I've also noticed the quality control has gone down the tubes, with 3rd party sellers shipping counterfeit goods. Amazon doesn't seem to be interested in regulating this.
If there was a company with Amazon's shipping speed but without all the shady 3rd party sellers, I don't think I'd use Amazon again.
But I often also find myself searching a community like reddit for product suggestions through google. query: "product name" reddit, and I may add in tags like BIFL (buy it for life) or frugal to try and trigger different results, so I can see what people who are less likely to be shilling have to say.
For example, while fan searching today, I learned more from https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/3ad5rl/bifl_r... than I ever could have from Amazon reviews, and it even made me realize I already have a fan that circulates, I'm just using it wrong.
5 star and 1 star reviews are usually garbage - either fluffed fake reviews, or reviews outraged about something unrelated with the quality of the product itself.
And that's where their amazing (by the standards of other etailers) return policy comes into play.
Same here. I stopped buying commodity electronics items (cables, power supplies, headphones, etc.) on Amazon, because of all the fake products that claim to be 100% original.
Even the Amazon basics brand does not live up to its standards. I recently bought an Amazon basics USB/Lightning cable, "Apple certified". The lightning plug was so lose, it fell right out of the iPhone.
I would consider a YouTube channel that primarily reviews things less trustworthy than a rando on the internet, not more.
Even if the YouTuber is totally trustworthy, "professional" reviewers are only going to give short term impressions, how its features and cost stack up in the market, etc. which I can research for myself. What I want to know about is long term experience, failure modes, etc.
Pretty much only Consumer Reports is in that business, and only for big ticket items like cars.
Maybe I'm just picky but I find reading/judging Amazon reviews a pain in the ass.
And it being a "social" thing, there's nothing stopping you from reaching out and having a conversation with reviewers.
Still, I would at least like to see something like what I mentioned tried.
I have some ideas on ways to tackle the fraud problem, such as with a trust-based ranking system, rewarding balanced feedback, purchase verification, looking for heuristics of fake reviews, and avoiding potential conflicts of interest.
It's not the primary concern of Amazon to make sure their reviews are authentic, where as it would be with a service dedicated to that very concern. In fact, positive reviews help drive more sales, so there's an inherent conflict of interest that I feel justifies the need to separate reviews from the place selling the things being reviewed.
That to me is a pretty good quick-window into the level of quality of the product.
When I changed cities a few years ago, I decided to sell the majority of my books so as not to have to ship them, and I made enough from those sales to cover about a quarter of my shipping fees for the rest of my stuff.
This is particularly true with what I've been buying lately--tools. The local home depot will just deal in a couple of brands for most tools, while amazon is virtually guaranteed to have dozens in all variety of size, power, options, price, and quality.
The price is usually better, as well, and then I don't have to load it into my vehicle, either. Poor UPS guy, though.
I've been searching for a drill press for months, and I actually just hit one today. Assuming it's not sold out from under me by tomorrow, I'll have a new one in the evening.
The last one I saw was sold within two hours of listing, and that was over a month ago.