1. I go to your link
2. "Oh cool, there's a lot of travel adapters"
3. Filter by free shipping
4 (optional). See the top 2 are Sponsored, which makes me less likely to trust them, so ignore them. [NOTE: This is similar behaviour to using ANY search engine]
5. Open the top 3 links (https://www.amazon.com/MX-UC1-Protector-Universal-Charger-Ad..., https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Worldwide-Universal-Converter..., https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Universal-Schuko-Adapter-Ger...)
6. Dismiss #2 because it's twice the cost of the other ones and has lower reviews
7A. Pick #3 because it's a "best seller" - which means it has been vetted by other customers
7B. Pick #1 because it looks the nicest
Both have mostly good reviews with some bad ones, but hey it's a 7 dollar piece of plastic that tries to work in 150 different countries, it's not going to be perfect.
What is so customer unfriendly about this process?
Oh and by the way, this is a POWER user process who really wants to get the best one. A layperson could have just as easily just went straight for the "Best seller" and been satisfied.
I called customer support and wrote to the responsible regulatory body in Germany. This specific model is not available anymore. A dozen identical looking still are.
In the end I used one that is three times as expensive made by a reputable company.
That is the problem.
1. Ask for referral from people your trust, like your friends.
2. Buy locally in a physical store with a good return policy.
3. Buy from brands you trust.
It used to be Walmart, now it's Amazon; people will impoverish their local economy to save 50 cents.
Things I bought recently:
1. A rake. I chose the 5$ more expensive one that looked more sturdy and was made in Canada (where I live) instead of China.
2. A old generation smartphone. I chose Motorola G because it's a well-known brand and it had good reviews when it launched, two years ago. It's also got one of the longest battery time.
3. Jeans. I bought Lois Jeans at a local store because it's the last barnd I know of that is still made in Quebec.
Buying is also a political action.
I once bought a higher end item because I expected it to be good quality. Ended up being one of the poorest quality items I ever bought, replaced it with something that cost 1/4th the price and is better quality.
I have a $200 phone. $600 phones also exist but the $200 does everything l need it to do perfectly. The expensive option isn't better for my needs.
Even the cheapest cars sold in the last decade are remarkably durable and reliable.
If I actually want the cheap stuff I can go to Aliexpress on my own and pay half the price.
This means Amazon is fine for brand name stuff (PS4), or low risk stuff (Travel Pillow, Book). But, for a huge range of things you really can't tell if something is low cost, or low quality.
Which can start a fire, destroy a phone or laptop, etc. I think we need to take these things a bit more seriously. I usually just buy something from an US brick and mortar, at least then I know the UL tag is real and someone vetted this somewhere.
Heck, this problem even extends to usb cables. There's a google engineer who reviews USB-C cables after people started complaining about them damaging Nexus phones. I think you're being flippant about a real problem here. Unregulated Chinese manufacturers gaming the system with junk is not something we should be ignoring.
And will the insurance company say when they find out that the fire started from the junk metal-and-plastic piece you shoved into the socket?
Even if they don't know or care right now, they will in the future if (or when) it becomes a problem.
> There's a google engineer who reviews USB-C cables
There's that. We clearly need some third party testing these products. UL and CE tags receive little or no verification. The results of said testing was that the majority of cables could possibly damage your phone, if I recall correctly.
Along with other ridiculous prices, like $40 for a standard tape measure.
Ah, same pattern for the Dewalt DW2166 45-Piece Screwdriving Set, your price $37 shipped, not than anyone's likely to wait a month for the earliest estimated delivery date, vs. 14.45 Prime from Amazon.
Ditto:
DEWALT DPG82-11 Concealer Clear Anti-Fog Dual Mold Safety Goggle
DEWALT DW1354 14-Piece Titanium Drill Bit Set
Klein Tools NCVT-2 Dual Range Non-Contact Voltage Tester
DEWALT DCB205-2 20V MAX XR 5.0Ah Lithium Ion Battery, 2-Pack (679 plus generious free shipping, vs. 150 Amazon)
DEWALT DCS387B 20-volt MAX Compact Reciprocating Saw with Tool
I just happened to have bought a house built in 1910 6 weeks ago, so I have a general sense of what these sorts of items go for, as well as this item I might get later after I move in:
Hakko 599B-02 Solder Tip Cleaning Wire and Holder
I'm finding it impossible to come up with innocent explanations for the combined set of facts listed above, when your entry eliminates comparison shopping.
Picking one of your examples, we have the primary URL: https://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-DW1354-14-Piece-Titanium-Drill...
Then we have our store's URL: https://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-DW1354-14-Piece-Titanium-Drill...
Clicking on https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0045PQ762/ref=dp_ol... results in a view of all merchants selling on this listing. We're on the second page of 3 pages (last page is empty). At $25.57 we are not the most expensive, nor the least expensive. The lowest listed price is $14.99 by Amazon themselves. They probably got a good deal on them.
As you note, there is little reason for someone to order that particular item from us, on that listing. The same can be said of "Home Plus Hardware" which is selling it for $33.71.
I would note that your final blaming statement appears to demand an explanation for something I said incorrectly. I'm not providing a blow by blow "explanation" here for our pricing, but I would point out that I didn't say we always had the best prices on all items. We don't.
I did, however, indicate that we tend to be able to find good listings using our algorithms. That's not to say we can always get good prices on the items we're selling. That's another problem to solve entirely!
But let's check several items at semi-random (I avoided things in the same Dewalt tools category area, and every single one was significantly more expensive; first is your listing, second is the general one:
https://www.amazon.com/Woods-2001-Photocell-Weatherproof-Mec...
https://www.amazon.com/Woods-2001-Photocell-Weatherproof-Mec...
https://www.amazon.com/Lasko-2264QM-20-Inch-Performance-Velo...
https://www.amazon.com/Lasko-2264QM-20-Inch-Performance-Velo...
https://www.amazon.com/GE12722-Z-Wave-Wireless-Lighting-Cont...
https://www.amazon.com/GE12722-Z-Wave-Wireless-Lighting-Cont...
https://www.amazon.com/Moen-DN8408CH-Preston-Inspirations-Ho...
https://www.amazon.com/Moen-DN8408CH-Preston-Inspirations-Ho...
https://www.amazon.com/Akro-Mils-10164-Plastic-Storage-Hardw...
https://www.amazon.com/Akro-Mils-10164-Plastic-Storage-Hardw...
Sorry, but this is just too many coincidences for me to swallow. How are you even still in business??? Any idea how can you convince me, bald assertions just aren't making it against hard data.
However, your explanation for why only the listing on your store are limited to you is correct, I should have checked another storefront, I withdraw that objection and apologize for not doing my homework.
People who are in dissonance ask questions that have no answer. I would respectfully ask that you refrain from making blaming statements and asking questions with no answers.
I actually wrote out a whole reply for you which put a double bind on your argument, but then I said "fuck it". I'd rather eat dinner with my wife.
Pricing can also be a direct result of a velocity + stock calculation. If we are running low on FBA stock and don't have a good supply for the item ATM, the system may use a not-so-great source price on the item to calculate what it will cost us to refill stock. Sometimes items move around, or we lose suppliers for items, which cause the system to adjust the price accordingly.
If you are searching from Amazon proper (not our store) for those items in question, it is very likely Amazon won't show you our listings on them because of the price delta.
I would note we definitely utilize customer feedback to constantly improve our system's accuracy.
It would dramatically increase the quality of their store and brand, and it benefits from economies of scale.
Assuming they pay $100 for an high quality review, then a $10 item would increase by only 1 cent if at least 10000 are sold, which seem reasonable conditions.
For categories with many very similar items, reviews should be cheaper since a standard review procedure could be designed and applied quickly, offsetting the lower sales per items.
Is it backed up by numbers? As a customer, I agree with you, but our annoyance could be less important than all the customers that quickly pick some product they neeed as long as it got enough stars, without going much into the reviews.
To this day I'm amazed at how relatively badly the "Amazon Basics" usb cables worked.
In the UK store at least, a good portion of the ice machines sold appears to be the same design, but there are subtle and not so subtle differences, but many of the not-so-subtle differences are tweaks of the exterior plastic.
About 2/3 of them appears to have internals of the same broken design (plastic cam on the ice tray coupled with lack of a sensor to determine when it has rotated all the way back, causes it to twist and eventually crack), but it's not clear if all of the nearly identical versions are even from the same manufacturer.
Some of the non-broken ones are still clearly based on the same design too, but changing the plastic cam for metal and adding extra sensors.
(I learned this after my second one broke, and I dismantled it and looked through drawings and pictures before ordering my next one).
Any reason to think this isn't the intended function by the manufacturers. In my experience lots of products have really simply low cost changes that would make them last much longer (eg fill this 1cm^3 area of the injection mould instead of hollowing it) such that the product will fail after a year or so. Even my IKEA armchair has a beam where a 1 or 2cm extension on either end would give the chair much more strength - before seeing that I thought IKEA was good-but-cheap, now I see them as much closer to just cheap.
They are even shipped by Amazon. These products should never enter any western market. If a kid electrocutes himself thats going to be very bad news for Amazon.
Based on the kind of crazy dangerous shit that ends up on Amazon and stays on Amazon, I wonder what kinds of things they are catching and blocking from being sold?
The number of verticals of items I won't buy off Amazon has increased. Between spending a lot of time looking at the search results, ordering something that sucks, sometimes its easier, faster, and cheaper to go to Target.
http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-if-you-have-a-problem-with-ama...
I say this because I heard through someone that works there that Jeff does read complains and will often forward it to a department head with "?" body content. At that point that manager drops everything to come up with an explanation for what happened. Can't confirm this, but the source was pretty solid.
I wish Jeff Bezos would try buying a travel adapter (among many other items I've tried to buy recently) and tell me that it's a customer friendly process: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Atravel...
There are approximately 5 actually different adapters sold under maybe 50+ brands, and all the reviews are so padded with 5* free reviews, it's tough to know which ones are crap and which are good.
Reviews aren't as important for retailers like Wal-Mart that curate their products. But for a marketplace like Amazon, reviews are absolutely critical to prevent scams. I hope Amazon realizes the enormity of this issue and is working on it.
I believe Amazon should:
1. Fix the reviews. Disallow giving items for free or reduced prices in exchange for reviews. This may have worked originally for books, but any benefit received now is far out shadowed by the negatives. Alternatively, just limit it to 5 total free / reduced reviews per product to limit the negative effect. Police this policy heavily.
2. For the duplicate products (where one identical product is sold under 10 different brands, like in the travel adapter example above): Group the products together, and choose the brand like you might choose the color or size on a t-shirt. I recognize that there isn't a UPC numbering system that makes this easy - but there are probably only a few thousand items required to group together to make the buying process a lot easier for a large percentage of purchases.