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Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a
by cmiles8 4mo ago
Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.”
If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!
- macintux 4mo agoI do my best to find a local or online shop that actually knows & understands what they sell. Getting harder, but for more expensive items definitely achievable.
- Loughla 4mo agoI have yet to find something on Amazon that I couldn't find at a local shop for within 5% of the Amazon price. I live in a very rural area, so I have to imagine that it's easier if you live near a city. Or maybe my sample size of 1 person isn't enough.
- cmiles8 4mo agoA lot of things are actually LESS expensive in stores. All that speedy delivery adds a lot to costs that are baked in. Sometimes things on Amazon are 50+% more. You have to know your prices to know what’s a good deal vs what’s a total ripoff. IE folks will take a 4 pack of something that sells for $20 and sell each bottle individually for $10 each.
- secabeen 4mo agoMy rule of thumb is that every not-heavy product has about $7 of shipping costs baked in somewhere. For cheap items, there isn't enough markup to cover those costs, so they are usually higher priced than at retail. If it's $50 or more, there usually is, and the amazon price will be competitive or better than retail. For heavy things the shipping ding is bigger, but they also usually cost at least $30. No one bothers to sell $5 items like 50lb bags of basic sand on amazon.
- adamddev1 4mo ago[dead]
- jonhohle 4mo ago10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal. I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within their own listings to satisfy both properties), but left before implementation rolled out. Based on current search results, either they failed or the project was abandoned. I’m shocked at how some categories just contain junk from random brands with unpronounceable names. Want a music player by Sony or even RCA? Those brands have left that market completely for B2B products or are a licensed name on top of some garbage. Now you can get a Zaqe, Picxiul, Lwyinp, Globluum, or Swofy!
- MrDOS 4mo agoAs I'm sure you know but some others might not, the random brands with unpronounceable names (as opposed to no specific names at all) are also a problem that Amazon has created: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/amazons-quiet-overhaul-of-the-trademark-system/ https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/amazons-quiet-overhaul-of-the-t....
- grogenaut 4mo agotalking to several of the catalog unification projects and doing promo reviews for people, it turns out it wasn't as easy to do as people thought. there's places it worked well (media) and others where it's a lot harder.
- steve-atx-7600 4mo agoYou'd think this trend would be obvious to product folks at Amazon unless they're living under a rock. And, you'd think they'd care about lowering conversion rates. I don't think name brand products will stop existing. In the long term, Amazon will lose out on business as people that can afford higher quality products will use Amazon less or just when they already know which brand/model they want to buy before hand.
- QuantumGood 4mo agoAI chat interface works where search does not. Not perfect, but much better, and allows more specific, accurate filtering.
- QuantumGood 4mo agoI totally understand the downvote, as bad player adds bad tech must = bad. I'm just pointing out that the terrible search interface / results / algorithm / intention of Amazon is, for now, a bit alleviated by their AI interface that filters much more reliably based on prompt, and can adjust the prompt.
- stasomatic 4mo agogoogle.com "KEYWORD reddit". It's been the only way for me for the last several years, but mostly for inexpensive items (20-100 USD). In the States it's more frictionless to do Amazon returns then through Temu or AliX.
- kirykl 4mo agoleadership knows that they get to charge those 150 sellers bidding based "advertising fees" to get the buy box