I just ordered a product on walmart.com that arrived in a Newegg box. When looked on Newegg I didn't see the product.

So no idea what is happening but makes me think there are lots of sellers shipping from different locations potentially for competing sites.

You can do it on Walmart. In fact, I was just about to post that this announcement is a negative for me. I have such a hard time shopping on Amazon these days and tend to try Walmart first but always select Walmart.com from the retailer filter. I don't want to see a bunch of random junk that I have no desire to purchase.

Ah right, it was under the "retailer" filter (was looking for "Seller").

Having to do this is why Walmart is down my list of places I shop online. I'm not looking for third party sellers when I'm looking for a trusted company to buy from.

I just bought from Newegg for the first time in probably a decade and was surprised to see third-party sellers. I went there specifically because I remembered them being reputable, but came away with a different feeling entirely.

They got bought by some Chinese company/people a while ago. Quality, and mostly customer support, has gone down since then.

Newegg commingles inventory just like Amazon, so it's not much better. I don't know if Walmart does, but I try to spend money wherever I don't have to deal with sellers, and directly at the manufacturers website if possible nowadays.

I just don't understand why Amazon (and apparently Newegg) continue to do this. It's clear by now that sellers have abused it "launder" counterfeits into online retail fulfillment systems. Just charge an extra fee to the third-party seller to keep their inventory separate, have them stick a unique inventory barcode on it, and be done with it!

Because retail is a low margin business, but being a platform and collecting 15% off of top line revenue is much higher margin. Walmart’s market cap is $338B, Amazon’s is $1.3T. Even though Walmart’s share of retail dwarfs Amazon’s, clearly there is not much profit to be made.

You don’t have to deal with complaints, vetting products, or supply chain issues. Just side with the buyer in a dispute, and outsource all the other tasks to the customers who spend their time browsing through all the garbage on Amazon to save an extra few dollars.