I'm sure bad experiences happen but compared to driving to the big box suburban wasteland to browse through a limited selection, Amazon is a godesend.
Last time I bought a router from them it was defective. I had to stand in line for over an hour. The clerk was surly and didn’t believe it was defective. Kept opening the box, pulling everything out, looking at all the pieces. Putting it all back. Over and over.
Then he didn’t said he couldn’t accept it because the receipt was ripped - which it was when the check-out person ripped it out of the register. He said they could take it back, but I wouldn’t be able to make any other returns.
I ended up asking for the manager who took another 15 minutes to arrive, argue and get it sorted.
The return took almost 2 hours. Absolutely crazy.
Still not quite as good as Costco or REI, but at least with BB I know I'm getting the good I actually purchased and not some cheap Chinese knockoff.
Here's a 1 TB microSD card [1]. No such product legitimately exists [2], so it must be a data-destroying counterfeit.
4.5 stars, $80.
That one was easy to spot, but it's my understanding that pretty much every MacBook charger on Amazon is a kock-off counterfeit [3]. They get the case perfect, but the electronics inside are a fire hazard [4].
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Wazzey-Micro-Memory-Adapter-1024GB/dp...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/31/16232618/s...
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/majority-apple-accessories-am...
[4] http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...
I know that it’s not fair to expect customers to distinguish between legit and shady listings, but I consider this effectively a “do not buy this product” warning.
I checked every one of my SD cards when I learned about Amazon's problem with fakes... Turns out I'd bought two fake SanDisk cards. They looked and worked like the real ones but the serial numbers were invalid. Maybe they'd continue working fine, or maybe one day I'd lose 64GB of photos in the middle of a vacation... who knows?
Needless to say, that destroyed my in Amazon. How can they guarantee they aren't selling malicious IOT devices, counterfeit healthcare products, cheap kitchenware made of toxic materials, or even the products of slave labor?
That won't really help. There are prime-eligible counterfeits shipped from Amazon's warehouses due to the Fulfilled by Amazon program. Even buying from a known trustworthy seller is not enough, as Amazon commingles FBA/Prime-eligible inventory from multiple sellers of the same item:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/on-amazon-pooled-merchandise-op...
Also: anything food-related that's by a major brand (like Oxo or Rubbermaid) I buy from a local store, as a lot of the Chinese Alibrands don't comply with FDA requirements but are advertised as if they were.
This was 2+ years ago and the last thing I will ever buy on amazon that uses electricity.
Looks like somebody being told by the manager not to accept returns or over return quota or something. Something shady definitely going on there... I never had such experience with local BB store, but I guess it depends a lot on local management.
Took 10 minutes. And even though I returned the opened XBox controller a few days after their return window, they gave me store credit.
I was a happy customer.
They screwed me over on a price match and I ended up getting the whole thing charged back.
BestBuy want to play games? I can play too.
Last few times I've had to return something to Best Buy, it's been pretty painless and quick. They know their competition is Amazon and one of its strengths is its return experience.
Most retail purchases can be returned via the credit card no problem.
For Amazon customers in the EU, GDPR is supposed to help with the "You simply will never know what you did that triggered them" part as they are required to explain what led them to close the account.
This is not typical at all.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/amazo... http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-find-fake-products-onl... https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17301714/amazon-counterfe... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-walmart-newegg-third-par...
The same sort of incentive can be found in a lot of places. There's a pretty niche but healthy market for aged companies, for example. So rather than winding down and dissolving your entity, you can make a few bucks by selling it. And rather than making a new company, you would just buy one of those dormant entities. With multiple incentives, one of the primary being that the established entity will have an aged enough paper trail to pass a lot of fraud checks and credit opportunities that a new entity couldn't.
Immediately thereafter you list a way you can get flagged through no fault of your own because a friend who was flagged shipped things your your address as a gift.
I don't want to have to establish a strong background of years of membership in order not to get treated like trash. I'm not interviewing for a job or a date I just want to give you my money for goods that aren't counterfeit.
When you have a large minority of fakes and problem shipments you are going to have outliers. People whom you shipped 5 fakes/broken stuff in a row.
Banning these people means that not only can I not trust you to sell me a legit good I can't trust you not to turn your back on me afterwards.
Now the fact that they sell fake crap and expect people not to use the return policy is obviously ridiculous. If you're going to continue selling fake crap, then you better be willing to allow people to return that fake crap without consequences. So I definitely agree with your point.
Separate AWS account won't necessarily save you - if they can connect the two by name, address, credit card, etc. they're at risk. If you've got a business, having it under the business name might do the trick, but that's still a risk.
Even when padding is put into a shipping box, often it's a rectangle or two of "air pillow" that doesn't come close to filling the free space. And/or some of the pillows are broken and deflated.
I've become concerned about how they will ship things.
And, with news of their apparent "kill accounts with too many returns" overreach or arbitrary-ness... Yes, ordering from Amazon is no longer a no-brainer.
(Not to mention the counterfeit problem; that, I myself mostly seem to have avoided by paying attention to the listed fulfillers. And the $150 billion versus temp employees who have to pee in bottles and collect benefits disparity.)
Sorry, I reiterate, occasionally in comments, because at this point, I believe bad PR is the only thing I can contribute to that has any impact.
Well, also, starting to make more of an effort to shop competitors, as pointed out in this comment thread. As to that, secure your payments process. For a while, that helped hold me to Amazon.
Kind of defeats the quick delivery convenience/reputation they are after.
Not that I feel sorry for them in anyway. Their stock mixing is basically fraud. The only thing that is more maddening are the corporate submissive boneheads that rise to the defense of the prime service whenever someone has a legitimate complaint.
It is reporting based on: https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers...
But that is behind a paywall.
I think Alibris is _especially_ wonderful from a seller's perspective. Their chat support is friendly and efficient, and does not seem to be an outsourced and overworked call center, but actual Alibris employees who can fix things.
I think you are being overly cautious. I've been buying with Amazon for many years and returned a bunch of stuff for various reasons, and only times I had issues were third-party vendors, but Amazon never objected or gave me any trouble with returns. Of course I guess if you actively abuse it they have some triggers, but I don't think honest use has high probability of triggering it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers...
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/18/banned-by-amaz...
As for terrible customer service, see the below for my reasons for cutting off Prime:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16937290
In particular:
• Prime shipping is no longer certain to be two days.
• Those which are assured to arrive within two days don't always do so, but I never get a credit for that delay against my prime membership for a failure to meet their SLA even though I'm supposedly covered with some sort of guarantee.
• Prime shipping is no longer certain to source from Amazon warehouses.
• And worst of all: Amazon commingles Amazon-sourced with FBA merchandise. I've had numerous issues with counterfeits from "sold by Amazon" listings in the last two years because of this.
It is shocking how many times something that says `sold by Sony` or `Amazon` yet I press `inventory` on the menu that the extension injects into the product page and surprise, surprise, most of the stock is coming from FBA sellers.
imagine a more consumer-oriented extension that could list whether a given amazon product was likely to have commingled inventory or not - do you think this is possible?
Take a look at the information it displays: https://i.imgur.com/ZbgfSlo.png
Ignore the price bit, it normally shows the price right but there must be a minor transient issue right now.
But as you can see, Amazon claims the product is sold by Sony. However most of the sellers are not Sony.
As you said, having a customer-oriented variant of this functionality would be an amazing feature for a browser extension.
PS: Been reading HN for a while now. This is my first post.