I would argue that it's even worse. At least, IME, the ratings at E-bay for both sellers and products mean something. With Amazon, neither mean a damned thing anymore. It's just a crap shoot, unless you know exactly what you're already looking for.
Amazon used to be nice, because you could actually do product research. The worst thing, again in my opinion, they've done is ruin the ability to actually compare products due to sketchy reviews.
I know what I'm looking for, but most of the products are impossible to evaluate, because there is just not enough info/data. Low res bad stock photos, terse description, no full technical specs, etc.
And many Amazon sellers don't sell anywhere else, they don't even have a real website, so ... good luck deciding based on that.
And since Amazon become so big, they set the bar for quality. So now the same shit is everywhere. (Plus there's the high-end overpriced but also not perfect segment too.)
Blows my mind that this is an actual issue. It just doesn't make sense that _this_ would be an issue, yet it totally is. Oftentimes you don't even know for sure what's included with a product and you have to sift thru the comments (reviews & Q&As) to figure out if what you think is included is indeed included as there is no clear indication in the listing. Very low quality in this regard. eBay, OTOH, is very specific because sellers vying for your attention want to make sure you know exactly what you're buying.
If eBay offered something which tightly integrated 2-Day Delivery, they could become a legit competitor on the non-media services side.
But even someone who actively dislikes Amazon such as yourself would still rather get the lowest price and access to the largest selection, even if it means begrudgingly putting up with a worse experience.
Even if you do, inventory co-mingling means that sometimes the seller you think is the seller isn't even the seller!
On Amazon, you can still get some value from the 1-3 star review contents, but the average star count (which is similar to eBay's % positive ratings) is almost meaningless since any number of negatives can be outweighed by near infinite fake 5-stars. That doesn't seem to happen as much on eBay (although I'm sure it does still happen).
What's the search engine equivalent of "showrooming"?
Turns out, all Best Buy had to do was not turn their inventory into a lottery of real/counterfeit/broken/returned stuff.
It has an abysmal user interface that seems to have been built by 100 team with an intense hatred for each other.
The feedback system is broken. You can't leave feedback if you opened a case against a seller. Many sellers I had serious problems with had stellar reviews.
The resolution system is also pretty bad. If you open a case that gets automatically closed without being solved, you better hope it all happens within 60 days. Thankfully, PayPal is better run.
they don't. when you buy something from a top seller, they get an automatic 5 star rating for that purchase. you have to wait many days (5 i think) after you receive the item, to lodge a less than 5 star rating. the rating is across a few categories, with unknown weighting, so even if you successfully put in a 1 star rating (which you have to justify), the weighted rating is still above 3.
"top seller" status doesn't have anything to do with quality, just as "amazon's choice" has nothing to do with quality.
What do you mean by this?
Amazon has had the lowest price for basically everything I’ve shopped for in the last 4 years. When it is higher on Amazon, it’s by pennies (because algorithms) and not for very long.
At home there’s a grocery store at the bottom of my elevator. It costs less money for me to buy groceries on Amazon Fresh with same-day delivery, than it does for me to go downstairs and buy my own groceries. Not a little bit less either, like 20% less. Same products!
I don’t even have to be home, the groceries just materialize at my front door whenever I schedule them to.
I think HN just gets on a negativity roll sometimes, and the most extreme or exaggerated comments float to the top.
I’m sure there are plenty of externalities, probably moreso with Amazon than most any other company... but let’s not pretend that Amazon isn’t doing amazing things for their customers. The efficiencies they’ve added to my life have saved me hundreds of hours.
They’ve done that with a business model that (allegedly) monetizes the widespread violation of all kinds of regulations while (allegedly) externalizing all of the liability, and it’s devastating hundreds of businesses, and a million other things ... but on the other end of all of that is a very happy customer.
There would be no point to playing so dirty if there was nothing in it for the customer. It wouldn’t even work, we would all just go back to K-Mart.
Amazon beats other shops in terms of convenience and selection (you can buy lots of random unrelated items and get them delivered fast), but often it's basically just a more upmarket eBay.
Their prices are almost always the lowest I can find on books, similar to Book Depository which they also now apparently own. Other items like the small kitchen appliances I've bought on the DE site are also almost always cheaper than I can find in brick and mortar stores.
I'm not sure they have the same grocery service in most European markets that they have in the US, where as I understand it the grocery orders are handled rather separately with local selections.
For instance, my local grocery store has 2 liter Diet Coke Caffeine Free for $0.99 (on sale, sure, but it occurs like clockwork every 2 weeks), while Amazon Fresh has it for $1.74. Plain bagels are $1.99 at the grocery store, while AF charges $3.24.
Could it be the case that your local grocery store is simply overpriced?
For things like PC components, I find them hit or miss. They might be the cheapest (or near it), but they might also be way more expensive than another legit retailer. These days, I always check, because they are so variable. A lot of that is probably that Amazon doesn't carry everything, and other sellers are a crapshoot.
I don't know where you live that their groceries are so much cheaper, but it isn't true here in Texas, where HEB (the dominant grocery chain) is hard to beat.
Groceries? I find that Amazon almost never wins there compared to the local grocery chain. That most certainly is going to end up being a "where you are right now" kind of thing compared to computer parts.
Now when I go to Amazon they push the lowest cost thing even if by a $1 (like Wallmart). These weird "Amazon's Choice" options are increasingly lower quality cheap stuff. And Amazon day feels like a garage sale where I think they're pushing out their back stock of rock bottom quality garbage ... more than usual. And that's not to mention fakes and etc.
At this point I'm shopping around the internet way more than I used to when I was all about Amazon first.
Now I really view Amazon as two separate products in one interface - there's the Ebay style bazaar, and then there's the first-party store. If I'm looking for a brand-name item, like an iPad or some other gadget, or some camera gear, I can often find it on Amazon and it'll be "shipped from and sold by Amazon", or there are a few other sellers whose names I recognize (like Apple or Adorama for the camera gear I was recently looking at) that I trust to buy from. More and more there's also the Amazon Basics brand covering everything from batteries and usb cables to snacks like trail mix, and I have come to trust their brand as well. These things will generally ship with prime shipping and arrive in 1 or 2 days, I get 5% cash back on my amazon card, and it's convenient to check out and I generally can trust I won't have any issues.
If I'm looking for something that's not brand-name, and I want to pay the cheapest price I can for something that gets the job done, I can venture into the bazaar land. I recently bought some patio furniture and a rug that were quite cheap, and they work pretty well and have been awesome for using my outdoor space during the lockdown. In this side of the platform I know I'm making sacrifices, I often don't get prime shipping, and I may even get counterfit items. I would never buy things like vitamins or lotion or make-up here in the seedy back alleys of the store. And often I do opt to use a different e-commerce site instead of Amazon, rather than risk it here. But I still buy from here occasionally.
I still think Amazon should do more to differentiate these two worlds, the high-trust vs low-trust platforms. But as a frequent user I now know what to look for and am mostly able to distinguish between the two, and I have to admit I do appreciate that the low-trust, 3rd party world exists. It gives me more choice as a consumer, and the alternative is that most of these items wouldn't be available on Amazon at all.
I think this has more to do with a lack of meaningful competition than anything else. I'd happily go back to 1-2 week shipping if I could order from a more trustworthy source. I've only had a few total duds from amazon and they were all under $50 and not worth even returning, but I accept that I'm basically rolling the dice with every amazon purchase at this point.
> I do appreciate that the low-trust, 3rd party world exists. It gives me more choice as a consumer, and the alternative is that most of these items wouldn't be available on Amazon at all.
I'm largely fine with it 100, assuming that amazon is wiling to refund or replace anything I buy that turns out to be crap. That gives them an economic incentive to do at least the most basic policing of people selling on their site.
A good way to introduce meaningful competition is leveling the playing field when it comes to return policies. The ease of returns at Amazon is often brought up by US users in these discussions. And it's indeed great. However in europe it's a non-issue since all shops have to offer a 14-day no questions asked return option. Wondering whether I'll be able to return an item isn't part of my purchasing considerations at all - regardless of where I shop.
In my opinion good legislation and reasonable minimum standards for all sellers enable competition.
But I don’t trust it for anything that goes into my body any more. I’ll make a trip to a GNC to buy ON protein powder. I don’t trust Amazon to sell my something from the actual manufacturer.
That’s new for me. Just in the last couple of years. The risk profile of getting a bad knockoff is overwhelming now. And for ingestibles it’s just not worth it...
costco.com has this at a good price with fast free shipping: https://www.costco.com/optimum-nutrition-gold-standard-100%2...
For example, recently i had some items missing from Amazon and some items missing from Instacart. Refund from Amazon took a few minutes. By contrast, i've spent a very long time dealing with Instacart (and more hours sitting on hold, and weeks waiting for promised followups that never came) and no refund yet. Instacart is just an example; there are many other merchants with poor return policies (or poor execution of return policies), and many others with good return policies. The competitive advantage of Amazon here is that it's hard to quickly find out whether a merchant that you haven't used before has good customer support, which pushes you towards sticking with a merchant you know.
So, yeah, eBay, Ali-express ... might as well go there.
...strange world.
At individual level, I’ve markedly experienced degraded customer service in last 1 year. For instance, I have to deal with hassles in cases where product sold by amazon (not 3rd party) had defect. The key reason I moved to Amazon bandwagon was: no hassles.
To me, Amazon’s day 2 looks likely now.
It was great while it lasted.
You can build something much, much better with about $100 with a Raspberry Pi, depending I guess on the camera quality. Are there any features unique to the Ring?
I am an advocate of using something like RPi's for Computer Science in Africa but I am a missionary without a following (thank goodness there isn't another crank like me going to central Africa).
It may not be obvious to someone not experienced in the design of battery-powered electronics, but that much battery life from a device with wifi and streaming video is very impressive - they must be making extremely good use of low-power sleep modes on their CPU, radio and camera.
Being battery powered means it can be self-installed, even by people who don't know a serial terminal from a screw terminal.
with amazon it's convenient and honestly the support (while hit and miss) is still better than the effort you get from minimum waged retail workers. i am getting annoyed at the rise in rubbish and duplicate listings though.
Well now here we are. Fake reviews, counterfeit products, most things (IME) are actually FBA or just outright 3rd party sellers (not automatically bad, but more opportunities for problems), their prices aren't competitive anymore...
So, they've still got a lot of selection, although it's really more like shopping at a bazaar, since really their website is almost nothing more than Ebay in some sense, and I will say their customer service has almost w/o exception been stellar. But that's not enough anymore.
We'll see. Nothing lasts forever. Either Amazon will get the wakeup call and tighten its ship, or it will become the next Ebay/Myspace/Craigslist (I'm deliberately just throwing the kitchen sink here).
One last footnote -- just within the last week or so, 2 Amazon tech products that I've praised -- the Ring Doorbell and the Eero router(s) -- had firmware problems. Ring bricked itself (firmware update gone wrong) and had to be RMA'ed (they did it w/o any problem, and this was almost 2 years after purchase). The Eeros went into a cycle of resets and couldn't update their firmware.