Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

Post by ixacto » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #142

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

> Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Speaking as a longtime customer, I agree: this is what Amazon's behavior feels like to me nowadays. Search no longer works well for me. Reviews and product ratings are no longer trustworthy. The authenticity of products in key categories (e.g., electronics) can no longer be taken for gra…

Post by prostoalex » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

Post by jeremy7600 » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

primitivesuave wrote: post #294

maaaats wrote: post #10

Unless you know exctly brand/make/model you wan't to buy on Amazon, the search is useless. Hundreds of similar results from dozens of vendors of varying quality. I liked it better when they sold things themselves, now they're just an eBay clone selling cheap knockoffs trying to hide the fact.

Try searching "airpods" (a registered trademark of Apple) and you won't find a legitimate Apple product until the third page. Even if you search "Apple airpods", the first page is filled with knockoffs of the product I'm clearly intending to purchase. In frustration I simply walked to an Apple store and learned they price-match Best Buy and Walmart (not Amazon) with up to a 10% discount - I found the Amazon price on…

Post by binarysolo » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #298

PKop wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, prices (aside from "Amazon Business" pricing which was a large internal project to achieve what you're describing but only for differentiation between business and personal purchases) are all the same for every user. I believe most of the rationale was not wanting upset customers annoyed with getting different prices than others first and foremost, but also technically pricing system is already extremely complex…

I heard that prices arw different for the webpage and the app in some cases. And even for Android or Apple users. Any truth to that or is it just office talk? Seriously wondering...

Post by zjaffee » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #74

tfha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I've been unhappy to see Bezos gaining steam. As his other products become more successful, you can expect a lot more of this. Alexa is not your friend, Alexa is a tool to make Amazon money. Amazon's move into media is not an effort to improve the media system, it's a recognition that there's a lot of money to be made by controlling the media that people consume. Same thing with the fire phone, it wasn't…

> Bezos is out to make an empire, everything else comes second. I share this sentiment. For comparison, I believe the amount of and methods with which Google collects data to be wrong, but I also believe that they don't believe they are doing something (outright) wrong. Amazon, however, must know that they have a counterfeit goods problem, but it seems that they couldn't care less about it. Same applies to gaming the…