Amazon Kind of Sucks and We’ve All Just Come to Accept It

Amazon's UI, in my opinion, is a case study in heavily politicized UI design. There are too many parties involved. They all want more screen real estate. They all think their widget is already the key to Amazon's sales, and if not, they think that if they just had a bit more screen real estate that they would increase sales 10X. Because of the magnitude of the involvement and the stakes at hand, proposing a major overhaul would literally create hundreds if not thousands of internal enemies, ready to do anything and everything to take you out.

As a result, we get Times Square with a cohesive font and color scheme.

- Pricing

Amazon has excellent prices, even after they started charging sales tax in my state, and even after factoring in the annual Prime fee. Often the affiliate vendors don't charge sales tax[1], and sometimes they are a couple of bucks cheaper than the Prime price. I keep trying to find better deals elsewhere -- Ebay sometimes beats them -- but other vendors really can't compete.

- Selection

Selection at Amazon is fabulous. You can find literally anything there. Between Amazon and Ebay, they've got you covered for probably any kind of product you could imagine.

- User Experience

Well I haven't found it that difficult to do things like sort by price. You have to fast forward past the irrelevant items but many other online retailers have the same problem with false positives and deceptive categorization. After a while, people just get used to it and learn how to deal with it.

- Books

Amazon began as a book seller, and it remains one of their core competencies. The Kindle Paperwhite reader is an excellent product (the Fire tablets less so). Amazon has created a first rate ecology for e-books, self-publishers, and of course traditional printed material.

- Deals

I'm a shopping junkie and I'm always looking for bargains. I do online polls and other tasks to acquire Amazon gift cards, so I may not be the typical shopper. But there are opportunities to knock $5 off here, $10 off there, and really get some deals. Fill out this poll after the AnDevCon and receive a $20 gift card. Really? I'm all in! I live for this stuff.

- Returns

If you want the luxury of free returns for non-defective merchandise, then shop locally. That's what retail pricing is for -- to pay for the overhead of 10-20% return rates. If you can do your research and shop online very carefully, you can avoid the need to return. If a product is defective, on the other hand, Amazon has first rate service. Usually just print the label, stick it on the box, and leave it on the porch. OK, yeah, you probably need to have a roll of packing tape handy, and tape the box closed -- a rather trivial effort in the grand scheme of things.

Amazon's not perfect, not by a long stretch. Once in a while, there are better deals elsewhere. But if you shop realistically, efficiently, and try to accumulate gift cards, you make out like a bandit.

[1] Retail sales tax is gradually being extended to online sales. I respect the law, but I feel that I do not "owe" my state any more money than they already get from me (which is a lot). Just because a business has a "presence" in my state should not require them to charge sales tax on an item I ordered over the internet that was shipped from Seattle or Texas or China.

That is true, and it can really bite you if the item is heavy (speaker stands are my personal example - $17 to return $40 stands... I just kept them).

On the other side of the continuum though sometimes Amazon will tell you to just destroy the item and won't make you ship it back. That's always a nice surprise.

I don't know if it's a regional difference (suburban SV here), but my UPS guy always shows up to my door with his own label and tape. It's REALLY convenient.

I use it so often that the yearly costs (like prime, about $100/y) is a drop in the bucket.

Amazon used to be less expensive, but in the past few years, I've noticed local stores are sometimes drastically cheaper on basic goods.