Considering how shopping at Amazon now feels like shopping at an electronics bazaar in Singapore with giant bins of random knock-off products of suspicious quality, tweaking the algo to push name-brand options (even if it's their own name-brand) would be a welcome move to me as a buyer. Obviously it's grossly unfair to their vendors, but from a strictly user-centric view it's an improvement. Otherwise, Amazon feels l…
(I can only guess you are American) - American experiences with Amazon are so different to mine over here in the UK it's incredible. I buy tonnes of different stuff from Amazon(multiple hundred orders last year) and I have never ever gotten anything counterfeit or had any issues. In fact every time when their 1-day delivery arrives late they just extend my prime by a month, no questions asked. And yet every time I go…
I've certainly had fake products from Amazon UK. Certain categories of products are very likely to be counterfeit, while others aren't. For example there were lots of apple replacement headphones which are much too cheap.
Could we take a break with these articles for a bit? I’m all for redistributing Jeff Bezos’s money, and I'd be happy to have mine redistributed as well if that happened, but this and the Apple App Store algorithm news are so insignificant in the world. We're arguing about if online stores can organize their shelves how they want to while people are dying because they can't afford insulin or drink their tapwater. Yeah, you can care about two issues at once, but this isn't really an issue. I don't care to read the same comment about Microsoft with Internet Explorer every day. Maybe it's unfair to them but I really do not care, they clearly survived just fine.
The one difference is that the Amazon Basics products seem to have a quality bar higher than the other random re-labeled products.
I'm not sure about Amazon Basics, but with Amazon's Choice products they're plainly not evaluating products before selecting them. LockpickingLawyer on youtube has done reviews on several Amazon's Choice locks and safes and they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.
In fairness, very few locks can stand up to LPL for very long.
It’s odd to me to think that something which is user-centric could be “grossly unfair” to vendors. If you view vendors on the platform as existing to serve the users (as I do), the contradiction evaporates. If you view users as existing to serve the vendors, then it’s possible.
There are things known as two-sided marketplaces. This isn't novel; malls and similar have existed for a very long time. I get that US culture is heavy on "the customer is always right"[1], etc. but two-sided markets don't exist without recognizing both sides. [1] In reality, that ends up being more of an employee control mechanism than a dedication to customers, but that's a different topic.
"the customer is always right" means the customer has the money in his pockets to spend, and you can't argue with the sales figures at the end of the day. It sounds like guidance on dispute resolution but isn't exactly.
Sadly Newegg is following in Amazon's footsteps with it's affiliate program. You have to choose Newegg as the seller or you run into the same issues. As soon as Newegg starts mingling stock like Amazon does, then we'll have to go back to big box retailers to ensure we're getting the item we're paying for.
In 2016 a company called Liason Interactive bought a majority stake in Newegg, personally I think to try to turn newegg into an electronics version of amazon. Since around then Newegg has been garbage, and continues to become worse. I think any seller like amazon or newegg that turns into a marketplace/platform is trading their reputation for the potential of a cut from a much larger market, and they probably do this…
The one difference is that the Amazon Basics products seem to have a quality bar higher than the other random re-labeled products.
I'm not sure about Amazon Basics, but with Amazon's Choice products they're plainly not evaluating products before selecting them. LockpickingLawyer on youtube has done reviews on several Amazon's Choice locks and safes and they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.
>they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.
Isn't this just a property of most locks in general? I was under the impression that there are very few consumer locks that will stand up to someone with tools and a weekend of practice.
What does commingling mean? In real world terms? I ask because I'm unclear if shared SKU is a physical thing, a logical implementation detail, or some mix. Is there a bin full of white 3' USB cables of the same type, regardless of supplier? I had the impression that fulfillment centers weren't organized by product. Everything is everywhere. The robots retrieve the bins of whatever from wherever for the pickers to gra…
Correct. Fulfilment is UPC based and independent of seller, for all FBA products.
This doesn't sound right. Even if two different sellers are selling the exact same brand manufactured product (say, an Android Phone), via FBA, when a customer buys from seller1, they should get the Item1 which was actually supplied to FBA by Seller1. They cannot get Item2 which was supplied by Seller2. When the customer returns the Item1 for manufacturing defect etc reasons, it has to go back to the Seller1. This is because Item1 has "manufacturing date and batch number", may have "imported from" etc that are different from Item2 by Seller2. Seller1 may have gotten it with different pricing terms etc.
Could we take a break with these articles for a bit? I’m all for redistributing Jeff Bezos’s money, and I'd be happy to have mine redistributed as well if that happened, but this and the Apple App Store algorithm news are so insignificant in the world. We're arguing about if online stores can organize their shelves how they want to while people are dying because they can't afford insulin or drink their tapwater. Yeah…
Honestly and without sarcasm, maybe just take a break from this site? If those are the kinds of issues that you want to find more about, I don’t think this is the right venue. Yes, HN does dabble in politics sometimes but for the most part, this isn’t a place to talk about the “big issues”.
It's likely related to (1) US market is largest "single-language * consumer spending" market, so almost everyone outside of US/UK market puts effort in US first. (2) USPS/UPU offers nearly 0-cost shipping for China to US. Can you ship a 2oz packet from China to the UK for under $1?
I don't know specifically about the UK, but the zero cost shipping from China isn't a US thing. It's an international agreement, and I've seen things being shipped for free from China to both Europe and the Middle East.
Woah. In this bigger picture, amazon and everybody else is doing the last mile for Fulfilled By China!