You sometimes can't even get the right thing from official brand stores. I bought a thermal paste product from the official Amazon ThermalGrizzly store (I did check) but Amazon delivered me a fake. Amazon co-mingles inventory.

The only reason I could quickly tell it was fake is because ThermalGrizzly provides an online serial number verification system, which isn't very common among most products. I'm not sure I'd trust Amazon for anything.

You have to evaluate if a product is worth counterfeiting. For many goods the clone factories aren't going to bother. Amazon is also a convenient onshore gateway to Aliexpress resellers with less shipping ambiguity.

>You have to evaluate if a product is worth counterfeiting.

this does not seem to be worthwhile for someone wanting to purchase something, my estimates as to if something is worth counterfeiting requires me to have a rather deep understanding of the brand's importance in the world that I would not have for any but the most notable brands, aside from that I have to know something about how easy/costly it is to counterfeit and get things on Amazon to make a model in my mind if the brand was important enough for someone to fake it.

So, for example, if it becomes significantly cheaper to counterfeit things the importance of brands counterfeited (in consumer reach etc.) should drop.

That's a lot of variables. Think I'll just go to the store.

Amazon has a similar service now, but brands need to onboard so it's not super wide spread yet https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency

A couple of weeks ago, I wanted to order a couple of pairs of Levis jeans.

There was no way I'd do that on Amazon.

I got them from Costco, instead.

Same situation. Got them from the Levi’s store. In my mind Amazon=counterfeits/stolen

I’d only order very specific things from Amazon and as a result haven’t actually ordered in a couple years.

With all the hand-wringing about how Amazon has completely monopolized online ordering, I'd think that having a true "honest broker" storefront would be a fairly natural way to compete.

Amazon has become a truly awful storefront, and this has accelerated markedly, in just the last couple of years.

You would think, but since Amazon is a monopoly and not an honest broker, there's no way to compete with them.

If the people who were supposed to be keeping them in line actually went after them aggressively, then it might be possible to start a competitor.

And here's another post, I made here, about two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625376

The fake is still up for sale.

Yes, because Amazon has created perverse incentives for anonymous manufacturers to fabricate as many "brands" as possible, there are now so many of them that they crowd out actual brands. The original purpose of a brand name was to give a reputable seller a recognizable way to differentiate a quality product or service from anonymous competitors. But search and recommendation on Amazon favors the anonymous sellers.

Amazon today is less about selling things to consumers and more about selling consumers to anonymous Chinese suppliers.

The problem I’m having in Germany ist that only Amazon reliable delivers to my door, usually next day.

Every other store ships with DHL, which after several days pretends that they ring you, when they don’t, and then u can go pick it up at the DHL store a day later.

That’s their moat.

In the Netherlands they seem to ship exclusively with DHL. And all products arrive in the evening slot. Which means that next day delivery is usually around 21:00-22:00 which is typically too late to be useful.

PostNL is the most reisje local carrier here. Ups is the best but almost never used, so far only by Apple. Dpd, GLs, etc, are all rubbish.

Weird, DHL is for me the best and most professional of all. The experience you mentioned happens to me with DPD and very often with GLS. Hermes is also pretty good and professional.

Maybe it depends on the location...

Maybe it does depend on the location, maybe you're lucky. But the complains process with DHL is impossible, so if you have bad delivery ppl in your area (in my case downtown Berlin), there's nothing you can do.

I always wonder what products are so important that they need to be delivered next day? The few times I realised I need something urgently it typically means today and even next day delivery is not enough, so I go to a store and possibly pay a slightly higher price. For everything else it doesn't really matter if it is one or 5 days. Is the next day delivery really necessary or does it just appeal to our impulse of needing to have it in our hands right now?

For many people, going to a store the same day is completely impossible (not having a store within reasonable distance that stocks any similar product).

This is not just rural areas, either: even in major cities items can be delivered faster than the time it would take to find a store that carried the item, go to the store, get it, and come home again. It's really only suburban areas with a high density of big-box retail that even have the option to "go out and get something" immediately.

Amusingly, it's also only in these suburban areas where next day delivery even exists to compete. As an anecdote, living in the downtown of a major American city (population > 1million), the average Amazon delivery time is roughly 3 days, and last mile deliveries are all delegated to the USPS which adds significant time.

For me it's more about the certainty than the rush. I hardly ever need anything next day, but "next day" is a concrete day, while for example "in 3-5 days" isn't. As someone who is often not at home, I'd rather not have to be at home or arrange for someone to be there several consecutive days in case a package arrives.

I think most of the complaints are directed at the amazon.com. They do not at all reflect my experience with amazon.fr - yes there's no name crap but there's also lots of legit stuff, and it's the majority that comes up in search results (confirmed through third parties recommending the same legit stuff with amazon links).

Weird. Out of the four major delivery services, DHL is by far the best and most accommodating.

If you just want to buy chinese consumer junk of middling quality or you are buying industrial widgets based on part number or specification those things mostly aren't an issue.