back
96 comments
Amazon, Walmart, Etsy... my kingdom for a marketplace that doesn't become just a dumping ground for shady fly-by-night dropshippers.
This has pushed me to high levels of brand loyalty with direct ordering from the brands I like and trust, plus a lot of buying used… also mostly products from a handful of trusted brands (this is largely clothes, nearly all of which I buy used except socks, underwear, and most sweaters)
Don't allow 3rd party sellers?
B&Q in the UK went exactly the same way - used to be pretty reliable, and I didn't mind paying the extra to have all the things a home DIYer might need without going to half a dozen different builder's merchants and trade suppliers. Then they opened their store page up to anyone who wanted to list anything even tangentially related to home improvements and predictably it's a huge heap of drop-shipped rubbish and it's all been SEO'ed to the Nth degree to appear higher in the search rankings than anything actually sold by B&Q.
It depends on the brand, but a lot of the stuff I buy is available directly from the manufacturer's site, usually via Shop Pay.
Most of the amazon sellers package trash and send to many people broken items ETC amazon is losing its name in India
I tend to find ebay less shady than Amazon these days, which is a bit disapointing really.
I have ordered items on eBay just for the seller to order it on Amazon and send it to me that way. Just happened to me this week with club bells/Indian clubs.
eBay is very good for science-related goods, in my experience. Last week, I bought ~$12K of used gear for a project. All items work, would have cost ~2.5x that from the usual used instrument vendors, about 6x new.
EBay is the worst website someone can use for shopping…they just got it all wrong. Seems lead by people who don’t use it
Ebay is no less shady. Buy something(from China) that takes a long time to arrive, reviewing is disabled. Ebay is junk.
AliExpress is less shady. If only they had customer service and a decent UI.
Ebay would be a lot more fun to use if

a) You could search for keywords without also matching keywords that have your keyword as a sub-string

b) "Sort by lowest price including shipping" actually did what it says

As it is you often have to wade through tons of undesired crap to get to what you want.

I also don't like that eBay sellers can see that you viewed their product and send you price offers.

Oh and let's not forget the popup nagging you to use their app for a discount ... while you are typing something into the search bar.

Amazon could easily solve this problem if they wanted to. They just don't want to.
"We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with the customer and work backwards." - Jeff Bezos

Backwards indeed.

Of course not. They _created_ this problem.
Its been "day 2" at Amazon for a long time now. I guess the Leadership Principles need an update.
That's a problem for you — the customer - not for Jeff, the VP.
> leave a product review in exchange for a free bed scrunchie accessory

I wonder what the exact language was. If it included something like “5 star review” on that card, then the guy deserves getting kicked out from Amazon and getting his business shut down (it’s federally illegal to do that per ftc regulation). If it was just very neutral language asking for reviews, then that sucks, and hope he can get it resolved with Amazon eventually.

In 2022 I got physical mail about leaving a review for something I bought from Amazon (sold by company X, shipped by Amazon) in exchange for Amazon Gift Card. It contained the name of the product I bought. When I tried to report it to Amazon:

* there was no obvious way to do it. Closest thing was by reporting issue on product.

* there was no way to show the customer service agent a picture of the mail. Chat did not support sending pictures & they were unable to open imgur link.

* agent recommended me to leave a report it by leaving review to the seller page. I did that and next day review was deleted.

So it's pretty clear that Amazon didn't care and I doubt it has changed (unless the law you are talking about is recent one).

Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.”

If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!

10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal.

I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within their own listings to satisfy both properties), but left before implementation rolled out. Based on current search results, either they failed or the project was abandoned.

I’m shocked at how some categories just contain junk from random brands with unpronounceable names. Want a music player by Sony or even RCA? Those brands have left that market completely for B2B products or are a licensed name on top of some garbage. Now you can get a Zaqe, Picxiul, Lwyinp, Globluum, or Swofy!

I do my best to find a local or online shop that actually knows & understands what they sell. Getting harder, but for more expensive items definitely achievable.
google.com "KEYWORD reddit". It's been the only way for me for the last several years, but mostly for inexpensive items (20-100 USD). In the States it's more frictionless to do Amazon returns then through Temu or AliX.
leadership knows that they get to charge those 150 sellers bidding based "advertising fees" to get the buy box
AI chat interface works where search does not. Not perfect, but much better, and allows more specific, accurate filtering.
It's by no means limited to amazon. $50k or less gets you arbitrary account information from almost any large site you can name, similar rates for access to information that's supposed to be law enforcement only, or to get someone's realtime cellphone location. If it's not via a corrupt insider, it's by corrupt LEO, or impersonating LEO.

The only way to have a reasonable level of privacy against a well funded attacker is to not provide anything private to companies in the first place.

"This item will arrive tomorrow at 9 AM" -> Pay -> "Sorry this item can't be delivered by tomorrow will be delivered 2 days later" -> Next day -> "This item will be delivered 3 weeks from now"
OMG yes this. So annoying.

It’s like Uber saying book and pay for a ride, cars are 2 min away. Great here’s my money, send a car. 15 min later still waiting for car…

I think Amazon is catching on. I had this happen last week, and after the 2 days late, Amazon sent an automated apology with the option to cancel if it didn't show up after the third day.
It's not common that they miss those timed delivery windows, in my experience... but when they do their systems don't seem to be able to handle it well and the delay is far worse than it would have been if it _weren't_ a timed window. I suspect it's related to the timed deliveries mostly being farmed out to gig drivers.
sounds like fraud to me
I can’t believe Nekhala managed to gross $6million on a bed scrunchy on Amazon without Chinese competitors pirating the design, even with a US patent. That in itself is a major accomplishment. At some point when progressives finally take the house perhaps we can get some real regulations in place so that someone banned from the system like this has recourse other than call tree AI.
The only thing I use Amazon for is price guidance - is that hardware $1, $2, $10 or $100?

I have not bought from them since 2005.

There is no need

1999 or maybe 2000 for me. Dollars are votes for how I want to see the world.
I use Amazon when I've planned poorly and need something the next/same day. But, actually, less and less over time because Walmart and HEB (Texas grocery store w/ solid delivery) keep improving their delivery offerings.
So Amazon could have logged who performed the action(based on logon details) and catch the culprit.
The article says that they did do this.
This has been going on for a decade.
People. Stop making '20 calls' about this sort of thing.

If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it.

Then call your lawyer, who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal.

If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court.

The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.

What do you think Bezos does when a contractor takes his money and doesn't fix one of his dozen swimming pools? Or a car dealership fucks up one of his hypercars?

Do you think he makes 20 calls to customer service numbers? Or do you think one of his personal assistants calls once and asks politely, and then if it isn't made right, it gets batted over to his law firm.

> The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.

Yeah, if you are a private customer that might work out going to small claims court against a large company.

But if you are a commercial vendor? Tough luck, you probably signed some mandatory arbitration clause in your terms, maybe even a non-disparagement clause. Whoops. Arbitration can cost shitloads of money upfront or expose you to the risk of having to pay the counterparty's lawyers if you lose the arbitration, no referral to the regular court system possible. And even going to the press to complain is a risky move.

There's a lot of things I'd be willing to jump into. But I'd never ever want to be in a commercial relationship with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta or any of the other tech giants (or Walmart, they are just as infamous for squeezing suppliers), simply because they have all the cards and I have none. They decide to kick me out, my existence is gone.

Have you ever paid for legal services? If you are a small business you may not be able to afford 4-500 USD/hour while they make phone calls and type emails.
That costs a lot of effort, time and money, all of which are in short supply nowadays.
https://archive.is/hioIm