It's a weird story but I ordered a kids plate from Amazon. I ordered 2 that were totally fine but when I ordered a 3rd one, it was completely different quality, seemed to be a different material, and had a weird smell to it. It was "Prime" but almost immediately, you could tell it was a different product.

This has happened to me a bunch and I've heard crazier stories about people ordering supplements/vitamins and getting fake bottles :(

I don't trust Amazon as much either outside of a few products I trust + majority of common electronics. I wouldn't buy an HDD from Amazon for instance due to their crazy shipping shit.

Also, their shipping is so fucking unreliable. I get delays on my packages at least twice a month, and they've lost packages before :(

I stopped buying anything electronic from Amazon because one power to USB adapter burned up, tripped a circuit breaker, and it broke my fridge. Luckily, that was the only other thing I had plugged into that circuit at the time.

Another big issue was my friend bought an Apple power adapter that started smoking after a few hours of it being plugged into the wall.

Scary stuff, especially when you consider anything that goes on or in your body could be counterfeit too.

I used to order a lot of our daily household stuff from Amazon: cleaners, dish soap, detergent, etc. So much of that stuff now is priced just horribly. $4 for a bottle from Amazon, but it's just from Prime Pantry so you have to order a bunch of stuff or be stuck with a high shipping cost.

If you go with one of the other sellers, the prices are frequently 2-3x normal retail, I guess preying on the fact that people don't realize they're getting ripped off.

It was for that reason I started buying my household stuff at Amazon — because I could save a buck or two, per item, which adds up.

Then — as you pointed out — stuff got weird. Amazon's prices became consistently higher than the supermarkets.

Then the third-party sellers started using "AI" pricing, so that a package of soap bars that is $3.59 at Safeway is $61 on Amazon.

Then the counterfeits arrived, and now my family has a policy of not buying anything from Amazon that goes on, or in, our bodies.

These days there are bargains to be had through Amazon, but only through the two-hour shipping from Whole Foods. At least in my market. (A particular cheese that is $15/pound at Kroger is $5/pound when I get it delivered from my local Whole Foods.)

It's not too late to Amazon to regain trust. But it's not going to be a quick or easy process.

It was likely they were fakes and if they provide electrical power they may be a fire hazard.

Amazon seemed to realize how big of a problem this was (or Apple took them aside and made it a problem for them) because they just announced they are taking action: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjexb5/amazon-is-...

Basically we pay Amazon $1 or 15% of sale (whichever is higher + ~$2.50 for shipping before anything else, so after margins and what not that's a minimum of $4 going to Amazon for marketing and logistics. That's why low dollar 1-pack items feel like price gouging -- there's been years of A/B testing on the marketplace that shows a $4.99+free ship item is way more attractive than $1.99+$3 shipping.

Amazon itself sells stuff direct from manufacturer at a loss or breakeven-ish cost for items under $3 because they can, but even those prices aren't hugely sustainable and they play around with algorithmic pricing themselves over time.

Retail logistics for low dollar items is a Hard problem. :|

https://www.amazon.com/Formula-409-Purpose-Cleaner-Bottles/d...

You can get the normal retail prices on all this stuff and still shop online. You just can't do that on Amazon any more.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/investing/target-earnings/i...

And as a result, I've become much more careful about checking prices on Amazon, which can't be good for Amazon overall.

By contrast, when I go to the grocery store, I generally assume the amount I'm paying is more-or-less the same as what I would pay elsewhere. (Likely a poor overall mindset on my part, but good for the store.)

For out-of-print books/toys/games/etc., eBay is usually your best bet. Computer hardware (video cards, RAM, etc.) is often cheaper on either eBay or NewEgg. Et cetera.

Some of these items, like the pasta, are things I'd previously ordered from Amazon for a fraction of the current price. Which, again, has caused me to be much more cautious—every time I reorder something nowadays, I have to check whether the price has changed. How does Amazon expect people to use stuff like the dash button when prices can vary this much?

But the products that double in price have made more sensitive to the ones that change by a few dollars, because I'm now on high alert for price changes in general.

I have a couple of Dash buttons for Gatorade and pistachios and such. I stopped using them because I couldn't be certain of a reasonable price, or that the products wouldn't be fakes.

Safety > price > convenience, Amazon.

I think it all stems from the same thing. Dishonest Amazon sellers know that most Amazon shoppers don't price check, so they can all get away with selling way over market price as long as everyone selling a given item stays the course.

Last week I tried Mercari, and it was... OK. Better selection than Goodwill. The shippers don't seem to be in a hurry to get things out. Both sellers offered excuses when they missed Mercari's three day window. But the stuff finally got here.

Can anyone recommend another marketplace? Something not Alibaba or DX.com?

AMZN's ridiculous P/E ratios aren't really ridiculous when you think about it. Everybody knows Amazon pumps most of its free cash flow back into the business, which increases their growth rates at the expense of current earnings. The prices they are getting for the stock are just the result of a market betting on the future profit potential of Amazon when the growth stops or slows to normal levels. High prices imply that investors see huge amounts of growth potential, and if you extrapolate out what that P/E means, it shows that AMZN investors see Amazon growing 10x larger (or more) than it currently is.

But now Amazon has this huge liability of the Marketplace, and in order to cut it out they have to cut back their revenues by a substantial amount. And a revenue slowdown or decline signals to investors that growth is slowing. Needless to say, the anticipated future value of Amazon will cut quite drastically with a hit to revenues.

Compounding the problem is the fact that so much of their compensation comes in the form of RSUs, which are new issues. This is a great growth strategy, because it reduces their dependence on free cash flow for compensation, allowing it to be used for investment. BUT, any hit to their stock price will require drastic increases in RSU grants in order to maintain personnel, further exacerbating a drop in stock prices through dilution.

I don't envy the person who has to solve this problem.

Amazon has the data from Amazon Marketplace to know the top selling products, and Amazon has the scale to arrange manufacturing deals with perhaps the same overseas factories Amazon Marketplace sellers are using to economically produce private label brands for Amazon, thereby decreasing the market share of Amazon Marketplace sellers. Amazon could also make their Amazon Basics more visible to consumers by default, and have more control over the QA of the items.

With growing negative feedback about the quality-side of Amazon's Marketplace items/sellers, there is an opportunity to accelerate into private-label territory with more control over manufacturing oversight/customer service while using the Amazon Marketplace as the "proving grounds" to determine which products are most profitable for Amazon to private-label. Sure AMZN's earnings are doing well, but the real secret sauce for Bezos isn't just logistics - it's holding control over a market.

Right now, Amazon's quality-gatekeeping on their platform is the equivalent of Mac doing an "ocular pat down" on entrants. If there is monetary incentive to stray away from this, Amazon would be more willing to flip the switch on the marketplace. And thus we come one step closer towards living in an Amazon corporate town buying Amazon-branded items from the Amazon general store.

Probably wait for something to be announced like "Prime Plus" for premium brands as they try to figure out how to differentiate products in the market, or watch them continue to expand into new types of markets altogether... there's very little for them else to do.

And I haven't even been bitten by the Amazon commingling fraud yet, just bitten by egregiously craptastic products bought off of Amazon. I can't trust the reviews without carefully parsing them to figure out which ones are likely factory-generated. I can't trust the pricing without looking through various historical price add-ons. At that point, the cognitive load between using Amazon and choosing alternative channels is pretty meh, and I'd rather just go "straight to the source", ordering direct from the manufacturer and finding the manufacturer by looking up forum discussions.

For renewing household goods, I'm finding myself shopping at my local grocery chain, Target and WalMart a lot more these days. Once Amazon pricing for the same household item shows it is more than these other sources (and often by a surprisingly large delta), Amazon doesn't get a crack at that spend for another year, as it isn't worth the cognitive bandwidth to comparison shop each time I go to the grocery store, or if Target/WalMart deliver the best price, they get the subscription for the year. I use a credit card number generator for subscriptions, so we have to renew the configuration each year.

Amazon is losing its convenience value proposition, and I find taking their eye off of that ball very odd for a B2C context, but what do I know.

But for many things I shop for, that would be extremely inconvenient for me. For example, I needed to buy replacement fuses for a Fluke multimeter. Amazon itself didn't sell it but a 3rd-party marketplace seller did. If the marketplace was shut down, I'd have to go through the hassle of registering a new account on yet another ecommerce website just to buy that fuse. In this day and age of customer databases getting hacked, I'd rather not create any new accounts unless absolutely necessary.

Yes, I get the danger of counterfeit items. I did get bit by that with fake eclipse glasses from China last year but nevertheless, the 3rd-party marketplace has been a net positive for my shopping experience. I just pay attention to the seller ratings and make sure they're better than 98%.

This is why I'm a software engineer and not a retail tycoon ;-).

For example Mercado Libre. Originally from Argentina (I think) but it's all over Latin America now. They used to have auctions but at least in Mexico it's mostly a marketplace.

https://www.mercadolibre.com.mx/

Maybe I'm just extremely cynical, but you don't feel those are somehow gamed? For parts that you've described, I've actually moved to eBay as my first stop.

I think the reviews for products are gamed but I don't think the seller feedback ratings are.

I used to sell used books as a Amazon marketplace seller and I once sold a book that was damaged and put that condition in the description. The buyer bought and gave me 1 star rating for it and described the damage that I already put in the description. The buyer just didn't bother to read the description before he bought it. I couldn't get Amazon to remove that unfair rating.

If there's a way to game the seller feedback in a sustainable way across thousands of ratings, I'd like to know how. Sure, sellers could offer refunds to bribe customers to change their seller rating from 1 star to 5 stars (not sure if that's even possible) but eventually, the seller will run out of money with that scheme. On the other hand, product reviews are easier to hack.

Last I heard, it was ~50% of their revenue. And they take a 15% cut of the price, plus a per-transaction fee, for the cost of maintaining a product catalog (which they already do).

Not a chance they'll drop it.