This has pushed me to high levels of brand loyalty with direct ordering from the brands I like and trust, plus a lot of buying used… also mostly products from a handful of trusted brands (this is largely clothes, nearly all of which I buy used except socks, underwear, and most sweaters)
To bad that the actual buying experience (once you have selected what to buy) is still so much better with Amazon.
* One cart for everything you need to order
* Fairly predictable shipping and tracking, especially for FBA stuff vs. the random shipping companies vs random shippers you have never heard about or weird shipping options selected by the seller (i.e. ID checks required where that makes no sense at all, preventing the carrier from just dropping the package at the door when you're not home)
* Global shipping with tariffs/fees included in the checkout price - brand stores often don't even ship at all outside their operational area
* The ability to get your money back with high confidence when there are problems vs. smaller sellers that just ghost you.
Amazon has been doing their best to reduce these advantages by making it harder to report problems with orders and also having more sellers that do their own unpredictable shipping.
I also direct order from brands I trust and this hasn't been my experience AT ALL. In fact using Apple Pay with an AMEX card means the experience is essentially amazing -- fingerprint checkout and the ability to reverse the charge with Amex is all I really need.
Of course, I'm still using Apple Pay, so that may not work for everyone.
I’m done with Amazon, but unless something changed in the past year, buying through them is actually inconvenient.
The return experience is great, because it has to be. You buy so much crap because of drop-shippers and their search is atrocious due to paid placement.
If you know what you want (a Thermoscan was one of my last purchases), it can be cheaper to go elsewhere, you don’t deal with their search “engine”, and you don’t help Bezos buy the next election. My context is European, but I really don’t agree that Amazon is that great anymore.
There’s plenty of stuff I find cheaper in other places, plus I’ll know it’s authentic and not a drop-shipped counterfeit. Amazon was tremendous once, but that’s gone.
I was an eBay PowerSeller 1999-2004 (the era of primarily accepting money orders). I don't even recognize that platform, anymore (perhaps one purchase, every few years, now – some diamond-in-the-rough rarity, unavailable elsewhere).
I closed my Amazon account, a few years ago, for similar reasons (both platforms seem to become the dumping grounds for brokens, defectives, and otherwise abandonables).
Most items I'll now purchase in-person, at a store – I want to feel the clothing's thickness, smell the hardware's newness, and/or pay more for warranted IRL customer support. Mandatory in-person purchases are memory (RAM or SSD), only because they have a supplier chain-of-custody, without mixed seller bins (which Amazon is attempting to resolve, albeit decades too late IMHO).
----
Random shoutout to Duluth Trading Company (not-affiliated, no stock owned – just a great brand): I drive 2.5 hours round-trip, once a year, to visit one of their clothing stores. If you haven't worn their firehose contractor pants, you're missing out on the incredibility of 3% spandex pants – thick, breathable, don't tear... and when you feel them in person you will absolutely not care about their pricetag. They have traditional US wwXhh mens-sizing, but also three separate "fits" (tightnesses).
If you're a fattietradesman (like me), trying things on is essential. Really glad to see certainly higher-end storefronts "coming back," as these customers demand quality.
Just wish they sold computers – although I did visit my first MicroCenter, recently: WOW! (Reminiscent of early-2000s Fry's Electronics, but smaller/better).
I think that is key. I used to browse Best Buy's website for various electronics and it was typically pretty good. I knew that somewhere, a Best Buy product buyer was evaluating the products with at least a minimum set of expectations. Then they opened their marketplace to 3rd party sellers and it's the same low cost, low quality crap on every other site.
I walked into a Best Buy, last summer, and the prominent retail location (i.e. right when you enter the store) had BBQ Grills for sale... not just one option, there were several sizes and configurations.
And somehow no local retailer had a corded phone (had to order off Amazon, unfortunately... friend's account) – not even the local telco! Exception: expensive fax machines (?!), with attached corded handset – in 2026.
We get NAÏF and other stuff from our kid directly from the brand. Sure, their websites are a bit lame and you gotta make a few accounts, but we end up getting nice promotions and good service.
The alternative is “here’s 450 other matches to your search that are definitely not what you’re looking for, that may be counterfeit, and may or may not give your kid dermatitis.”
I think some companies should lean more into that. We’ll pay for shipping if it spares us from those “skimming off the top”.
This sounds so obvious…Decathlon’s and Leroy Merlin’s 3rd-party sellers made their webshops a nightmare. Why would I go to Decathlon to buy from 3rd parties? We already had, like, 200 marketplaces for that.
B&Q in the UK went exactly the same way - used to be pretty reliable, and I didn't mind paying the extra to have all the things a home DIYer might need without going to half a dozen different builder's merchants and trade suppliers. Then they opened their store page up to anyone who wanted to list anything even tangentially related to home improvements and predictably it's a huge heap of drop-shipped rubbish and it's all been SEO'ed to the Nth degree to appear higher in the search rankings than anything actually sold by B&Q.
I have ordered items on eBay just for the seller to order it on Amazon and send it to me that way. Just happened to me this week with club bells/Indian clubs.
Haha, I ordered my car wing mirror cowl and it arrived in a box with an Amazon gift receipt. I suppose the eBay fellow was solving a discovery problem for me for a cut. Good for him.
eBay is very good for science-related goods, in my experience. Last week, I bought ~$12K of used gear for a project. All items work, would have cost ~2.5x that from the usual used instrument vendors, about 6x new.
I recently dealt with a merchant in Aliexpress who was intentionally selling things well below market price, not to build their storefront reputation, but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel. I forced them to cancel the order, which harms their rep.
Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Recently I attempted to return an item to AliExpress. They gave me a USPS return label with a domestic address that Google Maps showed as some generic office building. This address turned out to be an undeliverable and the package bounced back to me.
Support couldn't explain it and said I'd have to pay for a replacement label since I guess they only pay for one return per order.
I filed a chargeback instead. It was approved immediately. Surprisingly, AliExpress didn't ban my account or card, and I still shop there instead of equally terrible Amazon or eBay.
YMMV a lot with Aliexpress. I bought a $700 chiller that arrived without a small attachment fitting for the return inlet line. I complained, received another chiller (with the fitting) free. Go figure.
25 years ago if you wanted to sell a product you had to ship samples to buyers who would beat the crap out of it and if they liked it they'd place orders for 100s of thousands a month.
Amazon got it's start in that world undercutting the brick and mortar stores with their carefully curated manufacturers and buyers. In the process they completely destroyed it. Which is why 80% of the stuff for sale now is shitty.
i think you’ve hit the nail on the head. it’s the unmanaged part. it isn’t clear to me how We collectively are shocked when these marketing and execs convince us “oh, there’s nothing we can do. having customer service would be cost prohibitive. making sure there are no scams would be cost prohibitive. etc… etc…”
how about you get some customer service and protect us from scams and don’t buy your third private island and fourth mega yacht and have net worth larger than a lot of countries?
oh, that’s asking too much. you’re right, “nothing” can be done.
I don't think anything can be done, without regulation, which the USA is allergic to.
Why have customer service when the market doesn't seem to care and still buys your shit? Why crack down on scams when the market just does chargebacks, and yet keeps buying your shit?
So, we just deal with scammers, counterfeiters, drop shippers, fake brands, fake companies, fake products, all because regulation is seen as the worst thing that you could ever do to a business.
If only they would sort out their language / shipping country / currency model and make it so I can actually select what I want rather than their wrong assumption.
(And that's me having that problem in English / England / GBP, not a weird combination.)
> leave a product review in exchange for a free bed scrunchie accessory
I wonder what the exact language was. If it included something like “5 star review” on that card, then the guy deserves getting kicked out from Amazon and getting his business shut down (it’s federally illegal to do that per ftc regulation).
If it was just very neutral language asking for reviews, then that sucks, and hope he can get it resolved with Amazon eventually.
In 2022 I got physical mail about leaving a review for something I bought from Amazon (sold by company X, shipped by Amazon) in exchange for Amazon Gift Card. It contained the name of the product I bought. When I tried to report it to Amazon:
* there was no obvious way to do it. Closest thing was by reporting issue on product.
* there was no way to show the customer service agent a picture of the mail. Chat did not support sending pictures & they were unable to open imgur link.
* agent recommended me to leave a report it by leaving review to the seller page. I did that and next day review was deleted.
So it's pretty clear that Amazon didn't care and I doubt it has changed (unless the law you are talking about is recent one).
Yep -- I've gotten multiple postcards in the mail and/or product box after ordering something telling me I'd get ~$5-$10 if I left a 5 star review. They thoughtfully included exact screenshots of how to submit the review.
I also went looking for a way to report it. Eventually opened up a chat, didn't really get anywhere.
(I also didn't appreciate getting junk mail for ordering something).
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!
10 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!
You'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.
talking 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.
I 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.
I 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.
A 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.
My 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.
google.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.
I 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.
It's by no means limited to amazon. $50k or less gets you arbitrary account information from almost any large site you can name, similar rates for access to information that's supposed to be law enforcement only, or to get someone's realtime cellphone location. If it's not via a corrupt insider, it's by corrupt LEO, or impersonating LEO.
The only way to have a reasonable level of privacy against a well funded attacker is to not provide anything private to companies in the first place.
"This item will arrive tomorrow at 9 AM" -> Pay -> "Sorry this item can't be delivered by tomorrow will be delivered 2 days later" -> Next day -> "This item will be delivered 3 weeks from now"
I think Amazon is catching on. I had this happen last week, and after the 2 days late, Amazon sent an automated apology with the option to cancel if it didn't show up after the third day.
You don't use Amazon, and that's ok, but it's usually very reliable. In my case, it wasn't even Amazon, it was UPS that caused the delay. The automated delay based refund trigger, that costs them losses in shipping, is at least evidence that they're aware people don't like delays.
It's not common that they miss those timed delivery windows, in my experience... but when they do their systems don't seem to be able to handle it well and the delay is far worse than it would have been if it _weren't_ a timed window. I suspect it's related to the timed deliveries mostly being farmed out to gig drivers.
I can’t believe Nekhala managed to gross $6million on a bed scrunchy on Amazon without Chinese competitors pirating the design, even with a US patent. That in itself is a major accomplishment. At some point when progressives finally take the house perhaps we can get some real regulations in place so that someone banned from the system like this has recourse other than call tree AI.
I use Amazon when I've planned poorly and need something the next/same day. But, actually, less and less over time because Walmart and HEB (Texas grocery store w/ solid delivery) keep improving their delivery offerings.
People. Stop making '20 calls' about this sort of thing.
If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it.
Then call your lawyer, who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal.
If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court.
The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
What do you think Bezos does when a contractor takes his money and doesn't fix one of his dozen swimming pools? Or a car dealership fucks up one of his hypercars?
Do you think he makes 20 calls to customer service numbers? Or do you think one of his personal assistants calls once and asks politely, and then if it isn't made right, it gets batted over to his law firm.
> The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
Yeah, if you are a private customer that might work out going to small claims court against a large company.
But if you are a commercial vendor? Tough luck, you probably signed some mandatory arbitration clause in your terms, maybe even a non-disparagement clause. Whoops. Arbitration can cost shitloads of money upfront or expose you to the risk of having to pay the counterparty's lawyers if you lose the arbitration, no referral to the regular court system possible. And even going to the press to complain is a risky move.
There's a lot of things I'd be willing to jump into. But I'd never ever want to be in a commercial relationship with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta or any of the other tech giants (or Walmart, they are just as infamous for squeezing suppliers), simply because they have all the cards and I have none. They decide to kick me out, my existence is gone.
Have you ever paid for legal services? If you are a small business you may not be able to afford 4-500 USD/hour while they make phone calls and type emails.
