I feel like this is actually a potentially serious problem for Amazon, and it's getting worse.

The other day I went to buy a pair of standard issue Apple headphones. The same exact ones that come with the iPhone. Yeah they are slightly overpriced but I am really used to them and they sound good and my pair was getting ratty and I wanted another one.

It was literally impossible to do. Try it and see what I mean. I see "Original OEM iPhone Earbuds with Mac and Volume Control" as the first result, for $4.94. As a non-clueless person I know those definitely aren't real. But are the results for $24.99 or $29.99 real? It's really just impossible to be sure, you can look for "Sold by Amazon" itself but even that can be ambiguous. The day I went to do it I literally could not. I gave up and went to apple.com where it took 30 seconds.

That's not an uncommon experience. I typically buy Apple stuff from the Apple online store, or from B&H, as a rule, because this is such a problem. And I'm noticing it more and more with other products, things like USB hubs or IP Cameras and the like.

My default has always been to buy almost everything I can from Amazon as the first preference, but it's getting harder and harder to do in entire categories of products. I hope someone there is paying attention to this problem, it's real.

I have this experience probably about half the time I'm shopping on Amazon (which I do a lot of). If you look in the comments/reviews for many items there will be dozens of people saying e.g. "product shipped was not the product pictured", "only buy if the seller is so-and-so if you want a genuine product", "received a used/returned product", and on and on. I've taken to spending more and going out of my way to buy some things in retail stores, where I can at least be reasonably sure I'm not getting a counterfeit.

yes. I've felt this way lately. The overall quality of Amazon has gone downhill sharply. It's resembling eBay or even Craigslist today. I was considering getting Prime a few days back when it was on sale. But I remembered that the majority of things I buy today aren't shipped by Amazon even. Never mind their whole "Prime day" fiasco (which Amazon never owned up to).

From an ethical standpoint, I'm also starting to wonder if Bezos is one of the most unhinged, corrupt people on this planet. Stories from their top tech employees down to their warehouse workers have been nothing short of horrifying.

Also true with non Apple products eg Samsung accessories are all fake on Amazon.

It's a big problem when you know exactly what you want but can't find it because of all of the noise.

AFAICT, that problem is general to buying anything through Amazon except things sold directly by Amazon.

Yeah, it's becoming annoying. Batteries are more likely fake/offbrand than not, even when the ad claims otherwise, and last at best 3 months instead of 24 in my car's key fob. I got frustrated and eventually bought them at a local hardware store. Replacement chargers are chinese imitation shit. I've had an increasing number of purchases that don't match their descriptions. Amazon has been very good about it, and always refunds my money, but I'm still left without the plant mite spray or battery or whatever that I needed in the first place, so that only helps so much. I would have thought amazon would be working to get a handle on this but maybe their analytics tell them it doesn't matter.

Yeah I've bought bad batteries from Amazon (they were recharged AAs being sold as new), of course from a third-part seller.

Amazon doesn't care; thousands of people complain, and they keep letting it happen.

Amazon Subprime.

Bought some LED kitchen track lights on amazon that uniformly burned out in < 2 months

Yes me too. Never thought to blame Amazon. Do you have a recommendation for a more quality product?

Honestly I'm not sure stuff sold directly by Amazon is an exception.

But at least you'll be able to return it without hassle if it's not right

That's not the point. Who cares if it's expensive or confusing. They are banning products that are competing with their own products.

Amazon is simply a store for majority of the people who shop there.

If Google banned Amazon from search results you would probably be outraged.

Based on the news article, Amazon isn't banning competitors. Roku competes with Fire TV, and the Netflix app it bundles competes with Prime Video. The article says Amazon will still sell Roku. Indeed, Amazon's Fire TV also supports Netflix and Hulu and HBO and ESPN and whatnot, not just Amazon Video.

The news article says that they're banning video streaming devices that don't support Amazon Video. So if that's true, it's not that they're banning competitors, but that they're forcing streaming devices sold on Amazon to support Amazon Video in addition to whatever else they support.

I don't know what the primary motivation is, but I could genuinely see some customers being confused. Imagine you're a customer that's just signed up for Prime. You don't have a TV stick to watch it on, so you shop around the store and find a streaming device that's highly reviewed. You buy it and plug it in, only to find that Amazon Video does not work on it, or works poorly. This is plausible; this kind of thing happens, especially with unsophisticated, less computer savvy buyers (the kind of people who think the Google search box is the Internet). I could easily see my parents making this kind of mistake.

Whether that's the primary motivation, I wouldn't know. It seems like you could also deal with that problem by changing the way the product is displayed, for people who have Prime Video, and show a big warning like "This product does not support Prime Video" on the side so they can't overlook that fact when buying it. (Though this could lead to other complications - I could imagine there being weird legal or anti-competitive issues with making claims like that about competitors' products in a way that they can't control, that's not part of the product description. Banning them might be the simplest way.)

> The news article says that they're banning video streaming devices that don't support Amazon Video.

The only reason the devices don't support Amazon Video is because Amazon has chosen not to build apps that support those devices.

But you need to go deeper. Amazon hasn't built apps that support those devices because those devices manufacturers want a cut of their profits off of subscriptions or rentals because those device manufacturers (Google / Apple) want people to use their own services instead.

That's only for in-app subscription purchases. You didn't think Apple was getting a 30% cut off Prime video subscriptions just because there's an iPad app, right? Or Netflix for that matter.

This is a problem entirely of Amazon's making. And I don't understand it. No one makes money on the devices, they make money on the subscriptions. It's in their best interests to be on as many devices as possible.

Or because they don’t support the specific DRM system used?

If it were the primary motivation to avoid confusing Prime members they could easily just add a bold description field: DOES NOT SUPPORT AMAZON VIDEO. They could also just drop it from Prime-eligible rather than drop it from the store entirely. Many Prime members filter things by Prime-eligible (for many different reasons) and that would possibly be more effective than dropping it entirely.

Google is a monopoly or near monopoly in search. Amazon is not a monopoly or near monopoly in general ecommerce (excluding ebooks.) Seeing as amazon is not a (near) monopoly in general ecommerce, I can't be bothered to care. If you don't like amazon's policies, patronize walmart, target, newegg, apple.com directly, or a dozen other competitors. I personally think amazon is wildly overestimating their ability to extract concessions from apple.

A couple more Amazon problems:

They obviously treat their vendors like red-headed stepchildren; they know they have to be on Amazon to make sales, but the margins have to be tiny. Ever notice how when you order something from an Amazon "partner", the tracking information is magically worse than worthless? And of course, if you have a problem they'll correct it immediately at their own cost, because Amazon threatens to turn off the sales faucet if they don't make the Amazon Experience pleasant for the consumer.

Don't get me wrong, I still shop there. Particularly for electronics -- 3% cashback on my Amazon card is nothing to shake a stick at.

But it's feeling worse and worse to do so.

This is half Amazon's problem, and half Apple's problem for not giving their computer models unique names. Type iPhone 6s and you get much more clear results.

No, it's that these listings on Amazon are kind-of-like "eBay" just without the auctioning part. The seller can write whatever he wants. Amazon just evaluates the complaints of the buyers.

There is a standard naming convention with Apple products though that they and everyone else uses:

MacBook Pro (mid-2015)

GradeAUnderA brought out some really good points https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_osrpU9UWrc