazon will no doubt have A/B testing which shows net beneficial to revenue overall.

bombcar 2y ago
Amazon gets a lot better with an ad blocker because most of the crap is sponsored results at the top of the search which if they’re gone, you get stuff that’s closer to an actual result for your search.

jhgvhi 2y ago

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dsclough 2y ago

The crazy thing to me is that you’re confused about this. These companies make huge margin fooling consumers who aren’t paying attention. Nearly all the consumers I know are barely conscious, the first promoted link on Amazon is the one they buy. Losing customers like you who actually inspect the listed price is a pittance to the Amazon machine. How much time have you spent in physical stores observing the physically listed price per volume labels? These things are all labeled specifically to fool people who are alive but not conscious. Again, we are just a rounding error to these monoliths

mlsu 2y ago
It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store or online. I try to do the calculation nonetheless. But every time I just need to buy some ordinary staple, I’m up against the Relentless Spirit of Pure Deception, who attempts an ever evolving and always brand new form of trickery, at every engagement. Sometimes, I simply make the $1.00 donation to P&G or whoever just to avoid having to think of strategies to outsmart. This too feels terrible and exhausting in a different way.
- pmontra 2y ago
  > It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store Where I live price labels must carry the per liter or the per kilo price too. It's printed with a smaller font size but it's visible and it's often the only price I look at.
  - xp84 2y ago
    The unit price labels here in the US are hilariously messed up. The items you want to compare will be say, a pack of 6 granola bars or a 10 pack. The unit prices will be like: #1: $0.37 / ounce #2: $6.50 / pound or even: #3: $1.82 / each (a price per item) This will even be common within the same exact brand too. The stores seem so bad at picking a consistent unit for a product category that it seems malicious, but it stretches my belief that they have the time to get it so wrong intentionally.

hnbad 2y ago

What the replies seem missing is that books are not just the thing Amazon started with but also subject to regulation around pricing in places like Germany, which Amazon sells in. The reason they seem to have good and consistent data on many books is that it's necessary in order to avoid violating laws and regulations.

rickdeckard 2y ago

To be fair, Amazon didn't create this. Even supermarkets position products at different height to steer their sales, and the majority of customers grab the laundry detergent from the mid-shelf with the most sensational pricing-tag. A specific book is also a far more unique product than i.e. "laundry detergent". To be comparable, you would have to compare laundry detergent to a genre of books, and maybe also the publisher. And then the absurdity of some of Amazon's "Smart Shopping" strategies becomes quite obvious: Is there a market for an Amazon Dash-button that blindly ships i.e. a "fiction book from Penguin publishing"...?

bombcar 2y ago
I wonder how true that is. I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  > I wonder how true that is. The fact that the middle shelf of a supermarket is usually the first one to be empty is quite compelling evidence. > I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves. Just to validate that assumption: Would you say this is the same for toilet paper? Soap? garbage bags? Sponges? Pencils? cooking-oil? There are lots of commodity items I use where I don't know the brand, I cannot even tell how often I switched the supplier of them in the past year... Subjectively, most people _I_ know buy out of a pool of detergent-brands, all looking quite similar (and most belonging to the same parent company). If they are bombarded with advertisement inside and outside of the shop, and maybe a stacked palette of a different brand of detergent, many of them will "try" this new product instead and end up expanding their pool of brands they will buy.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    For most of the items like toilet paper and paper towels and soap, we have specific brands that we always get the only differences which size seems to be the cheapest to me at the time. The wife is very adamant about those.

K0balt 2y ago

I don’t think Amazon created this on purpose. They did create a system where individual vendors are incentivised to scam consumers though. The most common and irritating one I see is making a listing for a product at a low price, selling lots of said item and getting people lulled into reordering, then bump the price, change the per-order quantity, or even change the brand or product sold under that listing, 10xing your profit on residual reorders, while you relish the original deal on a new item number. Rinse and repeat.

ant6n 2y ago

Plus, Amazons search is garbage. Available items that exactly match the query get ignored. Actually the query only vaguely resembles the results. There is basically no filter functionality (even simple things like which item I can get tomorrow), and the few filters that do exist are ignored. It's like they're playing some funny psycho game with you in order to make you buy stuff that's not quite what you want, even though they do have what you want.

cschmidt 2y ago

Cory Doctorow has a good blog post explaining why Amazon is so bad. Amazon is now an ad business https://doctorow.medium.com/how-monopoly-enshittified-amazon-83f42a585c3c https://doctorow.medium.com/how-monopoly-enshittified-amazon...

aswegs8 2y ago

Agreed. Everytime I order supplements, I have to create a spreadsheet to compare the price per active ingredient weight. Hard to standardize such a thing, of course, but for a lot of other household articles it would definitely be possible.

LorenPechtel 2y ago

I believe an awful lot of it is due to allowing third party sellers. And I think a lot of it is third party sellers uploading their catalogs without trying to sanely de-dupe it vs what's already there. And Amazon certainly doesn't help in how they organize their search results. Please give me a simple size and quantity separate from the description. So often I have to open up a bunch of entries because the description is long enough to push that off the summary you see on the search page. I also think there are a lot of entries on there where the main objective is to get accidentally grabbed when the main supplier is out of stock.

gandalfian 2y ago

Yes there should be a simple test such as "show me the cheapest three meter hdmi cable including shipping". Both ebay and amazon fail it spectacularly. Perhaps they don't want a race to the bottom?