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this is completely unrelated but amazon quality has gone significantly down over the past couple months 3 out of the 4 times I've ordered something from them i

this is completely unrelated but amazon quality has gone significantly down over the past couple months 3 out of the 4 times I've ordered something from them it either didn't show up or the wrong thing showed up most of these sellers seem to just be dropshippers with chinese goods employing "reputation management" tactics. can't say I trust the average amazon seller at this point

LordDragonfang 2y ago
There's a comment to this effect on every thread even tangentially related to Amazon's marketplace for the past 5+ years, all with timeframes that are much shorter (like your "a few months") - much shorter than the timelines that are implied by how long those comments have existed. There has been some gradual decline, but realistically you just had a string of bad luck with Amazon fulfillment and it's not indicative of any particular recent change.
- rybosworld 2y ago
  The same thing was said about google search for a while - that it was declining in quality. Some people noticed and others didn't. You'd see threads with one person claiming google search is worse. Another person chimes in with a comment similar to yours; that is: "your experience has just been uniquely unlucky". Then almost overnight, the search quality reached a point where most people took notice and agreed: "yeah the search quality really is worse". I'm not saying this is what's going on with Amazon, but this pattern is a typical part of enshittification.
  - LordDragonfang 2y ago
    While I agree that it can be a pattern of enshittification, I don't think it's one that Amazon is actually currently going through, at least with regards to fulfillment. If anything, I think they probably had a drop in quality a little over 5 years ago that has long since plateaued. I order lots of items from Amazon (50+ in the past month alone) across a lot of categories (non-perishable food, fun clothing for myself and my partner, office supplies, lots of little fun trinkets, etc) and I can only remember one in the past several months (easily >100 items) that failed to arrive (An obscure limited edition flavor of lemon kitkats specifically not fulfilled by amazon), and even that was something that they notified me of. And I literally can't remember the last time I received an actually "wrong" item. I think people showing up with stories of 3/4 of their orders being messed up are the kind of extreme outliers you get from a product used by tens of millions of people - and by the vast majority of the tens of thousands of people who read HN. It's just something that happens sometimes in the global supply chain. Hell, I personally have experience with that from one of my few significant purchases from a brick-and-mortar: the mattress topper they were supposed to get me in a week was delayed by 3 months because the delivery truck was stolen, in Texas That said, it's ironic that you bring up search, because I think Amazon's search is the part of the storefront that is actually undergoing active enshittification right now.

LordDragonfang 2y ago

There's a comment to this effect on every thread even tangentially related to Amazon's marketplace for the past 5+ years, all with timeframes that are much shorter (like your "a few months") - much shorter than the timelines that are implied by how long those comments have existed. There has been some gradual decline, but realistically you just had a string of bad luck with Amazon fulfillment and it's not indicative of any particular recent change.

rybosworld 2y ago
The same thing was said about google search for a while - that it was declining in quality. Some people noticed and others didn't. You'd see threads with one person claiming google search is worse. Another person chimes in with a comment similar to yours; that is: "your experience has just been uniquely unlucky". Then almost overnight, the search quality reached a point where most people took notice and agreed: "yeah the search quality really is worse". I'm not saying this is what's going on with Amazon, but this pattern is a typical part of enshittification.
- LordDragonfang 2y ago
  While I agree that it can be a pattern of enshittification, I don't think it's one that Amazon is actually currently going through, at least with regards to fulfillment. If anything, I think they probably had a drop in quality a little over 5 years ago that has long since plateaued. I order lots of items from Amazon (50+ in the past month alone) across a lot of categories (non-perishable food, fun clothing for myself and my partner, office supplies, lots of little fun trinkets, etc) and I can only remember one in the past several months (easily >100 items) that failed to arrive (An obscure limited edition flavor of lemon kitkats specifically not fulfilled by amazon), and even that was something that they notified me of. And I literally can't remember the last time I received an actually "wrong" item. I think people showing up with stories of 3/4 of their orders being messed up are the kind of extreme outliers you get from a product used by tens of millions of people - and by the vast majority of the tens of thousands of people who read HN. It's just something that happens sometimes in the global supply chain. Hell, I personally have experience with that from one of my few significant purchases from a brick-and-mortar: the mattress topper they were supposed to get me in a week was delayed by 3 months because the delivery truck was stolen, in Texas That said, it's ironic that you bring up search, because I think Amazon's search is the part of the storefront that is actually undergoing active enshittification right now.