Years ago, I felt like I could trust that the prices, selection, and quality of items I found on Amazon were relatively predictable. Now that it's a bazaar rather than a store, I can't trust anything and unless I want to get ripped off I have to apply an exhausting level of scrutiny to each item purchased. As a result, I don't shop there nearly as much as I once did.
How is Amazon thriving? I don't get it. Don't other people have the same experience?
I feel the same way about Amazon. What tipped me over the line was a counterfeit pair of Ecco shoes. I mean, seriously? You cannot safely buy air or water filters, SD cards, batteries, and so much more, but you have to even now be super cautious about buying shoes from Amazon? Its just not worth the convenience. It feels almost like an abusive relationship.
I've started experimenting with Walmart to replace lots of the stuff I usually get from Amazon. Unsure about them yet.
Unless Amazon ditches the 3rd party sellers, I won't be back.
The solution doesn't have to be ditching 3rd parties as these can create great shopping value. Amazon should create a hurdle that keeps scammers away. While obvioudly there are better solutions than my off the cuff comment you could for example require a significant deposit for new sellers which is lost on sale of fake goods. Or payment terms are 120 days until you reach X reputation (supplier or item) allowing for full refunds to customers and zero payment to suppliers should fakes show up.
Solution is simple, create a filter to only show items shipped and sold Amazon.com, and never commingle inventory.
But amazon wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to offload all that inventory risk into others and it wants its customers to pay the same or more as other retailers who you can trust to not sell counterfeit goods.
A consumer’s only solution is to switch your purchases to actual retailers who are selling goods you can trust.
At the very least, Amazon should mark the commingled vs. non-commingled status for each offer. Right now, you only see this once you hold the item in your hands - if there's a barcode starting with "X" on the package, it's non-commingled AFAIK.
(But I wonder if Amazon actually authenticates X-labeled incoming merchandise, e.g. by requiring a shared secret on the package slip. Otherwise, if an attacker sends in a fake item that's X-labeled as if it came from an honest seller, they would still be able to tank the reputation of the honest seller. Maybe this could even be done from the position of an Amazon customer, i.e. they would apply the fraudulent X-label to a swapped "returned" item. Who would believe the honest seller in this circumstance?)
It used to be you can click "Amazon Prime" and get a reputable seller...but now I guess you gotta click on "Sold by Amazon". I hope they don't commingle Amazon's stuff with 3rd party sellers...
If so...I'm just going to buy name brand items in stores and get a price match.
Third party sellers can also sell directly to Amazon via something called Amazon Vendor Central. Their products will be "Sold by Amazon". I know someone who was accused of selling counterfeit products to Amazon. He has 3 different accounts all hooked up to its own network.
Another Amazon horror story would be I was listening to an Amazon seller podcast. The person being interviewed sold supplements. He said he imported some herbs from South America, picked them up at the airport, dropped them off at the plant with some bottles, got them, and sent them off to Amazon. Nowhere did he mention fda or anything. I'm hoping things are a lot harder now to sell your own private label supplements on Amazon, like requiring GMP certificates or invoices from a credible manufacturer... Or even worse electronics from China that do not have any of the required testing that retail brick and mortar stores require. Or ah maybe the worst story of all. The Amazon seller who sells used bras as new on Amazon. I stopped buying bras on Amazon after I heard that one at an Amazon seller event.
"Dietary supplements" are essentially unregulated. The manufacturer is responsible for doing any quality control/inspections/etc. The FDA might come after you after you sell something, but they do absolutely no verification before. I can't find any evidence that the regulation requires anyone but the manufacturer to do anything and it doesn't seem there is any verification. (in other words, don't trust supplements no matter where you buy them)
On the other hand, all meat that isn't privately sold is required to be inspected before and after slaughter and processing by the USDA. The packing plants have to shut down if there aren't inspectors there.
>I hope they don't commingle Amazon's stuff with 3rd party sellers...
Sorry, but they do. I've sold new stuff on Amazon. I ship it out to their warehouses. When you look at the product, you will see my price amongst the various Prime sellers. However, when you ship something new to Amazon, they ask whether it is OK to comingle your product with Amazon's. There's no good reason to say "No". So when you buy from me, you could be getting the one owned by Amazon, and vice versa.
Anker usually are the only sellers on their item listings so I buy electronics from them on Amazon because their items won't be conmingled. Otherwise, I go to Best Buy and pay the premium for the quality control.
People who get what they ordered aren't newsworthy? I buy all manner of stuff from amazon and haven't had much trouble. One time I got something that wasn't quite right (my two pack was missing one) but they immediately refunded the cost and I got to keep it. Reports of fraud have been somewhat concerning, but I see no reason to change anything. Their experiments with their own courier delivery service have been far more disruptive, but the great AI in the cloud has learned my address work best with UPS and everything is back on track.
The vast majority of people still think it's the old days. Until all of seller fraud at Amazon hits the mainstream news, they will still believe that Amazon is a land of legitimate abundance and good deals.
Same here. I get really stressed when I go on Amazon because there is so much junk there. I also used to buy from Newegg a lot but since they started selling from third party suppliers it's also a mess.
Nowadays I feel almsot more confident to buy on ebay from sellers that have thousands of ratings with a high positive percentage.
Amazon is problematic simply because they refuse to let you filter searches, and stop the ridiculous co-mingling practices.
Newegg so far hasn't done either of those things, and I simply select "Sold by Newegg" as the only options I'll consider when looking.
I also get annoyed at every damn e-store now being a giant import of some silly bazaar database - but at least Newegg still gives you the ability to ignore it.
Yes, my first online purchases were from ebay, I then switched to amazon but now I mostly buy on ebay again.
I trust its ratings more than amazon's and also ebay feels less creepy to me as a company.
They do, however it is easy to miss the 'bulk' rush. Which is to say that the bulk of the people using Amazon aren't particularly careful so they just click the 'buy it' link and never think twice about it.
As a result the services suffer, and they will continue to do so which then opens up a niche for a new seller to come along. Ebay has suffered the same cyle.
My brother ordered a 6 pack of tea boxes, seller "accidentally" sent 1. His reviews were full of the same complaint but I thought Amazon a2z guarantee was still around and would fix it. It wasn't, I couldn't even contact Amazon about it. All the order help would lead to emailing the seller.
As somebody selling on Amazon MWS, this might be entirely Amazon's item matching issue - when you are uploading your item feed to Amazon, items on your feed are mapped automatically to Amazon's ASINs (basically their own IDs), and that matching often ignores when you specified pack quantity. I.e. sometimes your 6-pack gets matched as a single item and sometimes a single item gets matched as a 6-pack. They have that issue ~8 years already; I guess to them it's more important to invest elsewhere than to better algorithms...
It's not hard or unreasonable to restrict yourself to items shipped and sold by Amazon, and to do a little extra searching for things outside that bubble. (usually just fakespot and reading a few good and bad reviews)
How is Amazon thriving? I don't get it. Don't other people have the same experience?