But some can be harder to spot because of tricks that sellers use to essentially hijack listings for other products to carry all the positive reviews along. Or they may just go the route of putting completely fake reviews on the product. Some may even be from verified purchasers because they packed a card along with the product offering compensation for a 5 star review. Or they can get verified reviews in an even slimier way involving ordering from themselves and then shipping random crap to people who've they've sent stuff to before.

And then there's the inventory that's poisoned with counterfeits. Thanks to inventory co-mingling counterfeit and legit products can end up getting mixed together. There's a chance that even buying from a fully legit listing will end up with you getting sent a counterfeit product.

However, despite all of that I do still use Amazon. Their immense investment into logistics means that many things will make it to me next-day. And their return policies allow me to order with the confidence that if I get a fraudulent item (or just something I don't like) it will be fairly painless to get a replacement or my money back.

That said, I have also been making more efforts over the years to not use Amazon. I tend to buy all my major electronics from Best Buy or direct from the manufacturer. And I would never buy any food or medicine from Amazon. I don't want to risk things that go into me being counterfeit.

It used to be easy to tell which items are from third-party sellers, now often that's hidden.

It used to be that I could trust Amazon to have a reasonable price, so I didn't have to price-shop every item every time. Now, many common items are only available from third-party sellers with wildly inflated prices. Now I feel like I have to comparison-shop everything to ensure it's not a rip-off.

It used to be that third-party sellers would be listed in descending order by total cost (price plus shipping). Now they're in seemingly random order, and you can't see the shipping cost until it's in your cart. Many sellers game this by listing a low price with ridiculously high shipping.

Really feels like Amazon is going backward at a remarkably fast pace.

Oh they aren't random. They're sorted by Amazon profit margin.

Walmart will actively price match Amazon. I know it won't be counterfeit and I can return in store immediately. I had a recent experience when I returned an unopened Apple watch. Despite them receiving it for several days, I never got a refund. I had to chat with customer service. I don't know if I had any products in the past that never got refunded. I only checked for the Apple Watch because it was a significant amount of money.

Amazon at this point is only good for cheap made in China commoditized goods delivered quickly. i.e. needed a pair of throwaway quality headphones recently.

As someone from Asia am amused.

But seriously, it's understandable that someone wouldn't want to wait for 20 minutes when the alternative is simply dropping off a parcel somewhere. Sure, there's always places that are worse but 20 minutes is relatively long, there's clearly room for improvement.

I'm done with Amazon for the reasons others have mentioned and will gladly wait 20 minutes just so to not give them a single cent of my business. But not everyone hates them as much, some folks might not care much either way and just go with what's most convenient. Maybe they don't notice getting low quality trash from some Shenzhen-based seller either. The same way many people eat junk food because it's convenient. If competitors can match Amazon in that regard, I think even more people will turn their backs on them. Because what Amazon does well is automation and logistics, not quality.

If they don't want to go to the store then don't have to...they can mail it back, just like Amazon.

https://www.walmart.com/cp/returns/1231920

Walmart has the flexibility of both.

If I have an expensive item I'd rather have the piece of mind that it won't get lost in the mail or in Amazon's warehouse, or like the case of my Apple watch...they've received it but haven't refunded it a week later.

Walmart customer service is open in the early mornings and evenings - more flexible hours than a UPS store or the likes and that's when I'd go where there's less people.

This is what really turned me off from Amazon. They say it'll get to you next day... and then it shows up several days later (or it gets marked delivered or never shows up, and you have to take the time to call them up and complain to get another sent).

And worse yet, there's always the knowledge in the back of your mind that if you complain too often, they'll simply ban you from purchasing from them [https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers... etc]

Yep, it's running about 25% 'on time' these days for me with Amazon. I've also noticed they'll continue to say 'arriving today by 9pm' even when UPS or Fedex tracking of the package says it is still halfway across the country and it is due to arrive in a couple days.

things still seem to be happening on the back-end of course, but the UI to display to customers must be in a database/service of its own and it is often getting stale and never getting refreshed.

Honestly the problems also coincided with the change to in-house amazon logistics... it seems like the delay rate with UPS/Fedex logistics is far lower than with amazon shipping. Especially pre-covid, UPS/Fedex were just absolutely completely reliable, if they said 2-day it would be there in 2 days, nowadays the most I've seen is an extra day here or there occasionally.

It seems like Amazon looked at the logistics problem and said "we can solve that 95% as well as UPS and if anyone complains too often we'll just ban their account, so there is no need to outperform it since we're not the ones who bear the cost if we don't".

After all - the way Amazon gets that 2-day guarantee is, if it doesn't make it through their logistics in time for delivery on UPS 2-day shipping, they have to pay more to UPS for overnight shipping/etc. That's money they can now retain in-house because lol fuck the customer. And I'm sure on-time delivery was a KPI for UPS/Fedex if they wanted to get paid, they had an incentive to get it there on time or else... and amazon logistics doesn't. Having those two entities be separate led to big improvements in quality-of-service as they each tried to minimize the faults in their own behavior, now it's one entity and it's fine if it sucks.

(not talking about busting the balls of some delivery driver here either, these are problems with amazon's logistics and shipments, not the drivers.)

I don't think that's fair. Amazon was among the very very few things that actually worked during the pandemic (in London). And they still have the best logistics operation by far.

What's not working is search. It feels like they're not even trying to show you what you're looking for. They're just trying to sell you something ... anything, regardless of how unsuitable or useless it may be.

It's so frustrating that I'm even resorting to Google search sometimes, which says a lot. Product search is universally broken everywhere.

And I agree totally with your point about search.

The price premium to know I'm getting a legitimate version of something in this category is painful. Protein powder might be twice as expensive directly through GNC, but I share your sentiment. I'm comfortable with the risk of a fake widget, but absolutely not with food.

I acknowledge there are some obscure supplements/etc that are difficult to source from third parties but.. a lot, you can.

Correct me if I'm wrong but while there is a way for sellers to pay for non-commingled inventory... this is not signaled to consumers in any way either, this is a benefit to the seller to avoid increased returns, not to you as a customer. So you have no way of knowing where any particular "sold by amazon" or "fulfilled by amazon" item comes from. Probably by design... it would not surprise me if "no discussing commingling" was a rule too. It's in Amazon's interest to keep this opaque so that consumers treat them all as interchangeable commodities rather than favoring one storefront or another. Consumer loyalty would be detrimental to amazon's leverage over sellers.

everyone hates the non-prime items because they come slower and frequently incur large shipping costs... but those are the only items that are guaranteed to come from a trustworthy supply chain (if you trust the seller). Prices are actually often higher than a direct transaction with a vendor because they pay large fees to transact on amazon's platform too, and the shipping costs are often more sensible as well.

You really need to price it out because between prime costs, platform costs, shipping costs, etc, amazon is often not that much cheaper than directly transacting with a merchant, and then you would get a trustworthy supply chain by default.

The only thing keeping me on the platform is the unlimited 5% back from the amazon prime card (vs 3% for the card without prime), which can be worth it for certain big-ticket, difficult-to-counterfeit electronic items... and even then, I may end up significantly reducing my usage because Amazon has recently sent me a warning telling me to knock it off (a string of items damaged in shipment). Well, I'll have to make sure I don't order anything I might want to return, then... and I'm definitely going to re-evaluate in light of the price increase kicking in for my next renewal. The platform flat-out does not work if they start getting bitchy about returns given how awful it is in other considerations.

If toxic products are getting into consumer food I would hope the FDA or some other regulatory agency would sue Amazon to oblivion. The USA is supposed to be better than this.

Spot on for me too. That calculus is slowly shifting in the other direction for me though. It's becoming a pain to have to ship things back repeatedly, and I'm starting to find that the wait time of shipping from normal companies is coming out as a wash when factoring in the multiple-shipment-return-cycle Amazon factor.

At least with other companies that don't have a wild west of third party sellers I can be reasonably confident I won't get an outright counterfeit.

I still order like usb cables and cloths to clean my glasses. That's pretty much it. Looking at the parent and grandparent comments and my experience, I'd say they've become a flea market, where maybe you can get a good price of some throwaway crap you don't care about, but wouldn't use for anything of value. And in reality, that's what a collection of fly-by-night shady sellers is. It should not be a surprise. It's a shame though, in principle the ordering process and older style prime delivery is way better than going to a store for almost everything.

Also I’ve never had that “apple cables suck” experience many had so maybe I’m holding it differently- ymmv

They're not the most aesthetic cables, but they're cheap and they work.

Anker typically makes decent products too, but I don't have a lot of experience with their USB-C stuff.

A few years ago I didn't consider Amazon and Ebay as similar options. Now, I think of them as a wash in terms of risk vs. reward with Amazon having a slight edge on return policy (maybe).

I dunno, my point is you're right, it's a wash at this point.

what about a picture on the internet made you believe it? were there images of serial numbers that matched the items received?

Compare to the common opposite on Amazon, 50 listings of different products with an identical image.

Oddly enough Amazon didn't invent this. All of the "big box" and online retailers had no-questions-asked returns before Amazon came along. My hunch is that one of two things have happened: 1) You figure out that the most cost effective way to manage quality control is through returns and refunds, and you streamline this process; 2) You go out of business.

The retailers who delivered quality goods and charged appropriately for getting it right on the first try are gone.

No. It's actually just about the most expensive way to do it. But the decision is made by the retailers, who (particularly in the case of Amazon, but also other chains, Walmart, Best Buy, etc) can effectively enforce the decision on their vendors unilaterally, and who coincidentally have virtually no financial stake in the matter (their vendors do!).

I can second that, someone I know personally who is building well-reputed longboards in his shop with a few friends, thought a few year ago it would be a good idea to sell through Amazon. Let's just say it didn't went well. Amazon forced them to take basically any returned longboard no matter how obviously it was destroyed.

While Amazon may pay for the shipping, many low quality products are probably losing money for the seller when returned.

Yup, apparently until recently Amazon didn't bother finding a new buyer for the returned products and simply trashed most of them. Now there's a cottage industry of people buying returns in bulk, sorting through, and reselling the quality stuff (kind of like the industry around auctioning unclaimed storage unit contents). However, I imagine that many cheap products even now don't go through the auctioning process and go directly to waste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66qOop6J8Q8

It's getting very hard to wade through offers and find what is the one that will make you waste the least amount of time.

Also, while Amazon might seem to get it faster more often, its also the most unreliable. I've had way more taped up empty boxes and never-sealed bubble mailers from Amazon and many times I've had it promise next day and have it arrive a week later. Meanwhile other retailers seem to not have as many shipping errors and tend to hit their shipping estimates better.

Wholefoods is owned by Amazon.

It was not a 5 star product. It was a 2 star product, at best.

I tried to mention the fact they were paying for reviews in my review (to explain the other 5 stars).

Amazon rejected my review.

It's against Amazon policy to let others know that sellers are buying reviews.

In a zero-trust marketplace it is impossible to ascertain the truthfulness of such statements. Let say, you a seller on Amazon and your competitor posts a review for your product accusing you of soliciting 5-star reviews from your customers. Now you have an egg on your face. How will you prove that this accusation is false? There were actual cases when sellers were buying blatantly fake 5-star reviews for their competitors to trigger Amazon ban of those competitors. This is a war zone out there.

Spot check via secret shopping. Get a few complaints about a seller doing this, place an order to an Amazon.com employee's home address and have that employee report in whether there's a "pay for review" in the package. Easy.

Can't come from their competitor that way.

a couple hundred or a couple thousand 5-star reviews is plenty anyway. It's the old "don't be greedy and get noticed" thing.

plus, you can get an initial bump from taking another item and changing the name, or buying from one of the "free item for positive review" services. The fake reviews just need to be enough to offset the ongoing bad reviews. 1/10 boxes is fine.

There's a separate place in Amazon's UI for rating/reviewing sellers, though it's not as easy or obvious to find (at least on mobile).

I guess. I mean, my account has been around since 1997. We do a fair bit of ordering each year. And this was the only time I've reported someone bribing me.

It seems there are at least some signals there that would be useful.

Adversarial systems are just so fun to deal with…

"When pigs fly" comes to mind.

The messages are in the shipping box, not the packaging.

The post card had all sorts of Amazon logos and regalia. It has been destroyed.

Clearly this channel couldn’t be snooped by Amazon unless it provides the means for printing and sending the cards.

Amazon's "customer focus" is a misnomer, because the resellers are more important customers than the buyers are.

I used to spend about 60% of my disposable income at Amazon. That’s dwindled to maybe 1-2% over the last 5 years. I do most of my shopping at Costco or Target now. Amazon is a last resort only. Their customer experience sucks. It reminds me of what happened to eBay and Etsy. I’ll be cancelling my 10-year Prime membership at the end of this year, because I don’t use it anymore.

The entire system is designed so that those spending considerable amounts of time and money on cheating come out on top. Because few customers are going to scroll till page 15 and spent hours doing detective work to filter out the products with fake reviews (and even if they do it's become almost impossible). The most aggressive manipulators win and get all the business. Amazon must be aware of that but they don't do anything, in fact it's gotten worse in recent years.

So naturally: "After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. It appears you reviewed shipping or packaging experience."

I finally got a review through by pointing out the misrepresentation that they did not come in a tray, and not mentioning breakage. So you have to read between the lines of that review.

I bought the next set of Aliexpress, and those were fine. What a garbage rule. On the one hand, I understand people are quick to complain... but there's no nuance, and it's definitely become stacked in sellers favour - at least the unscrupulous ones.

At this point people seem to not care since Amazon will give a refund/exchange pretty much no questions asked. It's still extremely annoying and it's definitely not a good look for their business, but I assume the number crunchers have determined actually dealing with the fraud isn't yet worth it financially.

Local optimization beats global optimization. It's why Google went to the crapper too after it reached some number of employees. With 100+k people, no one cares about Google, but about their success within Google.

Someone at Amazon is meeting their short-term objectives and getting their bonus. "The brand" suffering is much more amorphous and harder to translate to a KPI.

Google search is worse because their revenue model requires optimising returns for their advertising arm, not for making a better end-user product. Shareholders demand it (in fact, this problem has a lot more to do with a public listing than team size).

The same is true of Amazon. Amazon’s shopping experience is worse because it is more profitable to be a logistics front-end for a million dropshippers selling specialised goods from tiny Chinese factories. The brakes are off and everyone with any influence over the company is incentivised to make the company more “efficient” (profitable).

(1) To assume high level roles, you must invest $LARGE_SUM_OF_MONEY in funds managed by the company.

(2) After leaving, you get back your money after $FAIR_AMOUNT_OF_YEARS. That's done as an incentive for folks to think long term.

Not sure how you could do that in a company as large as G or A though.

Google Search seems to be in decline but that has more to do with the slow death of the open internet than with any sort of internal issues at Google.

- the ability to engineer good products

- reputation

In the early '00s, most of the really competent people went to Google. Right now, most of the really competent people I know avoid Google, and it's sort of a second choice employer.

It has a lot of market power, but it's increasingly vulnerable.

The cost structure there doesn't help. High salaries+benefits / fewer employees was a good call. High salaries / 100+k employees is less competitive.

I can't predict the future, but I've been bearish on Google for a while.

Ryan George - What Shopping on Amazon Feels Like https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30

It's a subjective heuristic I developed informally. Never formalized anything statistical.

Just looking at the ration between 5 through 1 stars, I have a high confidence judging whether they bought fake reviews or not.

It's a subjective heuristic I developed informally. Never formalized anything statistical.

Just looking at the ratio between 5 through 1 stars, I have a high confidence judging whether they bought fake reviews or not.

They’ve dealt with it in limited ways. For example, they’ve inked exclusivity agreements with certain brands (ex. Apple) so that only Amazon can sell them. So at least that inventory should be legit as they don’t allow third party sellers.

Of course this is somewhat to Amazon’s favor. If a brand is concerned about their reputation due to customers unknowingly getting counterfeits, they need to strike a deal with Amazon, and likely one that is favorable to Amazon.

On the product page itself there are a few different page sections that show alternative products or similar products to consider. Only the single one at the very bottom of the page is not a sponsored listing. ALL the other ones are just sponsored listings.

I actually have more confidence in random ebay used listings lately. At least I get what was described.

Maybe I am just fortunate to have not had an issue, maybe the counterfeiters are very good, or maybe I am just clueless, or some combination of these.

I try to stick to only name brand items. If there is a product that looks compelling but is from a brand I have not heard of, I generally look at both their website and other reputable retailers which sell that same product.

I largely ignore the reviews. Not necessarily because they are scammy (which I’m sure they are) but because they are so largely subjective. Reviewers will often give a one-star rating for a product because shipping was slower than expected. Or a one-star because the product didn’t package a standard USB-A cable or didn’t include AA batteries. Or a one-star rating in protest something of the company or product itself. Many times it appears the reviewer did not read the description closely enough, and accidentally purchased the wrong product, for which they blame the retailer.

I almost always purchase from Amazon.com as the seller vs. some Harry’s Tech Supply Store. Exceptions are made if there are thousands of Store reviews and a 95%+ positive rating.

In other cases, I will simply purchase the item from the official brand website, or some other retailer. It’s frustrating that Amazon allows commingling of products from different suppliers and retailers in a common bin. It’s also frustrating that other retailers like Walmart and target seem to have followed suit.

When I returned it, I stated that I'd better get a 930e as a replacement, but the vendor (not Logitech -quelle surprise) told me that I would get a 930c, so I cancelled the order, and got one directly from the Logitech site (It was a bit more expensive, but not crazy more).

When I reported it, Amazon rejected my (polite, detailed, and backed up with photographs) reports on the product page, and ignored my reports to them. I would not be surprised if the item is still being sold as a 930e (it's not), and as being sold by Logitech (it's not).

I did mention it to Logitech, but they basically told me that Amazon is an 800-lb gorilla, and that they weren't gonna raise a stink (not in exactly those words).

Amazon’s used marketplace has similar issues, but Amazon enforces refunds. I once brought a typewriter that was used, but advertised as “like new.”

What I got was broken (shipped loose, in a cardboard box), and filthy (it literally looked like someone puked on the keyboard).

I did get a refund, but the vendor ghosted me. I had to exercise Amazon’s guaranteed refund. Once I started that, the vendor contacted me, and I was able to return the item (packed better than they did), and get a refund.

Because Amazon's so bad as everyone is detailing here I have started buying much less expensive stuff on eBay where I'd only buy it on Amazon from a 3rd party seller that ships direct, things like books and CDs. Have had uniformly good experiences without paying as much to pass through to Amazon vs. eBay.

Note the ridiculously low price (it has dropped quite a bit, since my experience, last year). I suspect a number of folks are happy with the Chinese version. Caveat emptor. Lots of apps and drivers can’t figure out what the camera is, and forget firmware or driver updates; let alone support.

To be fair, a couple of the 1-star comments are being listed at the top, warning of the scam, but the item has a couple of thousand “five-star” reviews.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CES5A60

The Nike or Polo clothing sold there isn't overstock. It's legitimately lower quality items sold at a cheaper price. They're intended to attract price conscious consumers that like the brand.

Every product on the site seems to be rated 4.5+, which makes sense if they’re rejecting reviews in this way.

I can only recall ever having one review rejected, and I've reviewed probably hundreds of things.

I wonder if they have an internal system that marked your reviews in particular for more scrutiny.

This might be a difference between the U.K. Amazon and their US counterpart but I’ve definitely not had any issues leaving negative feedback.

AWS is great, but the Amazon.com side of things feels like a slow, steady decline for years now.

They have over 10,000 items listed too.

The hot/neutral being swapped thing matters because some stuff only has a switch on the hot leg. (Not your computer; it could just as easily be used with a Schuko plug on the end of that C13 cable - which isn't "polarized" at all!)

I try to avoid at all costs for buying electronics, as so much counterfiet stuff. Apple gear "designed in Carlifonia" proudly displayed. (real spelling found on Amazon gear sold from the Amazon Apple Store).

Lately just about anything computer related has been way jacked up in price from all the 3rd party sellers drowning out any direct-by-amazon. I go to Target or BestBuy to get normal prices. NewEgg may have something you can find still in the normal range of jacked prices in the sea of the same overpriced resellers there too.

Just about any books I've unfortunately bought from them come bent, folded, and the covers riped off. I've returned 90% of them. Now that Amazon has driven physical book stores out-of-business (and the two BN stores left near me carry about a single shelf of way out-of-date tech books), have to get very creative finding where to buy books. I miss the days of having real packaging protecting the books during shipping.

Unfortunately, many computer subject authors have moved to self-published through Amazon, and I end up with a book that is many screen shots that I can't read through the 10DPI they printed it at. Oh well, back it goes, I try to find the author's blog/twitter posts to let them know Amazon is printing crap for them and thats probably why they get so many returned book refunds.

It used to be a decent place to buy commodity items such as cleaning products, but lately everything is jacked way up in price to get you the "free" shipping. A $3 product is now $18, so they can soak you on the "free" shipping because most people aren't going to question the price, they see, they buy.

  2009 
  2010 
  2011 *
  2012 ***
  2013 ***
  2014 ****
  2015 ****
  2016 ******
  2017 ***
  2018 ***
  2019 ***
  2020 *
  2021 **
  2022 

Oh, the funny part is, for most of this junk you can find exactly the same items at Aliexpress with the same pictures and Chinglish descriptions at a fraction of the price...

You know who I've really lost confidence in? Etsy. It used to be a great place to find hand-made, high quality items. A few months back I searched for a nice Turkish coffee set and was met with 40 listings of the exact same low-quality ali express item. Their revenue has soared recently, but at the cost of flooding their market with junk.

1. The buybox is disabled for traders that have different prices on other platforms. But: other platforms are way(!!!) cheaper than Amazon when it comes to fees.

2. Negative reviews magically disappear. Tried to prove a point by scraping some traders regularly that bid on the top related keywords but nobody cares at Amazon.

3. The search is messed up. There is no way to search what you are searching for. You always get spoofed with totally unrelated Chinese crap from Aliexpress. Even the keywords for brands are spoofed so much and they don't care about anything regarding trademark law.

4. Amazon Basics basically copying 1:1 existing items without any repercussion of trademark violations and/or design patents. There's lots of documentaries about it, how Amazon systematically pushes out and copies brands that are the best in their sector.

So yeah, in Europe I'm glad I have an alternative when it comes to electronics and house hold stuff [1] and for everything else I am basically trying to never buy on Amazon.

For some things there's websites like banggood and others which feel kind of like forefronts of aliexpress, basically. When I need electronics stuff from China, I'm using those...but it's very rarely.

I am never buying clothes on Amazon. Not kidding you, already had radioactive metal in a package, alerted customs (German Zoll) and others. Nothing happened.

[1] https://geizhals.de (German price comparison/scraping platform)

Kind of panicked a little afterwards, but customs kept the package and told me to clean everything thoroughly.

Depending on where you are and what you are ordering, they can bring it faster, but for most orders 5-7 days is the new norm.

For me, Walmart kills them. Generally better quality, trusted brands that probably won't burn my house down, and they'll bring it to my house from the store today. Or 2 day ship it if it's not there. And I can get groceries.

My kid loves her Gap clothes I buy super cheap from gap factory outlet online. 5 bucks for shirts, maybe 10 or 15 for jeans.

I'm struggling to see the point of department store clothing if they do nothing but mark up clothes.

Obvious disclosure: We are not a high fashion or trendy family, ymmv.

You may or may not case based on your disclosure, but lots of brands have “outlet store” and “main store” versions of their clothes manufactured differently or with QC difference. Sometimes literally cheaper materials and sometimes simply “binning” of QC.

Similarly, many brands of eg TVs will release shadow “holiday versions” of their TVs with worse warranties or lower quality specs meant to hit holiday sale prices (eg 50% off). Obviously iPhone 13 specs are know and won’t get away with it but Panasonic 65TDQ56P (made up SKU on a brand that does BF models)? If they subtly change the specs on the holiday version would you know even when shopping around?

Not a single bad experience, although I did spend a bit more time than I would have preferred looking through product reviews.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, I feel I must be buying different things?

I did once however report that a power strip I had bought, knowing ahead of time it was super cheap, was designed in such a way that you could touch the live power pins because it was rounded and that I had shocked myself. That report seems to have gone nowhere

If it were possible to get 9800 mah out of an 18650 we might all be flying around with electric jetpacks. About the best capacity possible today is 3600 mah. This has been going on for years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGF9DZcBric

Fake or misleading battery products are so common on Amazon there is an ongoing class action suit: https://www.classaction.org/news/amazon.com-hit-with-class-a...

The truth is that it is possible to police the suppliers, resellers etc. to prevent this, and Amazon has both the power and resources to do it. Amazon just doesn't give a damn.

https://www.birkenstock.com/us/us-policies-counterfeits.html

https://footwearnews.com/2020/business/retail/birkenstock-am...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/birkenstock-ditches-a...

I have only had one bad experience and that was because the item wasn't packed properly. Two things I do, however, to put the odds in my favor: I stay away from any product with tons of 5-star reviews with little relevant text content (fake astroturfing) and I do most of my product research elsewhere on the web.

https://www.stopfakes.gov/Reporting-an-Online-Vendor-Selling...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-shoppers-this-is-how-to-...

It's extremely convenient to be able to order with same day shipping, and the return policy (and returns process) is superior to everyone.

If theres a chance I might need to return something I rather buy it from Amazon, as going into a store and waiting in line is not worth the cost savings.

Now I want to make a replacement and I have to drive to their nearest warehouse. A more efficient process will be to logistic their shipments daily somewhere (for a location) and send the delivery guy once. The delivery guy also picks up returns.

What I’ve never heard of this! Do you live in the middle of no where? The currier usually can do pickups and many retailers will front a return for Amazon.

Also Amazon will let you do planned deliveries with fewer boxes if you pick a day a few days out.

For a while I was selecting this option, as far as I can tell they just completely ignore it since items still come in individual shipments the vast majority of the time.

If you're buying consumer staples (toilet paper, tide pods, cables, etc) then you should have no issue. Buying a random plastic replacement part to a 2011 Honda Civic in the unpopular color ? Good luck.

- you can return almost any purchase within 7 days of receiving it, without any reason or excuse, usually with free shipping

- logistics and payments are extremely efficient and low-overhead, meaning everyone is ordering a bunch of options, receiving them within 1-2-3 days, and returning all but one or all, the system is handling this well

- margins are low, competition is crazy, search is AI/image-based, meaning you almost always get an amazing deal, 3x-10x cheaper in nominal terms vs same product on Amazon

- the way Alipay works on Taobao, most consumers are allowed to defer payment until they received an item and decided to keep it, no credit card needed

This only fails with products where it’s difficult to verify the quality yourself and the downside risks are high - most famously baby formula - then you just buy from official brand stores at high markup.

Amazon has problems but in my experience their competitors are worse.

previously I was a prime customer for nearly a decade, but in the space of a week I had two deliveries ruined by their terrible delivery agents (and they blamed me) and repeated harassment from a seller for posting a review that they solicited

Edit: like another reviewer, I really only purchase name brand items and mosty from amazon.com reseller. My last amazon purchase from a non-amazon reseller was fine, ramset 1 7/8" pins that I could not find anywhere else, for fastening 2x4s to a steel I-beam.

It's surprisingly easy to cut them out in a lot of markets and just shop somewhere else. I assume anything I buy from Amazon won't be genuine, and only buy things there that I don't mind being knock offs.

Rule #2: Buy books from Powells.com

Rule #3: Only buy things that cost <US$20 from sketch-brand-name, because you get screwed 25% of the time.

Rule #4: Buy less stuff.

Rule #4 is excellent though and you can’t go wrong with it.

So, let’s say Makita makes a particular drill. They obviously stock amazons warehouses with a shipment of it so it can be prime eligible etc.

Now someone else manages to buy some of these same drills for cheap at a store closing sale or whatever. They also send them to amazon for sale because it would be a tidy profit without much hassle.

And now me, a shady “businessman” who gets a bunch of counterfeit/defective/somehow subpar few pieces of the same drill. I also send them to amazon because they cost me 10$ a pop to make but sell for 200$ on amazon.

All these all get put in the same bin in the warehouse because they all have the same barcode on the box. As far as amazon is concerned, a makita xyz drill is a makita xyz drill is a makita xyz drill.

And when someone purchases one, an overworked warehouse employee comes to the bin, picks any one drill, and sends it to the lucky customer. They might be getting the real deal that was shipped from makita direct, the might be getting one clearance stock seller's or they might be getting the one I sent in. Nobody knows because afaik amazon doesn’t even track which particular item was sent by whom.

Instead, they use a random algorithm to choose which seller “sold” this drill and gets the money.

The beauty of it all is that I might get the sale (and the money) but using a genuine drill from the other two guys. And then one of the other two get the sale but one of my drills ship.

Amazon dgaf because they either made their commission or they charged the seller for shipping the thing and then handling the return. The customer shrugs because they get a refund and maybe order again or they price match elsewhere.

It’s a scammers wet dream and there is no accountability whatsoever. Co-mingling is a scourge, honest sellers hate it, yet it continues unabated because it’s a goldmine for amazon.

This happened so many times to me on amazon Canada I stopped buying there altogether. This and the classic obviously used and returned item sold as new (best one was a pair of Wahl clippers with someone else’s hair in them)

Hopefully that explains how the whole scam works.

Now amazon gives the option for sellers to pay amazon extra and avoid mixing stock. Which means if makita buys this service then only the items shipped directly by makita to amazon will be sold under their listing. And then you’ll have another listing for the same item at a different price which will sell whatever everyone else sends in to amazon as a Makita xyz drill. You, as the ~~mark~~ customer have no way to tell if it comes from commingled inventory or not.

So the Makita store is not guaranteed to actually ship me the product, it just comes from ANY store that matches the UPC code? Holy shit.

> This happened so many times to me on amazon Canada I stopped buying there altogether. This and the classic obviously used and returned item sold as new (best one was a pair of Wahl clippers with someone else’s hair in them)

Yaarg!

Fortunately I've never been screwed over like this since Amazon started, but I guess I don't buy enough stuff to be at risk. Or maybe I have been subject to it but the product was OK so I never noticed. It is weird that Makita actually sends you to Amazon to purchase.

Thanks for the head's up.

I’ve had too many incidents of improperly handled or expired food being sent to me or outright fake / gray market things.

It’s hard to lose confidence in a company overall though with such an amazingly easy and liberal return policy.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that are difficult to source outside of Amazon, so while I avoid any company whose co-mingling policy pretty much guarantees fakes, sometimes you just have to take your chances. Day Two can't come quickly enough, as far as I'm concerned.

I got in a fight with them because I ordered an SSD, I received a box containing brown packing paper. When I wanted a refund or replacement, they wanted me to return the SSD ..

Their returns policy works fine when you fit in an automated workflow. The moment they have to exhibit independent thought, you're screwed. And if you try to exercise your consumer rights, they'll come down hard. Chargebacks will be met with your account being closed, including losing any access digital media you've "bought" through them (which is why I still won't convert my legacy Audible account to an Amazon account, no matter how many times they ask)

Sounds familiar... in 2019 I bought a multipack of smart bulbs. Unfortunately, one failed after only a couple of months.

I asked amazon for a replacement, and they wouldn't do anything until I sent every single bulb back.

For books, I always check bookfinder before ordering from Amazon.

But if you get a funky product on Amazon, I would think that returning it would be a fine way of registering disapproval. It can't be that good for Amazon, and you can bet they're noticing both the product and the vendor when it happens.

a) Highlighting how some "Amazon Choice" products have scored really low when actually tested (due to fake reviews) - https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/amazon-tech-with-fake-r...

b) Buying fake reviews linked to facebook accounts - https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/how-facebook-fuels-amaz...

c) Though in the interests of posting counter argument, allegedly Amazon are making some efforts here - https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/amazon-takes-legal-acti...

Personally I try to avoid using Amazon nowadays and buy direct, but previously I've had a least one occasion where I've been asked to leave a 5* review in exchange for a free accessory and we've seen really top notch ripoffs (headphones) that were practically indistinguishable from the originals (did a side by side comparison).

From the comments here, and my own personal experiences, it looks like that line is a lot further into scam territory then I would have thought.

I've gotten wrong/missing deliveries, account issues/mishaps (caused by me in some cases), and other issues that customer service was able to quickly and promptly resolve.

The service is so convenient for the end user. While consciously minding all the other un-cool things Amazon does, their customer service is really good.

That being said, every non Amazon online order I place reminds me that they are the best we have.

Haha, oh no, bad news! A lot of times amazon will have special "amazon print" editions and many times they have had printing problems... no print, wrong book inside, etc.

I have never personally seen one IRL but I've seen review pics of people showing the problems with their books they bought directly from amazon.

That aside, I agree on your point on reviews, but additionally lost confidence in their pricing of prime/next day products compared to non prime products. In many cases, it seems that they've just built into the products price the price of shipping and label it as "prime"/free shipping

... hm ... well ... yes. there's no free lunch after all.

I always had 2FA and strong password.

I tried to reach out to Amazon as a well as standard procedures for this kind of situztion, but faced only generic responses. Tried to recreate an account, the problem did not stop. Google results told me I was not alone stuck with this kind of experience.

I definitely closed my account, said farewell to my Kindle library and only use my spouse account when I need to buy some electronics for which Amazon provide a stellar customer service around here.

So yeah, Amazon lost me and I have zero confidence in the security of the platform and the legitimity of the reviews.

Amazon warehouse open box stuff - I've had some fraud issues with that. Shitty people buying another copy of an old broken item and returning the bad one and keeping the new working one. Then the next customer (me) trying to keep stuff off the landfill gets a broken item as "Like new".

SD cards...haven't had any proper fake ones but some have had suspiciously short lifespans.

Bought a incredibly unsafe cheap rice cooker that I used exactly once.

No immediate plans to switch to something else. It is still the most convenient/cheap frankly even with the misses

To me the Amazon search box feels like the GPT-3 of matter. I can imagine a thing that I’m not even sure exists, I can type a description of it into the search box, and then have that object in my hands within 24 hours.

I agree with your criticisms and I hope that Amazon solves them very soon. But none of that makes me not want to use Amazon as my first stop for shopping.

So I found them on Amazon and there are some video reviews!

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09CGYBZVG/

One of the video reviews is titled "Love the battery life and microphone abilities". I thought, "great, I will get to hear what the microphone sounds like."

No such luck. The video reviewer is some doofus who wears an orange flame wig - I guess it's his trademark schtick? - and at no point does he actually demonstrate the microphone quality. He did talk a lot about how good the microphone is - without letting me actually hear it - and also commented on how the headset gets caught in his wig.

Dude! Why would I care about that?

So I did a search for "opencomm microphone quality" and landed on this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRmTMpZVoVc

Now this is what I was looking for. Not only does he let you hear the microphone, but he switches back and forth between the high-quality camera mic and the OpenComm mic, with a supertitle showing which you are listening to. And they throw in noise sources like a blender and a fan so you can check out the noise cancellation. Not a worry for me, I have a quiet private office, but gosh, I love this kind of demo.

So naturally I ordered from them instead of Amazon. And I did something I never do: I bought their extended warranty. I take good care of my equipment, and on a $150-$200 purchase, I'd rather just take the minor risk of having to buy a new one. But I paid for the extended warranty just as a way to thank them for providing such an informative video review.

If you make video reviews and want to see the difference between a ridiculously bad one and a great one, compare the two above.

there is zero chance that I would ever recognize an amazon video reviewer and if they're someone I cared about I would go watch the youtube channel they undoubtedly have.

I do have reviewers whose opinions I value greatly - HdtvTest/Vincent Teoh is one who comes to mind. But I ain't watching them on amazon.

I personally got my money back many times when issues came up, so to them it’s probably along the lines of “let sellers do their things and be quick to refund if customers complain..”

is this tradeoff worth it? Hard to say..

Really?! Not Standard Oil? Not Apple? This is old, but

https://fortune.com/2017/06/07/fortune-500-companies-profit-...

Also, "American-made" is a very tricky thing to define. If you want American-made clothes, does the fabric have to be woven in the US? Where was the cotton grown? If it's a synthetic, does it have to use domestic oil? I'm not trying to nitpick; it's just silly to focus on only the top of the manufacturing chain.

I'll ignore your snark and admit I typed that on a whim.

> Also, "American-made" is a very tricky thing to define.

In the end, I think a list of American-made brands or products would have to be curated. I believe a multi-billion dollar tech company like Amazon can pull it off, though.

https://www.amazon.com/Products-Made-USA/s?k=Products+Made+i...

I'd prefer to filter by well-made. Both seem elusive though.

It's really pushed me to waste 25 minutes driving across town for something that may be in stock and may do the job in most cases.

That being said, the biggest problem with Amazon is their contract to sell on their site has clauses in it that force you to give amazon the lowest price you sell for elsewhere. Since amazon has very unreasonable fees for selling on their site (that keep getting worse), this basically forces a price hike everywhere because a seller can't afford to miss out on the large volume of amazon and stops any other place from pulling an amazon on amazon itself and outcompete them on price until they have large market share. These kind of contracts should really be illegal, or at least limited to net of site fees.

Didn’t bother fighting it but will never buy from Amazon again!

In those categories, the Amazon's choice is likely a product that will be toxic that it will shorten your life by 20 years.

Amazon needs a "report hazardous product" button.

The only crummy product I remember getting was that time I ordered a HEPA filter and it was obviously a situation where some low-life put their used one in the box, returned it, and for some reason Amazon thought it was good as new and shipped it to me. Imagine the look on my face when I open the box to find a dirty filter covered in someone else's dust and hair. :/

Overall, I get exactly what I ordered from Amazon and at lightning speed. But I'm also very, very skeptical of all the reviews and usually put in my due diligence before buying anything over $10.

Also, I am quite happy to get out of the house and pick something up from one of the many retail businesses near me. This may not be the case for everyone but I don’t mind doing my own delivery most of the time.

Is it slightly more work than just going to Amazon? Only a bit (e.g. payment takes more work if you haven't shopped there before). But it's often faster to find what you want at a better price than via Amazon itself.

I still have Prime so occasionally I buy something, but the shipping is rarely 2-day anymore. I’m surprised when it actually arrives in 2 days.

Anecdotally, when browsing I often see many items that look to be exact rebranded duplicates (i.e. cheap headphones) of each other, from companies I’ve never heard of.

I’m not against a cheap and low-quality item that is good enough - they are perfect for me. But it’s been years since I trusted the reviews on Amazon, and it’s nice to have items that last and maybe create less waste. I’ve heard of counterfeit items as well, although haven’t encountered any myself. And increasingly the prices aren’t better on Amazon than elsewhere.

So many items are made in China. Not a problem outright, and not unique to Amazon or even caused by Amazon. But it’s non-obvious where an item is made. Usually there’s a Q&A where a user responds with where it’s made, but not always. I am looking for a moka pot, and it turns out the classic Bialetti moka pots are not all made in Italy but maybe certain sizes of certain models are, and it’s extremely difficult to get information on specific styles/sizes of a product with the way reviews for all styles/sizes are mushed together, especially when reviews for OLDER models are still included on product pages for new models. I opted to grab a moka pot in person at Target on my next visit since they have one in store. A while ago, I bought a nice Zojirushi rice cooker from Amazon and looked for one made in Japan. Luckily, the brand clearly stamps “Made in Japan” on the front of the machine when that is the case. It was probably a 20%(?) premium for that stamp, and I wonder if it was worth it (so far so good).

Amazon shipping is still quite fast and the Amazon return/refund policy is still great, as far as I know. I like the option to return items to Amazon through Kohls, although you can’t return all items through Kohls.

But other stores have good return policies as well. Target and Best Buy both have good shipping, store pickup, and curbside pickup options, and with easy returns in my experience. They both have a decent catalog of online only items, and good information on which stores have which products in stock.

(Grabbed the AirPods for the same price from Costco while Amazon figures out what on earth is going on...)

Hello,

We noticed that you have requested multiple returns in the last few months, and some of the items that you returned were not received in their original condition. Items are considered as not in their original condition when they are damaged, have obvious signs of use, missing parts, or not cased in the packaging they came in.

We would like to know how we can better support your shopping experience. Please reply to this email so we can understand any problems that you may be having with your orders or with the ordering process on Amazon.co.uk.

And another thing is the auto-playing video reviews on the front page. No thanks.

My checklist is: 1. Check the item on all AliExpress 2. If you think your country will steal some money at customs, factor that in (for small cheap items you should be fine) / consider whether you're happy to wait a few weeks 3. Check eBay for new items 4. Check local stores 5. Check Amazon and try to put enough daily crap (toothpaste, protein bars, whatever) to reach free shipping

- AWS - Amazon Ads - FBA - Marketplace

This is in order of profitability. It seems that Amazon doesn't care much about the Marketplace itself.

(I ended up buying first-party heads, but not from Amazon.)

I think Amazon has exposed enough signals for me to set my expectations, it's just unfortunate that in recent years it takes a lot more time to consider those signals, and expectations tend to be low.

Gave up on Whole Foods. Trader Joe's has shorter lines, good quality, better prices, and less wierdo stuff such as homeopathic remedies. Once in a while, Lucky's, which has short lines and unionized staff.