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.
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.