Even then, its getting harder to find somewhere I can "trust". Example, I buy 8TiB Seagate drives, used to be I could depend on Newegg to get them, but now they have a market thing like amazon.
My last box from them was empty, literally. I'm down to B&H photo for buying drives which is fine they're great but I'm getting pissed off at all the things that used to work fine to buy on amazon but now its total sketch.
An Amazon example, I bought a NUC from some random store, but totes shipped by Amazon we promise so I was like well eh, its like the only place on the internet to buy this model.
Didn't even get sent, fortunately I got a refund but I'm DONE buying electronics on Amazon or Newegg. I can't trust that I'll get what I want from either anymore. This ignores the crap like getting a power brick and finding out the stupid thing is a counterfeit and not the name brand it was supposed to be.
edit - best buy may not have everything you need but typically you can find a decent drive.
The big issue is that there aren't a bunch of independent e-retailers to choose from. If you want to make it, you gotta make stores on Amazon, eBay, NewEgg, Etsy and Reverb (not all of course; depends on your products). I wrote an article about this recently:
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-death-of-the-mom-and-pop-...
The realization that the experience that changed was Amazon, not BestBuy was startling to me.
Best Buy sometimes has GPUs or SSDs at good prices, but its less common. I still price-compare at Best Buy because of that small chance that they win in the price wars, but my #1 goto is still Microcenter (or Newegg if from online).
The fact of the matter is: Amazon's cables have such low-quality assurance on them, that they're untrustworthy now.
I think for cables specifically, Monoprice has created a good reputation and a good price. Unlike Amazon, who hides behind "marketplace sellers" and "comingling", Monoprice puts their own reputation on the line when they sell cables.
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=5458
Ultimately, if Amazon wants to be a "marketplace seller", they can. But Amazon needs to do a much better job combating fake-sellers, low-quality products. I'm not even anti-Chinese or whatever, I'm fine buying cheap Chinese stuff as long as there's some long-standing brand name that is willing to take the reputation hit if things go wrong. (Ex: why I'm fine buying cheap Chinese goods from Walmart, but not fine with buying cheap Chinese goods from Amazon. Walmart does step in and take responsibility)
Otherwise, its just Alibaba Russian roulette with your stuff. Maybe things work, maybe things don't, maybe things will blow up your laptop. Maybe the 18650 cell will blow up in your vaping device and give 3rd degree burns on your face. Or the 18650 cells will create a garage fire burning down your new scooter. Etc. etc.
The problem is the distinct lack of brands and accountability on Amazon. If a Monoprice or Best Buy cable destroyed laptops or caused fires, we'd all blame Monoprice or Best Buy. But if an Amazon item does the same, we somehow don't blame Amazon, but some indistinct unnamed entity.
1. they too have a giant marketplace of who knows who
2. they require you to stay logged in to paypal if you want to use it for "convenience". The entire reason I use PP is to prevent sharing my payment data with yet another retailer and provide some isolation.
If I need something from them I just order to the store and pay then.
Edit to Add - She KNEW she was getting the generic adapter but still thought it would do what she needed. So this is not Amazon's fault in this case.
Except last time, I forgot, and when I needed to return something, it took over a week just to get an RMA and return shipping info from the "marketplace".
Fuck yooooooou, Newegg, for doing this to your brand and to my shopping.
On Newegg and Amazon.
Never thought I'd miss the old monopolistic, competition killing WalMart that raced towards the bottom...
I still use Amazon for the various products that simply aren't available in stores, but nowadays I first look somewhere else.
I’ve gotten shitty stuff before but it’s always FBA. So I just avoid that now and I have no complaints (other than the fact that very few things I actually buy arrive in 2 days)
it is just not acceptable a shopping site has so little product integrity that they cannot guarantee a review belongs to the product it is attached too. Amazon could fix a lot of this by assigning each product a unique number that can never be reused; as in ever. Let the retailer point back to the previous version if review history is important but never let it appear as review of the viewed product
[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/customer-reviews-ratings/hij...
I must say that I don't really understand this strategy, although of course it's hard to get the full picture when you don't have access to the raw numbers. It's not like Amazon is aching for money so why risk their reputation like this?
Its really out of hand.
They'd never sell you counterfeit goods, so that option on the pulldown doesn't even need to be there in the first place!?!? wink wink right?!? RIGHT??!
As someone who's received a counterfeit board game, I do have to say that they were exceedingly prompt in getting me a replacement item. I know it's probably an uphill battle, but I hope they're able to make some progress on that front.
This is the most frustrating of them all, reviews mean absolutely nothing anymore when the item can be switched out at will while keeping any old reviews.
If it hasn’t been solved yet, it’s probably not that trivial. How many is “too many”? What happens if I change one attribute every week or so until I’ve completely changed the product?
The problem seems trivial, especially for a company of Amazon's size. All they'd need to do is have some prominent part of the product description (say the product name) be unmodifiable without review and approval by Amazon, and have reviewers that are trained to spot patterns of fraudulent behavior. Any legitimate issues caused by the review can probably be mitigated by giving sellers the ability to get pending changes pre-approved before they go live [1].
If a seller doesn't want to go through the approval, they can delete the product listing and create a new one with a new description, but they'd lose all the reviews. Seems like a fair tradeoff.
However, all that would cost a little bit of money, and would require staff. Amazon probably made the business decision that they like money, and don't mind the costs of allowing the fraud since it's mostly borne by customers.
[1] so the Amazon review for a legitimate product name change can happen while the packaging is being redesigned, and it can all go live in a coordinated fashion
It's more trivial than that -- the product physical dimensions and weight.
Amazon, the store, may have no idea about the description or product specifics.
But you think Amazon, the logistics company, doesn't know exactly everything needed for shipping and warehousing an item?
It's hard to capture long-term sentiment towards a product, so short term optimization end up dominating conversations.
"Five stars! Would recommend this ship to Theseus or anyone else."
There are thousands of retailers out there, Amazon seems to be unique in having this problem at scale.
As long as you let such individuals into your marketplace without any oversight or data-cleaning requirements, you will have this problem. It's like email and spam all over again.
No this is a problem unique to Amazon because it has both a marketplace filled with third party sellers and an official brand both operating on the same site without highlighting that the marketplace is less trustworthy. If you want to buy an Asus mainboard then you won't be brought to a seller specific page. Instead there is a product specific page that bundles first party and third party sellers onto a single page and both will appear in the search results. The conflict of interest is pretty obvious. Only Amazon sells the "AmazonBasics" brand and by making all non Amazon brands look untrustworthy through third party sellers they steer people toward buying the Amazon products.
It's not a perfect parallel of course, so some lessons were learned I suppose. It just seems like it was somehow fun at first, and then the people who sell on it find a way to ruin the experience.
Just like the internet.
I dunno, I always get what I want from eBay, and any issues are resolved quickly and fairly, while Amazon it's pay and pray :/
This is in the EU, btw.
And they've managed to improve the latter while ignoring the former.
You get better prices, but the barrier to entry for buyers is substantially higher than Amazon.
There can also be a sales tax optimization game included. True for Canada anyway.
Then you have a hundred sellers selling near duplicates that may or may not be identical. Do you just buy the cheapest?
Do you buy it slightly cheaper in $AUD from Asia or in your local currency?
I’ve bought bike lights that used 2032s, then the same looking units a year later that had smaller heating aid cells.
Then there’s the lack of reviews, so you gotta détermine quality based on cues. maybe that vendor has sold a thousand units and Ebay links to some feedback for that exact listing.
Vastly differing return policies. And remember: when it comes from Asia and doesn’t work; just say it was lost. When Ebay asks you to return it, it’ll cost you more to ship it back than the whole item cost incl. shipping.
Just what is up with that account that has 3k listings but just 24 feedback?
But it’s definitely cheaper if you can manage all that.
A lot is product category dependent.
The lack of reviews doesn't bother me at all, as my experience is that reviews are worthless anyway.
So, I guess it entirely depends on how you're using eBay and what your goals are.
When I need it tomorrow: Amazon.
At least in Canada, there isn’t much in-between on the massive marketplaces.
All the big mega-sites (NewEgg, Amazon, eBay, Reverb, Etsy) are really just sites for tons of marketplaces.
Disruption, freedom, ala internet diverts energy away from good old solutions.. for a while, until it spoils itself under its own flood. By the time we realize, old businesses have suffered tremendously.
Stress is good for health, but too much too fast is called a disease.
Amazon is hurting itself on purpose here, because of greed, not because their model is fundamentally flawed.
Anyway, lesson learned.
In the UK Trademark enforcement seems to be something only large companies get action on against very smalltime operators.
So, presumably it serves government aims not to enforce the laws, in this respect, that help citizens.
1) A local, physical store.
2) Directly from the manufacturer's website.
3) An online retailer that I have found trustworthy and reliable in the past.
4) eBay
5) Amazon, if I'm desperate enough.
But no... They hide the price because they want me to come in so a salesman can dazzle, confuse and up sell me to buy something else.
To be fair, they also don't want to put their prices online because it means they'd have to compete with other physical retailers on price instead of relying on rash purchases by buyers that are driven by time and location constraints.
My favorite local supermarket, for instance, makes their current inventory and prices available for download (in spreadsheet form, but still...) -- and they even tell you which aisle has which products.
I'm finding more and more local businesses have similar data on their websites. I expect this trend to continue.
Books.
They should spin off the retail company and keep books + AWS.
However, the last book I ordered from them was Python in a Nutshell about a year ago. It's an expensive book, so I was less willing to tolerate damage to a $50 book that I want to keep and use a lot. I had to return it twice to get one that wasn't beat all to hell. And even then I feel like I settled for something not in as good condition as I expected.
Amazon used to put books between two pieces of cardboard, shrinkwrap it, then put it in a box with padding. Books always arrived in good condition. Books in the padded envelope always arrive with crushed corners, and sometimes damage to the cover.
* Searching has simply becoming wading through pages and pages of Chinese junk with incorrect, misleading, or straight-up lies in the description.
* Similarly, the average quality of generic items is so poor, I'm trending back to brick-and-mortar stores. Walmart may have cheap stuff, but at least they put some effort into maintaining their brand.
* Who knows what product a review was actually written for. Lots of basic products are being sold to pump up reviews then being switched to a much more expensive item.
* I've also noticed I'll pay for many name brand items on Amazon that getting them directly from seller or another retailer.
* At least 10% of my orders from Amazon now have something wrong with them. What good is 2 day shipping if I need to return and re-order an item - taking nearly a week total.