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I honestly think sites like stockx where they open the package and verify before shipping it forward will overtake amazon despite the increased costs. Absolutel

I honestly think sites like stockx where they open the package and verify before shipping it forward will overtake amazon despite the increased costs. Absolutely not invested in stockx in any way, just an opinion that was formed as follows; Amazon was built on trust. I bought a book from them in the early days. It didn’t arrive after 2 weeks and they said ‘we believe you’ and they shipped me the book again at no charge. A week later i got 2 books, the first was lost in transit. Contacted amazon and they and no problem keep both and give one to a friend. I and many others were loyal to amazon after these experiences, paying more due to the lack of hassle and high trust. They became the default online bookstore thanks to this trust. It wasn’t even worth price comparisons, you looked on amazon and bought it there knowing you’d get the product you paid for. That’s now gone. They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point. People are willing to pay more for trust and the lack of hassle it represents. I want to buy a hard cover book that’s well printed. If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'll happy pay more to buy from a site where that never happens. I won’t even bother with price shopping when one site is a good chance of a scam and the other isn’t. In fact i’m pretty sure that’s where amazons dominance as the default online store came from and i’m shocked at how little care they have for this fact.

Aurornis 1y ago
> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point. Between eBay and Amazon over the years I’ve done thousands of transactions, including probably 100 as a seller on eBay. The way people on HN talk about these companies, you’d think I would have been victim to endless amounts of fraud. In reality, both companies have handled the rare issues that came up just fine for me and the vast majority of transactions were perfectly fine. The HN comment section version of Amazon is pure hyperbole at this point. I’m aware that there are problems and some people haven’t been as lucky, but do you honestly believe you’re more likely to get a box of rocks than the product you ordered? Or that people will pay large fees to have average products verified before shipping when Amazon takes returns all the time? This is just silly.
- dimitri-vs 1y ago
  Agreed. To add to this I often buy warehouse deals which is an order of magnitude more risky and the percentage of returns I've had to do is in the low single digits. Almost always it's an obviously brand new never opened product.
- ungreased0675 1y ago
  I’ve never had a problem with buying on eBay, but I have received counterfeit products from Amazon. In one case, it was an electronic gadget that was using a counterfeit chip, so the real drivers wouldn’t work. They did nothing to remedy the situation. Customer service didn’t even understand what my problem was.
  - foxglacier 1y ago
    It wasn't a USB to RS232 converter was it? Those are notorious for the knock-offs filling the market and not working with the "real" driver.
    - account42 1y ago
      On the hand the "not working" part here may be due to the original manufacturer deliberately breaking their driver if it detects them so I won't feel too bad for them getting ripped off.
      - razakel 1y ago
        They had to revert that when they realised they'd just bricked a load of critical equipment.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > They did nothing to remedy the situation. Customer service didn’t even understand what my problem was. I don't understand. If I want to return an Amazon product for any reason I just return it. You don't have to explain the driver situation to customer support. This is what I'm talking about when I say internet comments feel like people are operating in a different world: If you get a counterfeit product from Amazon, you just return it. You can even return a product if you just decide you don't want it.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Personally, I don’t get anything for more than $50 from Amazon, and, usually, not even that. Amazon used to have the best prices, but that is no longer the case. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed to get bulk cat food (for a bulky cat). I tried Amazon, but they wanted double what I would pay at chewy. So I got it from chewy, and will never look at Amazon for that kind of thing again. I also tend to go directly to manufacturer Web sites, and order from there. The price is seldom much higher than Amazon, and I won’t have to worry that I’m getting a fake, or gray market junk.
- account42 1y ago
  Seems more mixed for me. Yes, Amazon is not guaranteed to be the cheapest so it pays to compare prices fro non-trivial items but often enough Amazon will still be the cheapest for me. Also, grey market products aren't junk - they are by definition the official product just without the price gouging the manufacturer does in locales where they can get away with it.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    …or the support. F’rinstance, get a Chinese webcam, and find the latest download. Also, there’s some controversy over the privacy in Chinese products (but it’s easy enough to make the same argument about almost any brand). I have found that Chinese versions of products make up the largest percentage of gray market stuff. I suspect that some percentage of that, is outright fakes.
    - account42 1y ago
      YMMV but I have never found manufacturer support useful for anything.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
        I use it all the time; especially firmware downloads.
BrenBarn 1y ago
> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. Overall I have a higher level of trust in Ebay purchases than Amazon purchases.
a2128 1y ago
There's absolutely no trust anymore. Apparently when you pre-order an item, you'll actually be the last to receive it because they'd rather guarantee next-day delivery for people buying on launch day. Apparently your delivery can be delayed by multiple months in this case. Apparently customer support might tell you to cancel the order and re-place it to fix this and they'll refund the price difference due to price increase. Apparently the next guy will say they pulled up the chatlog and they never promised any refund for any price difference and to please go away. Apparently you might have to waste months complaining to national authorities with screenshots for them to finally get word that they should look into your case for more than 15 seconds and finally honor a simple 150€ refund on a 2000€+ order...
gs17 1y ago
> If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'm curious, since I never get these (90% of the time I'm buying used anyways). Do you know what genre has this the worst?
conductr 1y ago
It's certainly degraded and I have to sift through a lot of junk but I find it's still pretty easy to identify the grift/counterfeiters/etc. I've never had a problem with returns. It's generally easy to initiate, there have been a few random high dollar purchases $500-$1000 that I didn't even notice were flagged as "no refunds" at time of purchase, but if I get on chat they have always made exception and allowed me to return it. The only annoying part is every time I do that, finding the chat feature takes me a good deal of time it's so buried in the UI I don't buy a lot of books though so maybe that's where a lot of this is coming from?
account42 1y ago
> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point Strongly disagree. I have always gotten refunds on Amazon when there were issues whereas on eBay I had sellers run away with my money when they knew that pursuing legal action would cost me more than the dispute amount and eBay doing nothing.

Aurornis 1y ago

> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point. Between eBay and Amazon over the years I’ve done thousands of transactions, including probably 100 as a seller on eBay. The way people on HN talk about these companies, you’d think I would have been victim to endless amounts of fraud. In reality, both companies have handled the rare issues that came up just fine for me and the vast majority of transactions were perfectly fine. The HN comment section version of Amazon is pure hyperbole at this point. I’m aware that there are problems and some people haven’t been as lucky, but do you honestly believe you’re more likely to get a box of rocks than the product you ordered? Or that people will pay large fees to have average products verified before shipping when Amazon takes returns all the time? This is just silly.

dimitri-vs 1y ago
Agreed. To add to this I often buy warehouse deals which is an order of magnitude more risky and the percentage of returns I've had to do is in the low single digits. Almost always it's an obviously brand new never opened product.
ungreased0675 1y ago
I’ve never had a problem with buying on eBay, but I have received counterfeit products from Amazon. In one case, it was an electronic gadget that was using a counterfeit chip, so the real drivers wouldn’t work. They did nothing to remedy the situation. Customer service didn’t even understand what my problem was.
- foxglacier 1y ago
  It wasn't a USB to RS232 converter was it? Those are notorious for the knock-offs filling the market and not working with the "real" driver.
  - account42 1y ago
    On the hand the "not working" part here may be due to the original manufacturer deliberately breaking their driver if it detects them so I won't feel too bad for them getting ripped off.
    - razakel 1y ago
      They had to revert that when they realised they'd just bricked a load of critical equipment.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > They did nothing to remedy the situation. Customer service didn’t even understand what my problem was. I don't understand. If I want to return an Amazon product for any reason I just return it. You don't have to explain the driver situation to customer support. This is what I'm talking about when I say internet comments feel like people are operating in a different world: If you get a counterfeit product from Amazon, you just return it. You can even return a product if you just decide you don't want it.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

Personally, I don’t get anything for more than $50 from Amazon, and, usually, not even that. Amazon used to have the best prices, but that is no longer the case. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed to get bulk cat food (for a bulky cat). I tried Amazon, but they wanted double what I would pay at chewy. So I got it from chewy, and will never look at Amazon for that kind of thing again. I also tend to go directly to manufacturer Web sites, and order from there. The price is seldom much higher than Amazon, and I won’t have to worry that I’m getting a fake, or gray market junk.

account42 1y ago
Seems more mixed for me. Yes, Amazon is not guaranteed to be the cheapest so it pays to compare prices fro non-trivial items but often enough Amazon will still be the cheapest for me. Also, grey market products aren't junk - they are by definition the official product just without the price gouging the manufacturer does in locales where they can get away with it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  …or the support. F’rinstance, get a Chinese webcam, and find the latest download. Also, there’s some controversy over the privacy in Chinese products (but it’s easy enough to make the same argument about almost any brand). I have found that Chinese versions of products make up the largest percentage of gray market stuff. I suspect that some percentage of that, is outright fakes.
  - account42 1y ago
    YMMV but I have never found manufacturer support useful for anything.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      I use it all the time; especially firmware downloads.

BrenBarn 1y ago

> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. Overall I have a higher level of trust in Ebay purchases than Amazon purchases.

a2128 1y ago

There's absolutely no trust anymore. Apparently when you pre-order an item, you'll actually be the last to receive it because they'd rather guarantee next-day delivery for people buying on launch day. Apparently your delivery can be delayed by multiple months in this case. Apparently customer support might tell you to cancel the order and re-place it to fix this and they'll refund the price difference due to price increase. Apparently the next guy will say they pulled up the chatlog and they never promised any refund for any price difference and to please go away. Apparently you might have to waste months complaining to national authorities with screenshots for them to finally get word that they should look into your case for more than 15 seconds and finally honor a simple 150€ refund on a 2000€+ order...

gs17 1y ago

> If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'm curious, since I never get these (90% of the time I'm buying used anyways). Do you know what genre has this the worst?

conductr 1y ago

It's certainly degraded and I have to sift through a lot of junk but I find it's still pretty easy to identify the grift/counterfeiters/etc. I've never had a problem with returns. It's generally easy to initiate, there have been a few random high dollar purchases $500-$1000 that I didn't even notice were flagged as "no refunds" at time of purchase, but if I get on chat they have always made exception and allowed me to return it. The only annoying part is every time I do that, finding the chat feature takes me a good deal of time it's so buried in the UI I don't buy a lot of books though so maybe that's where a lot of this is coming from?

account42 1y ago

> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point Strongly disagree. I have always gotten refunds on Amazon when there were issues whereas on eBay I had sellers run away with my money when they knew that pursuing legal action would cost me more than the dispute amount and eBay doing nothing.