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I swear to God you people on lemmy (and reddit) just find a few isolated stories and pretend like it's hard or dangerous to use Amazon lol.
I've ordered well over 50k over the years and have like two or three minor minor fuck ups. They are fantastic. That's why they are popular.
I mean... even if it still works or hasn't fucked up it's still a cheap knockoff. The cheap knockoffs I get from Amazon usually work fine, but I don't go there to find cheap knockoffs, I need a specific brand usually. Where I get frustrated is when I search for a specific item I need and I get a hundred cheap knockoffs listed first. Maybe other people don't care, but I don't want a genuine Sorny or Pantafonix.
I have never seen this. It just doesn't happen that often on US Amazon stores. There entire thing, at least in the US, is over blown.
Literally just did this to prove it to you. I searched for "Wireless phone charger". Something that's not technical, that most people with wireless charging have at least thought about buying. First page is shown here. Feel free to point out any brands that you recognize.
I've tried 2 so far from amazon. Both garbage. 1 didn't work out of the box and the other worked for about a month then crapped out. Amazon hosts just garbage now. I've gone back to buying from retail whenever possible.
After about 12 results I finally get to a brand name one, the Apple wireless charger here. So, I guess what I'm saying isn't that offbrands are bad, I love buying third party stuff and modifying it. This isn't that though, it's cheap knockoff garbage where they manipulate the rankings and put their crap above anything that might actually be useful. The site is so flooded with this crap that it's barely usable for me. (You can see I'm using extensions to help try to adjust the ratings too, because they also flood the reviews with fake garbage)
I agree with you, however Anker is a well known brand
I actually had never heard of them, but I'll take the recommendation! Still looking for a quality one, I'll give them a shot. You can see how actual 3rd party products get lost in the thick of all this crap surrounding them
Anker is a cheap knockoff brand?
It happens every single time I ever search for anything on Amazon in the US. I have to search through pages and pages of shit knockoff items with fake reviews from other product listing created by "brands" with names that look like a cat walked across the keyboard.
Most the time the items are unrelated to what I'm actually looking for and are only showing up because their titles are "CIGNHKA Road Bike saddle seat chair seat comfort adjustment bike seat mountain seat, gravel, ideal, perfect use universal, black." And then the description has even more word salad.
If you bother taking the time you can find 17 other brands selling the same identical item with the same markings and the same specs (sometimes with the same reviews) with the only change being the name on the product.
If I didn't live in a very rural area that Amazon somehow still covers with their free shipping I would never shop their. I only shop on Amazon when I can find a specific item from a specific well known brand.
Nah, my search results look this like this. Even when I search for a specific brand, very rarely does that make it to the top of the list. Far more often than not, I have to go digging for what I want. It sounds like you have a different experience of Amazon and I honestly envy it. It used to be great
It's worth pointing out the cracks in a service everyone uses - some of those cracks have been there for a long time and Amazon has been doing a poor job combating it - if they even are. Amazon seems to make knockoffs themselves of best selling items, but that's another topic.
To your point though, depends what you buy - when I was looking for really good headphones a few years ago, there were warnings on review sites about ordering Sony brand headphones and getting fakes. Apparently there were also sites dedicated to help identify fake headphones bought from Amazon (Sony MDR-7506). One would be correct to say counterfeits were around since before Amazon, but you wouldn't expect to get a counterfeit if you pay full price from a brand name store - which is the new problem.
Also buying SD cards, specialized batteries, etc has been a big problem on Amazon for years, and Amazon doesn't seem able to really address it (inb4 someone says they have made it worse)
I used eBay for years buying everything from computers to expensive bikes. I even helped a friend who bought a car from eBay.
Now? Full of knock offs and scams. My last transactions were garbage designed to last long enough for a product photo shoot. Using any of these products for their intended purpose is a real safety risk and returns require a back and forth with automated systems designed to try to make you give up before you get any $$ back.
I haven't used eBay in ~8 and likely never will again. The thing about critical mass and network effect is it has as much (if not more) of an impact during a service's decline.
I think there are different aspects to it.
Amazon’s delivery service is better than ever. You get products in half the time, with less packaging, and fewer miles traveled to deliver it to you, without any significant increase in delivery fees.
Price is still competitive when you take into account delivery cost and speed. If you don’t care about those, Amazon isn’t the cheapest.
Search and reviews are down the tubes. It’s like Amazon no longer cares if their site is overrun with crap products as long as people are buying them.
Amazon still works great if you only buy name-brand products that are fulfilled by Amazon.
Once upon a time I had Prime and their two-day delivery was extremely reliable. Then it started slipping and became "probably two-day delivery." At a certain point it became "sometime in the next week delivery," so combined with the nightmare changes they made to what used to be the best search GUI ever, I decided to cancel Prime for good. This was a few years ago; has the delivery situation improved? Because I know the search situation is still utter garbage.
I think it must vary by location. I’ve heard your extract situation and I’ve had exactly one package take more than two days. I live twenty minutes from the nearest store which is a Walmart and anything else is an hour drive each way. I buy almost everything from Amazon. My first order was in 2006 and I started racking up hundreds of orders a year by 2009 on. I just ordered a couple countertop drink dispensers for a party coming up. I ordered them this morning and they are getting delivered today before 9pm. I’ve had six defective products in all that time and only once did I even need to worry about returning the item (grab bar for my golf cart). In every other instance it was simply refunded to repurchase or use for whatever. Their support is exceptional and I’d never abuse it. I’m big on cash back cards also so anytime I can get 5% cash back that’s a nice bonus. The only thing I don’t buy from them is computer parts, id rather go to micro center for that kind of stuff.
Works on my computer?
did you write this in another comment? it feels like I've read this before
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