Amazon has enacted a rather dumb rule with regard to paid product reviews. I was contacted about a year ago by a chinese company I have bought a lot of electronics from and left positive reviews for in the past. They offered me deep discounts (via rebate) on products if I left reviews after purchasing and using them for a while (no 'has to be positive' strings attached). I reviewed a couple of their products last year and put a disclaimer about being partially compensated for the review at the top. One of the products wasn't great (it was a bottom of the barrel budget phone) and I gave it a middling review.
I didn't hear from them for a while, then about 3 months ago they reached out with two more products they were asking me to review. Same deal. I submitted reviews this time and they got rejected because it is apparently now against Amazon's policies to publish compensated reviews. I resubmitted the reviews with my disclaimer removed and they published them. Kinda crappy on their part that they won't allow reviewers to divulge that information.
Which is weird. Because some reviews have a tag/label specifying "received product for free". So there must be some way to indicate it.
Amazon seems to be following in the footsteps of TigerDirect and NewEgg. Both were amazing sites in the beginning, great deals, great customer service, etc... Then they started allowing fake knockoff brands, direct to consumer products from china, scammers, resellers, fake reviews, terrible refund policies, etc... and it slowly brought down the overall quality of the site and overwhelmed their support staff and eventually fucked over their reputation. The difference with Amazon is they aren't limited to just tech, the fact that they now carry pretty much everything under the sun basically protects them from this same fate, sadly.
I'm finding more things cheaper elsewhere. Even brand name stuff. I was looking for some Gorilla glue and it turned out cheaper in my local supermarket (Tesco UK) than Amazon.
Had a few crappy quality things/lost items. Have started buying elsewhere now before even looking there.
My sales are going to break Jeff Bezos but it (hopefully) might be a sign of the times.
I noticed this Black Friday, almost all name brand items totally disappeared, and most deals were garbage Chinese knockoffs/non-name brand. Then immediately after Black Friday, I saw a huge return of name brands in their featured products/deals.
I also bought a new Microsoft Surface Slim Pen 2 (for $90) recently and got a total Chinese knockoff piece of shit in a package labeled "fashion jewelry." Total wish.com trash listed as name brand.
Amazon didn't publish my review (I'm assuming because I said this was becoming a rampant issue on Amazon. Did refund me, but the Chinese knockoff listed as a Slim Pen 2 is still listed on Amazon.
I went and paid the same price on ebay for a factory-sealed brand new legit one. What a change we have undergone when eBay is a safer marketplace than Amazon..
This shit was all over the place on Black Friday. Some items I followed dropped in price, but were crappy versions of the same thing. Others were cheaper earlier in the month and increased on BF.
I notice prices shot up on 9/1 so they could be "reduced" by BF. It was a clear attempt to justify "50% off the average price".
I've noticed the same thing here in the US. I looked at getting some toothpaste my kids like and it was about $7 on Amazon. Got it at my local Target store via an online order for under $4.
"Everyday" products have always been expensive on Amazon. Things like food, pharmacy items, "junk drawer" items, basically anything you can expect to find at your local grocery store. A few years ago I was shocked that that didn't have a pair of scissors for less than $12 (at the time they were probably half that at Target). I don't know if this is because the logistics of these items is more expensive to do online, or if they're price gouging under the assumption that if you're buying a gluestick online it's because you live in a super remote area or are too unable/lazy to go to a store in-person. It's like Staples in reverse: Staples figured out that if you're buying electronics in a store it's probably because you need it right fucking now and can't afford to wait to order it online (or you're not tech savvy enough to shop/price compare online) so they can get away with making you pay through the nose.
It's the cost of the lumped in "free shipping." I find the prices are good when I buy bulk. Like I'll buy 3 packs of my deodorant and toothpaste and then the price is better than all my local stores. For whatever reason, none of the stores carry the scent I like in deodorant. They only carry antiperspirant, which I didn't want, causing me to research my options online.
I have found for small basic stuff, it's always cheaper at Walmart, home depot, target, etc. Plus depending what it is, you benefit from seeing it first.
I had about the same experience.
Also, I spent a lot of time finding low prices at amazon and bought them. And then saw the same things for at least the same price at the local stores. I don't find worth the time anymore.
Succeeding at buying from Amazon is easy:
- Make sure that the local brick-and-mortar doesn't have the thing you want first.
- Avoid products that have SEO titles ("fish bowl for fish container fish aquarium for fish"), or nonsensical manufacturer names (FDRTNHY).
- Weep quietly because it's page 50 and there still aren't any listings that don't violate #2.
Or; 1. Don't.
I never did, until I moved into a very remote area where travel expenses mean every trip needs to count so if the shops don't have it you're screwed. Or if they do have it, it often is too expensive compared to online offers :(
Yes, correct, that's a summary of what #1 said.
It is bloated with poor quality no name products but it's fine if you stick with known brands. Reviews do suck tho. Fake reviews have made the rating system is useless.
Their fulfillment centers are where joy goes to die. $15 an hour to be a human robot for 40-60 hours per week doesn't sound like a great way to spend your time on this planet.
Read about PIP, Focus, and Pivot, and you'll see that their corporate centers aren't much better.
Imagine that every year, regardless of layoffs and people quitting, your employer tries to fire 5-10% of the entire corporate workforce. On top of this, as some people naturally manage to perform well when under pressure, imagine the number of threatened people doubling or even tripling. Now, imagine that every single year.
It's no wonder that some tech companies don't like hiring people that used to work at Amazon, particularly managers.
Amazons $19 starting pay is well above industry standard as well as the health care day one. You could do much much worse.
Not saying this isn't happening, but the same shit has been said about Walmart for 30 years.
Aliexpress when you can't be bothered to wait
This really is it. Apart from that, for me it's really to get specific gluten-free foods that I can't find easily.
I don't think "Downfall" means what this dude thinks it does...
A bit hailcorporate but in Switzerland we have Galaxus and they expanded into Germany a few years ago, so if anyone here is German, maybe try them once in a while, great customer service, none of the issues Amazon has.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ws3YptLmLQ - Another video, this time about stolen iPhones winding up on Amazon
Obligatory, very funny Ryan George video on 'What shopping on Amazon feels like'
How do I get into a lawsuit for a fraudulent sword that is definitively prove, in my own hands, NOT the High Manganese steel it CLAIMED to be?
And further...is a deadly breakage of high likelihood when strking a TREE (tree is gorramn near dead anyway). If I had struken it normally said brade could have flipped over and stabbed me, potentially killing ME, if I hadn't been stabbing said tree on its third strike.
Three strikes to break a High Manganese steel sword. Shit is fraudulent NOT what is claimed to be. I already made it be for removal. They refused. It is still for sale to kill someone who buy's said again.
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.
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.
Works on my computer?
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.
did you write this in another comment? it feels like I've read this before
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