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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I'll bite. I disagree with this.
I buy things, I get them in a reasonable time at a reasonable price. If something is wrong, I can return. Their customer service is one of the best. I feel more comfortable buying things there with Prime since I know they'll take care of me.
I wish Prime was cheaper ... I wish everything was. Every company jacks up prices.
It's not even close to AliExpress. The quality of Amazon is far superior. I buy stuff from AliExpress and I have to wait 2 weeks, have worse customer support, etc. I bought something once and didn't get any info until it arrived at my door 4 weeks later. I asked what's up at week 3 and was told to wait till 4 before they can look into it.
Amazon is a marketplace, anyone can create a store and put up items. It's not really Amazon's fault that people have BS listings. It's not reasonable to human-vet every listing. Maybe they could have a better reporting system; idk.
Could they do better on ratings and other things? Sure. Heck they added the ai summary for reviews. I like that. Are they still the best general marketplace for consumers: in my opinion: yes.
I ordered a random endoscopic camera for a car issue. Less than 20 bucks. It'll be here in a couple days. It's from a random brand. If it works: great. If not: money back. I like the choice of random brands and maybe some I've heard of. Choice is good.
I'll push back on this part. They can vet just fine by raising the barrier to entry a bit. They'd have fewer products. There'd be three USB cable vendors instead of 500. That would be OK.
Leaning into Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") can be OK in some circumstances. Leave all the gates wide open and let anyone in. Steam is a good example; I find most of my games by word of mouth, and if some shithole asset flipper wants to toss their game up there, I will probably never see it until Steph Sterling points it out.
I don't think that can work for Amazon. It's too much and fraud is rampant.
I disagree. I'd rather have 500 choices and let the consumer choose than a triopoly on my poor USB cables.
Edit: Maybe the ranking system needs more work. Personally I like seeing all and making choices. Though some may just want above board picks.
Reminds me of code. Too bad ya can't just regex search combined with star ratings and some secret sauce to get rid of what the viewer thinks of as crap.
My big issue with amazon these days is that it's flooded with trash. Like sure if you want some disposable garbage that you dont think twice about or if a very specific item you know is good is for sale on their site you can use them and their return policy is good.
But otherwise the flood of no-name vendors has become like browsing a more expensive wish.com. So many randomly generated non reputable companies selling the same rebranded knockoffs of knockoffs at various price points. It used to be that at least you could go up in price bracket and get to the actual products but now even that is hard. You can check out products worth over a hundred dollars and it still have mixed reviews and no actual brand recognition . It's gotten to the point that if its something that matters or is more that $50 I search on big box sites and either order directly for them or find the item and get it off amazon.
Yeah once I stopped buying from Amazon I realised how many of my supposed needs were just wants. Like, it's ok if I can't get literal brass tacks for a project this week. It's not urgent. Nothing ever was. I didn't need any of this shit in the 90s and I don't need it now. I just got used to having it, and had to adjust to intentionally going without it (for ethical reasons).